Superoxide Dismutase Benefits: The Master Antioxidant Explained

Nick Urban [00:00:01]: You’re listening to High Performance Longevity, the show exploring a better path to optimal health for those daring to live as an outlier in a world of averages. I’m your host, Nick Urban, bioharmonizer, performance coach, and lifelong student of both modern science and ancestral wisdom. Each week we decode the tools, tactics, and timeless principles to help you optimize your mind, body, and performance span. Things you won’t find on Google or in your AI tool of choice. From cutting-edge biohacks to grounded lifestyle practices, you’ll walk away with actionable insights to look, feel, and perform at your best across all of life’s domains. Hey, François, welcome to the podcast.

François Vix [00:00:54]: Thank you. Nice to be here with you, Nick, today.

Nick Urban [00:00:57]: Yeah. Yeah. Well, this one will be interesting and novel because we’re gonna be talking a lot about a molecule that most people have heard nothing about. I don’t even know if molecule is the right classification of it, but it is called superoxide dismutase. And will you break down that big scientific word, what it means and why it is important?

François Vix [00:01:18]: So what it means, SOD is an enzyme. It was actually discovered not that long ago in 1968 by two American scientists, Michael Fridovich and Joe McCord, who were both biologists, and they discovered that enzyme and its role, which is really, it’s the first line of cellular defense. So whenever cells are attacked by free radicals, they will produce multiple enzymes, and the first one is superoxide dismutase. And SOD is common to all life forms that consume oxygen because it’s really the first line of defense against the toxicity of oxygen. So if I can go back a little bit, like 3.5 billion years, when oxygen first appeared on Earth as a byproduct of photosynthesis, synthesis, And for 4 billion years, it was not really in the atmospheres. It was trapped in marine underwater wells. And then after a billion years, like 2.5 billion years ago, it started to evaporate in the atmospheres. And when that happened, it almost wiped out all life forms.

François Vix [00:02:57]: Because oxygen is so toxic. But we survived. I mean, species survived, life survived, and it survived by producing a molecule, an enzyme that has the ability to detoxify or protect against the toxicity of oxygen. And that enzyme is superoxide dismutase. And when you think of it, This enzyme hasn’t changed in 2.5 billion years. So when you know how evolution makes everything perfect, this enzyme was perfect from day one. So that enzyme is obviously very critical, and I will tell you why. Because when you breathe oxygen, oxygen is the source of energy for your cells.

François Vix [00:03:52]: However, when you burn oxygen, when your cells burn oxygen, there are some byproducts or poorly burnt oxygen molecules, and they are called oxygen reactive species. And they are the most toxic free radicals. And probably your audience is familiar with free radicals, antioxidants, but free radicals, and they are referred to oxidative stress. And free radicals and especially the most toxic ones, oxygen reactive species, are very specific because they are unstable molecules. So they will try to find the missing electrons anywhere else. And by doing this in this process, they will destroy and disrupt your cells basically. So first they will puncture the cell membranes, and eventually they will do damage at the level of the nucleus, and they might even damage your DNA. And if you have damaged DNA, that could lead to, obviously, it will prevent yourself from duplicating themselves in a homothetic way.

François Vix [00:05:15]: They won’t be able to replicate. And if they can’t replicate in the same way, then that could lead to cancer. It could lead to premature aging. So from the very beginning, the consumption on oxygen and free radicals and reactive oxygen species are very much linked to longevity and lifespan to the point that when oxygen, when SOD was first discovered in 1968, it was called the enzyme of life because every living, every life form that consumes oxygen produce superoxide dismutase. And the longer they live, the more SOD they produce. So there is a direct correlation between your ability to produce SOD as well as other enzymes and your longevity or your lifespan. So very, very critical. I mean, you clearly cannot live without SOD catalase and glutathione.

François Vix [00:06:25]:

So that’s the short introduction to the role of SOD.Nick Urban [00:06:29]: François, so people, there’s like kind of a paradox here where people say like oxygen, like is the basis of life. They say, oh, there’s a lot of different sayings, like the presence of oxygen is the presence of health, et cetera, et cetera. But also at the same time oxygen is damaging.

François Vix [00:06:47]:

Yeah.Nick Urban [00:06:48]: In isolation when it’s applied. And so is superoxide dismutase the missing link where it explains how oxygen can also be the harbinger of life? It can be, it can cause and let life exist and flourish. And at the same time, if you get oxygen by itself without the right support, it can actually damage and eventually over time destroy life.

François Vix [00:07:10]: Very much so. I mean, you cannot live without oxygen, but oxygen is what kills you in the long run. It’s very simple. It’s called, actually, scientists have coined a term for that. They call it inflammaging. Reactive oxygen species as well as oxidative stress and consumption of oxygen produce inflammation, and inflammation produce oxidative stress, and eventually they have an impact on your aging and so on. So yes, oxygen in itself doesn’t kill you, but the consumption of oxygen kills you, you know, in the long run. So those byproducts, those molecules, and clearly SOD is absolutely critical.

Nick Urban [00:07:59]: I’m sure people tuning in at this point have heard you mention superoxide dismutase, SOD, and they have heard that, okay, oxygen is important for life, but like in the right dose with the right buffers, and SOD acts like an antioxidant. But what about all the other antioxidants that everyone’s heard of? Like all, like half the supplements in the longevity industry are antioxidants. And then you look at some of the research and it says, okay, well yeah, like we thought that antioxidants were gonna solve everything. It turns out they don’t. If you administer them in high doses, the wrong ones over a period of time, you see that they actually have detrimental impacts on longevity and other certain parameters. What makes SOD so different here?

François Vix [00:08:38]: So not all antioxidants are equals. You have 2 types of antioxidants. You have the primary antioxidants and you have the secondary antioxidants. So primary antioxidants are the antioxidants that our body produces. Those are the most critical because they are working 24/7. They’re always on call. Our body has the ability to produce them and they are always available. And those are enzymes.

François Vix [00:09:17]: So, SOD, catalase, glutathione. And so they are very critical because they will transform toxic free radicals into non-toxic molecules. Then you have the other kind of antioxidants such as vitamins and minerals and so on. Those are, we need to consume food because they are chemical compounds that our body cannot produce. But they have the ability just to neutralize one free radical. So one molecule, one vitamin neutralize one free radical. If you look at one molecule of SOD, because of its ability to get revitalized all the time, it can neutralize many, many more free radicals. So we usually say it’s 1 million to 1.

François Vix [00:10:12]: So one molecule of SOD can neutralize 1 million free radicals. But as a matter of fact, if you search in articles and science, it’s more like a billion free radicals for one molecule of SOD, while one vitamin will neutralize one free radical. And we don’t even know. So when a free radical is in contact with one vitamin, the free radical will capture the missing electron on the vitamin to stabilize itself. But we don’t know what happens to the vitamin itself once it’s spent. So yes, it’s a very complex, I mean, biochemistry is extremely complex. But clearly, it’s critical to have a healthy and an enzymatic pathway to be able to produce SOD as well as other internal antioxidants because that’s definitely your first line of defense and it’s working 24/7.

Nick Urban [00:11:30]: To play devil’s advocate here, if I take certain antioxidants, say some of the vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin E, those will often help recharge the other antioxidants in the body. Why is that not a viable strategy to like sidestep all this if the vitamins and minerals are doing more than just neutralizing a single free radical?

François Vix [00:11:53]: Yes, but you, you would’ve to take, I, I don’t know, wanna say tons, tons, but grams of vitamins and you’ll, I don’t know what kind of vitamins you would take. I mean, if, if it’s synthetic vitamins, you might as well forget about it because your body is not used to grab vitamins from synthetic sources. You always must take natural sources if you’re going to take vitamin C or other vitamins. But you never know, and especially these days, you never know how much vitamin you take in in natural products. So if you want to take the equivalent of grams in natural products, you’re going to be eating oranges forever. So sure, it’s a good idea to take natural vitamins, but they are very quickly spent. They will not be useful in the long run. That’s the big difference with enzymatic antioxidants because again, it’s the length of time they they work with your body.

François Vix [00:13:10]: And if I may, the product that I manufacture doesn’t impact, it doesn’t bring directly SOD. It’s a fairly complex mechanism of action, but it stimulates your own production of SOD. So it’s even a different mechanism of action.

Nick Urban [00:13:29]: Yeah, I want to explore that because that’s a fascinating area in itself. To go back more, I wanna explore like the landscape of antioxidants a little in some more depth. Cause I think it helps understand like the difference with here. If I look into the research on say ascorbic acid or synthetic vitamin C and I look back like to the mid-1900s, I see like good results on a lot of different things from certain people who are using that as their primary intervention. And perhaps it’s not purely through its like direct antioxidant effects. Like what would you say? Like why would that work even though it’s not natural, it’s synthetic? And of course to me, when I have the option of taking something natural versus synthetic, I usually choose the natural route because it tends to be more biocompatible. It works better with the body, but we’re still seeing good effects from people using moderate to high doses of vitamin C in certain conditions.

François Vix [00:14:19]: I, I don’t know. I’m not very comfortable talking about, you know, synthetic vitamins. There is the only major study on vitamins, it’s the Svivimax study. From the ’90s and they used a pretty high dosage of vitamins. And the only long-term difference that I saw was with men because men tend to have a less balanced diet than women. So it had some impact there, especially on cancer and prevention, but not a major impact. I suppose it depends if you want to have long-term intake of vitamins or if you want to have a short burst of vitamins. So secondary vitamins such as vitamins would be very beneficial, but for short-term burst of energy and vitamin, but for the long run, and what I mean by long run is your ability to recover, which is the critical factor, then the enzymatic antioxidant will be more, will be preferable.

François Vix [00:15:41]: But the good, you have to combine the two. I mean, that’s the way to go. Natural vitamins, and enzymatic antioxidants, that’s a great combination. And plus minerals as well because SOD, there are different kinds of SOD because there is SOD in tissues, in blood, in intracellular, extracellular. So you have SOD, copper, zinc, magnesium, iron SOD. And so it’s good to have a healthy supply of minerals so It’s because those minerals that I just listed are precursors of SOD activity. So again, I’m sorry, it’s not that simple, but if you want to optimize every level, you should really consume some minerals as well, especially if you, and it depends your location in the world. In the US, the soil is very rich in selenium.

François Vix [00:16:51]: So you probably don’t need to supplement in selenium. But in Europe, we have very poor selenium and our soil is not very rich. So it’s a good idea to supplement with selenium as well. So again, I’m sorry, I can’t really offer a simple, straightforward solution, but, and also you have to find out if you have any deficiencies. Because obviously it’s better to, you know, to take supplements if you have deficiencies. Like most people above the age of 40 years old are deficient in vitamin D. So, you know, a strong supply of vitamin D is a very good idea.

Nick Urban [00:17:36]: So yeah, I saw some research from Dr. James D. Nicolantonio, and he found that in his research, I think it was 30% of Americans have 10 or more insufficiencies, not like clinical deficiencies, but insufficiencies in, uh, 10 or more vitamins and minerals. So I think it’s a good idea in general to cover those bases. However someone does it for SOD, like that’s one of the ones that is endogenously produced. And so your body actually is manufacturing this. And as you mentioned, there’s a bunch of different types of SOD. If that’s the case, the body has a lot of feedback loops and mechanisms where if something is increased above a certain level, then the body downregulates its production to keep it in like a homeostatic balance.

Nick Urban [00:18:23]: And like some of the hormones, people are on hormone replacement therapy and that’s like the prime example. Does that happen with SOD? If I increase my SOD levels, however I do it, is that gonna result in my body downregulating its natural production?

François Vix [00:18:37]: Yes, it will. And we have, we’ve done different studies on a, you know, 2-year supplementation with our products and people with, we’ve done a study with, on atherosclerosis, you know, and people suffering from metabolic syndrome. So it’s a pre-diabetic condition and they usually have a high level of oxidative stress. And what we’ve seen is that even if they go on a very strict diet, they can’t stop the stress level and they cannot stop the inflammation, you know, that is going to produce plaque buildup and so on, complications with pre-diabetic situation. So what we have seen is that when we supplement with our product, we can regulate SOD and catalase levels. And reduce what we call lipid peroxidation, which is the byproducts of membranes deterioration, damage to the membranes due to free radicals and inflammation and oxidative stress. But, you know, after a while, of course, if you stop supplementing, you’re going to go back to your level. So But absolutely to your point, it’s not good to have below, I mean, SOD levels that are below normal levels, but it’s not good to have SOD levels that are above normal levels.

François Vix [00:20:13]: You need to be within that bandwidth. And we know that to your point, your body is going to regulate that level. So we’ve seen also on its impact on the immune system where sometimes you have very high level of SOD. I mean, SOD is a very tricky molecule to measure because if you have the flu, if you have a bad digestion, it’s going to, so if you want to measure SOD as well as other internal antioxidants, you have to do it on a period of time like 6 months and do it to have multiple points to understand where you, if you do it on a bad day, you, you have the wrong reading. You know, you need to do it 2, 3, 4 times so that you, you know your levels. Yeah.

Nick Urban [00:21:11]: I mean, it seems like most people today are not going to have excess levels of SOD, so it seems like it’s gonna be less of an issue and more people are gonna be under like a, a burden because of lifestyle, because of environment, because of different factors. So, regardless, adding a little support is probably not going to hurt for most people.

François Vix [00:21:32]: Yeah. I mean, I totally agree with you because, and they will see some, obviously some benefits and back because I mean, I know the topic is the role of SOD in longevity, but it’s very hard to measure longevity as you very well know, unless you have 20 years ahead you. So you are going to look at levels of energy, you know, chronic pain. You’re going to look at some other markers and, and yes, supplementation of SOD can alleviate part of those issues.

Nick Urban [00:22:11]: Since it’s hard to measure longevity, you just listed a couple of the reasons, like things people notice out of using it or increasing their levels significantly back up to at least normal levels. What are the other reasons? What makes you so interested in SOD? Like, in terms of outcomes that people notice? Okay.

François Vix [00:22:28]: So if we are talking about healthy people, although there is no such thing as such people as healthy people, but people who have a very balanced life, they have a good diet, they work out, they don’t have too much stress at work, they have a good personal life, and they are in their midlife or 30s, 20s, Those people, obviously, they are not great subjects for me because they are not in pain except if they do extreme workouts because high-intensity sports generate a lot of free radicals. Because as soon as you start hyperventilating, you’re going to consume more oxygen that your body can recycle. So, it’s a great way to stimulate your immune defense, but it’s also exhausting. So, but if we go back to normal people, what they would see is probably increased energy. They will also have better photoprotection. So their skin might be clearer because of, and I’m not saying this is a natural internal sunscreen because it’s not, but somehow it helps with enhanced photoprotection. It will never replace the sunscreens, but it helps with photoprotection. And you live in Texas, so you would know what the harsh sun can do to your skin.

François Vix [00:24:13]: So yeah, that’s for healthy people. Now, as you age, it’s going to be a different story, obviously, or if you’re sick, it’s a different story, especially if your immune system is deficient. That’s when hesody can help because it will work on normalizing part of your immunity. And if you, so usually, yes, we do work on normal people, but it’s hard to measure something thing on people who are healthy and young, I mean, for those obvious reasons. So we tend to do clinical work on people who have health issues because that’s when you’re going to see a difference. In the case of if their immune system is overactive or not efficient, that’s when you will see the difference in types. If they are subject to allergies, Yeah.

Nick Urban [00:25:20]: Yeah. It seems like anyone that is breathing more than is healthy or just like, yeah, I guess intaking and exhaling more oxygen than is normal because like we know there’s a correlation between breath rate and a lot of different conditions, whether it’s from sleep apnea, it’s from intense like endurance exercise, it’s from something else entirely. It’s from breathing in oxygen, like therapeutic oxygen or hyper, maybe even hyperbaric oxygen. Like it seems like these populations are gonna benefit from increasing SOD levels somehow.

François Vix [00:25:51]: Yes. So you mentioned increased breathing, increased or under pressure oxygen, you know, that’s, yeah, that me, I mean obviously you have to do it under strict control because we’ve done some work on using hyperbaric oxygen and because we’ve done work on scuba divers. And professional scuba divers. And these people, especially middle-aged scuba divers, they do a lot of obviously scuba diving. And especially if they are in the Navy, they will try to keep doing that scuba diving because they get better pay if they are active in scuba diving than if they are not. And the problem with hyperbaric oxygen is that it’s very toxic. And so at a young age, you normalize that, you neutralize that toxicity. But as you age, hyperbaric oxygen is going to induce DNA lesions.

François Vix [00:26:58]: And we have measured that, and it’s a study that we did quite a few years ago using hyperbaric oxygen and putting 3 bars of pressure and having people breathe 1 hour pure oxygen. And when they exit the hyperbaric chamber, we draw blood and then we filter, we look at their white blood cells. And what we see, and it’s very short-lived, but what we see is a fragmentation of their white blood cells like a comet. And by measuring the tail moments, the length of the tail, you can measure the damage to your white blood cells, to the nucleus, and to your DNA. So if you do that in a, if you repeat that exercise over and over again, you might get some lesion that could very well produce accelerated aging and sometimes even worse, cancer. So yeah, hyperbaric oxygen is great because it will stimulate your immune defense, but But it has to be controlled. And by the way, I would advise people to use glycine or SOD along with hyperbaric oxygen so that they have the benefits of hyperbaric oxygen, but the protection also from SOD and enhancing their natural SOD activity so that they are protected. Because what we’ve seen in that study is that when you pretreat people for even just as short as a couple of weeks with my SOD product, you kind of stimulate their internal defense mechanism.

François Vix [00:28:55]: So when they are under hyperbaric oxygen, they are kind of protected. It acts like a buffer. And so they can absorb the stress in a much more effective way than if they haven’t been pretreated.

Nick Urban [00:29:11]: So, I mean, that’s one of the areas I wanted to explore with you. Like a lot of antioxidants, you take them, they blunt the hormetic beneficial adaptation changes that result from these types of things. Like when you take SOD, say in conjunction or before your hyperbaric oxygen session, you’re not gonna be blunting the like stress, like the micro stress, or maybe not even micro, just the stress that stimulates your immune system in your body to adapt to the hyperbaric session?

François Vix [00:29:40]: Well, it’s very short-lived. So if you do that once in a while, you’re not going to see much. But if you do it repeatedly, then you start seeing some fragmentation of the white blood cells and nucleus. So what the product will do, it will, and we’ve done that in a double-blind controlled placebo study. And we’ve seen that the people who had been treated even 2 weeks just as short as 2 weeks before to the hyperbaric exposure, they had very short tails, if I may say. Their comet was very short, so they had no fragmentation of their nucleus. So good protection, but they still had the stimulation, but it was a controlled stimulation by the hyperbaric chamber. So combination makes a lot of sense.

Nick Urban [00:30:39]: Francois, why, if this has been around nearly 60 years, a very long time, why is there so little like knowledge awareness on this? Because it’s in the cell, it’s like one of the body’s primary antioxidants. And it seems like that there would be a huge demand, huge like research interest in this. And it, if anything, it should be one of the more researched substances in the body.

François Vix [00:31:03]: I’m glad that you asked this question because If you look at PubMed, there are literally thousands and thousands of studies conducted with SOD, but it was in an injectable form. So 20, 30 years ago, yes, at least 30 years ago, SOD was very commonly used in an injectable form. So we would extract SOD from beef liver and inject it in the location of the inflammation. Very widely used for osteoarthritis, for example, but other also skin fibrosis, other indication as well. And very conclusive. I mean, lots, again, lots of clinical data. And then suddenly we had mad cow disease. And you couldn’t use animal extract and particularly no beef, nothing from cows and beef.

François Vix [00:32:17]: So you had to look for an alternative form of superoxide dismutase. And the problem is that if you look at botanical extracts, produce the SOD because they use oxygen. The problem with botanical extract is that you cannot purify it to a very high level to the way you could purify SOD in beef. So you cannot inject it because it will do a lot of damage if you injected non-purified botanical SOD. So the only way to absorb SOD was to actually swallowing SOD. The problem with SOD is that it’s a very tiny molecule and it’s destroyed in the stomach by the acidity of the stomach. So that really killed SOD in the ’90s and until two French immunologists who were conducting research in the field of AIDS, developed a protective matrix for that SOD. And at first they worked with beef liver SOD, but that was just experimental and using a fraction of gluten, a fraction of wheat, which is gliadin, which is a very hard protein.

François Vix [00:34:00]: And so coating that SOD with that fraction of wheat was very effective in protecting SOD during the gastrointestinal passage. The second benefit of gliadin, that wheat extract, is that it has very strong bioadhesive properties and it will stick at the level of the small intestine. When it’s swallowed. And that’s where you have 70% of your immunocompetent cells. So that’s where the absorption is going to happen. And that’s where you have the optimal stimulation of your own immune system using botanical isolate. So we own that patent because I partner with the 2 immunologists. Later on, we started the company and Cell, the manufacturer of glycidine, owns the patent.

François Vix [00:35:03]: So nobody else can do it. And unfortunately, we’re a small company, so it’s hard to build up the reputation of something when you’re a small company with limited resources, especially when there is so much publication that state that SOD orally is not bioavailable because it’s destroyed in the stomach. So that killed SOD in the scientific community, and we are trying to rebuild that reputation. It’s tough. In other countries, it’s not so. In the US, it’s particularly difficult, but in Asia, SOD is still very much on one of the top ingredients in countries like Japan or Korea. So hopefully, it will come back in the US. I think the way we are trying to reestablish the credibility of SOD is by producing research.

François Vix [00:36:05]: And I mean, we have over 40 published articles, so, which is quite remarkable because we’ve done that in 10 different countries. So it’s not like just a small lab in France doing a small piece of research. It’s, you have, we’ve done work with the top Japanese universities, you know, in many different countries in Europe, Europe, including even in the US. And we keep, every quarter we publish a new study, every quarter or every 6 months. So, but these days we don’t do as much pure science. We do clinical work with clinical end benefits because that’s obviously we are trying to commercialize, market our products in specific health indications. But that’s the reason why SOD is not as common. It’s coming up, you know, glutathione, SOD, those are critical enzymes.

François Vix [00:37:09]: So there is more and more awareness, but the problem is always what’s the real bioavailability? What’s the clinical data behind, you know, ’cause at the end of the day, you can do do all the in vitro work that you want, you know, it’s, it’s worthless. You know, you need, you need in vivo work and you need clinical data. That’s the way you do it.

Nick Urban [00:37:36]: Well, that’s a huge accomplishment in itself because very few companies have 5 or more like studies on their product and even fewer have 10 or more. And so to get that number, that volume is like unheard of. I’ve used other antioxidants before. I’ve taken probably 100, 200 servings, maybe more of glutathione in my life and noticed pretty much no effect. And I’ve tried different formulations, different encapsulations, different like delivery technologies until I tried one that was transdermal and I expected to feel absolutely nothing out of it. And I actually noticed it felt like a really potent nootropic and I wasn’t expecting that. When you’re administering SOD, whether it’s in your research or clinically or like wherever you’re seeing effects, is it always through the oral form or do people actually notice something when they apply it like topically as well? ‘Cause you mentioned it’s in some skincare products, I think.

François Vix [00:38:32]: Yes, but no, the, the short answer is no because we don’t do any topical research. You know, we, again, we have enough work, you know, doing oral products. And the problem with the gliadin, the coating that we is too big to penetrate the skin. So we don’t use our products topically and honestly, we are not really interested in doing any topical work. There are many good cosmetic companies, good skincare companies. I don’t see how I could make a difference. Orally, it’s a different story because of what you just said. There are not that many companies that do research and You know, people ask me, you know, how many millions did you spend doing all that research because you’re still a small company? Well, we spend money for sure, but you know, the fact of the matter is that we have quite a reputation now in the world as the SOD experts.

François Vix [00:39:40]: And we are approached by a lot of different, by a lot of academics, you know, around the world that they want to do research with our product. So we give them some raw materials, they do their research, they, you know, it’s hopefully it’s conclusive, they publish. So it’s, it’s, it’s had no cost to me, which is beautiful, you know, and it’s additional evidence, you know, so it’s all, it’s great benefit to the company. That’s how we, we’ve accumulated so many studies. Yeah.

Nick Urban [00:40:15]: Well, very nice. If people take it orally, what kind of magnitude of effect difference do they see from that versus applying it topically? I don’t know if the skincare companies when they apply it, like like, do you actually see a systemic increase or maybe not systemic, like, like internal increase that’s significant and enduring? Kind of like when you take it oral topically?

François Vix [00:40:36]: I don’t know. I mean, that, that will be very surprising because, you know, that’s the very definition of cosmetics is that it has no systemic effect, you know, otherwise, no, it’s, it has to be injected, you know, to have, so a lot of cosmetic companies because companies might pretend that they have a systemic impact or it’s a very local impact, but if they pretend to have a systemic impact, they are outside of the regulations, regulatory field. But again, I don’t think most of them, they are happy to have just a topical protective or hydrating effect or reduce depigmenting effect, but no systemic effect. You need to either to take it orally or to inject it to have, now, there are a lot of new technologies such as exosomes, different that pretend to have more of a systemic stimulating effect on cellular renewals. That might be the case, but I haven’t seen a lot of compelling evidence. And because the cosmetic industry usually doesn’t do double-blind controlled placebo studies, so you need to have the double-blind controlled placebo study.

Nick Urban [00:42:15]: Earlier in the conversation, you talked about how your delivery technology works specifically. You mentioned gliadin, which is a gluten, or which is a protein in wheat. And that is something that people like who are celiac or avoiding gluten are going, or gluten and grains, great gluten-containing grains are gonna want to avoid. What is the burden there? If someone has a sensitivity, maybe not an allergy, but a sensitivity, are they able to use this still?

François Vix [00:42:43]: Yes, because in a daily dose, dose of our products, it’s about 30 milligrams of gluten. Equivalent. So it’s about the amount of half a slice of bread, but it’s also below the threshold level for celiac patients of 50 milligrams. So you’re under, obviously we are not going to promote that to celiac patients, but people who have intolerance, light gluten intolerance, I don’t think they are at much of a risk. I have to say that up to now we’ve sold about 300 million daily doses of the product worldwide. And honestly, the allergic reactions are very, very, we have had very few reactions. So it’s, you know, I think it’s a pretty safe product. Plus I would add that we don’t use genetically modified wheat.

Nick Urban [00:43:46]:

Wheat.François Vix [00:43:47]: So again, absorption is better. And then we don’t use any pesticides or glyphosates or a lot of the allergies, gluten allergies are linked to the amount of pesticides that you find in wheat. So our wheat is very clean as everything in our product. So we think that also adds to the fact that there is no allergic reaction.

Nick Urban [00:44:14]: What are some of the things that you recommend people either stack in conjunction with it or avoid because perhaps it would either cancel out the effects or worsen them? Or, I mean, maybe I don’t even know if it is possible, but would actually like cause negative interactions?

François Vix [00:44:30]: I would say any therapeutic treatments that target destruction of cells, like oncology treatments. I mean, certainly, you know, because my product as well, it’s the role of antioxidant to protect cells’ longevity. So whether cells are healthy cells or cancerous cells, they will be protected. So you don’t want to use antioxidants at the same time as undergoing an oncology treatment. But besides that, Very little, very few contraindications. I find that as I believe I explained earlier on, SOD is a long-term antioxidant. So it’s gonna work on your longevity, your energy level, your quality of life, but in a very steady way. So if you want more of a boost, effect, I think you should combine it to polyphenols, vitamins, other that will have this, you know, effect that you will not get with SOD.

François Vix [00:45:52]: But what SOD will give you, for example, for people who practice workout, intense workout, is a recovery which you will not get with other antioxidants. So SOD will enhance recovery time and also minimize pain post-workout, but it will not enhance your performance during the workouts if you understand the difference, which I’m sure you do.

Nick Urban [00:46:27]: Yeah. Okay. And then if I want to start making a change in my SOD levels right now, What are some of the things that I can either subtract from my life that might be bringing them down artificially, or that I can add to my lifestyle to get like a natural endogenous support?

François Vix [00:46:45]: You know, avoid any stress situation, actually stress, you know, not too much. Basically, you first, you need to control what you eat, what you drink, what you breathe. You know, that’s the first thing is your intake, you know, as little toxins in those 3 things, that’s already critical.

Nick Urban [00:47:07]: 2 of the easy solutions there: filter the water, filter the air. For food, what should I be avoiding to prevent issues with oxidative stress?

François Vix [00:47:15]: Refined, you know, foods, you know, because again, you know, your body is not used to have highly processed food. It, it’s not good and it’s too much stress on your digestion. So whole foods, is always best. A lot of antioxidants in plants, but I’m not against meat, for example. Meat is red meat. If you do it once every 2 weeks or once a week, it’s very good. It has very high iron content. You need iron.

François Vix [00:47:58]: It’s so So I think it’s balance, but I mean, obviously with a lot of fruits and vegetables and not processed food, I think that’s the key, but no excess. I mean, obviously you don’t smoke, you drink wine, but with reason. Balance is very important. And avoid stressful situation if you can because that’s going to have an impact on your, it’s stress, whether it’s physical stress, oxidative stress, mental stress, it’s all have an impact on your health. So careful with the first source of free radicals is oxygen. Second source of free radicals Sun radiations. So you need to protect yourself against the sun as well. And then you have all the environmental factors, you know, pollution, drugs that you take, all those are going to have an impact on your level of oxidative stress and impact your SOD levels for sure.

Nick Urban [00:49:12]: I’d imagine on the lifestyle front, like a lot of these things, if you get a small dose of them, the body will hypercompensate and perhaps increase your levels of SOD. I mean, that’s essentially hormesis in a nutshell, but like if I go out in the sun for 8 hours, probably not gonna help my SOD levels. But if I go out for say 15 minutes, like is the right dose of these like lifestyle things important to like help naturally support SOD?

François Vix [00:49:37]: I mean, a 15 minutes of sun exposure is very good because you recharge your vitamin D. You know, sun is very, is very good, but you need to be protected in the sun. Because even if you’re protected, you’re still going to get those sun radiations. So yes, I’m always, I mean, I love the sun, so I will not avoid the sun, but I will be always protected in the sun. I love exercise, working out, but I will not do that to the level where I’ll be totally exhausted. So again, but obviously I’m much older than you, so it’s not necessarily a point of reference, but I think what would damage your SOD, certainly a disease. If you’re in a disease state, if you have an inflammatory inflammatory condition, that’s going to have an impact on your immune system. Sometimes it’s the other way around.

François Vix [00:50:52]: Your immune system is over, is hyperactive, such as in case of autoimmune diseases where you need to downregulate your immune system. So that’s where SOD can play a role as well in regulating your immune system. System in regulating your internal antioxidants. We’ve actually conducted a lot of work, research on skin disease called vitiligo. And vitiligo is an autoimmune disease. So it’s due to hyperactivity of your immune system and it’s very often, it’s triggered by stress factor. We had a lot of new vitiligo cases after COVID. Because your body has been fighting the virus and it has this hyperactivity, it’s generated other health issues such as vitiligo, for example.

François Vix [00:51:53]: So in that case, you need to regulate, downregulate your immune system, and SOD can be part of the solution.

Nick Urban [00:52:06]: And in that case, is it working by like dampening an overactive, like inflammatory response to the condition? Like why would SOD in that case be working?

François Vix [00:52:14]: So in the case of vitiligo, you, your pigment cells are called melanocytes. So they, they, they, they, they are produced at dermis level, dermis level, and then they migrate all the way to the epidermis and that’s where they’re going to stick at the level of the epidermis and bring color color to your skin. But in the case of vitiligo patients, their immune system is going to overreact and damage those melanocytes and it will prevent the melanocytes from sticking at the level of the epidermis, hence the lack of color because they don’t have enough melanocytes. So what SOD can do, it cannot, or it can’t first, what it cannot do, it cannot produce melanocytes. For that, you need sun radiation, the stimulation of radiation so that your body start producing more melanocytes. So it can be through UVB, it can be through sun exposure, it can be using lamps. So that will stimulate the production of melanocytes. But what SOD will do, it will downregulate the hyperactivity of your immune system.

François Vix [00:53:43]: So it will allow more melanocytes to reach the epidermis undamaged and stick at the level of the epidermis. So it’s regulation, you know.

Nick Urban [00:53:55]: All right, François, we’ve been going for a while. If people want to connect with you to check out out what you’ve been doing behind the scenes, maybe not even behind the scenes, just around the scenes for all things SOD to try your product, where on the internet do you wanna point them?

François Vix [00:54:11]: Okay. So if they want to do some research first, they can visit our website, R&D research website. It’s www.glysodin.org. So you have all our studies. It’s a community website where everybody who conducts research on SOD will list their findings on this. And we have a lot of webinars that we do. We do a lot of webinars towards the medical community. So those are available as well.

François Vix [00:54:50]:

So you can visit that website.Nick Urban [00:54:53]: Well, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.

François Vix [00:54:56]: It was a pleasure. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present to your audience and talk to you, Nick. Thank you.

Nick Urban [00:55:04]: Thanks for tuning in to High Performance Longevity. If you got value today, the best way to support the show is to leave a review or share it with someone who’s ready to upgrade their healthspan. You can find all the episodes, show notes, and resources mentioned at outlier.com. Until next time, stay energized, stay bioharmonized, and be an outlier.