[00:00:00] Luke Storey:  I'm Luke Storey. For the past 22 years, I've been relentlessly committed to my deepest passion, designing the ultimate lifestyle based on the most powerful principles of spirituality, health, psychology. The Life Stylist podcast is a show dedicated to sharing my discoveries and the experts behind them with you. Welcome to the show, Leslie.

[00:00:27]Leslie Kenny:  Thank you so much for having me, Luke. It's such a pleasure to be here.

[00:00:30]Luke Storey:  Yeah, I'm stoked for this conversation. Your journey is one that I find really inspiring. I think the listeners will share that opinion. I love interviewing people that have a pain-to-purpose story. And I find that many of the fascinating people that I have the opportunity to have conversations with on this podcast are people who have experienced suffering of some sort in their life. Of course, all people have. Not all people, however, are able to overcome it and turn it into their life mission, which you have. So, with that, I'd like to start kind of at the beginning of your health journey. And from what I understand, you had some autoimmune issues, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis at a pretty young age, like in your early 30s.

[00:01:16]Leslie Kenny:  I was 39, but that was exactly the same age that my father died at.

[00:01:20]Luke Storey:  Oh, wow.

[00:01:22]Leslie Kenny:  So, it was a pretty big year. I think that those of us who've lost parents early, when we hit the age at which they died, we do re-examine our own mortality just because, well, if it happened to them, it could happen to us. And ironically, it did sort of happen to me. I'd been leading this very fast paced career. I had an online matchmaking startup in Hong Kong, that was doing all the fun pioneering work and online matchmaking in Pan-China and India, and I just came to a shuddering halt.

[00:02:03] I was very burnt out and I got that call that nobody ever wants to get from their doctor saying, can you come in so we can discuss your results. And the doctor told me that I had lupus, which I had never even heard of before. And the rheumatoid arthritis, I understood, because I'd been experiencing a lot of pain in my hands. I couldn't type on my keyboard. I couldn't open doorknobs. Just a lot of pain in my hands, couldn't use scissors. 

[00:02:37] So, that, I understood. But then, she said, and I'm sorry to say that it's incurable. It was the first time that I had met a medical professional and they had used the word incurable before. I had had people say that I was infertile or that something else might go wrong, but usually, the people in the white coats are the ones who give us the answers. And I was so struck by that. 

[00:03:08] I did get a gigantic box of immunosuppressants that I got to inject myself with for the rheumatoid arthritis, but I was also told, well, this will work for about 18 months, and then you'll probably need to cycle into something else, because they stop working, because the body catch on. And after injecting myself for maybe a few weeks, a month, I just said, I don't think I can do this. First of all, your tummy starts to look like a pincushion.

[00:03:38] And you're a Californian, I'm a Californian, I still want to go out in my bikini, this is not a good look for vanity purposes. But I just couldn't get over the word, incurable. So, with nothing to lose, I began to consult Dr. Google and discovered that there were things that were the root cause of my illness, which was inflammation run amok. I had heard these words, cytokines, tumor necrosis factor alpha, C-reactive protein.

[00:04:11] I didn't understand what they were, but I knew that my levels were so bad that one of my doctors said it looked like I was fighting cancer. And rather than suppressing my immune system, I wondered whether or not there were foods or lifestyle practices that I could incorporate into my life to tempt the immune, the overactive immune system down. And I ran into Dr. Barry Sears's book, The Anti-Inflammatory Zone diet.

[00:04:43] So, this was like the early 2000s. So, the zone diet was big then. And I got rid of all dairy. I got rid of all gluten. I did lots of fish oil, lots of olive oil, made my own almond milk, that kind of thing. And did lots of yoga, did lots of meditation. I also did a very new therapy at the time called intravenous immunoglobulin, which now has been shown to help with autoimmune conditions, and that at the end of that period of really throwing the kitchen sink at my poor health, I had arranged ahead of time with my doctor to just retest in case they'd gotten it wrong.

[00:05:36] I mean, she looked very sympathetically at me when I said, could you have gotten it wrong? Maybe the test is a false positive. I got that very, she doesn't know, these results are clear. I went back, I took the test, and all of my levels had gone back to normal. So, suddenly, I didn't have this diagnosis. I didn't have lupus. I didn't have RA. And that was it.

[00:06:02] From that moment on, I realized that I had the power within my body to heal itself. And if I put it into the right conditions, it's always that, it's about the environment around our biology. And if we can gently manipulate that, then we can work in harmony with our body to allow it to do what it intuitively knows how to do, which is to heal and come back to homeostasis.

[00:06:32]Luke Storey:  Wow, that's incredible. Yeah. I've never been a fan of that diagnosis of anything being incurable, because I share the same perspective, and in my own experience, I don't know that I've—well, I guess alcoholism is incurable, and I did have a pretty rough time with that one, and I was able to, I guess, cure it. I don't drink, so I haven't tested that hypothesis. I don't want to tempt fate as it were. But I think that the medical system is just so deeply enmeshed in scientism, that it's only what we can sense through our intellect that's real, and anything outside of that is quackery or woo-woo, right? 

[00:07:23] And I think it's so fascinating, and this is not the fault of all doctors, I'm sure there are many Western docs and allopathic docs that are doing great work, and I applaud them for their dedication and their willingness to go into such debt to get their education, and all the things that doctors go through, and having to pay the bills when they build a practice, and all of the things, but I do find it really discouraging that any time you go in with symptoms, it's very rare that you're asked like, well, what are you eating?

[00:07:54] How are you sleeping? Do you exercise? Do you meditate? Do you have unresolved emotional trauma in your past? The things that will, as they did in your case, really move the needle toward health. And I love your perspective that the body wants to be healthy, the body knows what it needs, it's just a matter of us tuning into it, and kind of getting out of the way, and giving it support to do what it is inherently designed to do, which is to create an amazing vehicle for us to experience life on Earth. So, congratulations on being intelligent and hardheaded enough to go even what I'm going to put myself.

[00:08:29]Leslie Kenny:  Well, thank you. That's very kind of you. I started out with the intention of meeting my doctors halfway, because I knew that there was only so much they could do. And the way that doctors are when they talk to you, and say, you've got this and it is incurable, they are often wonderful students and they have been rewarded for coming up with the right answer, which is the diagnosis. So, a doctor may say, this is great, I figured out with this patient, you've got lupus, it's incurable.

[00:09:07] That, to the patient, is sort of like a death sentence, right? And a lot of patients will just give up. They will take the drugs, which can help for a period of time. I am not against drugs, drugs for acute illness, wonderful. But for chronic illness, there is so much more that we can do if we can simply empower the body to do what it knows how to do. And as I said that once you've seen that, you can never turn back. You can never not see it, right?

[00:09:41]Luke Storey:  What are the symptoms of lupus? That's a word I hear from time to time, but I'm not really familiar with what it is. I think I always get it confused with Bell's palsy, the half-paralyzed face.

[00:09:55]Leslie Kenny:  Yes, paralyzed half your face.

[00:09:56]Luke Storey:  I don't know why I get those two confused, but break down lupus for us. I'm sure there are people listening that have been diagnosed with that, or perhaps, even currently suffering from that. So, I'd like to kind of educate people a little more about what that is.

[00:10:08]Leslie Kenny:  Sure. Lupus, it often comes together with rheumatoid arthritis, and a lot of the symptoms, which are generally an autoimmune attack of the organs, you can also sense it in your hands as well. So, it can attack the joints, too. But in my case, I believe it was attacking the kidneys. I mean, once you hear it, I can't remember all the things she said, there were so many things that were wrong with me, I can't remember them all, but it will attack your organs. And that's why if you don't get it under control right away, it can be really an issue in particular for your kidneys.

[00:10:49]Luke Storey:  Got it. And so, how do you think you got there? I mean, were you just eating too much gluten and dairy, and the end result of that was this? I mean, were there other practices in your lifestyle that you think led-

[00:11:08]Leslie Kenny:  Sure. I think I was living the work hard, play hard, destroy your body, maximum, right? We've all been taught, oh, work hard, play hard, that's how it should be. Actually, the body has a limit. I was not respecting that limit. I was polluting it with junk food. I've got one of the genes, I'm heterozygous for celiac. Eating tons of gluten didn't really sit very well with my body, and surprising the SIBO, get leaky gut, have all sorts of toxins from undigested proteins from your gut leak into your bloodstream.

[00:11:45] The body naturally will amount to an immune attack against that, but there may be other proteins, other organs in the body that have proteins that are similar in look, and the body ends up attacking those. I presume it was probably a mix of that. Also, I've been on the contraceptive pill for 10 years and that seems to also lead to things like Candida. Candida is not great for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

[00:12:16] And so, I think it was the perfect storm, but honestly, this is how a lot of people just live, right? We eat processed food. We work long hours. We lead a sedentary lifestyle. We are under deadline. And instead of actually taking time out to just drop and put the vagus nerve into parasympathetic mode, we just start to tighten up. And we are living under chronic stress in that sympathetic mode. A fight or flight and high cortisol is inflammatory, right?

[00:12:52]Luke Storey:  Oh, interesting. Yeah, I never thought about that. Yeah. I mean, I feel like I do a lot of self-care. I mean, I meditate a lot. I definitely take breaks. I go do ice baths in the middle of the day, work out a little bit. But I sense that even all the things I'm doing as a pretty healthy 50-year-old that especially I think having just moved, and remodeling the house, and working, and doing tons of podcasts, I find myself a lot in a state where I realize that I'm in a sympathetic nervous system response, right? There's just this tension, but I can only imagine—well, I don't have to imagine, because I used to live like this, as you just described, but there are so many people that don't know the difference, right?

[00:13:35] So, they're just on autopilot all the time, kick ass. And I think at least in Western culture, that's encouraged, because our metric of success has to do with getting the things, stacking up dollars, getting the house, the family, whatever one's goals happen to be, and we're just kind of led down this path of a value system that doesn't see an inherent value in pausing and taking time to really regenerate. Let alone like really focusing on sleep, which is something I harp on consistently. Because as I get older, I think last night, case in point, I don't know why, I'm trying a new supplementation routine wherein I'm inserting 200 milligrams of melatonin in a suppository.

[00:14:26]Leslie Kenny:  200 milligrams. Wow. That is twice as high as—100 milligrams, I've heard of somebody doing 100 milligrams, but that's really high. I didn't think you were supposed to do more than 50.

[00:14:36]Luke Storey:  It's a whole thing. I have a show about it coming up. But anyway, I'm in an experimental phase as I do research, and then I share with the audience. But I got probably five-and-a-half hours of sleep, and all the supplements, the NAD, all the things, they will never top. I took my spermidine, my Primeadine, I do two of those in the morning and two at night. We'll get into that more.

[00:15:03] But nothing I do tops getting a solid seven or eight hours of quality sleep. And I think a lot of people look at sleep as just like a waste of time, like, oh, God, I guess I got to go to sleep, I want to keep crushing it. That's how I used to be. And now, it's just like, oh, my God, my sleep is so coveted, because I really feel the impact when I don't do it right.

[00:15:26]Leslie Kenny:  I agree. I think the older we get, the more foundational sleep is. And the American way of life, which, because America is so powerful, has now become the way that everyone in the world is trying to be. It's based on a Calvinist work ethic, right? You're supposed to keep working, working, working, working. You're not of value unless you're producing. But the Eastern philosophy is yin and yang. It's all about balance, bringing the universe back to homeostasis.

[00:15:57] And if we model our behavior on that and we do need to bring our bodies back into homeostasis on a regular basis, not just once a day, but the way that you do. And you're very optimized. So, if you feel like you're in a sympathetic mode too often, then what is it like for the rest of us? In particular, people who are in front of a screen and under bright lights with blue light spectrum coming down, talk about raising your cortisol. And you'll never get your melatonin production up if you're exposing yourself to all of that blue light chronically, which is how most people live today, if they're working in offices, right?

[00:16:40]Luke Storey:  Yeah, you just hit one of my other favorite topics of blue light. When I do these recordings, I have this giant LED light flashing on my face, and it's always like, practice what you preach, but goddamn, the video is going to look-

[00:16:47]Leslie Kenny:  The quality is not as good. I tilted mine. I don't have it faced, because I can't take it either.

[00:17:00]Luke Storey:  What do you think it was in your constitution that gave you the fortitude, the sense of hope, the I'll-figure-it-outness that kept you going where as a lot of people might go to the doctor and get that diagnosis, you're incurable, and just kind of fold. And even though intuitively, they might have a sense like, God, this can't be right, there has to be a way, but they just lose hope, and they become despondent and depressed, and just kind of end up being a product of the pharmaceutical system. What was it in your makeup? Was it something that you learned from your parents or do you have a model in your life that represented that sort of strength to just carry on and find your way?

[00:17:48]Leslie Kenny:  It was probably the School of Hard Knocks. So, you mentioned that you had your own struggle with alcoholism. And I grew up the only child of an alcoholic, and that was my father who died at age 39, and I took care of him on my own until he died. There were so many moments where I wanted to help him, but if you are 12, your ability to be resourceful is very limited. And I remember calling up Alcoholics Anonymous, and saying, I need help, I can't manage.

[00:18:26] I'm pouring out vodka bottles every single day. He starts at breakfast with vodka. I don't know what else I can do. And when he sees that I've replaced it with water, which is the answer to a 12-year-old, right? I know, I'll just give him water and he won't notice the difference. I had run out of answers, so that was my first experience with what I will call authority figures, because the AA said, and they have changed since then, two years after that, they did find a way to help families, including children who were on their own like I was, but that was my first experience with authority. 

[00:19:10] And then, when I was in college, my grandmother, my father's mother, who was a widow, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. So, I took a year out from Berkeley and I went back to my grandmother's home in Indianapolis. And between my uncle and I, I would do a 16-hour shift every day, because she basically went into a coma and we were feeding her through a tube and had a catheter, the whole nine yards. 

[00:19:39] So, every two hours, you've got to turn these individuals, otherwise. They get bedsores. I would read to her, she was my absolute beloved grandmother. And at one point, I said to the doctor, so what's next? And he said, you could just stop feeding her. And this is an unacceptable answer. You cannot tell a family member to essentially kill their beloved relative. It's an impossible ethical dilemma. And so, I had already pushed up at the limits of medicine. Well, there's nothing we can do.

[00:20:22] Well, you can keep feeding her with the tube, and then when you're tired, stop. That's not the answer. And so, when it came to my turn with medicine and the sharp end of the stick was poked at me, I just thought, ah, lupus, whatever, I have never heard of that, forget that. This is wrong. This does not apply to me. We will figure this out. And my grandmother who died, she was a typical Midwesterner and she channeled that pioneering spirit that many Midwesterners have. We're just going to have to make it happen. And I did. And I figured it out. And I think others can, too.

[00:21:10]Luke Storey:  I wonder if the emotional trauma of being a child of an alcoholic and going through what you did with your grandmother, I wonder if that had something to do with the physical manifestations that you experienced. Have you explored that side of healing as a component of helping your body heal itself?

[00:21:30]Leslie Kenny:  I did. I wrote letters to my father, because of course, when they die, with an alcoholic, it is very seldom that you are gathered around, and it's perfect, and you hear the angels singing, and you can say goodbye in the way that you want to. This was not the way that I wanted to say goodbye. There was a lot of unfinished business. And so, I did lots of meditations. I would do lots of visualizations where I would have conversations with him.

[00:22:06] As I said, I read a lot of letters, and then I burned them, just trying to incorporate ceremony. And I have this marked the milestone of, alright, I've said goodbye to you and I've made my peace. But interestingly, when I finally got a correct diagnosis for my hypothyroidism, and that didn't come until much later. That didn't come until, oh, probably 2008. The doctor looked at my cortisol levels, which were nowhere. I couldn't create cortisol.

[00:22:45] I was so exhausted. And he said, I think that you've had this for a very long time. I've never seen such bad cortisol levels. I don't even know how you're standing. And he said, I would guess that something really traumatic happened to you in your teens. And I said, actually, no, I just can't think about it. He said, really? Because it looks like that. And I was like, oh, wait a second, right, my dad committed suicide, he hung himself, I found him.

[00:23:14]Luke Storey:  Oh, wow.

[00:23:15]Leslie Kenny:  I stayed with a family friend to finish up that year of high school and the house burned down. And then, two months later, my grandfather died. That's what made my grandmother a widow. He probably died of a broken heart. He'd lost two sons at that point, so it's two out of three sons. So, I'm sure that there was trauma there, but of course, we never stop to think about it.

[00:23:46] And at that time, no one said, this child might have a lot of stuff going on in them, maybe they should talk to someone. It was never suggested, just not done, so not processed. And of course, if you've ever seen the work of Bessel van der Kolk at Harvard, The Body Keeps the Score, right? And all of these things leave imprints on our physiology. So, it's not surprising, really, that it did happen and I've done a lot of work to undo it.

[00:24:21]Luke Storey:  I can tell. Well, your energy exudes joy. People, myself included, at a time, that haven't resolved those issues and those emotional scars, I have a very hard time accessing that sense of lightness, the lightness of—because of this heaviness within your subconscious that is unaddressed, and it's just percolating back there. All of those memories, the moment you found your dad. I mean, I can only imagine, these type of things, I think, really shape our internal landscape and how we see the world. And it sounds like in your case, you went off to school making money, kicking ass. It's like, that's how I'll fix it, you know what I mean?

[00:25:03]Leslie Kenny:  Yeah, right.

[00:25:04]Luke Storey:  Which is so common. And then, here you are, 39, and the story unfolds as it did. Well, I commend you for your courage to work through all of that and to overcome it. And I think it's a really important message—yeah, really. And I think it's a really important message for people, too, that suffer from these mysterious kind of autoimmune issues, the Lyme, and fibro, and lupus, and arthritis, all of these things that are often labeled incurable and are going to necessitate medication for the rest of your life, I think it would be well-served for the people listening that are currently suffering from those type of issues that underneath the surface may very well be emotional issues that are preventing the body from healing itself.

[00:25:52] So, thank you for your vulnerability and sharing those stories. And that said, I'd like to kind of get in the weeds a little bit on some of the things that you've discovered along the way. Our body is made up of cells, right? And some of those cells over time for different reasons go dormant, and then the body has a system called autophagy, wherein it takes those senescent so-called zombie cells, and gets rid of them, and replaces them with new cells that do what they're supposed to do, and take form in whatever organ or system in your body needs them. Could you break down autophagy? And then, I'd like to go into the direction of the anti-aging and optimization that can not only get us well, but then help us to really have the vitality that we're all looking for.

[00:26:44]Leslie Kenny:  So, autophagy means self-eating in Greek, and it's the cell's innate ability to renew and repair itself. So, we all know from high school biology class about mitochondria, it's the energy powerhouses of our cell, and they rely on properly folded proteins. And over time, as we get older, as we expose ourselves to a lot of stress. Those proteins misfold and the mitochondria stop working very well, generally, the cell will have a lot of other material in it.

[00:27:24] It has waste material that it needs to get rid of. And the way that it does this is through this self-eating autophagy process. So, cellular renewal. And if that doesn't work well, it can manifest itself in inflammaging. So, when I look back at my 39-year-old self, I had no energy. I had inflammation run amok everywhere. I was prematurely aging. And what I needed to do was figure out how to harness my body's ability to trigger autophagy.

[00:28:06] And you can do that through fasting, or high-intensity interval training, or as you know, called thermogenesist, you're doing that every day, heat shock proteins. If you're in the sauna, there are various ways that you can do this. And you can also work on the inflammation side as well, which I also did. But at its core, what you want to do is, again, work in harmony with your body's innate wisdom on autophagy.

[00:28:34] And it is meant to do this cleanup process. Because the mechanism of action of autophagy was discovered by a Japanese scientist, Yoshinori Izumi, I like to think of it as having Marie Kondo, a Japanese cutter would come into your cells and just spruce things up. We all need to have our cells spruced up all the time. And if we don't, well, we know what it's like in our house if we don't have that. 

[00:29:06] Things pile up, things get cluttered, nothing works quite as well as it should. And without that kind of regular maintenance, the body begins to fall into disrepair in different ways, the aches and pains of aging, poor sleep, our circadian rhythm is not as good as it once was, for instance. And our energy levels tank, because the mitochondria aren't able to create energy in the way that they used to. 

[00:29:40] And naturally, this has an impact on our cognition as well, because we have mitochondria in our brain in addition, right? So, we want all of these cells in all parts of our body to be functioning optimally and harnessing autophagy is the way to do it. When we're young, we actually produce a compound, a molecule called spermidine in our gut biome and in our tissues. We also get it from our food. But because two-thirds of it comes from our tissues in our gut biome, you can imagine what happens as you take a lot of antibiotics, you are exposing your body to various stressors, your own ability to manufacture this endogenously is impaired.

[00:30:29] So, that means you have to increase your intake from outside, from food. And I know you eat natto, which is a very high source of it. Anything that is fermented has a lot of spermidine, which is this molecule that triggers it. And you can eat those things, you can also do things to help your gut biome produce more as well. And fasting naturally helps your tissues produce more, too.

[00:30:59]Luke Storey:  Is fasting an issue for folks who have thyroid problems? You mentioned you had a hyper-thyroid or-

[00:31:06]Leslie Kenny:  Hypo. I was hypothyroid. Yeah. So, that's exactly one of the reasons why finding an external source of having more spermidine was it is the way that I actually trigger autophagy in my body, because as a hypothyroid patient, when I fast, and especially for women, when I fast, my body says, oh, famine coming. So, my last name, Kenny, is Irish, and I do have a lot of Irish genes on my dad's side of the family.

[00:31:43] And there's a fellow at 42 who says that the Irish have higher incidence of hypothyroidism. They remember famine genetically. And that means that when you try to starve yourself, what does your body do? Well, it says, well, let's conserve the resources we have. And it does that by releasing reverse T3. So, T3 is the bioavailable thyroid hormone. Reverse T3 can sit on the thyroid receptors in every cell in the body and it can stop T3 from getting to the cell and kickstarting metabolism.

[00:32:21] So, that's why I think some women in particular, those who are over 50, who are postmenopausal and more likely to have thyroid dysfunction, tend to notice when they try to fast, they end up gaining a little bit of weight, and they don't understand it, right? They were so disciplined. They were so good. Why didn't this work? It sort of you had this counterproductive result? I think it's because the reverse T3 is being released and it's slowing their metabolism down. So, finding another way to do this, such as taking spermidine is a much easier way to do it and doesn't have that negative result on the reverse T3 receptors.

[00:33:09]Luke Storey:  Would you say that spermidine is most prevalent in natto as a food? Is that the highest food? And I know what natto is and I'm a fan of it. My fiancee, Alyson, who's in the other room, is not a fan of it, because when I open the little jug of the natto, she's like, ew, wash your feet.

[00:33:29]Leslie Kenny:  The smell is terrible. I know.

[00:33:33]Luke Storey:  I don't notice it when I eat it, but if I don't close the container, and then I walk back in the room, I'm like, oh, my God, disgusting. So, natto is going to be something that is not palatable to many people. I mean, I camouflage mine a lot. I'm not going to lie. I put hot sauce on it and all kinds of weird stuff.

[00:33:53]Leslie Kenny:  Oh, I never thought about that. That's a good one. I sort of wrap it, I enwove it in rice, which I have boiled, and cooled, and put some medium chain triglycerides on to turn it into resistant starch. And then, I got some seaweed around that.

[00:34:09]Luke Storey:  Right. So, for a lot of people, they just won't like natto. And for others, it wouldn't be necessarily available. I'm sure some people in Europe or different places won't have access to it, because it's a Japanese food, right?

[00:34:24]Leslie Kenny:  Yeah.

[00:34:24]Luke Storey:  So, if one didn't want to go the natto route and wanted to take spermidine as a supplement, what would be the relative dosage in terms of milligrams? Like how much Naruto would you have to eat to equal a couple of capsules of like the Primeadine product that you eventually created?

[00:34:48]Leslie Kenny:  So, it really depends on the way the natto was manufactured. So, we know that the Okinawans are among the longest lived people on the planet. They're one of the blue zones. And they actually ferment their natto for a year in these limestone caves. And it actually doesn't taste foul or disgusting, interestingly enough. Now, that is super high in spermidine. The natto that we get, we can get it in Japanese, and some Chinese, and Vietnamese food markets, even in Europe, and in the United States, and it comes frozen. 

[00:35:27] That is industrially produced natto and it is not fermented for as long, so the amount of scrimmaging in it will be a lot smaller than what you would find in the wonderful Okinawan one, which is fermented for such a long time. So, it's a little hard for me to sort of say a spoonful of this is going to be the equivalent of this, but I can tell you how much is in Primeadine, which is one milligram of spermidine. 

[00:35:58] And the reason we chose that dosage was because that is where the clinical studies have been conducted for cognition improvement. So, we know that in a cohort of individuals who are between the ages of 60 and 85who took one milligram every day for 90 days, and they had subjective cognitive decline beforehand, at the end of those 90 days, they experienced an improvement. So, that was the dosage that we wanted to rely on, because there was scientific validity behind it.

[00:36:37]Luke Storey:  I'm taking considerably more than that.

[00:36:39]Leslie Kenny:  Are you? Well, I do take more than that. I take it in the morning. I take it in the evening. But the European Food Safety Authority says that you can have up to six milligrams of supplemental spermidine daily without any untoward effects. The FDA hasn't actually made any statements about it, but it comes in your food, right? And so, yes, eat it if you can from places like natto.

[00:37:21] You can get it from shitake mushrooms as well, which is terrific, because I love shitake mushrooms. And there is also this ancient wisdom around medicinal mushrooms, there's definitely something to it. Teas are good source. Grapefruit has some. When I saw that about grapefruit, I thought, oh, right, the South Beach diet, right? That was all about grapefruit. I wonder if there's a connection. So, yeah, that's possible.

[00:37:44]Luke Storey:  At what point did you discover supplemental spermidine and what led you to go and, I'm just going to create my own product? Because when I first heard about it probably a couple of years ago, I don't think it was readily available. It's just something that I discovered in passing, and thought, well, maybe someday, we'll be able to get it, so I'll just eat natto, but it seems that as of late, it's a bit more prevalent kind of at least in the US supplement market. Was this something obscure that you discovered in a supplement form, you know what, I want to bring this to the world, because it's so effective in autophagy and these other mechanisms of healing?

[00:38:25]Leslie Kenny:  So, it first came to my attention while I was having parallel discussions with two Oxford University professors. So, I'd been introduced to Professor Katja Simon, who's an immunology professor at the University of Oxford, who is working on rejuvenating elderly immune cells using spermidine. And that paper came out in eLife in December of last year. And she was very convinced about it.

[00:39:00] She'd done all the mouse models. So, of course, we always must remember that preclinical trials like mouse trials do not equal human trials. What works for them doesn't always work for us, right? We don't run on little wheels. But she felt it was so promising and there were really no downsides. And I was introduced to her, and then at the same time, I was talking to Emeritus Professor of Physiology, Denis Noble, here at the University of Oxford.

[00:39:33] And he's most famous for being a systems biologist, for being the first person to compute how the human heart works in 1964. And he and I were talking about it, because he was working on a bit of a mystery. This was a series of scrolls, 30 1,000-year-old scrolls that he had been introduced to by a former pupil of his, the current Empress of Japan. So, she had been a student at Oxford University and on an official visit where he had an audience with the Empress and the emperor, he'd been offered the chance to look at these scrolls. 

[00:40:13] And three of the scrolls have to do with longevity, and one of them in particular has to do with longevity and sexual intimacy. And I don't think it will come as a surprise to any of your listeners when I say that sexual intimacy does have something to do with longevity. And, yes, it has something to do with spermidine. The sperm in spermidine, that is your clue.

[00:40:43] So, spermidine was given that name when it was first identified as crystals under a microscope when Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek basically put his semen on a microscope, on a little glass plate, put it under his microscope, and looked. Well, that's what you would do in the 17th century if you were trying to use this great microscope, you'd be curious, right? We would all be curious. So, he put saliva there, he put semen there, and he first identified it.

[00:41:13] However, a 10th century court physician to the Japanese emperor named Yoshimori Temba also observed its longevity-enhancing effects. And he had brought this wisdom from the Chinese court where his family had all been court physicians to the Chinese emperor, and they had observed in successive millennia of Chinese emperors that those who practice seminal retention actually seemed to live longer and healthier.

[00:41:48] Why is that? Well, because a man has this magic superpower, it can actually harness his internal pharmacopoeia by getting aroused, but then not ejaculating. By retaining that semen, it can be resorbed throughout the body. And I think that's how it can actually benefit the cells, it triggers then autophagy systematically. So, the average seminal emission is around 15 to 50 milligrams of spermidine.

[00:42:26] I told you that Primeadine has only one. So, that puts it into perspective. And that range, of course, that's a very big range, 15 to 50. It does correlate with age, and the ancient Daoist text, and also the text that Yoshimori Temba put together say that as men get older, they should practice seminal retention more frequently. And it's obvious, this becomes more of a precious resource when you're older and you need more spermidine. So, how are you going to get it?

[00:43:07] So, I've met a lot of men who say, oh, well, then I'll just not have sex. No, actually, you need to be aroused, you need to go through the meditation, the very slow arousal with your partner. You need to synchronize breath, and gaze, and heartbeat, then you come to this moment where you are almost in a meditative state and you are able to control the emission. Of course, physically, you can control it, either yourself, by squeezing the buttocks, or by pressing the perineum, or having your partner do it, but those who are most practiced actually can do this through breathwork.

[00:43:50]Luke Storey:  It's funny. I had no idea we're going to go here. This is so fascinating. In my research of spermidine, of course, I thought, wow, that's a funny name, but I never connected it to the semen retention. And I have interviewed a few men on the show, namely being John Grey, who's a huge proponent of this practice. And whenever I talk to these guys about this, I always liken it to Bigfoot, because it's something that people claim to be real, but I've yet to see it. But there are men who use these Daoist practices and not only retain it, but have a full orgasm.

[00:44:33]Leslie Kenny:  Yes. And you can, you can have multiple orgasms. They're like little earthquakes, right?

[00:44:37]Luke Storey:  Yeah. And like I said, I've heard about it, tried it, I don't know that I've put in—well, I know that I haven't put in the time and effort to be able to build that as a practice.

[00:44:50]Leslie Kenny:  You, of all people, a yoga instructor, you need to be doing this.

[00:44:55]Luke Storey:  But I can say as a guy who's not in my 20s anymore, that I definitely have more energy if I don't have sex very often. And it just kind of happens naturally that I don't do it every day like I did when I was younger. And when I do, it's more meaningful, because I know that there's going to be a little bit of an energetic leak there, so to speak. So, this is really interesting. So, I guess I could just take like half a bottle every time I have sex instead of holding it in and learning the Daoist practice. I just take a huge handful of spermidine pills from Primeadine. But that's very interesting. So, okay, let me see where I want to go with this. This is interesting. This is great.

[00:45:49]Leslie Kenny:  The other fascinating fact that people don't realize about spermidine is that it's so important to life that mother's breastmilk contains spermidine as well. It has a very beneficial effect on the gastrointestinal tract. It helps actually seal the gut lining, which is very important for babies. So, it's not surprising that it's there. Obviously, in breastmilk, there are also fructo-oligosaccharides, which are great as our prebiotics, which we can't digest, but which go through to our gut biome to help feed the colonies that the baby has inherited as it goes through the vaginal canal. And we always forget about the prebiotics. 

[00:46:33] We're so obsessed with probiotics, that we're always putting the probiotics in, and then forgetting we have to feed the colonies to keep them going. And that's one of the reasons that we put a prebiotic also in Primeadine, because we don't just want to put spermidine in, you have to also take care of the gut biome, because that's actually a vital resource of spermidine for both men and women. If you can feed those colonies, the Fuso and bacteroides colonies that naturally produce that. 

[00:47:06]Luke Storey:  Wow. For a lay person, you're super smart.

[00:47:08]Leslie Kenny:  I don't know about that.

[00:47:09]Luke Storey:  Are you sure you're not a scientist? And it seems to be in research and your background, you had the matchmaking service, and then you were involved in Swiss banking. I mean, it seems like you have had a successful career and an entrepreneurial one. So, it's fascinating that you've been able to amass and actually retain all of this data. It's really incredible. You mentioned one of the studies around cognitive decline. Are there any studies being conducted currently or any others in the past that you could speak to in terms of some verifiable benefits even outside of autophagy?

[00:47:47]Leslie Kenny:  There are a lot of clinical trials going on right now. What I would say is watch this space for human trials. There is so much mouse research. It's ridiculous—sorry, there's so much research in mice, that it's really crazy. We do need more corroborative studies in humans and they are being conducted on everything from immunity to—for instance, there is one on immune function and potentiating vaccines in the elderly that Katja Simon is going to be doing soon.

[00:48:35] And there are studies on multiple sclerosis. There are a lot of others that are happening. But I want to be very clear that these studies have not yet happened and we cannot draw conclusions from them. Really, though, if we take it back to what you said at the beginning of the podcast, was about how you find sleep so foundational, I think one of the really exciting things is that spermidine appears to reset the elderly circadian rhythm.

[00:49:07] We know this is true in elderly mice, but we've had a lot of people tell us that after they've taken Primeadine in the evening, that suddenly, they're able to sleep through the night or they notice on their Oura Ring that they get two hours of deep sleep, that they can go to bed after their deep sleep window. We know that deep sleep happens, it's front-loaded, so it's usually between 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM.

[00:49:33] If they go to bed after 2:00 AM, they generally don't get it. But if you take the Primeadine, a lot of people say they are getting it. So, it is helping with that shift. And the fact that we know spermidine triggers autophagy is resetting the sleep cycle and triggering autophagy are two big ones, but there are also six hallmarks of aging that it inhibits. And one of those is telomere length.

[00:50:04] So, that's a study that just came out. There were two studies actually on this, one out of the University of Hannover Medical School, and they noticed that it increased the length of telomeres, which is fantastic. Now, telomere length is one of the things that sort of sexual meditation, sexual intimacy done in the right way, the way that the Daoist prescribed it. It also lengthened telomeres.

[00:50:33] And that's based on the work of Nobel laureate Elizabeth Blackburn and head of the psychiatry department at UCSF, Elizabeth Epel. They actually wrote a book about this, where they mention that this sexual intimacy, the matching of the eye gaze and the breath can actually lengthen telomeres. So, that's quite interesting. But the other hallmarks of aging, the other five hallmarks of aging that this inhibits are things like stem cells, which we know we need, right?

[00:51:06] We must have functioning stem cells in order to repair the body. So, that's very exciting. It helps with misfolded protein in the mitochondria, which is obviously fantastic. It helps with epigenetic changes. It helps with mitochondrial dysfunction and impaired intracellular communication. So, there's a really nice paper from two UCL, University College London researchers Matias Fuentealba and Linda Partridge, and the guy at National University of Singapore, Brian Kennedy, that was published in Nature in May of 2020, and it's called the, I think, Molecular Targets for Antiaging.

[00:51:56] And it has all of the molecules lined up. Actually, I've got a kind of copy here and it shows what the hallmarks of aging are across the top, and then it shows what the compounds are and which ones they hit. And spermidine in that paper hits five. Since then, we know that we've got telomere, helps with telomere attrition. So, that's six. And I actually think it will probably help with senescent cells.

[00:52:30] That's a hope that I wouldn't be surprised, and can't make any claims on that, but for those of us who are over 50, all my girlfriends are postmenopausal, we want to maintain our vitality in the second half of life. We know that it's very possible we will live another 50 to 60 years. And if that's the case, I want to be in the best shape I can possibly be. It's almost like you get a do over in life, right?

[00:53:01]Luke Storey:  Yeah, I'm all for that. I mean, I think anyone that knows me or listen to this show knows that I'm not about becoming old and decrepit. I mean, because here's the thing, and that's an incredible litany of data there around this really unique molecule that I feel so stoked to actually be doing a show on it, because one of the things I pride myself in is kind of discovering new things and sharing them before they're totally mainstream.

[00:53:31] But what I can say is that I'm not as concerned with how long I live, it's more about how well I feel while I'm here. Correct. There are many people kind of in the biohacking space that want to live forever, and frankly, I don't want to live any longer than I feel good, but I want to stay feeling good as long as possible. I can say in my own self-study that I freaking love this stuff. And as I said, I do two capsules in the morning and two capsules at night every day.

[00:54:04] And I'll admit it's difficult for me sometimes to quantify what's moving the needle, because I'm always introducing new things and I don't often do an isolation test where I just like eat a steak, drink some water, and introduce a new supplement, case in point being the high-dose melatonin that I experimented with last night with mixed results. But there's something to this particular substance that I think is really unique.

[00:54:32] And there are very few things, I think, that make the cut for me where I take it and I actually feel something. And I just kind of know intuitively, and also based on some research and conversations like this that it's going to be in my top 10 and just something that I take all the time for the rest of my life until I learn something different. So, I think you've discovered something very cool here and thank you for making a viable product available, too. 

[00:55:03]Leslie Kenny:  Thank you.

[00:55:03]Luke Storey:  Yeah. What was the process like of being someone that doesn't have a background in having a supplement company? When you discovered this amazing substance, this spermidine, what was the process like of actually wanting to bring it to market, and seeing it to fruition, and putting together this incredible scientific advisory board and clinical advisory board? I mean, you have a lot of heavy hitters, some of whom, you've named, so you're kind of coming out the gate firing on all cylinders here, more so than someone who just like, no offense to them, but a mommy blogger that like makes some great toothpaste or something.

[00:55:42]Leslie Kenny:  Well, I'm very lucky that I'm in Oxford, right? And this is the Hollywood of academia. And I've got a friend who's a director in Hollywood, I've asked him how he puts his films together. This is Chris Weitz, who did New Moon about a boy and aunts. And he says, oh, I go to the Ivy, and I look around, and I see a screenwriter, an actor, and there's a first AD, and then I got them all together. And Oxford is exactly the same way.

[00:56:11] It's a very tiny city. It's only 150,000 people in all these medieval buildings. It's like Disneyland for academics. And you do just have conversations with people and you begin to draw your tribe together. And I noticed that there was a very interesting tribe of people here who did believe in the healing power of food. And by the way, ours is food-derived? There are some that are synthetic.

[00:56:40] I didn't want synthetic, because there are some other polyamines such as spermine that you also want in there, they have value, and putrescine. So, I met some of these other academics and realized that this was a viable group to pull together and make something. Nothing like this has really ever come out of Oxford. And as a matter of fact, it was the great Hans Krebs who learned about the Krebs cycle, mitochondria, who was here at Oxford, who was offered the chance to build a nutrition department at Oxford after the Second World War, and he was head of biochemistry, and he said, no, he didn't want that department, because it would have to sit in his department.

[00:57:27] He didn't say why, but I can imagine, probably, it was seen as kind of women's area, right? So, I'm just guessing, he probably wanted to have more luster to this new field of biochemistry. Why would you want nutrition? And his comment was, we know everything we need to know about nutrition. This is in like 1948. We now know that's not true. There's so much we don't know.

[00:57:52] And food has an incredible power. I think when Terry Wahls says she still wants to get, she eats a lot of great foods, because there are so many nutrients in there that we haven't yet identified that are also important. You can't just take a handful of supplements. And if you do take them, try to get them from food-derived sources, right? Because that's what the body recognizes.

[00:58:18]Luke Storey:  With the Primeadine spermidine product that you've created, it's derived from wheat germ, is that correct?

[00:58:25]Leslie Kenny:  That's right. Yes. And I got it from Japan.

[00:58:29]Luke Storey:  When I found that out, I recalled being a kid, and my mom and dad actually were both—I guess there weren't biohackers at this time.

[00:58:39]Leslie Kenny:  They were called hippies. I'm from California, too, my parents were the same.

[00:58:44]Luke Storey:  So, we begrudgingly followed my mom to the health food store instead of Safeway or whatever, and there would be these bins of wheat germ, and my mom would always put wheat germ in these smoothies. I mean, I was eating smoothies when I was two probably and I never liked the smoothie she would make with wheat germ, probably because she put so much. But after having listened to one of your other podcasts, one of the issues with wheat germ is that it's very easily oxidized.

[00:59:12]Leslie Kenny:  That's right.

[00:59:12]Luke Storey:  Perhaps, that's why it-

[00:59:15]Leslie Kenny:  That's maybe why you didn't feel so good. You had these rancid Omega-6s. So, wheat germ, it does have high concentrations of spermidine, spermine, and putrescine, which are all important polyamines. Spermine does something else, in terms of inhibiting hallmark of aging. Putrescine actually is a precursor—and just the worst, the absolute worst names, didn't they? Putrescine is the precursor to spermine and spermidine, but it's got these Omega-6s and they're so volatile. They're very delicate and volatile, and they oxidize and we took the fat out of ours. I think that is something that I just didn't want that, right?

[00:59:58] You think about the cell integrity, and if you're having industrial seed oils or you have rancid oils, it happens with nuts, too, right? I love raw nuts, but you've got to refrigerate them, and then you'd want to sprout them at a lectin. So, the reason why it's important to not have oxidized oils is because the outer membrane of the cell loses its integrity. It doesn't become perfectly round. It kind of gets wibbly wobbly on the outside. And so, we want the cell to be as healthy as I possible. We want that membrane to be healthy. And that's why we took the fat out. 

[01:00:36]Luke Storey:  Wow. Super smart. And then, you mentioned earlier that you're on some place of the spectrum of gluten intolerance, but I'm sure you're crushing the spermidine on the daily. What about people that are celiac, or gluten-sensitive, or allergic?

[01:00:55]Leslie Kenny:  So, I wouldn't recommend this to someone who is celiac or someone who is allergic. I think I would be cautious. For those who are heterozygous for celiac gene like I am, I would definitely try it. I think that as long as you don't have SIBO, undiagnosed SIBO, and there are a lot of people who have undiagnosed SIBO and leaky gut, you should be okay. And at this point in time, we have lots of customers who say they're very sensitive to gluten, but they aren't celiac. They've tried it, they're fine with it. Amy Lamonte, who's one of our clinical advisors, she's also the same as me. I'm very, very sensitive. She's also an autoimmune survivor. And we've both been very careful about keeping gluten out of our diets, but we don't have any trouble with this at all.

[01:01:53]Luke Storey:  Yeah, it's interesting. I'm not celiac and I don't have a technical allergy to gluten, but I feel much better when I avoid it. I don't always do so successfully, because bread is delicious, as is pizza, cake, and cookies, and all of those. But I don't have any adverse reaction at all to the Primeadine. It's a non-issue. Like I notice when I eat gluten, and I'll be honest, I have experimented and taken quite a big handful of the Primeadine, and not to test the gluten intolerance, but just because like I'm tired that day or something, like I need that tune up, and I haven't noticed anything. So, I think that's promising. And I guess if someone did have some of those other greater sensitivities, if they could stomach it, they could crush a bunch of natto or get it off grapefruit.

[01:02:45]Leslie Kenny:  Yeah, exactly. And we know it has very positive effects on the lining of the gut. That's sort of the irony, right? If you've got leaky gut, then spermidine will be helpful. If you are experiencing any kind of gastric upsets, I would start slowly with this. One capsule, definitely have it with the meal, and then titrate up slowly until you get to three a day. But in a dosage, there is about one-one-hundredth the amount of gluten that you have in the average slice of bread in the United States. So, it's the equivalent of a crumb, of a large crumb, right?

[01:03:30]Luke Storey:  Right. Okay. Cool. Wow. Well, Leslie, thank you so much for sharing your story today and thank you for your dedication to the cutting-edge stuff. As I said, I love having conversations with people when I feel like I'm kind of one of the first people to the party, so to speak. And I just I don't know what it is. I guess it's my innate curiosity and passion for feeling good.

[01:03:55] And like you, having been someone that spent the first half of my life feeling horrible in all the ways, it's fun to discover something new that's viable. And the research that's going on is really exciting, too. I'm looking forward to more of that unfolding. I'm not a huge research geek, but I know there is a segment of the population that's a bit more left-brained and they really want to see the data to prove something.

[01:04:20] To me, proof is just like, wow, I feel really good, my energy is great, and that's kind of all I need to know. So, thank you for giving us so much background on that, and again, for your openness and authenticity about your origin story. You've been through a lot, and you're now a happy, shiny person who's making a really incredible contribution to the world and bringing something really unique and viable, and something that I don't think is a waste of money.

[01:04:50] I mean, people, God bless them, send me supplements and stuff all the time, I can hardly keep up, and I'm so grateful for that, that I'm in that position, because I used to spend literally more than my rent for many, many years on different supplements, and technologies, and stuff. But oftentimes, it's like, I don't know, they're either redundant or just not that meaningful, and maybe they don't harm you, but they aren't something that I'm really committed to or super excited about, frankly. So, congratulations on doing something really unique in the world and I'm excited to share it with people. It's very cool.

[01:05:26]Leslie Kenny:  Oh, I really appreciate it. I think this is part of a paradigm shift in how we think about the aches and pains of aging. If we can just inhibit aging, slow it down, or even reverse it like I did with my illness at age 39, prematurely aging, then, wow, what does our future hold for us? How exciting. We can look forward to the second half life really as the new prime of life. And it is that great do over that everybody wants in life.

[01:05:56]Luke Storey:  It's true. It's funny. I was thinking about this the other day, I'm going to be 51 this year.

[01:06:03]Leslie Kenny:  You don't look it?

[01:06:04]Luke Storey:  That's good. Well, what? You're 55, right?

[01:06:07]Leslie Kenny:  I'm 56, yeah.

[01:06:08]Luke Storey:  Yeah. I mean, I think we're doing pretty well but more than whatever appears on the outside with wrinkles, and gray hair, and things like that, I can say year over year that I feel better and better and have more energy. It's crazy. It's like it really is kind of like aging in reverse. That takes a lot of commitment. And I don't do things perfectly. I mean, my diet since I moved here to Texas has not been great.

[01:06:32] There's a lot of tasty barbecue here that's probably full of chemicals. But the point is, I mean, aside from a couple of things, like my vision's a little funky. I have like tinnitus and a bit of deafness in the left ear. Like I have a couple of signs of aging that annoy me, but in terms of just happiness, wellbeing, energy, sleep, all of the things, I don't know, I feel like I'm getting better all the time instead of getting worse.

[01:06:57]Leslie Kenny:  I am, too. And I think part of it is we're comfortable in our skin at this age. What's wonderful is we know we don't want to live somebody else's story. When we're young, the body is strong, but the mind is weak, and we've got parents who say, oh, you should go to med school, you should marry that person, you should do this job. And we listen to all of that, and it is very anxiety-inducing, and we're not confident, but by the time—I don't know, all my postmenopausal friends, honestly, we are very happy. We know who we are and we are very comfortable showing up as the people we have become every day and embracing what comes before us. We've got all that experience behind us and the open road ahead of us, as long as we can just inhibit those aches and pains of aging, then what's not to look forward to?

[01:07:55]Luke Storey:  Amen, what a notion of hope to leave our audience with. However, I do have one final question for you, Leslie, and that is, you've taught me a ton today, as I said, bulk of information, and as you have the audience as well, who have been three teachers or teachings that have influenced your life or your work that you want to share with us.

[01:08:21]Leslie Kenny:  Oh, good question. Well, certainly, my grandmother, just that can do American, let's make it happen, we can do this. The other is definitely Denis Noble. A snowball. I think that I've been very privileged to work with such an eminent systems biologist. And he pioneered it here in the UK. He's teaching us how Darwin should have been interpreted, which I think is really exciting. And I get to talk to him every single week for over an hour, which is wonderful.

[01:09:04] And he has actually taught me more about learning to embrace my intuition and also to not poo-poo the ancients, to actually look at them with modern scientific eye, and say, was there any value there, before we discard it, simply because it's not something that we did. Is it possible that it was true? And I've gained a lot of confidence, I think, through him. And I'm just trying to think of a third and—well, I know this is going to sound like such a cliche, but I think it's probably the Dalai Lama. And one of his quotes is never think you're too small to make a difference, anyone who has ever slept with a mosquito knows that's not true.

[01:10:02]Luke Storey:  That's great. I've never heard of that.

[01:10:06]Leslie Kenny:  Yeah. So, that, I often think about that, because we're just a tiny startup. Actually, all women, in fact. And we want to make a difference. We want to make a change. And a lot of people say, oh, you have to raise tons of money, you have to do this, be that, maybe we can actually share this message, maybe this will resonate with people. And whether they can afford our product or not, they can at least try to incorporate spermidine or even seminal retention into their daily diet or lifestyle practices.

[01:10:36]Luke Storey:  Awesome. Well, thank you for such a great closing note. And where can people find you, website-wise, social media, et cetera?

[01:10:44]Leslie Kenny:  Right. So, the website is www.oxfordhealthspan, all one word. You can also go to primeadine.com. Prime like the new prime, A-D-I-N-E-.com. And I've got a YouTube channel as well, which is under Leslie's New Prime. So, you can find me there and everything there is about just bringing the body back into balance.

[01:11:12]Luke Storey:  Awesome. Thank you for sharing those. And we will, of course, put them in the show notes, which our listeners can often find right in their podcast player. I think a lot of people don't realize that if you scroll down on the Apple podcast app, for example, on this episode, you will see all of the links that Leslie mentioned right there. So, keep that in mind, folks listening. And thank you so much for your work in the world and for joining me today. It's really great to get to know you.

[01:11:35]Leslie Kenny:  It was great to do it today. Thanks so much.

[01:11:51]

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