Gladden longevity — Episode #62

Episode #62 —Mark Effinger

Steve Reiter: Welcome to the Gladden Longevity Podcast with Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, MD, FACC, Founder and CEO of Gladden Longevity. On this show, we want to answer three questions for you: How good can we be? How do we make 100 the new 30? And how do we live well beyond 120? We want to help you optimize your longevity, health, and human performance with impactful and actionable information. Now, here's today's episode of the Gladden Longevity Podcast.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Welcome, everybody, to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast, known as Age Hackers as well. I want to introduce you to Mr. Noots. Not everybody knows Mr. Noots, but a few people may know Mr. Noots, Mark Effinger. Mark, it's a pleasure to have you on the show.

Mark Effinger: Thank you so much, Dr. Gladden. Really appreciate it.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, so for those of you who don't know, Mark's going to go through his story, but really he's developed a passion for living a superhuman life, and we're going to go into what that comprises. And then he also has become an expert at nootropics. And interestingly enough, what I like about his approach is that he is also really focused on sleep. And I think this is a part of nootropics that a lot of people miss. They like to step on the gas all the time, and they don't realize that it's actually the sleep that really gives the base for optimal brain function.

So, Mark, it's going to be a really interesting conversation, but before we get to that, I'd really kind of like to understand a little bit more. How did you get into this space? What brought you into this space?

Mark Effinger: Actually, three events. The first was I was a white rat in the military during the '80s for a drug called Accutane. Do you know that drug?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: I know the name, but it doesn't ring a bell off the top of my head.

Mark Effinger: It's a highly carcinogenic acne quote-unquote solution.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay, yeah, that's where I've heard of it. Yeah.

Mark Effinger: Yup. In fact, you have to sign it that if you know somebody that's pregnant, they won't give it to you. They won't prescribe it.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: If you know somebody that's pregnant. Okay.

Mark Effinger: Yeah. If you met somebody that's pregnant. Yeah. So-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, this was like Agent Orange for acne, is that what this is? Yeah.

Mark Effinger: You know what, that's exactly right. And if you know the history of Agent Orange... I did a deep dive on that many decades ago when I realized what I was taking was not going to be conducive to long-term health. That set me into a depressive spiral years later. I was bodybuilding. I was doing century bike rides, running every day, and mountain climbing. Yeah, I lived near Yosemite. So, in the Air Force-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: How old were you, Mark?

Mark Effinger: I was 23 when I started that, and then finished at 24.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: And you had acne? Is that what it was?

Mark Effinger: I had cystic acne-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: You had acne, and that's what you took?

Mark Effinger: Yeah, in the Air Force, I started out as... I was hired as a spy, and I ended up becoming a jet aircraft technician. So, I was bathed in oils and lubricants and-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Fumes...

Mark Effinger: ... everything, and that did not help. And then I was in central California, so I was also sweating my butt off in military fatigues, which are made of the worst plastics you can assemble together in a woven structure. So, that combination was really negative. And a decade later, I was at the point of if there was a gun nearby, I may have used it. So, it was really-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, just tell me about the depression. Was that a function of the fact that you had taken Accutane and you figured out that you'd been exposed to it? Or was it a function of... What was actually that a function of?

Mark Effinger: That's a great question. It was actually diagnosed later as hypothyroid dysfunction. And so, the Accutane and then living in the Northwest, you take this drug that dramatically affects your immune system. And then you take working in... I was founding technology companies at the time, and I was one of those people that was a brute force kind of worker where I could just outwork people by throwing hours at it. I just hit the wall.

I had a chronic nasal drip. I was doing about a pint a day, losing out of my nose. I finally took a weekend off, I hadn't taken a weekend in seven years, and I went to a bed and breakfast. I met a doctor who reminds me very much of you, Dr. Gladden. He just took me by the hand. He looked at my eyes. He asked 20 questions just kind of casually and said: “I think you might be hypothyroid. You shouldn't be this cold and clammy on such a nice day. Your eyes are bloodshot. You look weak, and you're not a drinker. So what's the gig, man?”

And so, we did a basal metabolic test for the next four days and then did a blood draw, saliva and urine, and hair test. And the kind of really cool thing that was an epiphany... The first epiphany for me was he put me on what's called EWOT, exercise with oxygen therapy. So, he fed me a 10 liter per minute oxygen machine while I strode briskly, and in about 30 minutes, a sore opened up in my lat... And again, I was pretty well built at the time. And that sore, we sampled, it was clear fluid that came out of it. It was about the size of a silver dollar, and it ended up being over 80% Accutane. And this is ten years after my last dose.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Oh, wow. Wow, wow, wow.

Mark Effinger: And after being an extreme athlete. I mean, not extreme, extreme athlete, but who did coast runs and competitive-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, but very, very athletic. Okay. That's fascinating. So, pure Accutane is still coming out of your system. So, you had a massive detox issue as well as a massive tox issue, so to speak.

Mark Effinger: Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Mark Effinger: Correct.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Mark Effinger: He got me-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right, put you on desiccated thyroid. Okay, good. And that probably changed your life.

Mark Effinger: Oh, my God. I had never taken anything outside of maybe experimenting with mushrooms when I was young, when I was in my teens. I'd never felt anything that had such a profound impact on mood, energy, clarity, focus, and definition of life's purpose in life. All of those things that are vital to our growth and our engagement with the world suddenly came into focus. And within six months, I was negotiating. I used to be in venture capital, and I was negotiating a venture capital deal for a tech company.

And I just remember walking into the room with- I had VCs on one side of a table, I had these technologists on the other, and movie theater owners on another. And that room was loaded with tension. Nobody was happy with what was going on, but when you're really present, you're really in the moment and present, you can kind of almost sense what people are thinking and feeling. And I grabbed a marker, I grabbed a whiteboard marker, I got up, spun around on the whiteboard, and started just writing. And within 45 minutes, we were signing a deal, and it was diffusing the room, bringing a little bit of humor in, getting an understanding of what everybody wanted and innately understanding it. And that was my aha moment of, ‘Holy crap, man, I'm back.’ So, it was big.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Nice. Yeah, no, that's awesome. To your point, what I really like about the testing that you did is you did biometric testing to look at your thyroid, not just the blood work because it's the biometric testing that really tells the story. Yeah, so many people have been fooled and told they're not hypothyroid when they are. We do it for everybody. Every time we test the thyroid, we also do a resting metabolic rate because, without it, you're just shooting in the dark. If you think you can dose thyroid off somebody's T3 or free T3, you're just kidding yourself. So, I love that that's the case. Yeah. When you get that dose right, it's like the lights come back on. I've had the same experience, so I know how remarkable it is. Yeah.

Mark Effinger: Yeah. I mean, I'm an evangelist for nootropics because I've experienced, and I've got tens of thousands of clients who've experienced how powerful they can be.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, this is a really interesting point that you're making, which is that the first anti-nootropic is actually overworking yourself to the point where you really can't function very efficiently. And the second point is that one of the best nootropics is actually getting your thyroid modulated to the point where it's working properly.

And I think a lot of times people think about nootropics in terms of, ‘Well, I need to take this supplement, that supplement, this medication, that medication.’ But really, when you're thinking about nootropics, really, which is optimizing brain function, some of the basic things: diet, healthy fats, fish oil, things like this, vitamin D, getting your thyroid optimized, getting your testosterone optimized for that matter, estrogen optimized, all these fundamental things really precede any thought of, ‘Should I be taking a nootropic, should I go buy a nootropic and take it?’

Mark Effinger: Yeah, well, that's a super important point. One of the things I've noticed... I'm 61 years old now, so I'm fairly young, and I consider myself on close to the top of my game and getting-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: A mere child.

Mark Effinger: ... [inaudible 00:09:24]. I love that. I freaking love that. Believe me, when I was starting this business, I was in business with a guy named Marsh Fisher. Here's a disc. Marsh Fisher was the founder of Century 21 Real Estate, and we were in Newport Beach, California, creating brainstorming and innovation software. So, helping people think laterally. Marsh was 88 when he passed away. He would wake up every morning at four o'clock in the AM. He would spend two hours writing a joke, and then he would call me at 7:00 AM and tell me the joke he wrote.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Oh, wow, two hours.

Mark Effinger: Yeah, it was great. He didn't like using software, even though we developed software together. So, he had all of our software printed out in these massive bound tablets, and he would go through them and find associative words and phrases and actors and events, and... it was crazy. But one of the things I noticed is even with the- I've got high availability of nootropics because we make them and we formulate them there. I'm in a 24,000-square-foot lab here in Burlington, Iowa.

And yet, without doing- There's a small roadway next to me called Snake Alley. It's almost vertical. It's only a couple of hundred yards. And I sprint that on a daily basis. I sprint up that on a daily basis. And I notice that if I do not do that cardiovascular activity and get my breath work up and get the adrenal, the dopamine, all of the factors necessary for performance, my cognitive recall is off. The delays between cognitive response, call and response, are lengthened and, obviously, my sleep goes to hell, my sense of joy starts to lower… I'm still a very positive person, but it's not on that ragged edge. Plus, the ability to fire-crack ideas with somebody that's really smart... I've got a robot expert here who's absolutely brilliant. That starts to go away as well.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Starts to fade, yeah. So, that's a good point too. So I didn't mention exercise, but I think that's another very strong nootropic, right, because you're dissipating stress. And you could even couple in things like saunas and cold plunges and things like that also being very important for nootropic activity in the brain. I mean, if you really want to get your hit of dopamine, go do a cold plunge and see if your thinking isn't a little bit clearer when you come out of that, right?

Mark Effinger: Yeah. Break the ice and then dump yourself in. I was doing a bunch of podcasts in Austin not too long ago, and every one of the podcasters led me to the backyard and said: “Here, get in this.”

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right, exactly. ‘Yeah. We'll be back in a minute.’ Yeah, literally. Okay, cool. So, you were depressed, so you were almost suicidal, and then you made some sort of a turn. You figured out the thyroid issue, and this doctor/physician helped, which helped you on your bed and breakfast tour that one weekend. And then, what happened? You chartered a new course. All of a sudden, you knew you were back when you started negotiating these deals, and that led from one thing to another. Sounds like you've had a very entrepreneurial life, and you've been involved with many, many different businesses and startups, but something pulled you into the nootropic space because that wasn't part of everything you were doing. So, how did we get to that?

Mark Effinger: There were two quick events. One was I listened to a radio show one morning, and the gentleman was talking about Huperzine A, which is an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, a natural one, which means that it allows acetylcholine to keep flowing in the synapse rather than breaking down enzymatically and dissipating. And that can help your memory, and it can help your recall.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yup, just so the audience knows, we're talking about a neurotransmitter here, acetylcholine, that works in the brain. It's one of the primary memory-related neurotransmitters. And actually, when people start to develop Alzheimer's, they start to work on the acetylcholine pathway to increase acetylcholine levels. And it doesn't work for Alzheimer's. But optimizing acetylcholine levels can be very helpful. And there are a couple of ways to do that. You can increase the supply, and you can decrease the degradation. So, we can talk about that, but okay. So you heard about Huperzine, which is a way to decrease the degradation of acetylcholine.

Mark Effinger: Correct. That was really valuable. The guy happened to be a half hour away from me. I was dropping somebody off at the airport when I heard about his show. So, I zoomed up in his direction, met with him, and said I'm entranced with the capacity to be able to do something aside from just caffeinating myself to death that would improve my cognitive performance because it's always- My currency has always been my ability to actually think through big problems and make solutions, hence the entrepreneurial background.

And so, he said: “Sure.” He goes: "Sure." He goes: "I got no money." I said: "Great. Let me work for you for free for six months or a year, and if I can measurably improve your company, can we move something online?" And this is just at the release of the first Netscape browser and internet. And I was intrigued by what could happen. And we did. And that got exciting. I worked with some Intel engineers to use Huperzine A to replace their caffeine habit and saw a measurable increase in productivity and in overall results.

That was kind of one of those catalytic events as well. And then later on, a few years later… All of my children were born at home. I have three children. The last one was born on a couch in front of the fireplace, and after my wife grabbed my hand and just about crushed it, saying: "You're getting cut," they-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay. Okay. Right, she was done. Okay, I get it.

Mark Effinger: The end of my virility.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: It sounds like the birthing took place at the same site as the conception, possibly. I don't know, that's just a guess, but-

Mark Effinger: Good guess. Good guess. Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right?

Mark Effinger: Roaring fireplace and all. It was great. Well, at the time, this was the late '80s, the Sackler family hadn't taken command of the world in their painkillers, and the midwife handed my wife four oxycodone. She tore a little and didn't want an episiotomy, so she fell in love. She found her muse, and ten years later, she committed suicide on that very same drug.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Oh, wow. Wow, wow, wow.

Mark Effinger: Yeah, it was not fun. I had just helped sell a company called PR Web, and my business partner was very kind and said: "Here, let's get you out of town and have you reboot your system and go focus on what's important to you and your kids." And in doing that, I got back to the roots of this. If Huperzine A could have such a profound effect on these intel people, are there other things that we could do that would actually be able to help people get off of addictive drugs by improving their cognitive decision-making?

Because when I boil it down, after meeting with a number of people that were addicted, they said that the problem wasn't necessarily the drug or the substance; it was they who made poor decisions around the pull of that drug or the desire. And so, I had this naive desire to try to get people off of addictive drugs. And so, that was kind of part one.

And in part two, was... So, what I did is I met with a bunch of addicts at a rehab center, and I said: "Why are you here? And why did it take you so long to get here?" And a number of them had been there- I did this for a year, about every six weeks. And a number of them had been there multiple times. This was not their first rodeo when it came to addiction counseling. And I said: "Why?" And they said: "Well, it's embarrassing. It takes a long time, six to 12 weeks or more. They're going to give me a whole stew of meds to go through this process that they've developed. And in the end, I'm going to be addicted to two to four of them." And the minute I forget to fulfill my prescription, my former dealer is on speed dial.”

And so, what it boiled down to me was... And then it was expensive as well, if they didn't have insurance coverage. And even if they did, it could sometimes be expensive. So, working with that, I said, ‘Gosh, it sounds like there's a lot of cognitive stuff going on up there in the decision-making realm. If I can get them to detox relatively quickly and painlessly... again, painlessly, at a low cost, three, four, five, six, seven days, and I can help them improve their decision-making, then the next piece of that pie is, what about the lack of motivation that happens when they've burned out adrenals? They've burned out cognitive circuits; neuro-pathways have been fried, and all of these other factors. Is there a secondary part of that?’

And I said, ‘Yes, if we could give you what's called ATP, adenosine triphosphate as a result of improving mitochondrial health, which will also increase cognitive performance and their physiology as well, in general, then they would have the ability to execute on the good decisions that they're now starting to make. And that might lead to a dopamine hit of a little bit of success, and maybe there would be enough of that that would fuel their further growth.’ So, that was the plan.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, that was a strategy. Yeah, so that's the strategy. So, it's an interesting strategy. And what were you using to increase the ATP for them?

Mark Effinger: I did a number of factors, but PQQ was my early favorite.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay. And just so people know-

Mark Effinger: The challenge I had with it was-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: ... I was just going to say, so people know PQQ is a supplement, basically, that improves mitochondrial neurogenesis. So, you end up making more mitochondria when you have PQQ on board. It also kind of works in concert with another supplement called Coenzyme Q10, which many times are prescribed together, which also has an impact on ATP production by enhancing what I'll call the respiratory transport chain. Not to get too much lingo in here, but you can use these supplements to help optimize mitochondrial function, the net result of which is more ATP production. So, you started with PQQ, it sounds like, yes?

Mark Effinger: I so love what you just said because that's exactly it. What I did was I started with PQQ, and then I started adding carnitines, various carnitines to the mix.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: And carnitine, to make sense for the audience... Yeah, I mean, it brings fat, where it becomes fuel for the mitochondria. So, now he's enhancing the input to the mitochondria. How do we get more fuel into the engine, so to speak? How do we make the engine work better with the PQQ and have more engines? Okay, I get it. Keep going.

Mark Effinger: Yup. And then, I would do a number of herbal extracts to help at night during the sleep cycle. The brain shrinks a bit during the sleep cycle, and cerebral spinal fluid flows around the brain, and it starts to pull out toxins. If you're doing heavy-duty ATP synthesis, you're also creating some exhaust, so to speak. And so, your capillaries are very thin walled, especially in the brain, in the gray matter. And having this cerebral spinal fluid flow past that, it pulls out a lot of this detritus that would otherwise build up, pulls it through the spinal column and out the body. And that was really key because they would go to bed, and regardless of the condition they were in when they went to bed, they would wake up systematically cleaner and clearer. And again, this whole thing was good decisions, energy to execute success, repeat.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yup. And just so the audience knows too, this is a really important cycle in the brain for brain health and brain optimization, is what's now become identified as the glymphatic system, which is basically a system that basically drains these toxins away from the brain at night. And it only happens, or it happens at its peak efficiency during slow-wave sleep or deep sleep. So, it's one of the reasons why accessing deep sleep is so important, wearing a WHOOP, an OURA ring, something that gives you information like that, becomes critical.

And the other thing that's interesting, I heard a lecture by the woman that actually discovered the glymphatic system. They've discovered that it actually works better when your right cheek is on the pillow. So, I switched from being a left-cheek sleeper to a right-cheek sleeper most of the time for that very reason. So, it's pretty interesting. But this point of cleaning out the brain at the end of the day is critical. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, nice. Sorry-

Mark Effinger: It's so funny you say that.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Go ahead.

Mark Effinger: No, I love that because I'm also a right-cheek sleeper, but I'm a right-cheek sleeper... The face, not the butt, necessarily. I guess I am the butt too.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, you would be. Yeah. That's okay-

Mark Effinger: And I do-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Mark Effinger: I do the army crawl; it is my sleep position. So, I've got a knee up. I've got my left knee up, and I do that, but I do it because I've got a deviated septum. And so, if I'm on the other side, some parts of the night as the breathing cycle goes back and forth between the different nostrils, but that's how I can get myself into the state. I can get to sleep. I'll do some deep breathing prior to that and do a breath heart sink to help me get my whole parasympathetic system happening and then go to bed. So, yeah.

Steve Reiter: This episode of The Gladden Longevity Podcast is brought to you by H2 Molecular Hydrogen in the Gladden Longevity Store.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Steve, you've heard us talk about this numerous times on the podcast in terms of the benefits of H2 and hydrogen water. We love it. It's really the best way to balance your entire redox system, so it really protects you from free radical damage. I take it every time I get on a flight to protect me from radiation damage when I'm flying, and I use it to rejuvenate my brain in the afternoon.

There are really two kinds of exercise. There's physical exercise, and taking H2 before or after that works great, but also, there's a mental exercise, and I find that the H2 will bring your brain back when you're tired in the afternoon. So, I think it's the perfect thing for longevity and for performance, quite honestly.

Steve Reiter And I talked to you about this that I found dropping one or two tablets in a glass of water right before bed. I've seen an overall bump in my deep sleep when I do so.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Fascinating. Yeah.

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Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. One of the other things that I use it for routinely is when I'm about to go on a mountain bike ride, and I will say this that if I go on a long mountain bike ride, I will take one prior, I'll take one during, and I'll take one after. And some of the Iron Men that we've worked with have said that when they're doing an Iron Man, they'll take it three or four times throughout the race.

Yeah. And their comment is that, “it's taking out the old battery and putting in a new one.” It really rejuvenates your body's ability to perform when you're doing a more extended athletic activity. So, think about that too. If you want to go do a longer hike or whatever else, take it with you.

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Well, this is another great topic. So, one of the other things for optimal brain function is what he just mentioned, which is increasing parasympathetic tone, which is also good for sleep and recovery. It's correlated with heart rate variability, which you probably were measuring or have measured.

And so, what I like about this is here is really taking a global approach to this. It's not just, ‘Here, take a Huperzine A,’ which, for some people, quite honestly, can have side effects in the wrong dose too. So, none of these things are totally benign.

And so, if we're going to build the structure, it's almost like how you build your companies. We're going to build a foundation and build it from the ground up. And that's what I'm hearing here. It's the same approach. Let's build this from the ground up.

Okay. Interesting. So, you're taking this approach with the addicts, and that's working out.

Mark Effinger: Yeah. So, that's a start. And then, the big discovery was- And I started with polyglutamic acid and different sources of choline. So, amino acid, and I would take it at night. I would take about six grams at night and a small dose of choline. Too high a dose would be stimulatory.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Which one were you taking?

Mark Effinger: At that time, it was bitartrate. It was before I deserted Alpha-GPC and CDP choline and those factors. And I would wake up, and I would be really sharp for about two and a half to three hours and then fall off a bit of a cliff. So, I was going, ‘Okay. I've got a piece of the formula, now what?’ And I would start pairing these things. I would put them in clear test tubes, and I would send them to... I had a bunch of people, I had clients at Genentech, and Nike, at Microsoft, and Apple, and these other big tech companies who I had taught lateral thinking and creativity to.

So, I could send them, they trusted me, and I would send them these blank test tubes of paired compounds and say: "Try this. It's going to taste like crap, but if it makes you perform better or worse, let me know because I've got a form up on the web, and you can just fill it out. Let me know." And after 3000 of those tests with various pairs of molecules and various ratios of those molecules, I arrived at what's called a stack of 27 different compounds that together in the right ratios for the right age, sex, weight, exercise condition, eating habits, and goals would be highly efficacious in helping you to reach a- I don't like to talk about pure cognitive performance because I don't think that that's accurate, I think, it's a state change towards the goal orientation that you have. So, that's how that came about.

And then, it just so happens, a movie Limitless came out right at the same time. And my beta tester- I had a little over a thousand beta testers. I said: "Okay. We finally hit it. We finally got the formula that actually works reliably based on weight and height and everything." What I mean is that it's changed and customized for every customer. Still today, everything we make is optimized for the [inaudible 00:29:02], but I said: "What do I call it?" And they said: "Well, you should call it the thing in that movie." I said: "What movie?" And they said: "Oh, go watch Limitless. Bradley Cooper is going to be your muse for quite some time." And they were right.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Exactly.

Mark Effinger: I probably owe them royalties.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Probably. No, that's awesome. The thing that you said that I really like is that optimal performance is not just about cognitive ability. It's about the ability to go into a state. And I think, I don't know if that resonates with the audience or not, but it resonates with me incredibly well because flow states are one state that people can get into where performance goes forward. And the others are creative states where you actually stop thinking, and you start feeling into things.

You actually start imagining, create... Things start to flow through you, and you can even go into a source connection where now you're a conduit for things that are flowing through you. So, the state element. So, talk to me about states and how you got connected to states and figured this out. Did this go way back in your life, or was this something that came in somewhere along the journey, or what's the story there?

Mark Effinger: I don't know how much I'm allowed to share on this podcast, but I'm going to venture and... Awesome. And Steve, correct me if I-

Dr. Jeffery Gladden: Yeah. No, I mean, LSD is fine.

Mark Effinger: Okay, cool. So, back in the '70s, I'm a child of the '70s. '60s and '70s. I was playing district tennis at 16 years old. I was one of those perfectionist players. I knew exactly what my stroke needed to be, how my feet needed to be, what grip I was going to use, and the tension on my racket strings, whether it was a wood or an aluminum or a steel racket.

All of these factors were based on the ball we were using, a Penn versus a Wilson, and the court surface we were on, and whether it was an indoor or outdoor, and all of these variable factors. So, I was an anal-retentive tennis player who studied the best of the best. And I modeled their strokes so that I would have a Guillermo Vilas' backhand and Rod Laver's forehand. And that was my idea. And Adriano Panatta's drop shot and Ilie Nastase's forehand volley. And so-

Dr. Jeffery Gladden: You're going to be the Frankenstein of tennis here.

Mark Effinger: Yeah. It was totally- Then, back then, they had a thing called World Tennis Magazine. And in it, if you open it up, there were still sequential photos of each of the strokes. And every month, they would have a new performer. And so, I would say: "Okay. I'm a South Paw. I'm six foot three…"

At the time, I weighed about 135 pounds, and so, “here are the people that I can model.” And so, Roscoe Tanner served, because he was about my height, and I could figure out how to do that serve and get some beat on the ball, but what happened was I took- I'd already been experimenting with mushrooms and LSD back then and with my buddies who were nouveau.

And I was making parts for nuclear reactors during the day. So, I had half a day at school, half a day making parts for nuclear reactors and then enjoying-

Steve Reiter: Just drugs and methods on this whole...

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: This thing that's been [inaudible 00:32:27].

Mark Effinger: Exactly. Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay. Yeah. And what state are you in back then?

Mark Effinger: Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm a blue-collar kid, but my dad taught me to work really hard and just to outwork everybody. And that was going to be your ticket. And he wasn't wrong. He was not wrong. And so, I took a quarter ounce of mushrooms, of Psilocybin, golden teachers at the time, and fresh from the football field because back then, they just grew wild, and I was in Salem, Oregon at the time. And I came on during a... We were getting just creamed, I would say. I'd already won singles, now I was in doubles. And the mushrooms just came on. And anybody that's had that experience understands where suddenly colors are brighter, you're awake, you hear songs that don't exist, but they sure do in your head.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: And now you're playing tennis [inaudible 00:33:23]; what's going on?

Mark Effinger: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm playing, in fact-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: [inaudible 00:33:27]. Okay.

Mark Effinger: Yeah. And we're playing against Jesuit, right? So, we're the blue-collar school, and we're playing against the high-end Catholic school. So, these guys had money, they've been playing since they were four. I've been playing since I was in eighth grade, that kind of thing.

And it was great, my doubles partner, John Hewitt, lofted the ball short at the net, meaning that these guys, who were both our height, but they weighed 200 pounds, they were great. So, they came up, and they were about to smash it.

I ran back to the baseline, and I intuitively knew that the ball was coming behind me down the line, and I was able to get my racket behind me; of course, you practice all those things when you're trying to play a pro. And I punched it back hard. It went down the line as a winner, and it completely changed everything.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So now, just so people know, you're actually running away from the ball, and you're hitting it going backward, just so people can imagine what he just did. I mean, it's an incredible shot for a pro to make, right? Okay.

Mark Effinger: Yeah. It was great. Thankfully, my big brother was there to take notes.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay. Somebody confirms it.

Mark Effinger: Exactly. Yeah. So, that happened, and the big epiphany was it broke the yolk of my racket, which is that plastic thing in the middle that the strings go through. And again, I'm an anal-retentive perfectionist player. I didn't give a shit at that point.

And I realized that the racket, and the ball, and the surface, and the wind, and the sun, and the opponent didn't matter. I was playing dance. I was dancing and playing in- I was in a ballet, and I just had three other cohorts in this ballet with me. So, we were all doing this together. There was no opposition and no fear or anything. And I believe it was a Yes song in my head, like Yours Is No Disgrace. So, one of these early Yes songs that's on a really weird time signature. And it was a 7/8 time signature. And so, when you're in this state...

Again, this is a state thing. When you're in this state, which was a combination of flow state, joy, performance, and disconnection from, it's very present, but it was a disconnection from outcomes. I didn't care what the outcome was. I was in the pure joy of the moment. And so in that, I knew that they were listening-

Steve Reiter: And that's often when we play our best when we're in sports.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Mark Effinger: Oh, totally. Yeah. Kotler 101, right? It's when you get into that flow state, and you get it out of your head, you're suddenly not being dictated to. The actions you take are not dictated by all of these, ‘I have to have this’ or ‘I have to have that.’ This is really interesting. I wonder how cool this is going to be, or I wonder what fun this would be if we did this, right?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right. What happens if I hit it between these guys like this, right? Yeah. It's all creative fun.

Mark Effinger: Yeah. Well, that was it. And I got, instead of, normally on the return of serve, you back up behind the baseline by five to 10 feet to return the serve because you need the time because these guys are hitting at 110 to 120 miles an hour. I moved in halfway between the baseline and the service box, and I developed a 24-inch punch stroke on the fly. That was going to be my thing. And I just bounced on the balls of my feet, and I was forward, and I was just a jackrabbit.

And I punched everything back, and we just killed them, we killed them. But the big epiphany was they were listening to 2/4, 3/4, or 4/4 time signature songs in their heads because they were listening to whether it was country or rock or disco. And I was listening to something that was way beyond that. And the other was, I didn't give a shit if I won. I really wanted to play with these guys because they were so talented, and it was so much fun to stretch for that ball or to take the ball that everybody thought was going to be a goner and to get it back. And that was the big aha moment.

Here's the interesting thing, now that was when I was 16 years old. I'm 61 today. When I go on a tennis court, I can immediately go into that space. And I can rekindle those strokes. It's really a very powerful place. So, fast-forward, now we're doing these nootropic compounds, and we're hoping to help people get off addictive things. And we're finding that people that are not in this degraded state, they're in an optimum or a suboptimal, at least, performance state, they suddenly are really finding themselves performing at a very high level, whether that is getting into the flow state, it's getting into a dopaminergic reward and command state, or it's a serotonergic, fun, enjoyable, creative state is... I was finding that it was a really unique place to play.

And I realized that people thought that they wanted cognitive performance, but what they really wanted is they wanted to be having joy in the thing that they were doing at the moment or that they had to do at the moment, and they would feel good about that.

Apr 13, 2023

You can listen to this podcast by clicking the link below.

Episode #62

Episode #62 - Cont'd

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Wow. What a massive insight. What a massive insight, Mark. That's a massive insight. People think they want to be able to perform, but what they really want is they want to be able to enter that state, and from that state, they'll actually perform, but they'll actually do other things that they weren't even contemplating doing, that they didn't even know were possibilities. Making that shot or returning a serve, you don't even know that that's a possibility. It's not about before you were simply trying to execute what you knew; when you get into these states like this, all of a sudden new things become possible, and you just expand in ways that you could never even imagine.

So, I agree. The idea of going into states, which is why I keyed in on that word, really supersedes even cognitive ability, which is wonderful. It's wonderful to be razor sharp and have a good memory and recall and be able to do all the things you want. That's a nice tool, but it's only a tool. It's still really only a piece of what the bigger picture is, which is the state that you're in.

So, the question is, with the nootropics that you're developing… Most nootropics are really focused on cognitive ability, if you will, mental acuity, and alertness. Are you actually creating nootropics that are designed to put people into states? Is that really your aspiration? Is that what we're going for?

Mark Effinger: Yeah. Absolutely. And I mean, obviously, we want to do things like repair the brain as much as possible. We want to improve neurogenesis, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, the fertilizer for the brain, and those things-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Sounds like microdosing. [inaudible 00:40:05].

Mark Effinger: ... in the end. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly, dude. Yeah. That's incredible for that, right?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right.

Mark Effinger: So, someday, we're going to be able to... In the next few years, I'm hoping- I got to be a contributor to the Oregon's passing of the laws up there about micro-dosing mushrooms under clinical use and practical-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Surveillance?

Mark Effinger: ... I just thought it would. Yup. Very, very important. But once you realize that you're not a static animal that's in decline and that you actually have control over your neurological growth, your dendrite pruning and growth, all of the key factors that help keep us cognitively performing, then I think, to me, it was a delight.

It was going, ‘Holy shit, man. I can go from what we call sick to superhuman.’ I can move from realizing that I'm weak in a certain area and going, ‘Okay. What are some ways that I can prop that up? What's the scaffolding that I can build that will get us into a state of performance on demand?’ And for me, that was the big thing. And I had so much feedback from clients telling me that this was kind of an experience that they were happening.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: I will tell you that, for me, this whole category really interfaces with a spiritual path as well. I know that some of the first states I've ever experienced were in deep meditation, where all of a sudden, you just transcend into another plane. You see the world differently.

You experience everything differently. There's a much deeper understanding. All of a sudden, things become clear, just wonderful spiritual insights, if you will. And to this day, there's a very spiritual connection. And I know that many people that are suffering with depression, anxiety, whatever, using psychedelics. I saw some, whether it's LSD, or Psilocybin, or DMT, or whatever they're doing, they have very spiritual experiences also. So, is there a spiritual element to what you're doing here? Or is it more of a flow, or where does all that come together for you?

Mark Effinger: A couple of things. First, if I can comment and say one of the things that excites me so much about this work that we get to do, both you and I, is my stepfather was an MD and a physician in microbiology. And he was so far from spiritual insight. My dad was a monk, was a Trappist monk. So, I had these two contrasting personalities. So, I loved my stepfather for the cognitive things that he challenged me with and the entrepreneurial edge. But my father, who for three years didn't even speak a word, he just sang Gregorian chants in Latin and had a simple sign language for “pass potatoes” is, I learned the basis for transcendental meditation when I was eight.

And I learned how to do what I call a breath heart sink, where you breathe based on your heartbeats, in, out, and at the bottom and top, and a box breathing, so to speak. And that meditation, and then having an OBE, an out-of-body experience when I was very young and being able to go, ‘Holy shit, there is so much more on the unseen side of this life than there is seen.’

So, we fast-forward to today. One of the things that has intrigued me about these conversations I get to have with folks like yourself is I was always expecting people in the medical world, especially deep in the medical world, to be a little bit close-minded to the spiritual or to the unseen, to source, to whether it's God or whatever happens to be their definition of higher power or the energy. As my daughter likes to say, when my wife passed away, my youngest daughter said: "Dad, remember, energy's neither created nor destroyed. So, mom's just floating around here playing in her energetic role in the world." Yeah. And she's 12 years old, she said that.

Steve Reiter: Wow.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's profound, right?

Steve: Oh, that's pretty-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Beautiful.

Steve Reiter: Yeah.

Mark Effinger: Yeah. But that's the thing. So, yes, I don't think you can separate the two. I did think so at one time. I thought that there's this thing over here that I don't understand that is spiritual, I'm not going to play with that. And there's this thing over here that is purely biochemical neurochemical, and I know how to articulate that, but I think that the veil has been torn.

And I think that the tools that we have here, whether it's tools for sleep or tools for cognitive performance, or for focus or for love, I think that, all they are is catalytic pieces that help us realize the greater flow that's happening. And we get an opportunity through these tools to jump into that flow because we're not fighting our own physical limitations. We're not fighting the things that are trying to keep us ungrounded, and unhealthy, and unhappy.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Exactly. No, I call it living your unencumbered- Really, for me, it's reclaiming your birthright to live life as an unencumbered self where you're no longer encumbered by all the different things that we end up living in reaction to based on our childhood's growth, development, and things like that.

And people are always on tilt because they're living in reaction to these things. And I think when you have spiritual breakthroughs through whatever mechanisms, getting to the point where you are unencumbered by those, and now you're free to play tennis and see new shots that you didn't know existed, is really the joy of life, quite honestly, right? If that's what I would say.

Mark Effinger: Well said, Doc.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Mark Effinger: That's great.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Mark Effinger: Yeah, man.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Super cool.

Mark Effinger: It's a journey. And I think that I get the opportunity, both of us do, all three of us do, to be an active observer in this life. I mean, we're watching the things happen, and we're also getting to contribute in the areas where we kind of feel called to, or we feel like we have the most value or that pull at us, that tug at us. And so, that, to me, is the joy. So, what we did was we created a stack, a whole combination of different products that are, again, oriented towards state optimization. And they're natural. We use only natural extracts. And they're very effective. We don't put out anything that isn't what we call ‘experiential’. So, we want to have something, and we're not talking about experiential because we jacked a bunch of caffeine into it. We're talking about experiential because we focused on the right neurotransmitters, the right physiological processes, the right enzymatic breakdown, and enzymatic optimization. And then we, again, customize every product to the individual, so it's not just selected. Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: I love this approach. I love the idea because you know what we know in working with many individuals, that not everything works for everybody. And certain things work great for one person and not at all for the next. And so, I think the idea of doing a customization is a great idea. In the customization, is it primarily based on feedback? Like, I'll take this, and I'll say: "Well, this was good to this point, but there was something else that didn't feel as good." And then I relay that back to the company. How do you get to the customization? Is there a genetic profile, and is this done ahead of time? Or what are your… or intake forms, or how do you actually get to that point?

Mark Effinger: Yep. The equivalent of a medical intake form is where you start. Actually, there are a couple of things. When you go to the Nootopia website, the first thing you'll see is there's a button saying, ‘Hey, let's get your neurochemical profile.’ So, we do a thing that's very closely linked to the Braverman test. And Dr. Braverman was a... Right. And we use that as our guideline. And so, that lets us know what are you optimized in and what are you deficient in when it comes to neurochemicals. So, that's the start. And then, from there, you select which of the different programs that you'd like to start on, the journey you'd like to do. And then we have you fill out a very comprehensive intake form that is, again, your age, weight, sex, your workout programs, or training programs, any of those things, what your eating habits are, what your coffee and caffeine intake is, any of the stims you're on, what meds you're on, what nutrients or supplements you're on, how often you take them, and then what your goals are.

And then when you get to the end of that, we go, ‘Okay, cool.’ And we customize based on, we've got over 20 million data points we've collected over the years, and we continue to collect them every day. And we use that to be able to arrive at the first version customization level of your first order.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: I was just going to interrupt you for a second. And that is, how are you collecting the data points on your users? How is that done? Are they reporting back certain things, or what's the mechanism?

Mark Effinger: Yeah, we have a free app that comes with the kit. And then you feed us your feedback on a daily basis, and as often as you do. Basically, we have a 30-day campaign that says, ‘Let's start here. Let's try these different products and see how you respond to them at the customization ratios that we provided for you. And then let us know: did it suck, or was it rockstar? Was it rockstar for two hours, or was it rockstar all day? Do you have a different performance profile that you would like to have? Great.’ And then what we do is all that data is being built into our AI system that says- Okay, at the end of that, let's take this data. We aggregate it, and we say: "All right, based on not only these factors with you, but also these factors with people of the similar weight, height, sex, age, and other reasonable factors…" And we're getting a genetic test input coming in the second quarter of this year as well.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay. Nice. Yeah, I think that's really great because a lot of people are selling stuff and making claims about it. But the thing that the audience should understand is you really have to figure it out for yourself in this space. Because unless your genetics and your neurotransmitter levels, and you've actually done some homework on this, Huperzine may not work for you, quite honestly. So, or you may have the side effects from it: bradycardia or high blood pressure, or anything else it could cost. So, you have to be careful. This is a field that you need to be careful in. And I think the more precision you can have, the better and safer it's going to be for you to actually push on this, realizing that this is really the icing on the cake. And the cake we talked about earlier, which is all the getting yourself to a healthy state in sleep, in thyroid, in hormones, and all these other things. Then you're ready for the icing. But until you build the cake, don't try to substitute the nootropic for the cake. That's really a major mistake.

Mark Effinger: Well, I live in the Midwest. I moved from the Portland, Oregon area and to Port Beach, California, to Burlington, Iowa, which is right in the Mississippi.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's a big-

Mark Effinger: Oh man. Well, I don't know, where do you live now?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: I live in Dallas and Puerto Rico.

Mark Effinger: Oh, love it. Both.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Mark Effinger: My mentor in the real estate world also is from here, but he built his fortune in Dallas as well.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Mark Effinger: Yeah. Great. Really great guy. So one of the things that, the big wake-up call for us when we moved here, outside of the fact, is that for what I sold my home for in Vancouver, Washington, I could buy half of this downtown here.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Exactly. I'm sure.

Mark Effinger: It's crazy, man.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Mark Effinger: That was a good thing, right? It would be an ugly shift if I went the other direction, of course.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's right. That's right.

Mark Effinger: But you go to the grocery stores here, Hy-Vee is one of the big branded grocery stores, is you see people my age, again, 61. You see people my age who look 80, who are hunched over their shopping cart and using it as their-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. It's like a walker, basically.

Mark Effinger: Yeah, it is. It's exactly it. And it blows my mind because when we heard that this is the bread basket of America. And evidently, you were right, bread is definitely not as good for you as they said.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's right. Yeah. Whole grain goodness. Yeah. I mean, there are some nutrients and grain that are good, but we know for a fact that there's a lot of stuff about grains that are not in your best interest.

Mark Effinger: Yeah. Especially refined. When I was playing state tennis, our last competition was right outside the Wonder Bread factory in Portland, Oregon.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Oh, nice.

Mark Effinger: Yeah, you're serving a big breath of Wonder Bread.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's right.

Mark Effinger: That was great.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: We grew up on Wonder Bread and peanut butter and jelly. I mean, that was, come in for lunch. That's what you got, and you went back out and played more baseball, so yeah.

Mark Effinger: That's it. But that was the other side, right?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Mark Effinger: Is you went back out, and you played more baseball.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's right.

Mark Effinger: Until mom called you in for dinner.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's it. That's it.

Mark Effinger: I love that.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Cool. So yeah, so precision. So, people go through this one month, and then what's the program after that? How does that work for them?

Mark Effinger: So then, what they can do is, basically, each of the capsules- Here's an example: I know your viewers probably can't see that. But anyway, our capsules are uniquely custom-made, and you can see when you first see them a clear gel on top, and then there are layers of powder. Each of those layers were ladled in there based on the performance factors for each individual.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay. Now is it all released at the same time, or is there an element of sustained release or sequential release?

Mark Effinger: Yeah, so the oil releases after the powders.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Mark Effinger: And then we also have a different performance model here, which is- viewers can't necessarily see us unless they're on, but this is a capsule inside of a capsule with an oil surround.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Mark Effinger: So, in this one, you've got a compressed powder. And again, they're custom blended for you based on your factors.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: I see that.

Mark Effinger: There's oil in there as well, that's custom blended.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: What's the oil?

Mark Effinger: It starts with Celastrus paniculatus or intellect tree seed oil. And then there's some ginger oil, there's some black pepper oil, some capsaicin oil. Yeah. So, it's high bioavailability, it dramatically reduces inflammation [inaudible 00:54:44].

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay. So, it probably, yeah, it's probably anti-inflammatory, and also probably enhances the absorption of the powder when it breaks.

Mark Effinger: Exactly. Yeah. And we found that if we change it, like the capsules, the outer capsule breaks down at a 4.2 pH. The inner capsule breaks down at a 6.5 to 6.7.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Mark Effinger: So, you have one breaking down in the stomach-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Stomach, small intestine.

Mark Effinger: Yep, exactly.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Perfect.

Mark Effinger: And that also helps affect the flow rate of which the product gets into your bloodstream, so that you can actually modulate some of that. And then the oils will pick up the powders as they're passed through and become these, through the enzymatic process in the gut, become these different compounds, and then it'll push it through the blood-brain barrier because those oil components have a tendency to flow easier.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Nice. I think this is the most sophisticated approach to delivering nootropics to the brain that I've come across, quite honestly. So, congratulations for doing that. I mean, really.

Mark Effinger: Thank you.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: It's not only a feat of engineering, but it shows a real persistence and integrity to trying to get it right, which is really what we're all about, right?

Mark Effinger: Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, yeah.

Mark Effinger: It's an infinite horizon on that count.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's right.

Mark Effinger: Every Tuesday morning, we work with our Bosnian- We have a lab of 20 Ph.D. and Ph.D. candidates in Bosnia who just work for us at Burch University. In today's discussion, we were talking about incremental pH levels and how, once we get the right data back from gut examination, we want to be able to go, ‘Okay, you need a 4.7 pH on that first cap. And you need a 7.0 or 7.2 on the next one.’

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Nice.

Mark Effinger: And so, being able to fine-tune that is going to be very fun. And then also because we're well known in the enzyme and bowel flora restoration world, is we're going to be able to add some of those components so that you get this secondary factor that's present. As you know, the gut-brain connection is critical.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, it is. So, that's fascinating. So, your neurotropics are not just focused primarily on the brain, you're doing digestive enzymes, and also working on the gut microbiome, it sounds like. Is that what we're saying?

Mark Effinger: Huge.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Mark Effinger: You bet.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: It's huge, but it's unusual for a nootropic company to focus there. So, that's really interesting too. There's a lot of pathogens in the gut as well. SIBO, small intestinal bowel overgrowth, and yeast overgrowth in the small intestine, things like that. Do you have products that help address that as well, or is that a little bit beyond the scope of where you are currently?

Mark Effinger: Oh, no, no. That's actually a- BiOptimizers. We've got two products that specifically deal with that. One is P3-OM. So, it's an incredible probiotic-prebiotic-postbiotic combo. And then we have another factor specifically made for trying to get rid of some of those really nasty bugs that completely dysregulate the bowel flora.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Mark Effinger: I'm really, really happy with those guys. And just so you know, we don't stop, we don't just put powder in a capsule and call it good. Our team in Bosnia, they come up with between hundreds and thousands of data points every week. They're tasked with finding co-factors, like one of the lead- Monia, she's a biofilm master. She's actually a second-generation biofilm. Her mother is a Ph.D. in biofilms, and she's a Ph.D. in biofilms.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: She's got to be one of maybe one in the world; that's a second-generation biofilm, right?

Mark Effinger: Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's incredible. Yeah. Okay.

Mark Effinger: But it's great. What it does is it gives us... We have discoveries that we would never have known to even test for have we not had these deep science people on our team.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right.

Mark Effinger: Who were looking at areas that we made a bypass because we were looking at cognitive performance, not gut-brain connection, not vagal nerve induction, or any of those factors.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Cool.

Mark Effinger: Yeah, it really helps. Again, your viewers can't see that yet, but that was how I made the first money to make my first laser company, is I made test tube babies.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay. I see that. I was going to say it looks like a fetus in a test tube. And actually, it is.

Mark Effinger: Well, it's not a real one. It's a plastic one.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. No, it is. Just so the audience knows, he held up a little plastic fetus inside of a test tube with liquid all around it. Yeah. Okay.

Mark Effinger: It was awesome.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: All right. Well, good. Good, good.

Mark Effinger: So, when it comes to the product line, we've got things, we've got a couple of drinks. We've got a thing called Power Solution, which is slightly more ketogenic and slightly more high on the dopamine scale.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Mark Effinger: We have another one called Nectar X, which is a long-term sustainable choline, serotonin, and dopamine, with a very slight GABA piece on the end. And a little bit of norepinephrine. So, you get the motivation, and you get some of these other factors. And it's really fun to take that on the way into a meeting.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Mark Effinger: On the way into a meeting, I drink some of that as I'm- I'll walk my dog down the hill. I live about six blocks from here. And by the time I get here, I am ready to go have a brainstorming session with Mr. Robot, who works on the robot lab over here.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, here's a question for you. What'd you take before the podcast? Or maybe you didn't feel you needed anything?

Mark Effinger: That was great. I took Brain Flow, and I took Upbeat.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Mark Effinger: So, high serotonin, moderate dopamine. And then I've been sipping a Nectar X the whole time.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Mark Effinger: Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Oh, in a flask. So, he is holding up a flask like you'd see in a chemistry lab. Nice. The scientists are true scientists at heart. In fact, there are no glasses or cups in his home. He just has flasks all over the place. Yeah. You probably cook on a Bunsen burner too.

Mark Effinger: You know it, man.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Good, good. Awesome. Well, it's really fascinating. So, if you're interested in Nootopia, you should go check them out. They have a really interesting approach, a very comprehensive approach. And the nice thing is they'll work with you to get it right. And I think that's a that's a really different value proposition.

Mark Effinger: Absolutely.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, very, very cool.

Mark Effinger: The 365-day money-back guarantee, and I don't mean that, like, this is not an infomercial. But we really do respect the individual, and we understand that not everything works for everybody. We're more interested in... In fact, we have a thing we do every Monday morning, and we have a 60-minute meeting with- We're located in 19 countries, our employees. We got 120 employees right now. We're the 245th fastest-growing private company in America and the third-fastest growing nutritional supplement manufacturer.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Mark Effinger: And I don't say that to brag. I say that to say we're committed to this long-term vision.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Wow. Yeah.

Mark Effinger: And every Monday, for one minute, we set a purposeful meditation. And for a minute, or sometimes two minutes, we all, as a company, we meditate on- Our typical consistent goal is to make biological optimization available to every soul on earth.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Beautiful.

Mark Effinger: And I think, ultimately, what we want to see is people not leaning on their shopping cart, trying to get around the Hy-Vee.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right.

Mark Effinger: But instead, running through the Hy-Vee at 85 years old or 90 years old.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's right.

Mark Effinger: And enjoying life, and still having sex, and doing all the things that people find meaningful and valuable, and also contributing. I told you, Marsh Fisher, up until he died, would call me in the morning and tell me a joke.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Mark Effinger: And that was his incredible contribution because it told me that his brain was still firing well, that he still enjoyed the challenge of trying to come up with something relevant and funny and interesting. He wanted to be a standup but never got on the tour.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Oh, okay.

Mark Effinger: Made too much money in real estate. But I think we all have a tendency to the frog-boiling type of scenario, and we give up on our goals and our purpose and our passions too early.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: 100%. Yeah. There's this talk about boiling the frog. To me, it's this societal message of normalizing aging. We've normalized aging. We've normalized the decline.

Mark Effinger: Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: And so, it becomes this expected, and that's the boiling of the frog. So yeah, this podcast and the people that listen to it are all about not getting boiled. But yeah, next thing you know, you're leaning on your shopping cart, right? So, yeah.

Mark Effinger: Yeah. It's an indication of telomere lengthening is not happening very well.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's right.

Mark Effinger: Let me show you something real quick.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: All right. He just went off to get something. Knowing Mark, it could be anything. I don't know, another piece of science equipment or whatever.

Mark Effinger: Let me see here. Yeah. So, this is my dad. My dad went from being a Trappist monk in the monastery...

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, looks like a boxer.

Mark Effinger: Yeah. He was a boxer.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Oh, really? Okay. Wow.

Mark Effinger: So, he went from literally being a monk to being a killer.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's a bit of a transition. That's another podcast right there. But I don't think we'll go through all that. But anyway, that's interesting. Great.

Mark Effinger: Here's a client of mine, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Okay. Nice.

Mark Effinger: And when you take a look at Kareem, he was recently on the Daily Show, and that guy is sharp as a whip. He reads voraciously.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Oh, yeah, he's an intellect for sure.

Mark Effinger: Yep. And he's got about a 12% body fat. We did a photoshoot with him about a decade ago, and he was as ripped as any cover of Men's Health Magazine model as you would ever believe.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Unlike a lot of his contemporaries, quite honestly, that have not aged as well.

Mark Effinger: Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: So, for sure.

Mark Effinger: So, tell me something real quick. Obviously, longevity is a big thing for you. And what do you consider, if you were to encapsulate the one thing that everybody should be doing or thinking about in terms of longevity, what is that thing? How could you encapsulate that?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: I think they need to reframe the question. To me, it really boils down to how you think about this, right? And I think that people have bought into this story that aging is normal. So, I think questioning what everybody else thinks is normal is first. But then I think, for me, it's really about being young. It's really about being youthful. And youthfulness actually becomes the currency of exponential impact. And the way I describe that-

Mark Effinger: Hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it. Hold it. I'm going to have to meme that. Youthfulness is a currency… Try it again?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay. Youthfulness is the currency of exponential impact. Yeah. You can quote me on that if you want.

Mark Effinger: Beautiful. Yeah, I will.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. And the reason for that is because aging is not a linear process. So, this is a misconception also that people have. It's actually an exponential process. And the fact that it's an exponential process, people devise linear strategies. They get to a point in life where they don't look like they want to, don't feel like they want to, and can't do what they want to. And so, they either acquiesce and say: "Okay, I'm getting older. I'm going to lean on my shopping cart too," or they fight back and say, "No, I'm going to get healthy." And so, they start to work out, and they do this, and they eat better, and they take nootropics, and they get their thyroid checked, and all these things that happen, all beautiful things.

But it's a linear response to an exponential problem. Because they're not really addressing the drivers of aging. They're not really addressing the hallmarks of aging, which went from nine in 2013 now up to 14, and then 15 last year. So, when you start to work, what we do is focus on working on the level of those drivers of aging and unraveling the knot at that level. And when you start to do that, you start to be able to make real progress. But beyond that, longevity is an abstract term. For example, somebody wants to live to 120, 156, and 180. I want to live to 300. I don't know. I can't even conceptualize what that is. I mean, think about it. I can't conceptualize that. But I know what it is to be young. And I know what it is to be vibrant and vigorous, and I have a very strong reference to that.

And so, for me, it's about living youthful and being living young for as long as possible. And if I get hit by a car tomorrow, so be it. It's been a wonderful life. It's not about how many years. It's really about how much I can be youthful. So when you have aging as an exponential decline, and you have your impact being an exponential increase across your life, every decade you have more impact than the prior decades, maybe than the prior decades put together. But when those lines cross, your impact suddenly craters. It goes down to zero. And the next thing you know, you're in a nursing home, and now you've become irrelevant. People come to visit you to be kind to you. And there's still love, and there's still a connection, very much human kinds of things. But your ability to make an impact has gone to zero. Well, not zero. It never goes to zero.

Mark Effinger: Right.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Still, the fact that you're here, you're making an impact. But it drops significantly in certain ways, let's just say that. But if you maintain your youthfulness, let's say you stay 30. 100 is the new 30. That's the title of my book coming out. And you stay 30 for a long time, that exponential impact continues to grow. And the return on investment for what you invest in staying youthful comes back to you 100-fold. So, people don't know how to frame what's actually happening. They don't know the game they're playing, and they don't know how to create a strategic response that's an exponential response to an exponential problem. And that's what we do at Gladden Longevity is we're crafting an exponential response to an exponential problem.

Mark Effinger: That's beautiful, man. I love that. One of the things my dad told me years ago, that same guy, the boxer, he just died a couple of years ago, and what he told me before he passed away in 2000… I said: "Dad, what are your biggest mistakes you've made in your life?" And he goes: "Two of them, Mark." He goes: "Son, I got two of them for you. One, I let your mother divorce me." What's that?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Taking a block [inaudible 01:09:33].

Mark Effinger: So he said: "I let your mother divorce me." They still loved each other even after they split. And he goes: "The second one was I retired when I hit 60. I retired." He had gone from being very blue-collared, finally making a little money and was able to comfortably retire on it. And he said: "You need to have purpose every day. You need to have a purpose."

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Every day. That's right.

Mark Effinger: There's only so many pickleball and tennis matches you can play, and so many hands of Gin Rummy before you go, ‘Holy shit, man.’ And you bury yourself in a bottle of whiskey, and it's all over.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's it. Yeah. There's so many fish. There are only so many fish you want to catch, and so many rounds of golf you want to play. Right? I mean, that's the whole point, I think. And that's the other thing, retirement doesn't exist for us. Because if you're doing what you love, why would you step away from that?

Mark Effinger: It's robbery. Yeah. I cannot imagine not getting up every morning and doing; it drives me nuts, I've got some great friends, and I've got one who is counting the days. I remember going to take my son to school, and I always would deliver my kids late because I always had something fun to detour that we wanted to go on before I got him to school. And we were delivering him late, and there's a monitor, and the woman behind the monitor, it had a date that was two years in the future. I said: "What's that?" She goes: "That's the day I can get out of this hell hole." I said: "Honey, you can get out of this hell hole yesterday."

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Right. That's right. Yeah. No, that's right. No, that's funny. Well, let me flip the question around for you. If you were going to give our audience the top three things, let's say, that you think are important for their longevity, what might they be?

Mark Effinger: The first is, I think, having a practice of gratefulness, understanding that our lives are a hell of a lot better than the lens that we see them through, and that understanding and really taking a moment to reflect on that will change everything. I do it every morning. It's a really important part of my life. And I try to do it at night as well. And then every time I see an employee that I know could use encouragement, I brought one in recently, I sat him down, and I said: "Hey, I just want to let you know something. No matter how bad you may feel about things, your job is not at risk. Keep doing the cool stuff that you do. You're here because this is your place." And I don't mean that in a socialist perspective. He's a great performer, but he's such a great performer that he feels if he's not doing 150% of-

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Mark Effinger: Right. It's self-esteem. I think gratefulness is one. I think another is to honor this thing, this opportunity that we've had to have this physical presence, and don't take it for granted. This thing can decay at a really fucking incredibly fast rate if we are not on the ball paying attention. Really listening to the signals that your body gives us and your brain gives us.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's right. It's an exponential game. It's an exponential game.

Mark Effinger: It is. It is. And then the other one is to make sure that you have a big purpose. Make sure you have a big purpose. It has to be way bigger than you. It has to be way bigger than money. It has to be something where you're making an impact on; I don't care if it's a microcosm of your family or if it's a microcosm of the universe. Make sure that you are doing the thing that you- And find your calling in that. If you have to work with somebody to help pull it out of you, whether a mentor or a coach, or a guide, as a therapist, make sure that you find that.

I've had so many people come to me in the last 30 years and say: "I just don't know what I want to do." And I'm going: "Holy shit." Because I can't get my mind around that because I always knew what I wanted to do, I always knew I wanted to make a monumental contribution to the world. And so, I had to find the vehicles that would do that. I didn't know exactly what the vehicles were, but I knew that my calling was bigger than me serving myself. That's masturbatory.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: And that's a gift. That's a gift. I have no qualms about what my purpose is or what my vision is, or where I want to go. It's innate. And I feel grateful for that, quite honestly, because there are people that are searching to find that. And it can be difficult if you're not sure where that is. And it's interesting that just because you're passionate about something doesn't mean it's your purpose. Although whatever your purpose is, you will be passionate.

But I think to your point, your purpose actually is something that sits below the vehicle. So, it's hard to have your purpose be that I want to be a barista, or I want to own a this, or I want to do a that. You need to go to what's below those phenotypic expressions of it, right? And what is it? For me, it's changing the glide path of aging for the planet, so people don't have to suffer all the decline and demise that they go through. That's my passion. But then that fuels all kinds of activities. So, I think that's-

Mark Effinger: Yeah. You've got an operating system, and you've got applications on top of it. I'm a geek. My OS is I need to make a monumental contribution in every life I touch. Okay. What are my vehicles to do that? Let's see.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: That's it. That's it.

Mark Effinger: Today, I've got neurotropic, I've got gut health. I've got those things. Who knows what it'll be tomorrow?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Well, maybe we'll collaborate on something. Who knows? So, that'd be fun.

Mark Effinger: Yeah, man. I would be honored.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, that'd be super fun. Good, good, good.

Mark Effinger: Cool, man. Well, thank you so much. This has been an absolute joy, and one is I'm so glad that I found you. And as Steve said, he's freaking glad that he discovered you so long ago. Very few people do I get to have a conversation with who are able to add or contribute at such a high level, at such a deep level in terms of understanding and insight and science and medicine and health and wellness and passion and spiritual integrity. And so, thank you for inviting me on and getting a chance to collaborate.

Steve Reiter: Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Gladden Longevity Podcast. If you would like more information on what we've discussed or other topics, please reference the show notes or go to gladdenlongevitypodcast.com. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter by searching Gladden Longevity. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to get future episodes delivered to you and share our podcast or this episode with someone in your life that may find benefit. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week with another exciting episode.

The Gladden Longevity Podcast is provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute medical advice. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. The use of any information and materials linked to this podcast is at the listener's own risk.

Episode #62

Gladden longevity — Episode #62

Episode #62 —Mark Effinger

Apr 13, 2023

Episode #62 - Cont'd

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