Sleep is one of the most important supplements for your immune system. Especially with the world now we need better immune systems and better sleep. Which is why I’m bringing the topic of C60 with the company founder of My Vital C, Chris Burres. Read on to learn about C60 vs ESS60, how it’s used as a food product, the benefits of ESS60 (including sleep enhancement and antiviral benefits), and what you need to watch out for in this market.

 

Chris’s Discovery of C60

A company I started in 1991 is the source. One company did beat us but they didn't last for more than nine months so we're the first company that still exists to deliver commercial quantities of carbon nanomaterials (of which c60 is one). I also like to make a distinction because C60 (like the context of our conversation) C60 is for industrial applications and there's peer-reviewed research that shows if you process it improperly it's actually harmful. ESS 60 is C60 that's been processed for safer human consumption. 

My business partner Robert was working in an organization inside of the University of Houston campus and he was working at the Texas Center for Superconductivity with Dr. Paul Chu. Dr. Chu is really famous in the super conductivity realm and was doing research on fullerenes. My business partner Robert was there separating the fullerenes so that he could do detailed scientific research on it. And at that time, C60 was selling for six thousand dollars a gram. It was crazy expensive and my business partner comes from an entrepreneurial background so one day Dr. Chu said to him “this stuff is expensive and a lot of researchers want it, why don't you guys go start a business?” It didn’t even take 10 minutes for my business partner to go “okay let me figure out how to make this stuff.”

We then wrote our entire business plan based on what we were going to sell it to the University of Houston for. Which we never did but that was the business plan we had to move into a direction then you pivot. Originally, Robert brought me into the project because I was studying mechanical engineering and he needed help drawing and building out the equipment. So years later we are still business partners and we deliver commercial quantities of carbon nanomaterials to research institutions.

It’s important to point out that from 1991 until we had a supplement focus with the ESS60 in 2018, we were selling to institutions. These institutions not only have the equipment, they have the knowledge. And when we sell it to them the first thing they do is make sure that we sold them what we told them we were going to sell them. And there are competitors in this C60 (not ESS60) space and they've never had to sell to any customer who has the equipment or the knowledge to test it. So we're seeing a lot of fraud. That’s why if you are looking for C60 make sure its ESS60 that’s safer for human consumption. 

 

Why Universities Are Interested in C60

C60 was discovered at Rice University in 1985 by Robert Curl, Harold Kroto, and Richard Smalley. They were 3 scientists working together and by 1996, they had won the nobel prize. To give a little perspective, in the early days of the company I would share with friends and family “I make buckyballs (see below on the description of a buckyball)” and the ongoing joke was that they were really good for funding. Because if: 

1. You write a proposal about a molecule that the discoverers just won the nobel prize for 
2. You turn it into a funding agency 

Then you were very likely to get the funding. In fact, in 1991 (the year we started the company) all 10 of the most referenced peer-reviewed papers were about fullerenes (C60) so the scientific community was going nuts and that's why in 1996 they won that nobel prize.  

Buckyball description: they are super conducting and harder than a diamond. It'll turn into a diamond if you compress it anisotropically. It has six-fold symmetry and it's a spherical molecule of 60 carbon atoms. If you imagine the lines on the soccer ball, they represent the bonds between the carbon atoms. So imagine a chemistry student making a soccer ball with little chemistry sticks and balls on the ends. And there’s a new symbol in chemistry because of this molecule! The @ symbol never existed in chemistry before but this introduced it.

So now what you are saying is that you have lanthanum @ C60 which means lanthanum is trapped inside the cage (not covalently or ionically bonded on the exterior but physically trapped inside of it). That’s the first molecule that we were able to discover that you could actually fit any atom on the periodic chart inside of it. So with all of these applications, the six-fold symmetry that this shape has, it can hold and release a lot of electrons. It's also cost competitive with lithium. I've always said it performs as well or better than the current best material in almost every application: 

- Better paint 

- Better tires

- Better solar cells

- Better batteries 

We may have bucky batteries in the future. And we've partnered with a company that is working on bucky related organic solar cells. It’s just used in a lot of ways and the original joke was the it was good for funding.  

Why C60 is Not More Well Known and How it’s Made 

The short answer is because of the cost. In the original days it was six thousand dollars a gram. The production process is also very slow and unproductive. What ends up happening is the most prominent way to make full range right now is you take two graphite rods and you take them in an inner chamber and you vaporize those graphite rods together. BUT graphite is one of the hardest materials to vaporize (you're talking about EXTREMELY high temperatures). In fact, the arc that's between those two rods is the local temperature of the sun. We have a looking glass or a welders mask so we can watch. And if you have that mask off you can get sunburnt, that's how hot it is. The soot that comes off of that graphite as it's vaporized is only about 10 fullerenes and the 90 amorphous carbon (carbon crap that we are trying to get out of the way). Even that 10 percent of fullerenes is only about 80% C60. Then in the remaining full range there's a whole gamut of molecules like C70, C84, C96. It's an incredibly expensive material to make. 

But we are invested in two other technologies. They're a little premature because the volume of fullerene usage right now is still low enough to be sufficient for the arc method but as volume increases then the other techniques will come more into play. One of them is the flame synthesis technique and then the other one is a plasma powder technique. We’re invested in working with two organizations (one on each of those platforms) for production so we will see the price coming down. Recently, we’ve seen the supplement industry driving up the demand to the point that bringing in these bigger technologies to manufacture on a mass scale, starts to make sense.This will bring down the price and then we'll have our bucky batteries, have our solar cells, and potentially bucky paints. But even back in the 90s when it was more expensive, we had a very clear understanding that  there were only two types of applications that were really going to carry it forward: 

1. Where you only needed a tiny amount of fullerenes. Which means you were incrementally changing the cost (so if you just needed to put one tenth of a gram in 100 gallons of paint and it increased the quality of the paint by 30%, that could be sustainable) 

2. Places where money is not an issue. Think NASA or DARPA. If you can protect the astronauts or make a plane invisible, it almost doesn't matter what it costs.  

So we kind of knew that it would be one of those two. It turns out that in this case of a supplement, you can't get that much of the ESS60 to dissolve in the oil so it really is a small amount. Which means it has a smaller cost. It's still expensive but it's a manageable cost in terms of the supplement and what the supplement can potentially do. 

 

 

How it Transitioned from an Industrial Product to Being Used as a Food Supplement

From the early stages they figured that the buckyball would be very useful in medicine. One of the reasons that they got the Nobel prize is that one of the shapes on the buckyball is a pentagon. A pentagon is the foundation of benzene. Benzene is in plastic so it’s used in almost everything. Look around whatever room you're in and imagine that all of the plastic is gone because we don't have benzene. Then imagine a lot of detergents and most medicines gone because we don't have benzene. That gives you a frame of reference of how important benzene is. 

They figured that this buckyball would be a 3d version of benzene. A lot of the chemistry that works on benzene works on the exterior of the buckyball. So they figured it would have applications. In the early days they thought “what if we could put a radioactive atom or collection of atoms inside of it and then we could attach something to the exterior that might attach to cancer cells. Then we will have a radioactive payload that's sitting right with the cancer cells”. There's a patent using the buckyball to inhibit the reproduction of the HIV virus, so it's an antiviral agent on its own. 

So fast forward in 2012, as soon as you know it's going to be as ubiquitous as the benzene ring  then you have to have safety studies. They did a 2012 toxicity study and they assumed it would be toxic. They gave rats: 

- Water (the control group) 

- Olive oil

- Olive oil with ESS60 (again ESS60 is C60 processed for safer human consumption) 

But instead of it being toxic, those rats lived 90% longer than the control group.

A 90% extension in life is the single longest longevity experiment on mammals ever. And it's peer-reviewed published research. They used Worcester rats and they are known to get tumors so they typically live around 32 months. And the longer they live the more tumors they have in their body. These rats given the “myvitalc” formulation (which is the ESS60 and olive oil) lived 62 months and none of them had any tumors. So the cancer prevention label can easily get added to this. But as soon as you start talking about cancer the FDA gets really nervous and they should because it's something that people are terrified of and can be used improperly for marketing. There's a big difference between cancer prevention and then cancer cure. We know eating healthy, exercising, and getting enough sleep are things that can help prevent cancer.So in the study it’s fairly clear that this had the potential to be cancer preventative.  

Making C60 into ESS60 for Human Consumption

When you take the carbon arc and you vaporize it, you end up with amorphous carbon that can have polyaromatic hydrocarbons in it. You don't want those in your body. The main way to separate these is you take a solvent (like hexane) and you dissolve it. This works like if you were separating sugar and sand. You could put the sugar and sand in water, filter it, and the sand won’t go into the solution, it stays on top of the filter. The sugar goes through the filter in solution and you boil off the water so now you have your pure sugar. It’s the same thing with fullerenes you have: 

-Your amorphous carbon >> which doesn't dissolve in the solvent and stays on top of the filter 

-The fullerenes do dissolve in the solvent and they go through and you boil off the solvent and you're left with industrial C60 

Then there are residual solvents left on industrial C60. And just know that most plant extracts are made with solvents but the delivered product is safe. In our case, you take that industrial C60 you go through a vacuum oven baking process, a proprietary washing process, and now you have ESS60 which is safer for human consumption (ESS stands for elemental safe spheres). You want to make sure that when you buy a product it’s this version of it!

What Consumers Need to Watch Out For with C60

There's a person selling this through his website (https://www.c-60.com/) and I took his product and did a simple filtering process. His product is in sunflower seed oil (which is NOT a very good oil for human consumption in general) but I filtered it, all of the black carbon junk stays on top of the filter, and the sunflower seed oil comes through as a pristine sunflower seed oil. And if you have fullerenes in it specifically it will come through as a purple solution. This was the simplest of tests to prove that there was no C60 in it. He's still marketing that he has C60 in it. People are going to try it and in the worst case scenario someone is going to get hurt and the FDA will come in and say “nobody can sell C60”. But this isn’t true C60. 

I've also been on Amazon and there was one company that was selling capsules of C60 and I did a quick calculation based on their own projected concentration and I realized that you need about 20 of these pills to have what we would call ONE serving size...Their listed serving size was two pills. So you could see this product, say that you prefer pills over olive oil, try the two pills, and then tell everyone that C60 didn’t work for you and it's a scam. Without realizing that you didn't actually give it a legitimate try. 

And last example, today I ordered a package of C60 infused wafer thin mints that melt in your mouth. Yes this is certainly possible but to sell it as a C60 supplement would be misleading because there’s no way that you could get any amount even close to a serving size. So it is the same story as before, somebody's going to try those mints and say “my breath smelled good but I never really felt anything. I didn’t get the benefits that everyone was talking about like better sleep and less knee pain.” Because they aren’t taking an accurate dose 

In our industry (the probiotic space) the same things happen. In these studies, it's the dose and the strains that are specific to health benefits. So with ESS60, it's all about going back to the original research, looking at what dose level elicited that benefit, and then delivering that to the consumer. - Kriben Govender

 

The Dosage of ESS60 for Benefits and Human Trials

We have a calculator on our website. I did the allometric calculation because when you're giving something to a rat, you can't go on a kilogram basis to a human. We have different metabolisms and if you did that you would be taking a full cup of olive oil a day and that's not sustainable for most people. If you do the allometric calculation, it’s based on the surface area of the animal which correlates very well with its metabolism. So you take the surface area of a rat and you take the surface area of a human (they do these calculations all the time when they're migrating from rat studies to human studies), and I did that same calculation. We ended up with about five mils or about one teaspoon per serving. That gives people a feel for how much to take to elicit a health benefit. 

As for human trials, the scientific process starts with anecdotal stories, then a theory, and then you do a test. They did a test in 2012, it's peer reviewed and published so the next step is for another scientific organization to recreate that study. Since no one has done it, we're already in the process of getting set up to do that study again. It’s a 5+ year study so it’s going to take a while. But we are already doing the preliminary work. No other scientific organization has come in and said they wanted to do a study and big pharma is not going to be interested in it because there's no proprietary information. So it's going to be up to my business partner and I to make those investments and to have peer-reviewed published double-blind human trials that show results. 

How The Compounds Elicit a Health Benefit and The Impact of Sleep On Health

We do know that it's a great antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antiviral because there are patents to stopping the reproduction of the AIDs virus. And in Spain, there was research where there was one particular coronavirus patient who was on a severe decline. They gave him Anti-HIV drugs and the next day he was fine. My understanding is that they're treating patients in China with these Anti-HIV drugs. People are often asking me “do you think there's value in ESS60 in fighting the coronavirus?” and there's no research but it’s interesting that in the late 90s there was a patent that says C60 stops the production of the AIDS virus. And they're both RNA viruses and so there is A+B might = C logic going on there. And current medical theories about aging are that it's an oxidation and an inflammation process. So It's not surprising that this thing that extended the rats lives by 90% is a known antioxidant. In some reports it’s 172x more powerful than Vitamin C  

(DISCLAIMER: The FDA has not evaluated the product and it's not intended to treat, diagnose, cure or prevent any disease. And these anecdotes that I share, whether they're mine or my customers, they're documented, stored, and I can share them with you. I filter out a lot of testimonials that I think don't have enough credibility to share.)  

One of our most consistent testimonials is better sleep. There’s a book called “Why We Sleep” by Matthew Walker and he gives you examples of what happens when you don’t sleep. And as a society we all say “yeah we have to get sleep, it's great for our mental, physical, and emotional well-being….” ….UNLESS you got something else to do and then you should do that and then get sleep later...There is an entire “I’ll sleep when I die mentality” and that book really breaks down why you might be dying sooner. It really breaks down all of the bad things that happen to these things if you don’t get quality sleep: 

-Your memory 

-Your cardiac health 

-Your ability to process sugar and your insulin levels 

So when we get these testimonials about sleep it’s interesting and here’s an example: I gave a couple bottles to a girl in the office next door. She was talking about going through an oncology treatment. I went back to her probably seven days after and I asked her if she noticed anything and she down and she said “no Chris, I haven't really noticed anything.” I don't expect this to work for everyone. It's a data point but I asked her “how have you been sleeping?” and her eyes got huge and she said “I’ve been posting on facebook that i'm waking up at 5:30 every morning without the alarm clock.” Which was great because we know that better sleep is good for your mental, physical, and emotional well-being. We also have people talking about feeling less stress at work (even though they have the same job) and if you get better sleep that can significantly impact that. 

I would also think that there’s something going on with mitochondrial function because you mentioned Vitamin C having a high ability to be an antioxidant. And ESS60 has even more potent antioxidant abilities. A study also came out that found that mitochondria produce melatonin (your sleep hormone). So maybe there's some sort of connection happening. Melatonin is not just produced in the pineal gland but it's also being produced in the mitochondria which could potentially be leading to more efficient melatonin production. But that's just purely me speculating. -Kriben Govender 

So with mitochondria's ATP processes, the A in ATP is adenosine. When that chemical builds up it causes us to desire sleep. And  in that book they talk about the two billion dollar “sleep aid” industry that actually just knocks you right out. You don't get your REM sleep and it relaxes the chemical pressure of adenosine so you wake up not desiring sleep. But you haven't got the healthful sleep that you need. And what's interesting about our product is our customers take it in the morning and most of them report they've got: 

Mental acuity

Focus

Energy 

During the day and then better sleep at night. Unlike the sleep aids that you have to take you right before you fall asleep. So if ESS60 is in there with the mitochondria then you've got this free radical scavenger that's there, it's participating in the ATP process, and that's potentially working with the melatonin and the adenosine and then they're sleeping better that night. I’ve never heard of any product that you take in the morning that helps you sleep at night. The only thing that even comes close is if you exercise in the morning you have the potential to sleep better that night. It’s also nano so we do know it crosses the blood-brain barrier. So it's able to be in places that we understand would be very impactful if it was doing the right things and it certainly seems to be doing the right things. And another thing that could help you sleep better at night is early morning sunlight exposure. That’s for circadian priming and then using the blue light blocking glasses when you're about to go to sleep.

Aura Ring Sleep Data and ESS60

I'm doing a study right now where I sent the participants a few bottles of ESS60 and then they document: 

10 days of pre “myvitalc” data >> 10 days on it >> 10 days off of it >> 10 days on it again  

When I did the 10 days off, two very interesting things happened: 

- I was more tired during the day and I know I drank more coffee during the day but that could  all be placebo so let's throw that out the window... 

- I did get a migraine in that 10-day period while I was off the product. I've been mapping my migraines since 2014. I was mapping them to figure out: “did I use something? Did I eat something? Did I have too much to drink?” But I really never had a pattern. Then in 2018 when I started taking the “myvitalc” formulation consistently, I didn't get a single migraine in all of 2018. I did get 2 in 2019 but that's a time frame where I should have had 8 to 10.  

So the reminder is that sleep is everything and we live in a world now where there's constant distractions, there's mobile phones, there's stress, and blue light toxicity at night. All of these things that impact our sleep so assuming we get all those practices right, we can potentially get it to the next level with something like an ESS60. 

Immune System Support and the Antibacterial Element of ESS60 

Sleep is fundamental for everything in your life and the number 1 supplement for your immune system is sleep! And everyone seems to be dosing up on bucket loads of vitamin C at the moment and that's a really strong antioxidant and ESS60 is even stronger and it's an anti-inflammatory. And when you're talking about immune system support you want an antibacterial, antiviral, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory supplement. Which ESS60 is all of them so in terms of supporting your own immune system, let your body do the work with this powerful combination. 

In regards gut health, I  was recently on Dr. Gundrys podcast and he's all about the gut microbiome. A lot of the testimonials that he presents about people on his diet, mirror the testimonials that I get from my product. So I thought maybe there's a mechanism that: 

If we accept that lectins are creating inflammation in the body >> then you have olive oil which is a great anti-inflammatory >> you put that with ESS60 >> and then you’re addressing inflammation.  

We already know that olive oil is good for your gut and with our product you can't get much ESS60 into the olive oil (only about 0.8 milligrams per milliliter). So you’re dealing with 99% olive oil and then as much of the ESS60 as you can get in there. You’re inherently helping the  gut microbiome with the olive oil. And if you go back to the original toxicity study, they gave rats: 

Group 1: water 

Group 2: olive oil (and those rats lived 30% percent longer so even if you aren’t taking ESS60 in olive oil, whatever olive oil you're taking in you should probably double it.)

Group 3: ESS60 and olive oil (and those rats lived 90% longer with no tumors) 

So this is the research that shows that olive oil is a huge help with the gut microbiome. Olive oil is also a known antibacterial and 99% of our products have olive oil. Then again, you have this multiplier catalyst of ESS60, which took those original rats from a 30% increase in life to a 90% increase in life. Even if you're just getting the benefits of the olive oil (a boost in the akkermansia muciniphila bacteria, lactobacillus, and polyphenols) it’s definitely worthwhile. 

 

How to Protect Yourself Against Covid 19

I recommend staying calm because stress alone will impact your immune system. And then you have the CAD (vitamin C, A, and D) principle that I developed. -Kriben Govender

Vitamin C: berries, lemons, sauerkraut, some fermented foods, and kiwi fruits

Vitamin A: cod liver oil and beef livers 

Vitamin D: very simply just go out in the sun and get some sun time because there's antiviral effects of just going in sunlight 

And look after your gut because 80% of your immune system is in your gut so take care of it so it can do its job! 

I saw an article about the 1900 flu pandemic and the patients that were outside in the sun recovered faster. I don’t know if ESS60 is going to have an impact on Covid 19 but I did send extra bottles to my mom to make sure that she has them and I'm continuing to take my typical dose. You can get about 0.8 milligrams per milliliter in olive oil, 0.65 in avocado oil, and only about 0.35 in mct oil. So I put mct in my coffee and then I take about a teaspoon and a half of the avocado version on my salad. Also make sure to get some moderate exercise! And don't do any exhaustive exercise because that can reduce your immune system. And get enough sleep and then wake up early to watch the sunrise.

Chris’s Top Tip For Gut Health

I haven’t been paying much attention to my gut health before the last three months but I came across one of Dr. Guntrys book about this. In his book he said that when your gut biome is balanced, you don't have the severe cravings. And I also recommend intermittent fasting. 

Excess amounts of sugar is extremely detrimental to immune function. So if you're worried about your immune system, definitely cut back on processed foods. They've got a lot of hidden sugars, a lot of chemicals, AND also just cut back on sugar in general. Make sure to increase vegetable and fiber consumption like leafy greens and legumes, which might not be for everyone but for most people you are going to feel great. And of course, intermittent fasting is super important to do at least twice a week. The recommended time is 16 hours but there are huge amounts of benefits for mitochondrial function and for the gut microbiome. -Kriben Govender 

You can go to myvitalc.com and use code: guthealthgurus for $15.00 off. I recommend the olive oil but if you have a preference for avocado or MCT, that's available as well. We also have pet products and you can get a 25% discount on subscriptions! Share this with a friend that could learn from this! And remember to use ESS60 to support sleep and your immune system and to watch out for some of these products that aren’t being made safe for human consumption.