NFTs – Blockchain Powered Art, Trading Cards, Music and More (#47)

0:00:02 I think what it was for me is that I kind of look around.
0:00:05 The reality is that Americans are getting sicker every single year.
0:00:07 Chronosities rates are going up.
0:00:08 Kids are getting so sick.
0:00:11 Age group, children under the age of 18.
0:00:13 So something’s obviously not working.
0:00:18 There is almost no regulatory oversight for what companies can put in their product.
0:00:22 Fragrances, alcohol manufacturing, public water.
0:00:26 What people fail to recognize is that we’re putting thousands of chemicals
0:00:30 on our food, in our bodies, in our water, in our furniture per day.
0:00:34 And it’s the synergistic effect of all these things together that can be so damaging.
0:00:38 So metabolism is so simple.
0:00:41 It’s how we convert food energy to cellular energy.
0:00:42 And what is our life?
0:00:45 It is the bubbling up of all of those chemical reactions.
0:00:46 What is death?
0:00:48 It is the absence of those chemical reactions.
0:00:51 I had this patient, I talk about her in the book, Sofia,
0:00:53 and she’s coming to see me for her sinusitis.
0:00:54 It’s very dramatic.
0:00:55 It’s very expensive for the patient.
0:00:57 I know how to diagnose her.
0:00:58 I know how to medicate her.
0:01:00 I know how to operate on her.
0:01:04 I’ve done literally nothing to make this person healthier.
0:01:07 I don’t really know why this patient is sick, and that’s a problem.
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0:03:50 Casey, thank you so much for joining me.
0:03:51 Kevin, it’s so great to be here.
0:03:54 It’s so awesome that we finally get to do this in person.
0:03:58 Yeah, I would love to start off by saying congratulations.
0:04:01 I mean, you got a new book coming out, Good Energy.
0:04:06 It’s called The Surprise and Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health.
0:04:08 May 14th, Limitless Health Sounds Awesome.
0:04:12 There’s so much to back into here because I’ve been following your career for a while.
0:04:17 Obviously, Levels and Continuous Glucose Monitor was, I think, how we
0:04:21 first got, via that, we got introduced by a mutual friend.
0:04:26 And Levels was a game changer in that not many people still today aren’t paying
0:04:28 attention to their blood glucose levels.
0:04:34 And just to see that being turned into a consumer product that’s not just for
0:04:38 diabetics, that gets into the world of giving people more data, arming them with
0:04:41 more data so they can understand really what’s going on in their bodies.
0:04:43 Such an important mission.
0:04:43 Yeah.
0:04:48 But I would love to talk about and get into your journey because obviously
0:04:52 you’re a medical doctor, but you’ve gone a different way to walk me through that.
0:04:53 Yeah.
0:04:55 I mean, I’ve taken a big pivot in my career.
0:05:00 I did the whole like rising the ranks of the conventional system, you know, check
0:05:04 all the boxes, go to medical school, go to residency, train as a surgeon.
0:05:08 And I think what it really was for me is that I was about nine years into my training.
0:05:11 I’m four years into my head and neck surgery residency.
0:05:17 And I kind of looked around and at the trends of what’s happening in American
0:05:21 healthcare and the reality is, is that Americans are getting sicker every single
0:05:26 year, like the more we spend on healthcare, now $4.3 trillion on healthcare, the
0:05:29 sicker Americans are getting and it’s getting worse every year.
0:05:32 Chronos, these rates are going up, life expectancy is going down.
0:05:37 Kids are getting so sick right now with like lifestyle diseases.
0:05:40 So something’s obviously not working.
0:05:40 Yeah.
0:05:43 And when you’re in the operating room day in and day out and you’ve got this scalp
0:05:46 in your hand, like it’s pretty dramatic, like you’re sitting there with this
0:05:50 unconscious body in front of you and you’re going to cut into them and change
0:05:51 their life forever.
0:05:56 And I was standing there, you know, I’m like a 29 year old, pretty sensitive
0:06:00 woman and looking down and thinking like, is there anything else we could be doing
0:06:02 to be preventing some of these like surgeries?
0:06:03 This is very dramatic.
0:06:05 I’m going to cut into this person.
0:06:05 I was, I was head and neck.
0:06:08 So ear, nose and throat surgery and we’d be drilling into their skulls,
0:06:12 sucking pus out of their sinuses, you know, doing ear surgery, you know,
0:06:15 dilating the trachea for narrowing things like this.
0:06:18 I’m looking at these patients and I’m thinking like, we’re doing these really
0:06:22 dramatic things to them, but am I actually making this person like fundamentally
0:06:23 healthier?
0:06:26 Like I’ll never forget, like I had this patient, I talk about her in the book,
0:06:30 but Sophia and, you know, she was like in her sixties and she had, you know,
0:06:34 all the American diseases, she had prediabetes, she had high blood pressure.
0:06:35 She had some depression.
0:06:38 She was overweight and she’s coming to see me for her sinusitis, which is
0:06:41 like making it hard for her to breathe through her nose.
0:06:44 And I remember we went in, we did the surgery.
0:06:47 It was her third revision sinus surgery.
0:06:50 And, you know, you go in and you go through the motions.
0:06:50 It’s very dramatic.
0:06:52 It’s very expensive for the patient.
0:06:56 And she’s sitting in the post-op area and she looks at me and she’s like, oh my
0:06:58 gosh, thank you so much.
0:06:59 I needed this so badly.
0:07:04 And I’m like, kind of feel good, but I also feel like I’ve done literally
0:07:09 nothing to make this person in front of me, like actually healthier.
0:07:13 Yes, we have sucked out pus from her sinus and made that whole bigger.
0:07:18 I’ve basically done plumbing, but like, is this patient healthier?
0:07:19 Absolutely not.
0:07:24 Because the things that are actually causing the pathology throughout
0:07:26 her body cannot be operated on.
0:07:31 These are like fundamental issues with how the body is functioning.
0:07:34 And at that moment, that was really a wake up call for me.
0:07:38 I realized, like, I don’t actually really even understand why this patient is sick.
0:07:40 Like, I know how to diagnose her.
0:07:42 I know how to medicate her.
0:07:43 I know how to operate on her.
0:07:45 But I went to Stanford Medical School.
0:07:47 I went to Stanford undergrad.
0:07:48 I graduated honors.
0:07:49 I have all these publications.
0:07:51 I don’t really know why this patient is sick.
0:07:52 And that’s a problem.
0:07:53 That is a problem.
0:07:57 And that kind of ripped me out of my slumber and put me on a journey towards
0:08:00 really figuring out, like, why are patients in America sick?
0:08:04 Like, why are all these diseases going up at the same time?
0:08:06 What’s the connecting point?
0:08:08 And why aren’t we treating that?
0:08:11 And so that, of course, led me to actually put down my scalpel.
0:08:12 I left the surgical world altogether.
0:08:13 What year was this?
0:08:14 This was six years ago.
0:08:17 This was in 2018.
0:08:21 I actually quit in my fifth and final year of surgical residency.
0:08:24 And I said, you know, I’m a doctor with all this training.
0:08:26 I’ve got 50 year career ahead of me.
0:08:29 Like, I need to focus on, like, really, why are we getting sick?
0:08:30 Why are we getting worse every year?
0:08:32 How do we actually affect that?
0:08:35 I think we’ve all, anyone that’s had the aging parents has probably seen
0:08:36 some version of this.
0:08:41 Like, my dad had a triple bypass and then six, seven, eight years go by.
0:08:43 And then quadruple bypass.
0:08:43 Yeah.
0:08:44 And it’s just like bandaid.
0:08:45 Great.
0:08:47 Extended his life by six or eight years.
0:08:50 Another one, another six or eight years, third one.
0:08:51 And then eventually he dies of a heart attack.
0:08:56 And it’s like nothing about that underlying issue was repaired, you know?
0:09:01 And so how do you even start to begin to think about where can I do the
0:09:01 detective work?
0:09:05 Because so many people, I assume, have tried to figure out what’s really
0:09:06 the root cause here.
0:09:09 I mean, you can point to processed foods, you can point to sugar.
0:09:12 What was your own journey like to figure out where’s the real truth here?
0:09:13 Yeah, yeah.
0:09:17 So, I mean, really what it was was looking at all the things I was
0:09:19 treating as an ear, nose and throat surgeon.
0:09:20 And I was like, this is so fascinating.
0:09:25 I’m treating sinusitis, laryngitis, otitis, thyroiditis, perititis, cellulitis,
0:09:27 otitis, everything is anitis.
0:09:32 Anitis in medicine is the suffix that means inflammation.
0:09:34 So I’m like, oh my God, I’m an inflammation doctor.
0:09:35 And I didn’t even really realize it.
0:09:38 And a lot of it actually came down to sitting and meditating
0:09:40 deeply on what is inflammation?
0:09:45 Well, fundamentally, inflammation is this arm of the body, this like sort
0:09:48 of our army that fights things that it thinks are threatening.
0:09:48 Right.
0:09:52 And so I really did spend a lot of time just like sitting, staring
0:09:53 at a wall, thinking about that.
0:09:55 Like our bodies are fighting something.
0:09:56 And then you think back to medical.
0:09:58 So we think, okay, now we’re learning that Alzheimer’s in inflammatory
0:10:02 condition, obesity is an inflammatory state, heart disease is an inflammatory state.
0:10:05 A lot of inflammation going on in the American body.
0:10:06 What does that mean?
0:10:06 Right.
0:10:12 Well, fundamentally, inflammation is the body experiencing some type of fear
0:10:13 or some type of threat.
0:10:16 It is essentially biochemical fear.
0:10:20 So even for people who go deeper than just thinking about symptom
0:10:24 management and whack-a-mole medicine and say, OK, well, it’s chronic inflammation.
0:10:28 We don’t go the level deeper and say, like, why is the body actually afraid?
0:10:30 And that’s a really interesting question to start going down.
0:10:33 And then you can say, oh, yeah, it’s the processed food and it’s the chronic
0:10:36 stress and it’s this and that, but that still doesn’t answer the question.
0:10:40 And so if you go to the, I think, deepest level, and this is the rabbit hole
0:10:44 that I went on, you realize that actually there is something underlying
0:10:48 this inflammatory state in the body that is actually even deeper.
0:10:50 And that is metabolic dysfunction.
0:10:56 That is an issue that is affecting 93 percent of Americans now,
0:11:00 based on the latest research from the American College of Cardiology
0:11:04 published just two years ago, 93 percent of Americans have metabolic dysfunction.
0:11:10 And this is a problem inside the cell that is really the centralizing point
0:11:14 for how all these lifestyle things we talk about are generating inflammation
0:11:21 because metabolism is the fundamental core process in the body of how we power ourselves.
0:11:25 It’s how we convert food energy to cellular energy.
0:11:28 I mean, the only thing that a layperson would know is like, OK,
0:11:32 I want there, they say, I think they want a faster metabolism
0:11:33 because they want to be skinnier, right?
0:11:37 That’s the only thing we’re ever told in school that if we don’t go to school
0:11:40 to become a doctor, right? Yeah. Well, should we break?
0:11:44 I mean, because I think metabolism, it’s the most fascinating thing.
0:11:46 I’ve been doing this now for 15 years.
0:11:48 And I’m like, this is the most magical part of biology
0:11:52 because metabolism is so simple.
0:11:55 It’s how we convert food energy to cellular energy,
0:11:57 a currency of energy that we can use in the body.
0:11:58 We are machines.
0:12:01 We have 40 trillion plus cells in our body,
0:12:04 and every single cell in the body needs energy to function.
0:12:09 Each of those 40 trillion cells is doing trillions of chemical reactions every second.
0:12:11 And what is our life?
0:12:14 It is the bubbling up of all of those chemical reactions.
0:12:15 What is death?
0:12:17 It is the absence of those chemical reactions.
0:12:20 Death is the absence of metabolism working.
0:12:24 So the fact that we have 93 percent of Americans with some element
0:12:27 of metabolic dysfunction in our modern world is basically like saying,
0:12:30 a lot of us are kind of like one foot in the grave while we’re alive.
0:12:30 That is what we’re seeing.
0:12:32 That is the chronic disease epidemic.
0:12:35 When you say metabolic dysfunction, if we were to go into that piece of it,
0:12:39 what I would initially think it just is, you know, it’d be like,
0:12:40 oh, it just means like maybe they’re overweight.
0:12:41 How do you define that?
0:12:43 It’s an underpowering of our bodies.
0:12:48 It’s literally not making enough currency of energy to power ourselves.
0:12:54 And one result of that is that when we are having this problem converting food
0:12:58 energy, which is primarily glucose and fatty acids to cellular energy
0:13:00 through the mitochondria, which is ATP.
0:13:04 One of the things that can happen if that process is broken is that the body
0:13:08 will store those substrates that it can’t process in the body as fat.
0:13:13 Yes. And so the fat and the obesity epidemic is just one branch of
0:13:19 fundamentally a core problem with the fact that the modern industrial world
0:13:24 that we’re living in, that our bodies are sort of sitting in all the time,
0:13:29 is synergistically breaking the mitochondria, which is that part of the
0:13:32 cell that converts that food energy to cellular energy.
0:13:34 So then what happens?
0:13:40 You get this underpowered cell and nothing could be scarier to the body
0:13:43 than a cell that can’t do its work.
0:13:49 So that is the deeper layer to this chronic inflammatory sort of world
0:13:49 that we’re living in.
0:13:52 They call it like a senescent cell or what is it when it’s like is a
0:13:53 half functioning cell?
0:13:58 I just kind of think of it as like a car that is running out of gas or a
0:14:00 machine that doesn’t quite have enough power.
0:14:02 It’s sputtering along to do its work.
0:14:04 Does the body want to kill that cell?
0:14:05 Does it see it as potentially dangerous?
0:14:08 Yeah, it does see it as potentially dangerous.
0:14:11 So when the mitochondria is damaged by all these environmental
0:14:16 and lifestyle factors of our modern world, which is across all the different pillars,
0:14:18 ultra processed food, we’re getting less sleep.
0:14:19 We have chronic low grade stress.
0:14:23 We’re sitting 80 percent of the time, 100,000 environmental toxins
0:14:26 that have entered our food, water, air in the past 50 years,
0:14:29 our relationship with light and our relationship with temperature.
0:14:32 All these things have changed drastically over the past 100 years.
0:14:35 They’re all synergistically hurting the mitochondria.
0:14:38 So that food to energy isn’t working properly.
0:14:42 The mitochondria, because it is hurt by all of these factors,
0:14:45 incites what’s called the cell danger response.
0:14:48 It’s like, something’s wrong with me, I can’t produce energy.
0:14:53 And it actually initiates a process called the CDR, the cell danger response.
0:14:55 And that recruits the immune cells, it gets them all activated.
0:14:58 There’s something scary going on, help.
0:14:59 But this is the problem.
0:15:04 The immune cells can’t help because the problem is inside the cell.
0:15:07 The problem is the way the environment is hurting the cell.
0:15:08 So they are impotent.
0:15:12 They are literally there like, oh, they want to like engulf a bacteria.
0:15:15 They show up called and they create collateral damage.
0:15:18 And they’re seeing out all these inflammatory cytokines,
0:15:20 but they can’t fix the real problem,
0:15:23 which is the fact that the environment is hurting our cells.
0:15:27 So you’ve got essentially what happens is just a shit show inside the body
0:15:30 where you’ve got a well-meaning inflammatory system
0:15:35 that is seeing a cell that is under duress and it can’t do anything to change it.
0:15:37 It can’t take the donut out of your hand.
0:15:39 It can’t make you go to sleep earlier.
0:15:42 It can’t stop you from using that synthetic fragrance in your shampoo.
0:15:45 It can’t do anything about that.
0:15:47 So it will keep trying and trying and trying,
0:15:52 creating all this collateral damage in your body and not really fix the issue,
0:15:54 which is that the cell is underpowered
0:15:59 because of the way our modern lifestyle is hurting this precious structure in the cell.
0:16:04 And that’s the root of every single chronic disease we’re facing in the Western world today.
0:16:07 That’s a big statement.
0:16:10 So the fire department’s been called and it shows up.
0:16:17 The house that’s on fire is in an untouchable, like impenetrable structure.
0:16:20 And so the fire department is just hanging out
0:16:23 and it’s causing all kinds of street collateral damage, like clogging up everything.
0:16:24 And there’s a lot of information.
0:16:27 Inflammation at times can be good for us, though, right?
0:16:29 Absolutely. Can you explain when it’s good?
0:16:31 Yeah, it’s good and acute issues.
0:16:34 So you think about something like a wound.
0:16:38 You get cut by a knife or like you get cut on a tree when you’re climbing a tree
0:16:40 or you get an infection that comes in.
0:16:43 So there’s bacteria that enter the body.
0:16:48 Your immune system sees it, goes to it, engulfs it, kills it, and then it retreats.
0:16:51 It goes back to the bone marrow, the lymph nodes, etc.
0:16:53 And then it’s fine.
0:16:57 During that time when it is actually fighting that bacteria or trying to heal
0:17:01 that wound, it is going to release all these cytokines and different mediators.
0:17:04 And that’s why you’re going to get the swelling and the redness and all of that.
0:17:06 The hallmarks of inflammation.
0:17:11 And then once that is complete, everything retreats and you go back
0:17:13 to a nice homeostatic normal.
0:17:17 But with the issue with metabolic dysfunction, this fundamental damaging
0:17:20 by our environment of a core foundational process in the body
0:17:24 that allows all cells to function properly because that’s not changing
0:17:27 because the environment is not changing.
0:17:29 The cells can never calm down.
0:17:33 The immune cells can never stop their work because it’s not getting better.
0:17:37 So that’s chronic inflammation and every leading cause of death
0:17:44 in the United States other than suicide is fundamentally in some way related
0:17:47 to the immune system being on overdrive all the time.
0:17:53 And the deeper layer to that of why it’s not settling down is
0:17:58 because we’re not fixing the core core problem, which is that our cells have bad energy.
0:18:01 Our cells are not able to power themselves.
0:18:04 So this is this is why I think metabolism is so interesting
0:18:09 because on the more deeper and bigger picture and almost spiritual level,
0:18:14 we are the way we’re living and the way things have changed over the past
0:18:20 fifty hundred years in our world so rapidly, so unnaturally.
0:18:25 It’s fundamentally dimming our life force, the way that we create life force
0:18:28 in the body, which is metabolism, which is the conversion of food.
0:18:29 And you can think of food.
0:18:35 We take in 70 metric tons of food in our lifetime, like a football field full of food
0:18:39 and it passes through us and it not only rebuilds our body structurally,
0:18:43 but it also is converted into this life force, this energy force that we can use.
0:18:49 ATP and right now because of the damage to the mitochondria from all aspect
0:18:53 of our lifestyle, this flow of essentially external potential energy,
0:18:57 cosmic energy food is blocked through us.
0:19:00 So there’s a block of flow happening through the body
0:19:02 that’s leading to these diseases we’re seeing.
0:19:04 And that’s metabolic dysfunction.
0:19:06 And we talk about insulin resistance and blood sugar problems.
0:19:12 But really, it’s a fundamental block of flow of energy through the body.
0:19:18 And because every one of those 40 trillion cells needs energy to function properly.
0:19:21 This is why it shows up as so many different conditions,
0:19:28 because this is the other key point is we have 200 plus types of cells in our bodies.
0:19:32 We have glial cells and astrocytes and ovarian theta cells and endothelial cells
0:19:33 and hepatocytes.
0:19:36 So we have all these different types of cells all throughout our body.
0:19:38 And each of them they’re differentiated.
0:19:45 And so underpowering in a liver cell is going to look different than underpowering
0:19:49 in a brain cell in a neuron or in an ovarian theta cell.
0:19:52 We know that the leading cause of infertility in the US,
0:19:56 polycytic ovarian syndrome, fundamentally rooted in metabolic dysfunction.
0:20:01 We know that Alzheimer’s dementia now being called type three diabetes metabolic issue.
0:20:06 We know that heart attacks and stroke, blood vessel issues are metabolic issues.
0:20:12 So where this core foundational problem is showing up will look like different things.
0:20:18 But we’re practicing outdated medicine where we still define diseases
0:20:23 based on their symptom profile rather than their cellular physiology.
0:20:28 Because when we were describing these diseases, all we knew was the symptoms.
0:20:31 We couldn’t see these invisible things happening inside the cells.
0:20:36 So we describe depression based on a collection of symptoms.
0:20:41 We don’t describe it based on the cellular physiology leading to those symptoms.
0:20:47 That is outdated medicine that it because we are still practicing in that
0:20:51 very much descriptive, symptom based paradigm.
0:20:55 This is why the more we spend on health care,
0:20:59 the worse the outcomes are getting because we’re not actually approaching the physiology.
0:21:04 We’re just playing whack-a-mole reactive symptom based medicine
0:21:08 based on this outdated descriptive way of looking at diseases.
0:21:14 So there’s a field that’s really emerged in medicine called systems and network biology,
0:21:19 which instead of looking at everything as silos is looking at the connecting points
0:21:23 between diseases based on the physiologic similarities.
0:21:27 And that’s where we go straight to metabolic dysfunction.
0:21:31 This is fundamentally a book about systems and network biology.
0:21:36 What is connecting everything on that level that we can now understand
0:21:41 because of the incredible tools we have to really understand inside the cell?
0:21:43 We have not caught up in medicine yet.
0:21:48 We are still practicing whack-a-mole medicine based on turning little
0:21:50 knobs on biomarkers and symptoms.
0:21:52 And that is why it’s not working.
0:21:55 And this is the biggest blind spot in health care.
0:22:00 And so this book is a reimagination of how we could both understand
0:22:06 our own bodies and how we could create a system based on our real true nature,
0:22:10 what’s really happening inside the body, where if we focused the arrow,
0:22:14 that $4.3 trillion arrow on actually the right problem,
0:22:16 which is at the center of the cell, it’s much more foundational.
0:22:20 People would heal rapidly, but in our current approach,
0:22:24 we could spend $20 trillion on our current approach
0:22:27 and people will not get better because it’s not actually focusing on
0:22:29 the true physiology that’s causing disease. Gotcha.
0:22:33 So if you follow me on the Instagram, I’m sure you’ve seen,
0:22:34 I’m doing 90 days, no drinking.
0:22:40 Today is day number 25 and I’ve upped my cardio a ton, which feels great.
0:22:41 I’ve been rucking a lot,
0:22:44 which is where you put this weighted backpack on while you’re hiking.
0:22:47 At the end of my workouts, though, I’m sweating like crazy, which is good,
0:22:49 but you need to replenish your electrolytes.
0:22:53 And sadly, most of those replacement powders out there are just packed
0:22:57 with sugar and they go straight to gut fat, which is the reason I use element.
0:23:01 There’s no sugar and it has a science backed ratio of 1000mg sodium,
0:23:07 200mg potassium and 60mg of magnesium, not only no sugar, no coloring,
0:23:11 no artificial ingredients, no gluten, no fillers, just no BS.
0:23:15 Element is used by everyone from podcast hosts like me, NBA players, NFL,
0:23:20 NHL players, Olympic athletes and everyday moms and dads and exercise enthusiasts.
0:23:24 Right now, Element is offering a free sample pack with any purchase.
0:23:28 So that’s eight single serving packets free with any element order.
0:23:31 That’s a great way to try all eight flavors because they have a ton of different flavors.
0:23:37 You try all eight, get yours at KevinRose.com/ElementLMNT.
0:23:40 So that’s KevinRose.com/LMNT.
0:23:43 This deal is only available through my links, so you must go to that website.
0:23:46 And lastly, and the best part is totally risk free.
0:23:49 So if you don’t like it, share it with a salty friend and they will give
0:23:52 you your money back, no questions asked, you have nothing to lose.
0:23:55 Huge thanks to Element for sponsoring today’s show.
0:23:58 All right, this next mention is not a sponsor.
0:24:01 However, I am an investor, but I want to give them a little bit of love
0:24:05 because I’ve greatly benefited from using this app.
0:24:06 And I think you will as well.
0:24:08 Let’s talk about meditation in my opinion.
0:24:10 And I’m just speaking for myself here.
0:24:11 This is not coming from the company.
0:24:14 Meditation has turned into a pretty big enterprise.
0:24:18 So most of the apps that are out there these days are jam packed with shorter meditations.
0:24:21 They have sleep content, just more and more stuff.
0:24:25 I think this is great because these companies have huge marketing budgets.
0:24:28 They’re great at introducing meditation to the masses.
0:24:31 There’s a saying in meditation that the only bad meditation is the one
0:24:34 that you don’t do, which I fully subscribe to.
0:24:38 But if you’ve tried these apps and you’re looking for something else,
0:24:43 you’re looking for a little bit more depth in a clearly defined path from
0:24:48 an authentic, fully accredited Zen master, then you have to try out the way.
0:24:49 You’ve probably heard of Henry Shookman.
0:24:52 He’s been on my podcast before talking about all things meditation,
0:24:53 talking about enlightenment.
0:24:54 Henry is amazing.
0:24:57 His app is available for both iOS and Android.
0:25:00 You can find it at thewayapp.com.
0:25:04 I’ve been studying with Henry for several years now and it’s absolutely changed my life.
0:25:08 I’m so glad that he’s bringing these teachings in the form of an app because
0:25:12 typically you would have to go to a Zendo, travel out to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
0:25:14 And now it’s fully ready to go on iOS and Android.
0:25:19 So with this app, you’ll get to enjoy 30 free guided meditation sessions.
0:25:20 And they’re all different.
0:25:21 They’re fantastic.
0:25:23 There’s no credit card required.
0:25:24 Check it out.
0:25:25 Download it for iOS and Android.
0:25:28 And like I said, with this, you’re going to get focused training.
0:25:31 You’re going to get depth and you get it quality over quantity.
0:25:33 Thewayapp.com.
0:25:37 It’s the change in depth that I have a feeling that you’ve been looking for.
0:25:41 So is this a healthcare problem or is this an individual problem?
0:25:46 Because it sounds like in some sense, obviously, if I go to my doctor and ask
0:25:50 for advice around how to improve my metabolism, they’re going to look at me
0:25:53 with like a blank stare, maybe not some of the doctors I work with.
0:25:55 There’s a lot of outdated doctors out there.
0:25:59 They’re going on information that, as you pointed out, that’s decades old data.
0:26:03 How much of this do we have to take control of ourselves versus rely on
0:26:07 healthcare professionals and where can the healthcare professionals be helpful
0:26:10 in helping improve our metabolic health?
0:26:12 Great question.
0:26:18 Well, the reason the doctors are really not going to understand what you’re
0:26:21 talking about when you walk in and say, hey, doc, how do I improve my metabolic
0:26:27 health is because fragmentation and specialization and reactiveness is so
0:26:31 baked into our system on every level.
0:26:32 Oh yeah, there’s a specialist for everything.
0:26:32 Everything.
0:26:36 There are over 42 medical and surgical subspecialties.
0:26:40 And what’s so fascinating is that the more we specialize in healthcare, the
0:26:41 thicker we’re getting.
0:26:43 So that’s obviously not working.
0:26:44 They’re not networked and talking to each other.
0:26:48 They’re not talking to each other, but they also fundamentally are seeing
0:26:50 the body as a collection of separate parts.
0:26:56 And that is very much tied into the financial model of healthcare.
0:26:59 Because if you imagine we actually adopt what I’m talking about in good energy,
0:27:03 and we talk about these core foundational pathways, that if we really
0:27:07 addressed them, we could actually melt away a lot of the branches of the tree.
0:27:10 Well, that would put a lot of specialists out of work, right?
0:27:17 So right now, the core problem with healthcare is its financing, which is
0:27:22 that we have a system where there’s a devil’s bargain between two of the
0:27:23 biggest industries in America.
0:27:28 So healthcare is the largest and the fastest growing industry in the United States.
0:27:29 And that is a business.
0:27:31 It’s not a nonprofit.
0:27:33 It’s a business that’s designed to grow.
0:27:38 And the way that the healthcare business in America currently grows is by
0:27:44 having more people in the system, having more things done to them over
0:27:45 longer periods of time.
0:27:49 And that’s a stark economic reality that every single person listening needs
0:27:55 to realize, because unfortunately, even though you’re doctor, I can almost guarantee
0:27:59 when into medicine to help people and help patients and create a better world.
0:28:04 They are working in a four trillion dollar system that is also in a devil’s bargain
0:28:09 with a six trillion dollar business, the food industry, which the food industry
0:28:14 grows by having more people addicted to more food and the healthcare system grows
0:28:17 by having more people in the system, having more things done to them.
0:28:23 So together, those two systems impact every single thing your doctor learns,
0:28:30 how the research is done, how the medical education is taught, how the NIH functions,
0:28:31 everything.
0:28:36 So the system has these invisible hands in it that are corrupting every aspect
0:28:38 of the way we’re taught and the way we learn.
0:28:43 So, you know, I went to Stanford Medical School and I can say, unfortunately,
0:28:48 with certainty that you have incredible minds going into a school and a system
0:28:54 that is teaching outdated bad medicine, it’s fragmented, silo based medicine.
0:28:59 And that is in part because the economic reality drives us to see the body
0:29:06 as separate parts to ignore root causes because that puts one body in 10 specialist
0:29:12 office as opposed to truly foundationally healing that patient, which would eliminate a customer.
0:29:16 So it’s almost like the framework and the scaffolding or they’re just the
0:29:21 organizational structure of the medical system is it’s like you have these doctors
0:29:24 that I assume have good intentions that get in the medical school.
0:29:26 They’re like, OK, I’m here to change the world.
0:29:28 I’m here to help patients that come into my office.
0:29:35 But because they are entering a system that automatically makes them choose a specialty,
0:29:38 forces them into something that’s siloed information.
0:29:40 It’s like we’re never given the chance.
0:29:44 They’ve never given the chance to consider the whole.
0:29:48 And is that part of what’s missing is like they just are put into a structure
0:29:54 that’s just not designed to really think through the kind of importance
0:29:57 of having this holistic view on health.
0:30:04 Well, what’s so interesting is that actually prestige in the system and financial
0:30:09 success within the system as a doctor is very much predicate on specialization.
0:30:14 You think about like who is the most respected type of doctor in our system?
0:30:18 It’s someone who is hyper hyper specialized like that.
0:30:19 Like a brain surgeon or brain surgeon.
0:30:24 And I think about when I was at the end of medical school choosing a specialty,
0:30:29 I choose from over 40 specialties to devote my life to one very small part of the body,
0:30:33 even baked into that paradigm is the idea that the body is separate parts.
0:30:35 Then you go into that.
0:30:38 So I was an ear, nose and throat surgeon to become even more prestigious.
0:30:40 Maybe the chair of a department, the chair of the department
0:30:44 at Stanford Medical School, I was there was a neuro otologist.
0:30:46 So he became an ear, nose and throat surgeon.
0:30:49 Then did a fellowship in otology.
0:30:52 So two square inches of the entire body.
0:30:54 And then you become a neuro otologist.
0:30:57 And then maybe you get a disease named after you, which he had,
0:30:58 which was called Miner’s disease.
0:31:03 So on every level, this micro getting more and more focused
0:31:06 is actually what is associated with prestige.
0:31:10 And then you get into, you know, you think about
0:31:14 if someone like that starts to back up and think about the heart
0:31:17 and the diabetes and the other aspects of their patient.
0:31:20 Well, they’re so specialized that their knowledge
0:31:22 based on those things has diminished.
0:31:24 And so if you start practicing in that way, you’re almost,
0:31:27 a, you’re not incentivized to do it.
0:31:30 It’s basically pro bono work because you’re not paid to talk to a patient
0:31:35 about holistic lifestyle strategies and you’re kind of practicing out of scope.
0:31:37 So it’s actually putting you at risk.
0:31:42 So it’s baked in and all of that is a trickle down effect
0:31:46 from the core financial incentives of the system, which is why
0:31:50 incentives are something I’m really obsessed with just conceptually
0:31:54 because it’s these very top line incentives that drive
0:31:57 that drive huge amounts of downstream effects
0:32:00 that right now are very, very negative.
0:32:02 But getting to your question about how much of this is about
0:32:06 sort of individual responsibility,
0:32:11 I think that we all would love for the system to take ownership of this
0:32:13 and really help us along this journey.
0:32:16 But the system has virtually no incentive right now
0:32:21 to change, to focus on root cause health and prevention and reversal of disease.
0:32:23 That’s not currently the model.
0:32:28 So the reality that people just need to accept and realize and not complain about,
0:32:32 but actually just internalize is that it is our responsibility right now
0:32:36 to be healthy because the that if you just go on the standard
0:32:38 treadmill of American health, you’re heading towards sickness.
0:32:40 The majority of the country is sick.
0:32:42 Six in 10 Americans have a chronic disease.
0:32:46 Ninety three percent have at least one biomarker of metabolic dysfunction.
0:32:48 Seventy four percent are overweight or obese.
0:32:51 Forty percent of Americans have a mental health diagnosis.
0:32:52 It’s not good.
0:32:54 So you just really do have to take control.
0:33:01 And what’s incredible about the time that we’re living in right now
0:33:06 in human history is that we actually, even though all these trends
0:33:11 are sort of bad and scary, we actually have access to more information
0:33:15 about our bodies, no doctor necessary than we’ve ever had in human history.
0:33:22 There’s a confluence of technological advancements that make it possible
0:33:27 for us to live the healthiest and happiest and longest lives in human history.
0:33:29 But we have to access those.
0:33:33 And so this confluence of factors that excites me so much is one.
0:33:35 We, of course, have the wearables.
0:33:40 So we have these, the markers that can tell us a bit about our day to day
0:33:43 biologic reality and how our behavior is affecting that.
0:33:48 So heart rate, heart rate variability, step count, sleep, sleep stages,
0:33:50 oxygen saturation, very helpful.
0:33:56 We also have this brand new bio wearable revolution, which is, you know,
0:34:00 the continuous glucose monitoring, literally seeing our key metabolic
0:34:02 biomarker in real time with everything we do.
0:34:06 And now there’s new biosensors coming out like the Abbott-Lingo,
0:34:09 which is going to tell us about ketones and lactate and alcohol.
0:34:10 I hadn’t heard of that. Oh, yeah.
0:34:12 So Abbott has a new consumer device coming out.
0:34:17 Lingo, which is three, they’re separate sensors for different bios.
0:34:20 So you kind of have to poke it out yourself to get all of them.
0:34:24 But but I mean, there’s clearly incredible trends happening where we are
0:34:27 going to be able to really, truly see how the environment is affecting
0:34:29 our internal foundational health in real time.
0:34:33 And then the third piece is the direct to consumer lab testing,
0:34:36 which I could not be more excited about, which is where instead of
0:34:40 begging your doctor for scraps of information about your blood work,
0:34:45 you go online, you order 100 biomarkers, you walk into Quest or Lab Corps
0:34:47 and get them drawn or you prick your finger at home.
0:34:50 You get the results in a few days with deep interpretations.
0:34:54 And now, of course, with AI, we’re going to have even more rich
0:34:59 interpretations of what those labs mean and what the tea leaves of those labs
0:35:02 mean in a way that our doctors were never really trained to do.
0:35:07 So these trends are very exciting.
0:35:10 And I mean, I have a chapter in my book.
0:35:12 That’s a bold statement, but I believe it.
0:35:18 It’s we’re at a time now where we need to trust ourselves, not our doctors.
0:35:24 And I mean that only on chronic lifestyle based conditions, because the system
0:35:29 is abjectly failing on protecting us from getting these diseases or reversing them.
0:35:32 They’re going up every single year, the more we spend.
0:35:41 So what each individual must do if we want to be healthy is understand
0:35:47 some basics about core foundational health, learn where we stand on the biomarkers
0:35:51 that tell us about those factors like metabolic health and take ownership
0:35:53 of working to improve it.
0:35:56 And that is not as complicated as we think it is.
0:36:00 The paternalistic and phantalyzing health care system has benefited from
0:36:04 making people feel like it’s really complicated to be healthy.
0:36:08 In most American states, patients don’t even own their own health records.
0:36:09 The doctor owns them.
0:36:10 It’s crazy.
0:36:14 And we say, you need to sign these forms to get this information
0:36:15 because it could be dangerous if you have it.
0:36:16 That’s bullshit.
0:36:22 That is absolutely favoring the system, having an information divide from you
0:36:23 so they can take advantage of you.
0:36:28 So I think we’re entering an incredible era that I’m so optimistic about
0:36:29 where don’t trust experts.
0:36:31 Don’t trust the science.
0:36:32 Don’t trust your doctor.
0:36:34 Do not trust me.
0:36:41 Trust yourself by understanding your own basic biomarkers and tracking
0:36:44 them over time and really taking ownership for the first time ever.
0:36:46 That is possible.
0:36:47 And this is just a recent phenomenon.
0:36:48 It’s very exciting.
0:36:49 It’s super exciting.
0:36:53 In the book, you mentioned there’s five biomarkers that you pay attention to
0:36:55 that can predict deadly diseases.
0:36:55 Yeah.
0:36:58 Can you walk me through these biomarkers and what they are?
0:36:59 Yeah, absolutely.
0:37:03 So, as you know, the sky’s the limit on lab testing.
0:37:05 I mean, we could get a hundred tests.
0:37:09 But yeah, I think the first thing to say that what you said earlier, the fact
0:37:11 that you can actually do it yourself now, most people don’t know.
0:37:14 Yeah, I’ve had so many friends that say, you know, I’m very fortunate.
0:37:17 I have Peter Tia and some other people on my corner to help me out.
0:37:20 And I’m like, oh, my God, you don’t know what your ApoB is.
0:37:21 And they’re like, what is that?
0:37:22 And I’m like, we’ll get a test.
0:37:23 And they’re like, my doctor won’t give it to me.
0:37:23 Right.
0:37:25 And I’m like, you don’t need your doctor.
0:37:26 Like you can go to life extension.
0:37:28 There’s a bunch of different sites you can go to now.
0:37:33 And just buy the test for $30 and then go get down and get your blood drawn
0:37:34 and see what your results are.
0:37:38 And people have no clue that’s actually more than you’ve known in 20 years
0:37:41 from walking in and getting a crumb from your doctor about information.
0:37:44 You have to beg for it to wait to get in to see the doctor.
0:37:46 And this takes five minutes to buy it online.
0:37:48 It’s literally, yeah, I mean, just for people listening.
0:37:50 I mean, you just mentioned one company.
0:37:51 I didn’t life extension.
0:37:54 So life extension levels can give you these labs.
0:37:59 Next Health, Inside Tracker, Function Health, Genova Diagnostics.
0:38:01 Like just write these down.
0:38:04 It’s not expensive, you know, and you can actually get these tests.
0:38:07 I wish, wish, uh, Boston Heart did consumer lab testing.
0:38:08 It’s probably coming.
0:38:10 It’s incredible.
0:38:12 Yeah, they have like some of the testing and everything.
0:38:12 Yeah.
0:38:16 So to talk about the five, like most basic.
0:38:19 These are five tests that are under a hundred dollars total.
0:38:23 Your doctor will probably actually order them at your physical with no argument.
0:38:28 And they can tell you whether you fall into that 93% of Americans
0:38:30 who metabolically unhealthy or not.
0:38:30 Awesome.
0:38:31 Let’s get into these.
0:38:31 I’m curious.
0:38:33 Number one is fasting glucose.
0:38:35 I’ll just list all five of them and then we can talk about the ranges.
0:38:37 Okay, let me let me write this down so I have fast and glucose.
0:38:41 Fast and glucose triglycerides, HDL cholesterol,
0:38:43 waste circumference and blood pressure.
0:38:47 So there’s been two studies in the past five years, one out of UNC and one
0:38:50 from the American College of Cardiology using these biomarkers.
0:38:53 Actually, I’ll add on a six, which is hemoglobin A1C because one
0:38:55 of the papers used that as well.
0:38:59 And when you look at those biomarkers, these six biomarkers,
0:39:04 which essentially define metabolic syndrome, that’s how they’ve created
0:39:07 these statistics that are crazy, which is that 93% of Americans
0:39:09 are metabolically unhealthy.
0:39:14 Now, literally a hundred percent of Americans could be metabolically healthy.
0:39:16 These are lifestyle based biomarkers.
0:39:22 I can’t overstress how abnormal and unnatural and modern it is
0:39:24 that this many people have this issue.
0:39:27 So for these biomarkers, for them to be considered
0:39:31 metabolically healthy, the ranges they define are fasting glucose,
0:39:34 less than 100 milligrams through us leader, triglycerides,
0:39:40 less than 150 milligrams for us leader, HDL above 40 for men or 50 for women,
0:39:44 waste circumference, less than 35 inches for women or 40 inches for men.
0:39:47 And then blood pressure less than 120 over 80 and hemoglobin A1C less
0:39:49 than 5.7% percent.
0:39:55 So if you are in those ranges for all of those biomarkers and not on
0:40:01 medication for blood pressure or blood sugar, you’re part of that 7%.
0:40:07 And the reason I’ll just quickly touch on why these actually get back
0:40:09 to what we were talking about with the mitochondria.
0:40:11 I’m not sure how many people are listening versus watching, but if you
0:40:16 just imagine the mitochondria as a blob and basically food goes in
0:40:20 and ATP goes out and environment is essentially hurting that process.
0:40:26 Like big X of the mitochondria, what happens is it blocks the flow through it.
0:40:31 And so because it’s glucose and fatty acids that are going to be going through,
0:40:35 if the mitochondria is broken, it will literally put a block to the cell
0:40:37 taking in more glucose because it can’t process it.
0:40:41 It’s like, I don’t have capacity for this because I’m broken.
0:40:44 And so stay out of the cell because otherwise.
0:40:50 So what then happens is that you’re going to have, of course, if the glucose
0:40:52 isn’t coming into the cell, the glucose is going to rise in the bloodstream.
0:40:57 So that’s why fasting glucose can be a helpful biomarker to have a clue
0:41:00 of what’s going on inside the cell because that fasting glucose is rising
0:41:02 because the mitochondria is broken.
0:41:04 It can’t take it in.
0:41:05 So then let’s talk about triglycerides.
0:41:09 Why would elevated triglycerides tell you something about this foundational problem?
0:41:13 Well, when you have that excess glucose rising, the body’s, well, we don’t want
0:41:15 all this glucose in the bloodstream because that’s going to cause problems.
0:41:19 Excess glucose in the bloodstream will stick to things and cause what’s called
0:41:21 glycation, which is really damaging.
0:41:25 That’s a key root cause of blood vessel blockages.
0:41:28 So the body’s like, OK, we can’t have all this glucose floating around.
0:41:32 So it converts it to triglycerides and it stores it in fat cells.
0:41:33 It also can store it inside of cells.
0:41:37 So that’s, you know, why elevated triglycerides tell us a clue about this.
0:41:42 Hemoglobin A1C, which is essentially a measure of the percentage
0:41:47 of your hemoglobin molecules on red blood cells that have sugar stuck to them.
0:41:52 Again, it makes sense if the cell is blocking glucose from going in
0:41:56 because the mitochondria is damaged, that blood sugar is rising.
0:41:59 It’s going to stick to hemoglobin on the red blood cells.
0:42:01 And that’s going to raise your hemoglobin A1C.
0:42:04 They call it like the three months average of your glucose.
0:42:07 Yeah, exactly, because blood cells last for a few months.
0:42:11 And so essentially by measuring the percentage of hemoglobin in red blood
0:42:15 cells that have sugar stuck to them, it gives you essentially like a three
0:42:19 month average of your, you can estimate a three month average of your blood sugar
0:42:26 levels. And then waste circumference is relevant because when we have
0:42:32 mitochondrial dysfunction and we’re blocking that glucose from coming
0:42:36 into the cell and that glucose is being converted to fat, that is going
0:42:40 to turn into visceral fat, which is the fat around your organs.
0:42:44 And it’s going to be basically laid down as this layer on top of your organs.
0:42:47 And that’s going to show up as increased waste circumference.
0:42:51 And then blood pressure is a really interesting one because you might think,
0:42:54 well, how could blood pressure relate to this mitochondrial issue?
0:42:56 But this one’s really fascinating.
0:42:58 So a little bit of science tangent here.
0:43:01 But back to the mitochondria.
0:43:04 Inside the cell, mitochondria is damaged from the environment, can’t
0:43:05 process glucose to ATP.
0:43:09 So the cell is basically going to say, I can’t take any more glucose in.
0:43:12 The way it actually does that is through insulin resistance.
0:43:15 So the cell says, we’re going to block the insulin signal.
0:43:18 And insulin is the hormone that allows glucose to come into the cell.
0:43:21 So the cell blocks the insulin signal transmission.
0:43:23 And that’s called insulin resistance.
0:43:28 Then the body and its infinite wisdom is like, well, we can’t have all this
0:43:29 glucose floating around.
0:43:32 We’re turning a lot of it triglycerides, but we also want to try and like jam
0:43:35 glucose into the cell because we just do not want it floating around in the bloodstream.
0:43:42 So in the body secretes more insulin to basically try and drive glucose into the cell.
0:43:45 But of course, the cell can’t process it.
0:43:46 So it’s a shit show.
0:43:53 And with that high insulin levels, one of the things that does is it blocks
0:43:57 the production of nitric oxide, which is a chemical in the bloodstream
0:43:59 that dilates our blood vessels.
0:44:01 So that’s why we get the high blood pressure.
0:44:07 So this is just a quick overview of why those biomarkers that we should all know
0:44:12 can all tell us about something going on inside the cell, inside the mitochondrial dysfunction.
0:44:17 So every single person listening should go look at their lab results or they’re
0:44:21 going to the health record, look at their physical exam data from last year
0:44:24 and see where they stand on all those biomarkers.
0:44:30 Because if any of those are out of range, we should be focusing a huge
0:44:34 amount of our attention on getting it in range because having metabolic dysfunction
0:44:41 will lead to so many of these symptoms and diseases that we’re suffering
0:44:42 from in the Western world today.
0:44:45 And those are all super cheap, easy to get.
0:44:47 Let’s talk about more expensive.
0:44:49 A lot of people don’t like to go get blood draws.
0:44:49 Yeah.
0:44:53 If you’re going to go in and do this, it’s your shot to say, OK, one stick,
0:44:55 give me some more data.
0:44:58 What would you because I consider these like pretty table stakes, like numbers,
0:45:01 like basic, they are as basic as it gets.
0:45:02 Yeah, they’re important.
0:45:06 I mean, if you go to dinner party and ask everyone what your triglycerides,
0:45:08 I bet no one would know, right?
0:45:10 Everyone needs to know, right?
0:45:11 Minor forty seven, what are yours?
0:45:13 Like, you need to know.
0:45:17 I feel like there’s a few things that are also like APOB, it’s got to be a huge
0:45:21 point, would you consider that to be the biggest predictor of heart disease?
0:45:26 I think at this point, the APOB is thought to be pretty much the best marker.
0:45:28 We can look at it and nobody orders it.
0:45:29 So let’s talk about the second tier.
0:45:33 So that is, yeah, you got 75 bucks.
0:45:35 Go do it, right?
0:45:38 Because you we need to make that 7% of Americans much bigger.
0:45:40 But then, of course, there’s the fun.
0:45:42 Let’s get into the next one to give you more riches.
0:45:47 So APOB, of course, APOB is basically telling us about a protein
0:45:51 that lives on what are called lipoproteins, which are these structures,
0:45:54 these spherical structures in the blood that carry cholesterol.
0:45:59 And the particles, these lipoproteins that we know promote heart disease.
0:46:02 There are several different types of in the blood, but they all have this APOB
0:46:04 protein on them.
0:46:10 So by looking at APOB, you can actually understand all the blockage
0:46:14 promoting cholesterol containing particles in the blood, as opposed to
0:46:16 just like one, which is LDL.
0:46:20 So APOB is like a broader picture of these potentially
0:46:23 blockage causing particles in the body.
0:46:24 So it’s really important.
0:46:26 So APOB is a key one.
0:46:30 And what’s so crazy, Kevin, is that there’s not a standard range
0:46:31 of what we should be shooting for.
0:46:36 I think at this point, Peter Tia wants to be less than 60, 50.
0:46:40 Yeah, if you get it done and look at the lab slip, it’ll say like less than
0:46:41 one 30 is fine.
0:46:42 That’s insane.
0:46:43 Huge range, right?
0:46:49 Yeah, I was in the 130s when I got mine tested and my dad died of a heart attack.
0:46:51 My grandpa died of a stroke.
0:46:52 Like it’s it runs in the family.
0:46:53 It’s a genetic thing.
0:46:54 Yeah.
0:46:58 And so they put me on a statin initially and he got all of my other
0:47:01 my triglycerides, all of my HDL, everything was looking great.
0:47:02 Yeah.
0:47:04 And then you go test APOB and it’s still high as can be.
0:47:05 And it’s like, oh, shit.
0:47:07 OK, there’s still an issue here, right?
0:47:11 And so I ended up going on a, is it PSK1 and hamburger?
0:47:12 PS3, yeah.
0:47:15 Yeah. And that was and that’s a shot.
0:47:18 And you do it once every two weeks and a drop might be like crazy.
0:47:18 Wow.
0:47:20 And so that got me.
0:47:22 It’s a much cleaner mechanism than I guess in the statin.
0:47:23 Tia prefers it.
0:47:24 It’s expensive as hell.
0:47:26 Insurance covered by insurance doesn’t cover it.
0:47:28 It does for some people, but it won’t for me.
0:47:30 Thank God that Amazon started covering it.
0:47:31 So. Oh, wow.
0:47:32 Well, Amazon Prime.
0:47:35 I don’t know if you use Prime Pharmacy, but it’s kind of amazing for CGMs.
0:47:36 Yeah.
0:47:36 Yeah, so it’s great.
0:47:40 So basically Amazon Prime will have cheaper than your insurance.
0:47:41 Oftentimes.
0:47:47 So my insurance was charging me like $2500 a month for this drug, which is crazy.
0:47:47 Yeah.
0:47:48 Well, that was for three shots.
0:47:53 So that’s six weeks and they now Prime was at 1500 or something like that.
0:47:54 So it’s come down dramatically.
0:47:57 It’s still very expensive, but it’s like that or death.
0:48:00 Like I’ll choose to spend a little bit more on the compound.
0:48:04 But, you know, that was a huge aha moment to me because no other doctors
0:48:05 were talking about this.
0:48:07 I couldn’t find any literature anywhere.
0:48:10 And this was like eight years ago that Tia was like, hey, this is something
0:48:11 to pay attention to.
0:48:11 Yeah.
0:48:15 And I feel like that’s the same thing going on with a bunch of other markers,
0:48:18 you know, Home Assistine, LP Lil A, like there’s a bunch of things here
0:48:20 that probably are good additional add-ons.
0:48:21 Yeah. Yeah.
0:48:24 Well, vitamin D levels, I just saw that in your book.
0:48:25 That’s like another great one.
0:48:29 So just run through and I unpack all of these in the book.
0:48:32 And one of my favorite parts of the book is just literally looking at
0:48:36 what are the standard ranges for these tests, which are ridiculous.
0:48:39 And then if you actually look at the research, like where should we actually
0:48:43 be shooting for, often it’s like half or a third of what the standard ranges tell us.
0:48:48 So the other tests that I think can be really valuable, you mentioned ApoB.
0:48:52 I really like HSCRP, which is an inflammatory marker.
0:48:55 So high sensitivity C reactive protein is a protein made by the liver.
0:48:59 It often goes up in states of inflammation because something really important
0:49:03 for people to realize is it’s not just the ApoB containing particles
0:49:05 that are going to cause heart disease.
0:49:09 It’s those particles dropping off cholesterol in the blood vessels
0:49:14 and creating the inflammatory cascade that leads to plaques and blockages.
0:49:16 So it’s not just that.
0:49:22 It’s also the mix of damaging physiology happening in the blood vessels
0:49:24 that creates a fertile soil.
0:49:31 And those two main damaging physiologies are oxidative stress and chronic inflammation.
0:49:36 It’s that swirl of cholesterol, oxidative stress, which can be thought of
0:49:40 as essentially like damaging reactive molecules in the body.
0:49:46 Plus the inflammatory cells that together create these mucked up plaques
0:49:47 in the blood vessels.
0:49:50 So because of understanding that physiology, we want to have a sense
0:49:53 of our oxidative stress and our chronic inflammation.
0:49:55 That’s C-R-T. Absolutely.
0:49:59 Now, this is one where the standard ranges are absolutely insane.
0:50:04 They say basically like less than three is OK, less than one is ideal.
0:50:12 The research actually suggests that less than 0.36 is ideal for the least risk of disease.
0:50:18 So that’s 10 times less than what people, a doctor might say, oh, you’re OK.
0:50:22 If I saw someone with a 2.9 CRP, I’d be very concerned.
0:50:27 I want to see it, the lab usually goes as low as it will go as less than 0.3.
0:50:28 That’s what I want to see.
0:50:30 I want to see very low CRP.
0:50:31 You’re scaring me now.
0:50:32 I got to go back and look at mine.
0:50:32 I don’t know.
0:50:34 People should be looking at their CRP.
0:50:39 And remember, inflammation is biochemical fear.
0:50:44 So if your CRP is high, you need to be going and looking through every aspect
0:50:50 of your life, the toxins in your shampoo, the childhood trauma that you haven’t resolved,
0:50:53 your fear of mortality, what is causing fear in your body?
0:50:56 Because all of it can impact your immune system.
0:50:57 So CRP.
0:51:04 Now, a test that almost no one talks about that I think is really important is G.G.T.
0:51:06 I don’t know what that is in the book.
0:51:10 And it’s gamma glutamate transferase.
0:51:12 I’d be curious to hear what Peter Thia thinks of this one.
0:51:13 So G.G.T.
0:51:17 It’s a protein that’s made in the body that’s concentrated in the liver.
0:51:22 And it’s one of the few tests that can offer a hint of what the oxidative stress
0:51:24 levels in the body are.
0:51:26 And so as an output of the liver.
0:51:28 So this has come along with the AST and LT.
0:51:31 It’s really interesting because one of the roles of G.G.T.
0:51:36 is to metabolize glutathione, which is one of our key antioxidant molecules in the body.
0:51:39 So we’re churning through glutathione really quickly.
0:51:40 We’re going to raise our G.G.T.
0:51:45 levels. And this is on a standard liver function panel test, but no doctors are
0:51:48 looking at it as a sign of oxidative stress.
0:51:50 So I read about this in the book, but for G.G.T.
0:51:57 the lowest risk for men is less than 25 and about less than 20 for women.
0:52:01 Although some papers suggest less than eight.
0:52:04 So we really want to shoot for G.G.T. to be low.
0:52:10 So I like G.G.T. for oxidative stress, H.S.C.R.P. for inflammation.
0:52:16 Look at that in concert with the ApoB and the LDL and these other markers.
0:52:18 Because that’s going to give you like through those tea leaves.
0:52:21 You can see like what’s happening in my vessels, you know?
0:52:25 And then on top of that, I really like to look at liver function tests.
0:52:26 So A.S.T.
0:52:27 These are my worst.
0:52:28 Really?
0:52:30 I’m bad because honestly, I can.
0:52:33 So I quit drinking recently, which has been great.
0:52:38 But when I was consuming alcohol on a regular basis, my liver enzymes are just
0:52:40 not through the roof, but they’re not good.
0:52:43 Like 40 kind of issue, like 38.
0:52:43 OK.
0:52:45 And, you know, a tea likes to see them in like nothing.
0:52:46 What do you want to see?
0:52:47 Less than 17.
0:52:48 Ah, yeah.
0:52:52 And the reason is because the liver is really our key metabolic organ.
0:52:57 You know, it is the organ that’s going to really be so key in determining our level
0:53:01 of insulin resistance because it’s connected to the pancreas, which makes
0:53:02 insulin through the portal vein.
0:53:09 So if there’s problems with liver cell functioning, it’s going to be inciting
0:53:12 more insulin resistance in the body because of this deep connection between
0:53:13 the pancreas and the liver.
0:53:17 And so one of the things that can damage our liver cells is if they’re filled
0:53:21 with toxic fat from basically part of this insulin resistance process.
0:53:26 And so when we’re AST and ALT are high, it’s a sign that there’s
0:53:27 damage to our liver cells.
0:53:30 We want pristine livers.
0:53:32 We want pristine livers, which means they’re not filled with fat.
0:53:33 They’re not dying.
0:53:39 So this means, of course, getting rid of all the added liquid sugar, any fructose,
0:53:45 beer, alcohol, refined processed grains, refined processed sugars.
0:53:48 These things all are going to go straight to the liver.
0:53:51 So the liver is the first pass from digestion and it’s connected to the
0:53:52 pancreas.
0:53:53 So we just want to make it pristine.
0:53:57 So AST and ALT are really a sign of that.
0:54:01 So less than 17 is where we want to shoot for based on my review of the
0:54:02 literature.
0:54:06 And the insane thing is that the standard ranges are less than 55 and 48.
0:54:07 Right, exactly.
0:54:09 Which is really, that basically means there’s
0:54:10 damage happening.
0:54:11 So those are ones that I love.
0:54:16 So we’ve talked about G-G-T-A-S-T-A-L-T-H-S-C-R-P.
0:54:20 Most important test, I think, other than ApoB that you can get is fasting and
0:54:20 slun.
0:54:23 Absolutely critical test.
0:54:28 It’s like $30 and is…
0:54:31 What’s that going to tell people if it comes back high?
0:54:34 If it comes back to the mitochondria.
0:54:39 If the mitochondria is damaged because of our environment, from all these
0:54:46 different factors, food, lack of sleep, sedentary behavior, chronic stress, poor
0:54:50 light hygiene, environmental toxins, et cetera.
0:54:54 The cell is going to block, want to block glucose from coming in because it
0:54:56 cannot process it through a mitochondria.
0:55:00 The way it will do that is creating insulin resistance, blocking the insulin
0:55:01 signal into the cell.
0:55:06 The body will respond by creating more insulin to try and drive to overcome
0:55:09 the insulin resistance to drive the glucose into the cell.
0:55:12 Because the insulin will open up the shell to settle the glucose in.
0:55:16 When insulin binds to the insulin receptor on the cell membrane, it
0:55:21 creates an intracellular signaling cascade that brings glucose channels from
0:55:24 inside the cell to the cell membrane, glute 4 channels that let the glucose
0:55:25 flow in.
0:55:29 Insulin resistance, which is fundamentally related to mitochondrial
0:55:31 dysfunction, will block.
0:55:35 The insulin can bind to the receptor, but it will not transmit the signal
0:55:36 inside to the cell.
0:55:39 And therefore, the glucose channels will not go to the cell membrane.
0:55:44 The body wants that glucose out of the bloodstream, will secrete more
0:55:47 insulin to try and overpower the block.
0:55:50 So what will happen is your blood levels of fasting insulin will rise.
0:55:56 And that is a clear clue to you that there is a problem inside the cell with
0:56:00 mitochondrial dysfunction, with the cell filling with toxic fats, et cetera.
0:56:07 So I look at that biomarker as just a clear signal that there is a foundational
0:56:12 dysfunction in how our cells are able to power themselves, which is not good.
0:56:14 We need to be able to power ourselves.
0:56:15 So fasting insulin is critical.
0:56:19 Why it’s also critical from a disease risk standpoint is that
0:56:28 fasting insulin, as it rises and the body basically is trying to jam that glucose
0:56:30 into the cell, it will work for a while.
0:56:34 It will overpower the block and allow the glucose to come into the cell.
0:56:39 So for a long time, the glucose in the blood can actually look normal
0:56:41 while the fasting insulin is rising.
0:56:49 Fasting insulin changes 10 to 15 years earlier than fasting glucose changes.
0:56:52 Because it’s overcompensating for so long.
0:56:58 So we are missing this huge window where people are becoming and expressing
0:57:00 profound insulin resistance.
0:57:02 But their fasting glucose looks normal.
0:57:04 But how do we define diabetes in our country?
0:57:06 Fasting glucose.
0:57:11 So there’s probably this gigantic swath of people who are deep on the insulin resistance spectrum.
0:57:12 And they have no clue.
0:57:13 They have no clue.
0:57:17 So this is an example I mentioned in the book, which I think is so powerful.
0:57:18 And I’ll just use you and me as an example.
0:57:20 We both go to the doctor.
0:57:24 We get our fasting glucose checked because that’s the marker that we check in American medicine.
0:57:28 We each are 88 milligrams stress leader.
0:57:31 The doctor says to each of us, you’re totally fine.
0:57:32 You’re doing great.
0:57:33 You’re in the clear.
0:57:40 Let’s say I have a bunch of mitochondrial issues and my body is expressing insulin resistance.
0:57:45 And so my fasting insulin, which is not being checked, is 30.
0:57:48 You, your mitochondria are doing great.
0:57:49 You don’t have insulin resistance.
0:57:51 Your fasting insulin is two.
0:57:53 Yours is two minus 30.
0:58:02 So I am profoundly insulin resistant and have a much higher likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes,
0:58:07 Alzheimer’s, cancer, stroke, chronic liver disease, chronic kidney disease, depression,
0:58:12 anxiety, gout, infertility, migraine, chronic pain, all of these conditions.
0:58:15 And that doctor is telling both of us that we are the same.
0:58:18 But we look the same to it based on the labs they’ve pulled.
0:58:20 Because we’re both young and we look the same.
0:58:24 And actually, I’m going to probably die earlier and I am going to develop these expensive,
0:58:28 terrible chronic diseases, but I don’t know because they’re not checking that test.
0:58:30 That is so problematic.
0:58:36 Now, probably on my labs, my triglycerides would also be starting to creep up.
0:58:40 And because some of that and my blood pressure might be creeping up too.
0:58:43 So I could probably see some clues.
0:58:48 But let’s say my triglycerides were 125 and yours were 40.
0:58:51 The doctor would still say we’re both normal.
0:58:53 Because less than 150 is normal.
0:58:55 Reference ranges are all screwed up.
0:59:01 So my call to action for people is like the system’s not helping us on this.
0:59:06 You have to take ownership for these basic tests that we’re talking about.
0:59:07 It’s in the book.
0:59:09 It’s one chapter.
0:59:11 Peter Tia talks about it all day.
0:59:12 It’s in his book.
0:59:17 We need to take ownership for these tests because, A, we can with the technology and
0:59:23 direct-to-consumer tools we have today, and B, because the system’s not changing fast enough.
0:59:26 So we talked about fasting insulin.
0:59:31 I think the other one that I love is vitamin D, just because it’s involved in literally
0:59:34 dozens, if not hundreds of chemical reactions in the body.
0:59:37 It’s really a hormone that it is a hormone.
0:59:37 It’s a hormone.
0:59:38 Yeah, it’s a hormone.
0:59:41 And it’s related to immune function, metabolic function.
0:59:43 I was 12, by the way, when I just got mind-checked.
0:59:45 Now, granted, the good news is that this was a decade ago.
0:59:47 A decade, okay, okay, okay.
0:59:49 So when I first had mind-checked, it was like 12.
0:59:52 And even back then, this is before I had it at Tia, it was over a decade ago.
0:59:56 And even the doctor by then was like, “That seems a little bit low, thankfully.”
1:00:00 And I started supplementing it and got myself up to the 40s-ish range.
1:00:02 40s, okay, that’s good.
1:00:05 The standard, the NIH recommends 20 to 50.
1:00:13 And I would say that from the research I’ve reviewed, we really want it more like 50 to 60.
1:00:14 That high, wow.
1:00:16 Yeah, like 40 to 60, 50 to 60.
1:00:19 But I mean, if you’re in the 25s, it’s too low.
1:00:21 Is there such a thing as too much vitamin D?
1:00:24 I worry about that, these mega doses of things.
1:00:28 And we can talk about homocysteine, too, and help people make a dose to correct that.
1:00:30 Very hard to have vitamin D toxicity.
1:00:31 It is possible.
1:00:33 It is extremely rare.
1:00:37 There’s been times for me where I’m taking 10,000, I use a day and I recheck,
1:00:39 and I’ve barely got it up like five points.
1:00:45 To me, honestly, I think a huge part of why the vitamin D levels are so insufficient in our country
1:00:50 is because the average American is spending 93% of their time indoors.
1:00:57 We are not seeing the sun and we are not even getting like baseline amounts of sun.
1:01:03 If you think about the concept of indoors, it’s actually a very new concept in human history.
1:01:09 And we have now, we live on this spectacular planet with this spectacular star in the sky
1:01:11 that literally is our life source.
1:01:13 It creates hormones in our bodies.
1:01:19 It creates, its photon energy is what helps define our circadian rhythms.
1:01:23 Its photon energy is stored in the carbon-carbon bonds of plants that ultimately we then,
1:01:27 like when we’re doing metabolism, what we’re really doing is liberating
1:01:32 the sun’s energy from carbon-carbon bonds in our mitochondria to power our lives.
1:01:38 We are intimidated to the sun and we are choosing to spend 93% of our time in a box
1:01:40 totally separated from that energy.
1:01:41 No wonder we’re sick.
1:01:46 And then, of course, everyone’s demonizing the sun, but safe interaction with the sun
1:01:49 where we’re not getting burned is absolutely critical for our circadian biology,
1:01:51 our hormonal biology, our metabolic health.
1:01:59 And I think that if we safely could spend more time outdoors, a lot of our vitamin D
1:02:01 would be a lot, a lot better.
1:02:04 Because I think supplementing can only go so far.
1:02:05 Yeah, that’s a great point.
1:02:08 I feel like there’s more to it than meets the eye.
1:02:13 We’ll probably figure out related other positive benefits that come from the sun
1:02:15 that aren’t just vitamin D related over time.
1:02:18 Because I just get a natural mood boost from the sun
1:02:19 that you don’t get from supplementation.
1:02:21 There’s more going on there than we know of.
1:02:25 Yeah, I mean, it’s full spectrum light and we’re light-sensitive organisms.
1:02:28 Yeah, number one, everyone was like, what was it they were obsessed with?
1:02:30 Was it vitamin E or something?
1:02:32 Or was it the keratines where they were like,
1:02:35 beta-keratine was like the hotness in the 90s or something.
1:02:37 And they’re like, actually, it’s the whole range.
1:02:38 It’s mixed keratines.
1:02:42 You have to have the whole spectrum to have the whole complete picture for your body.
1:02:47 I think this obsession with just any one thing is dangerous territory to be in.
1:02:49 Yeah, well, it’s like carbon capture.
1:02:52 It’s like we focus so much on like, we need to capture carbon.
1:02:56 It’s like, we need to build an ecosystem that has a healthier relationship.
1:03:00 And this is what I love the farmer, Will Harris, who’s the CEO of White Oak Pastures.
1:03:02 He’s been on Rogan and several podcasts.
1:03:06 But what he talks about when we think about carbon and things like that,
1:03:14 it’s you can’t have linear solutions or isolated solutions for complex ecosystems.
1:03:20 And the body and the environment are complex interdependent ecosystems.
1:03:28 And so linear solutions like isolated solutions like carbon capture or statins,
1:03:35 it doesn’t work because you can’t take a heavy hammer to a complex interdependent ecosystem.
1:03:42 You need several subtle nudges that create a harmonious system for health of that system.
1:03:46 And that’s a fundamental shift we need to have in both the environmental conversation
1:03:53 and the health care conversation is how do you actually utilize multi-dimensional nudges
1:03:57 that take into account the true nature of the system to create harmony
1:04:00 rather than to force it into something which will never work.
1:04:01 It will never work.
1:04:05 Love to cover a couple more biomarkers real quick just the way I have you here.
1:04:08 And then anything else you want to add to that extended list for people.
1:04:12 Well, we’ve covered so much about fasting insulin and a fasting blood glucose.
1:04:14 What are your thoughts on a glucose tolerance test?
1:04:16 Are they still useful?
1:04:19 Because I had one done about a decade ago.
1:04:22 You drink this sugary drink, which is just like pure glucose.
1:04:26 And then they draw your blood at intervals of 30 minutes or whatever it may be.
1:04:29 And I got to see a picture of not only the spike and the curve.
1:04:32 And I guess you can do that with the CGM obviously today,
1:04:35 but you get to see the insulin response as well, which is cool.
1:04:41 And the one thing I figured out a decade ago was that it was a poor disposal of glucose.
1:04:43 So my glucose would stay elevated longer than most people’s.
1:04:49 So on the standard all glucose tolerance test, they’re not going to be testing insulin.
1:04:52 So that was a special test that I must have had to have.
1:04:53 Tia ordered it for me.
1:04:54 So it was a special one.
1:04:55 Okay.
1:04:55 There are no people.
1:04:57 So it’s just glucose.
1:04:57 It’s just glucose.
1:04:59 Oh, well then you can just get a CGM.
1:05:02 I was going to say, I was like, this is, I will never,
1:05:05 glucose will never pass my lips when I am pregnant.
1:05:07 There is no chance in hell I’m going to take a glucose.
1:05:08 That’s a hard one too.
1:05:13 Because the doctors won’t let you go unless like you actually do those glucose tests.
1:05:14 If you’re pregnant.
1:05:18 There’s doctors who are starting to bend because there are some like toxic chemicals.
1:05:19 Oh, 100%.
1:05:22 They put coloring and like artificial flavors.
1:05:23 Mine was like pink or something.
1:05:24 It’s so weird.
1:05:25 What does it do to your baby?
1:05:29 Like biking the hell out of the glucose like on day zero.
1:05:30 Yeah, yeah.
1:05:35 I will not ever be taking glucose because I’m going to wear a continuous glucose monitor
1:05:40 through my pregnancy and see if I’m ever getting above 120, 130, 140.
1:05:43 And if I do, I’ll pursue it further.
1:05:50 But I mean, if I can have a constant movie of my glucose throughout my entire pregnancy,
1:05:56 it’s infinitely more valuable in my mind than having this super unnatural load.
1:06:01 And who knows what that’s doing to you, to the baby, to your stress, your inflammatory markers,
1:06:03 and just basically getting three data points from that.
1:06:07 So now what you’re talking about is an insulin response test.
1:06:08 Which I think can be very valuable.
1:06:11 But I think that unfortunately for the average person listening,
1:06:15 there’s, I doubt their doctor would even know that it exists or how to order it.
1:06:20 I never learned about this test until Mark Hyman and Peter Atia were talking about it
1:06:20 in their books.
1:06:24 But basically it’s, you take a glucose load 50 or 75 grams,
1:06:29 then you see what happens to the insulin levels over time, which can be very, very valuable.
1:06:35 Because if you can get a baseline fasting glucose and then see what happens after the
1:06:42 glucose load, and after two hours, you can really start to see how potentially elevated
1:06:47 your insulin levels are over time and get really early signs of insulin sensitivity.
1:06:50 So Mark Hyman actually thinks that that particular test, the insulin response test,
1:06:53 is the most important test in all of medicine.
1:06:55 I’ve never had it done for myself.
1:06:59 I think at a baseline, fasting insulin for everyone listening.
1:07:02 And certainly if you have a functional precision medicine doctor who can order that,
1:07:04 that can be really helpful too as well.
1:07:05 Well, who’s your favorite?
1:07:07 And I’d be curious to know what levels is doing on this front.
1:07:12 But so many people, these concierge doctors are insanely expensive.
1:07:16 A lot of people would love to have this type of advice, this type of conversation with their doctor.
1:07:19 There’s a bunch of startups that have tried.
1:07:21 I thought one medical was going to be that for a hot minute.
1:07:24 I was like, oh, one medical is going to be like that cool little like hip doctor that gets it.
1:07:26 And then it turned into just a big enterprise.
1:07:30 And what are your thoughts on, is anyone doing it well?
1:07:31 And then what are you doing?
1:07:34 You mentioned, I didn’t even know you could order tests from levels now.
1:07:39 Is that something that level is going to hopefully play a big role in over time?
1:07:43 Certainly with direct to consumer blood work, for sure.
1:07:47 Because glucose monitoring is an incredible tool.
1:07:49 But it’s not telling you everything, as we all know.
1:07:50 Like it’s one data point.
1:07:54 And so actually having the contextual information from your blood work is very important,
1:07:58 which is why we move towards offering focused lab work as well.
1:08:00 I think that some of the companies that are doing it well,
1:08:04 I mean, in terms of easily accessible, more precision functional medicine,
1:08:07 I would say Parsley Health is a really great option because it’s telemedicine,
1:08:10 it’s covered by insurance and it’s quite inexpensive.
1:08:11 I haven’t seen Parsley yet.
1:08:13 Parsley, yeah.
1:08:16 So I always recommend that for people who are looking for an entry point
1:08:19 to a doctor who kind of gets it more.
1:08:22 And they make sure their physicians are kind of up to speed on the latest science.
1:08:26 They are all trained by the Institute for Functional Medicine,
1:08:29 which is quite aware about a lot of this stuff.
1:08:32 You’re not going to have a fight about ordering fasting insulin with a doctor there.
1:08:33 It’s amazing.
1:08:37 Then there’s the Next Health I really like, which is expanding throughout the US.
1:08:41 And that for about, I believe, $200 a month,
1:08:44 you can get access to a functional medicine, precision medicine doctor,
1:08:47 and a really extensive lab panel.
1:08:51 So that adds up, but like $200 a month is like something that is reasonable.
1:08:55 And then the concierge doctors, you’re going to be getting to that higher price point.
1:09:00 I love ifm.org, Institute for Functional Medicine.org, which has a provider directory.
1:09:04 And so in every single state, there will be dozens, if not hundreds of doctors
1:09:09 who are practicing this type of medicine, many of whom may take insurance.
1:09:14 And then books, I mean, I think that Outlive and Good Energy and a lot of
1:09:17 David Perlmutter, Mark Hyman, Terry Walls, Sarah Gottfried,
1:09:19 they’re amazing people writing about this stuff.
1:09:20 And so a lot of it is just like doing your own.
1:09:22 Yeah, Rhonda Patrick is great, too.
1:09:24 Rhonda Patrick, absolutely.
1:09:25 This is super helpful.
1:09:26 I didn’t even know about those organizations.
1:09:27 That’s great.
1:09:30 One last biomarker and I promise to stop and get back to some of the stuff in the book.
1:09:33 Homo cysteine, what are your thoughts on that?
1:09:35 It seems like nobody really knows what it is.
1:09:40 Yeah, I mean, Homo cysteine is a marker that can really give us some strong,
1:09:44 strong information about our heart disease risk.
1:09:46 But it’s not causation.
1:09:48 No, it’s more correlated.
1:09:56 There are not standard ranges, although from my understanding, and I don’t quote man,
1:10:00 this is not a test that I actually order very often, but we want it kind of less than eight,
1:10:01 I think.
1:10:06 What it does is it gives us a sense of sort of our methylation and our B vitamins sort of status.
1:10:09 If we’re not essentially recycling some of our B vitamins well,
1:10:13 which are involved in like a lot of different biologic processes,
1:10:14 Homo cysteine can go up.
1:10:20 And so it’s sort of giving us a clue about some foundational processes in the body that are
1:10:22 related to like many, many important things.
1:10:27 For people whose Homo cysteine is high, which like most people I’ve seen,
1:10:31 I rarely see a Homo cysteine that’s actually like in the super healthy range.
1:10:32 I don’t know if you’ve had it tested recently.
1:10:38 No, mine’s really high, but mine is more related to, I believe, I have the MTHFR mutation,
1:10:39 genetic mutation.
1:10:43 So I really can’t absorb the B vitamins in the way that I should.
1:10:45 Especially like full eight and 12.
1:10:47 And so if I supplement with those, like get it down a little bit,
1:10:49 but honestly alcohol is the biggest one for me.
1:10:52 If I drop alcohol, it goes down.
1:10:52 Interesting.
1:10:54 Yeah, and pretty rapidly too.
1:10:57 Yeah, most people talk about if you have a high Homo cysteine,
1:11:01 you want to get on methylated B vitamins, like because you’re basically not methylating,
1:11:02 you’re not doing that process well.
1:11:06 If you do too many of the methylated Bs, they give you anxiety and weird stuff happens.
1:11:06 Too much instant stuff.
1:11:11 Yeah, just like I get really like creepy crawlies on the arms and it’s horrible.
1:11:14 But probably everyone should be, if you’re taking a B vitamin, you probably should be
1:11:19 taking methylated B vitamins because you’re going to kind of get more of the active form.
1:11:25 But yeah, it’s a test that I would just say I haven’t gone as deep on it, to be honest.
1:11:25 Yeah.
1:11:31 But I have seen in patients and myself that it’s kind of hard to get it below eight.
1:11:32 It’s really hard.
1:11:36 Although I stopped drinking also in January and I’m now really curious to,
1:11:40 I totally know that it had a relationship with alcohol.
1:11:41 So I was excited to check it again.
1:11:44 Yeah, I took a month off last year and then I took,
1:11:47 there was one point where I just took a couple of weeks off and I happened to be
1:11:51 getting a blood draw at the same time after a couple of weeks and my Homo cysteine had
1:11:51 completely dropped.
1:11:52 Oh, that’s so cool.
1:11:54 And then of course the second I started drinking, I just choose right back up.
1:11:56 And I was like, damn it.
1:12:01 Yet another data point on why that glass of wine in the evening is not good.
1:12:02 So, okay, cool.
1:12:03 This is super helpful.
1:12:06 You mentioned something really crazy.
1:12:07 I took a note here because I didn’t want to get away.
1:12:11 A hundred thousand toxins have been introduced.
1:12:11 Yeah.
1:12:14 The scariest thing I think about is especially with kids,
1:12:19 you know, we give them like to drink out of glass bottles and things like that.
1:12:21 I think about all these microplastics that are being released.
1:12:23 Did you hear about that tea, those teabags?
1:12:23 Did you hear about that?
1:12:24 Yeah.
1:12:25 Do you know the plastic teabags?
1:12:28 Did you hear about how many, it’s like a billion microplastics or whatever get
1:12:31 released in each teabag because of the way they’re laser cut and everything.
1:12:33 They have all these little fragments.
1:12:35 What do you think about all these toxins?
1:12:37 What are your biggest offenders?
1:12:39 How do we fix them?
1:12:40 Is there such thing as detoxing?
1:12:42 Can you sweat some of this stuff out?
1:12:44 Rhonda Patrick will say, sulfurophane is great.
1:12:48 Like it shows that people that live in environments where there’s a lot of
1:12:52 pollutants in the air, if they take sulfurophane as a supplement,
1:12:56 they literally can test the urine afterwards and see the pollutants in the urine,
1:12:58 which is just insane.
1:13:00 How do you tackle pollutants?
1:13:07 It is astonishing to me what’s being allowed.
1:13:15 There is almost no regulatory oversight for what companies can put in their products.
1:13:20 And there’s a lot of really crazy loopholes, especially around fragrances and alcohol
1:13:26 manufacturing and public water, where things just don’t have to be disclosed.
1:13:32 And I think people just need to be aware of that, is that there is not some entity
1:13:37 at B protecting our products from potentially damaging chemicals.
1:13:41 There’s this concept called GRAS, which is generally recognized as safe designation.
1:13:48 But what’s interesting about it is that companies can essentially self-elect
1:13:50 to do the research on GRAS.
1:13:54 And it’s the companies themselves essentially showing safety.
1:13:56 There’s no real oversight.
1:14:02 And nothing in GRAS talks about the synergistic effects of these different chemicals being
1:14:04 in our body at the same time.
1:14:08 So people will make cases like, oh, will glyphosate round up?
1:14:12 Well, these studies, which are, of course, all paid for by industry,
1:14:16 like doesn’t show that it has a relationship with cancer or whatnot.
1:14:20 But what people fail to recognize is that we’re putting thousands of chemicals
1:14:24 on our food, in our bodies, in our water, in our furniture per day.
1:14:29 And it’s the synergistic effect of all these things together that can be so damaging.
1:14:35 So I think we all need to be really aware of it and take reasonable precautions
1:14:36 to protect ourselves from these toxins.
1:14:40 Rob Lustig, he’s a metabolic health warrior,
1:14:42 professor emeritus of neurochronology at UCSF.
1:14:48 He actually thinks that 15% to 20% of the entire chronic disease and obesity epidemic
1:14:51 is the result of the environmental toxins.
1:14:55 He was an author on like a 150-page paper that came out two years ago,
1:14:58 which was entitled Obesogens.
1:15:04 So there’s a new class of these, these chemicals are now being categorized as Obesogens,
1:15:10 which what that actually means is that many of the chemicals have been causatively related now
1:15:16 to essentially promoting fat promotion in the body through a lot of different mechanisms.
1:15:18 Some is because they change our epigenetics.
1:15:21 They literally change the folding of our genome.
1:15:24 Many through the mechanism of how they impact our microbiome.
1:15:27 And of course, our microbiome is intimidated to our metabolic health.
1:15:31 The bacteria in our gut make byproducts that talk to our mitochondria.
1:15:32 It’s incredible.
1:15:37 And then of course, as direct mitochondrial toxins through all these different mechanisms,
1:15:41 we’re turning ourselves into like little 3D printers of fat,
1:15:43 basically, because we’re blocking our metabolic activity.
1:15:50 So I would say broadly speaking, the main things we want to really be aware of are air,
1:15:58 water, what’s on our food, our personal care products at home, our home cleaning products,
1:16:00 and then like our furniture, essentially.
1:16:04 Because those are some of the things that we’re like exposed to all the time.
1:16:06 Let’s walk through each of those just real quick.
1:16:07 So air, I got that covered.
1:16:10 I got a bunch of blue air filters and I changed my filters regularly.
1:16:12 So I have take out the volatile chemicals and whatnot.
1:16:15 They try to detect them as well and turn them on.
1:16:16 So we’re cooking in the kitchen.
1:16:18 They turn themselves on and they try and get to work.
1:16:20 But also like a little life hack here.
1:16:21 Just go outside.
1:16:24 Our air outside is so much less polluted than our air inside.
1:16:25 Even in LA?
1:16:26 I think so.
1:16:32 I mean, the homes are, we’re just literally surrounded right now by products.
1:16:33 No, it’s a great point.
1:16:36 Like I laid down the other day with the play of my dog and my body hit my rug.
1:16:38 Do you know when you get the right light angle?
1:16:39 And the puff.
1:16:40 And you see the puff.
1:16:40 Oh, God.
1:16:43 I love just like all these little micro things that are floating around.
1:16:46 And I’m like, what the hell are these squiggly things in the air?
1:16:50 And I’m like, oh, that’s like nylon fibers coming off of like that I’m breathing in.
1:16:51 Yep.
1:16:54 So I mean, yes to air doctor, yes to filter.
1:16:55 What is that with air doctor?
1:16:57 It’s like a great filter, like a HEPA filter.
1:16:58 Is that your favorite one?
1:16:59 I like air doctor.
1:17:01 I mean, I don’t, I don’t know which one’s the best.
1:17:02 But I think I use blue air.
1:17:05 But the nice thing is when you take the filter out and you see that it’s black
1:17:06 because of all the stuff.
1:17:08 And then you know, okay, it’s doing something.
1:17:09 But here’s the key.
1:17:10 Go the fuck outside.
1:17:14 You know, like I just, I always step back and it’s everything’s a business, right?
1:17:16 What do we really need to do?
1:17:16 Yeah.
1:17:17 Go outside.
1:17:17 Yeah.
1:17:19 We need to get out of these damn boxes.
1:17:22 We need to take our calls on our air pods outside.
1:17:23 In the sunshine.
1:17:23 Yeah, exactly.
1:17:28 So yes, and people need to go outside because 93% of our time indoors
1:17:29 because it’s also instilling fear.
1:17:32 Like when you’re in a box and you’re not seeing the long distances
1:17:36 and you’re not seeing the star in the sky and the moon.
1:17:39 Like we get fearful because we think that we’re small.
1:17:40 Yeah.
1:17:42 When in fact we’re part of this greater huge universe.
1:17:44 I wrote this 400 page book with thousands of references
1:17:49 and I’m like key points, go outside and be in nature and eat food that’s not poison.
1:17:51 It’s not really that complicated.
1:17:51 Yeah.
1:17:53 There’s a lot of complicated stuff in the book.
1:17:57 So air, be outside and if you can filter your air, that’s great.
1:17:58 You scared me about fragrances.
1:17:59 You said that a couple of times now.
1:18:00 Very bad.
1:18:03 And like I spray shit on my neck all the time.
1:18:05 I’m like, oh, Aesop makes a cool new sand or something.
1:18:09 And I’m like spraying all kinds of stuff and deodorant as well.
1:18:11 Sadly, I haven’t found my brand yet.
1:18:14 I’m just kind of like buying the stuff at CVS and whatnot.
1:18:16 I try to not get the aluminum ones.
1:18:17 I don’t know if that’s even a thing.
1:18:18 Yeah.
1:18:21 What are your thoughts on like personal items like that?
1:18:25 Like how do you determine what you can put on your skin, what you spray on?
1:18:29 I guess the skincare stuff can be pretty clean because at least you can see the ingredients.
1:18:30 You cannot.
1:18:32 They do not have to disclose the fragrances.
1:18:33 Oh, the fragrances.
1:18:35 Are you talking about like the crappy skincare?
1:18:36 Not crappy.
1:18:40 I mean, from the highest end perfumes to the lowest end CVS product.
1:18:43 No, I’m thinking for perfumes for sure, but I’ll have it like lotions and stuff.
1:18:45 They don’t have to disclose the ingredients.
1:18:46 They have to par food.
1:18:49 Like you see it’s either fragrance or perfume.
1:18:50 And that’s contained inside of that.
1:18:56 There’s hundreds of dozens of chemicals, dozens of untested and many are known to be
1:18:59 volatile, organic compounds, endocrine disruptors.
1:19:06 So, I mean, I very much believe that we need to move every home care and personal care product
1:19:12 to either totally unscented or exclusively scented with essential oils.
1:19:18 And not that all essential oils are universally good, but they are, you know, what’s in the
1:19:22 product if it says, you know, organic lavender oil.
1:19:28 So, I think one of the easiest ways to free up capacity in ourselves from potentially
1:19:32 harmful, obesogenic compounds is to move everything towards unscented.
1:19:36 And when you actually start making that list, it’s a lot of things because it’s deodorant,
1:19:40 perfume, lotion, shampoo, shaving cream.
1:19:43 How much does that really gets in your body though?
1:19:46 I was always wondering that because like, I’m sitting there in the shower and I have
1:19:51 a friend sent me this, this bar of soap from France and said, oh, I’m going to be able to
1:19:53 get it from France and it smells amazing.
1:19:54 Yeah.
1:19:55 And I’m like, okay, there’s chemicals in here or whatever, but it smells good.
1:19:57 I’m like lathering up and whatnot.
1:20:01 And I wonder, am I being too paranoid because I’m washing it right off?
1:20:03 Is that really getting absorbed in my body?
1:20:06 I get what I’m spraying on something.
1:20:08 How big of a hit do you think we’re taking from that?
1:20:09 I think it’s big.
1:20:10 You think that’s bigger?
1:20:11 I do.
1:20:12 I do.
1:20:16 I mean, I go hiking now and every person I walk by, I feel like I’m walking through
1:20:17 a plume of fragrance.
1:20:18 Yeah.
1:20:19 Like an axe commercial.
1:20:20 Everything.
1:20:23 You have to think about the cumulative exposure.
1:20:30 And then also, I just fundamentally, I do, the skin is the largest organ in the body.
1:20:38 I don’t want to put anything in my body or on my body that I don’t know what it is, especially
1:20:42 in the face of a chronic disease epidemic where like life expectancy is rapidly going
1:20:43 down.
1:20:49 So that’s just my framework is like, this is my temple through which in this lifetime
1:20:50 I can connect to God.
1:20:52 That’s how I think about my body.
1:20:58 And so I don’t want to be putting things in or on my body that are made in a factory
1:21:03 and are undisclosed to me in the face of this horrible healthcare crisis.
1:21:04 So I think for me.
1:21:05 What are you doing?
1:21:06 You’re doing that rock salt shit?
1:21:09 I use, you know, I like, what am I using right now?
1:21:16 Like Schmitz because it, I know every ingredient on there I can recognize and it’s only scented
1:21:22 with essential oils, at least the lavender one is, but what about like perfumes, like
1:21:23 I don’t use perfume.
1:21:25 What if I just spray it on my clothes?
1:21:27 I mean, do you think you’re getting any smell?
1:21:33 I mean, the thing is, is that some of these scents are like volatile organic compounds
1:21:38 that are associated with respiratory issues, headaches, things like that.
1:21:41 There’s gotta be a brand out there that is like just super cool.
1:21:46 Well, I use Ozzie organics, which is a, it’s actually a company that’s founded by a medical
1:21:50 doctor whose mom, similar to mine, died of pancreatic cancer.
1:21:56 It put her on a journey to understanding a lot of the harmful chemicals in our products.
1:21:57 Can you do that one more time?
1:21:58 What’s it called?
1:21:59 O-S-M-I-A.
1:22:00 Okay.
1:22:06 And it’s every ingredient in all of the products is sourced sustainably and it’s, it doesn’t
1:22:08 have anything you basically can’t recognize.
1:22:09 It’s just beautiful stuff.
1:22:11 And I feel very comfortable putting it out on my body.
1:22:12 Okay.
1:22:15 I use shampoo that’s only scented with tea tree oil, like actual tea tree oil.
1:22:19 Brandon, you like to use that Dr. Bronner shit that they have with all the stuff right
1:22:20 now.
1:22:21 I have gallons of Dr. Bronner.
1:22:22 Do you like it?
1:22:23 I’m obsessed.
1:22:27 I use the unscented Dr. Bronner’s organic castile soap.
1:22:29 We use it for our hand soap in every bathroom.
1:22:31 I use it for body soap.
1:22:32 The bars too.
1:22:33 Have you tried the bars?
1:22:34 I love the bars.
1:22:35 We use it for dish soap.
1:22:44 And then we use Ecos or Blue Land for our dishes and our laundry.
1:22:49 And then I use a lot of vinegar and water for spray cleaner, like counter spray and basically
1:22:52 just mix up white vinegar with water.
1:22:56 And then I use, of course, like non-toxic makeup, like beauty counter, thrive cosmetics,
1:22:57 ritual to fill.
1:22:59 There’s a lot of brands now that are really transparent.
1:23:04 And so when you get rid of a lot of the personal care products, the bath products, the home
1:23:10 cleaning products, that’s like hundreds of exposures per day.
1:23:13 And you just feel better, of course, get rid of all air fresheners.
1:23:17 I mean, that’s the craziest word in the world, air fresheners.
1:23:22 I have a diffuser and I use, a diffuser is a Hinoki oil, but it’s like a Japanese wood.
1:23:23 Cool.
1:23:24 It’s like a Cyprus.
1:23:25 It smells amazing.
1:23:26 Sounds amazing.
1:23:27 Yeah.
1:23:28 So you’re fine with diffusers and like as long as it’s like real ingredients.
1:23:29 If you know what’s going into it.
1:23:30 Yeah.
1:23:31 Yeah.
1:23:35 So I found this amazing regenerative farm up in near Halama and Santa Barbara.
1:23:41 They basically create sage oil from their regeneratively grown sage and they make a
1:23:42 room spray with it.
1:23:44 So I’m like, I feel great about that.
1:23:45 Yeah.
1:23:47 And it’s also supporting regenerative agriculture, which is so critical.
1:23:50 So it’s just kind of knowing what’s in the products that you’re breathing and putting
1:23:51 on your body.
1:23:57 And I think one of the easiest ways to get rid of the most toxins is simply to shop at
1:23:58 the farmer’s market.
1:24:03 Because if you think about doing that, you have food that’s not covered with synthetic
1:24:06 pesticides grown in good soil that is.
1:24:11 So the food itself is going to have more nutrients per bite, which is critical for
1:24:12 people.
1:24:15 Don’t realize how much nutrients has been lost out of our food over time, right?
1:24:20 Like it’s just like night and day from where it was saying 40 years ago and day.
1:24:24 Like you think about, we have these 70 metric tons of opportunity that we take in and food
1:24:25 in our lifetime.
1:24:30 We take in 70 metric tons of molecular information in the form of food.
1:24:34 It’s drastically decreased in nutrient composition just because of the way our soil has been
1:24:39 decimated by industrial agriculture, tilling synthetic pesticides and that it fertilizers
1:24:43 that have killed the microbiome of our soil and the microbiome of our soil is what injects
1:24:44 the food with nutrients.
1:24:46 So that was dumb of us to do.
1:24:50 And then you take that food that’s already nutrient depleted and then you put it through
1:24:55 ultra processing in factories, which strips more of the nutrients.
1:24:57 Then you ship it across the country.
1:25:00 The average piece of food travels 1500 miles to your plate.
1:25:07 Every day that a food is out of the ground, it’s denaturing the helpful proteins and antioxidants
1:25:10 and micronutrients in the food, the vitamin content.
1:25:17 So if you take a food directly out of the soil and it was recently alive, you’re going
1:25:21 to have such a higher density of those helpful nutrients.
1:25:24 Every day that it’s away from its life source, it’s going to deplete.
1:25:31 And so on three levels, transport, processing, poor soil, that 70 metric tons of life-giving
1:25:37 opportunity that we put through our bodies is just becoming empty and depleted.
1:25:42 And so, one, just like people think local and farmers market is frivolous, like nothing
1:25:43 could be more important.
1:25:46 It’s food that is going to be higher nutrient per bite.
1:25:50 So in a sense, cheaper, right, because you’re actually getting more nutrients per bite.
1:25:54 You look at the obesity epidemic right now, it’s like, what’s really happening?
1:25:57 We are eating ourselves to death.
1:26:03 We’re the only species in the world that is eating ourselves to death in history, right?
1:26:07 We’re literally gavaging ourselves into the grave.
1:26:08 Why?
1:26:10 Well, if you think about the body, it’s brilliant.
1:26:14 It has nutrient-sensing cells all throughout the gut and it’s just looking.
1:26:19 They’re just always sampling and looking for what it needs to have proper function.
1:26:23 If our food is totally depleted and we’re just loading up with things that aren’t helping
1:26:30 at all like Omega-6 oils from soybean oil, the body will push you to keep eating until
1:26:32 it gets what it needs.
1:26:37 So, saying like, oh, I shop at the farmers market, I shop local, it’s not frivolous because
1:26:42 what you’re really doing is giving a higher nutrient density source to your body to meet
1:26:48 its needs so that it can function properly and it will get you to stop eating when it
1:26:49 gets what it needs.
1:26:54 Like every other animal species in the world that doesn’t have a chronic disease or obesity
1:26:58 epidemic, giraffes are an obese and they don’t have PubMed or experts.
1:27:00 They are eating real food.
1:27:03 That’s one of the easiest ways, I think, to clean up the toxins and to just help with
1:27:06 general health is because you’re not buying something covered in plastic.
1:27:08 You don’t even need to put it in a plastic bag at the farmers market.
1:27:11 Just pick it up, put it in your bag.
1:27:15 It doesn’t have synthetic pesticides and it’s not being transported long-distance.
1:27:16 Let me ask you a question about that.
1:27:22 So this is really fascinating because so many people over time have said, well, it’s organic
1:27:25 versus non-organic and organic is three times as much.
1:27:26 I don’t want it.
1:27:27 It’s not worth the value.
1:27:31 I can just wash my spinach off an extra couple of times.
1:27:35 And what you’re saying is completely, well, it’s similar, but it’s also different in that
1:27:41 if you were to take, let’s just say some spinach, for example, and you grow it on a conventional
1:27:47 farm, the soil nutrients are depleted, and then you take a local farmers market grown
1:27:52 in somebody’s backyard with a full-on worm farm where they’re producing high-quality
1:27:55 compost, and you take those two things.
1:27:59 One, you ship across the country, takes maybe a week to get to its destination, and then
1:28:00 it shows up.
1:28:03 And the other one, I’m buying the farmers market, which if you go to the farmers market, it’s
1:28:04 not going to be that much more expensive.
1:28:06 It’s not going to be like crazy whole foods expensive.
1:28:09 And you compare the nutrients of those two.
1:28:13 What would you think is the order of magnitude difference in terms of density of nutrients
1:28:15 versus the conventional versus the local farm?
1:28:17 I think it’s significantly higher.
1:28:22 The data supports that because you can look at regenerative organic and conventional,
1:28:26 and the regenerative has higher nutrients across almost every major vitamin, mineral,
1:28:29 antioxidant, compound, omega-3s, everything that matters.
1:28:30 You can also taste it.
1:28:32 Yeah, it’s true.
1:28:33 People are kids.
1:28:35 Have you had a strawberry from Costco recently?
1:28:36 It’s disgusting.
1:28:37 I know.
1:28:39 I mean, this is the one thing that I will give Daria, my wife, a lot of credit for.
1:28:41 She’s gotten our kids to eat and try almost everything.
1:28:46 And largely because she buys in season, high quality, locally grown ingredients that taste
1:28:47 so much better.
1:28:48 Yeah.
1:28:49 It tastes so much better.
1:28:57 If we reframed towards nutrient density per gram, we would find clearly that the food
1:29:02 from the farmers market is actually cheaper because you’re getting more per bite.
1:29:07 And not to mention, I love this thing that Mark Hyman says, we in America, every cheap
1:29:10 piece of food that we buy, we are paying for it four times over.
1:29:12 It’s not a metaphor.
1:29:13 It’s real.
1:29:14 We are literally paying for it.
1:29:15 We are paying for the food itself.
1:29:21 So let’s say we’re buying an $8 Happy Meal or whatever at McDonald’s.
1:29:23 You’re paying that $8 for the food.
1:29:29 You’re also paying your taxpayer dollars for the farm bill subsidies that make the unhealthy
1:29:35 commodity crops cheaper, the corn, soy, and wheat that that cow that was tortured in a
1:29:38 fine animal feeding operation was fed.
1:29:42 You paid for that through your taxpayer dollars for the farm bill.
1:29:47 You pay for the environmental destruction that’s happening from the pesticide-covered
1:29:53 synthetic fertilizer-covered food that was grown conventionally and the way that that’s
1:29:58 literally like killing our water systems and creating dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico,
1:30:03 the size of New Jersey, et cetera, et cetera, and creating a dust bowl in the Midwest.
1:30:06 You’re paying for that in your taxpayer dollars and you’re paying for the healthcare costs
1:30:11 that you will rack up due to eating that food for yourself and every other American.
1:30:15 You are paying probably $100 literally for that Happy Meal.
1:30:21 So when people talk about like organic or local being frivolous, it’s if you are someone
1:30:27 who claims to be an environmentalist and you’re buying conventionally grown food, that is not
1:30:28 an integrity.
1:30:32 And let’s say you can, you have the money to afford it.
1:30:38 The health of farmers who are spraying synthetic pesticides, they are living shorter lives.
1:30:40 They’re getting cancer at high rates.
1:30:44 The dead soil is leading to topsoil runoff, which blah, blah, blah.
1:30:52 We could go on and on, but this is not just about the nutrient content of the food or
1:30:53 even the pesticide itself.
1:30:58 It’s what’s happening to our earth that has done a trickle down effect on everything.
1:31:04 And so it’s simply one of the easiest ways to meet the needs of the body is to just buy
1:31:06 the highest quality food that you can.
1:31:09 Let’s just say people are listening and they’re like, “Okay, I get it.
1:31:10 I’m in.
1:31:11 I want to change things.
1:31:12 I want to fix my body.
1:31:15 I’m going to go do these tests, see where I stand, and then make some changes.
1:31:20 What can people expect throughout the book and where do they end up in terms of what are
1:31:21 they going to have to do?
1:31:23 I mean, is there dietary changes?
1:31:24 Is there exercise rights?
1:31:26 Like, what are they going to get out of the book?
1:31:27 Yeah.
1:31:32 I think it’s filled with practical strategies and practical tips, but I think biggest picture,
1:31:36 like, it’s in a reimagination of our relationship with our body based on connection rather than
1:31:37 fragmentation.
1:31:41 It’s a different way to look at the true nature of the body that we can build our life and
1:31:46 our health choices on that isn’t hollow, that’s actually real.
1:31:50 And there’s a very spiritual element to the book as well, because I think that where the
1:31:55 health conversation has really lost its way is, one, it’s asked us to not trust ourselves
1:31:59 and to really relinquish our agency to experts.
1:32:04 And two, it’s very spiritualized, and it’s, I think, in many ways lacking in joy.
1:32:09 And I think that there’s a real way for us to reconnect with people, with the earth, with
1:32:15 our limitless divine nature, that if we can make that the foundation of our health journey,
1:32:17 everything becomes a lot easier.
1:32:21 Because a point that I make in my favorite chapter of the book is the last chapter, which
1:32:22 is called Fearlessness.
1:32:28 The highest level of good energy is that I think a root root cause of the chronic disease
1:32:32 epidemic that we’re dealing with today is fundamentally rooted in fear.
1:32:38 It’s fundamentally rooted in us believing that we are more insignificant and small and
1:32:42 limited and scarce than we actually are.
1:32:45 If we step back and really looked at, like, the big picture of what’s happening here on
1:32:49 this incredible planet and this incredible, miraculous journey of being alive.
1:32:56 And by buying into the system of fear that we are so deep in right now in our modern
1:33:01 culture through just the despiritualized Western world, our digital culture that’s streaming
1:33:06 sensationalist media towards us 24 hours a day, our culture, our isolationist culture where
1:33:10 we don’t really have, like, the communities to help us process normal life events that
1:33:15 now we’re labeling as trauma, all this stuff has made us feel very fearful and has turned
1:33:25 us into consumers of anything that will help mitigate our existential anxiety about our
1:33:26 lives.
1:33:32 And so a real call to action in the book is to examine that matrix that we’re a part
1:33:40 of and to take steps to be freed from it because I believe a health journey has to start on
1:33:46 that solid foundation of truly waking up for us to know, like, why we’re doing the cold
1:33:50 plunge and why we’re buying the organic food, like it’s bigger than just checking things
1:33:51 off a box.
1:33:56 It’s about true limitlessness and liberation, which we all can access, but we’ve got to
1:33:59 realize the system that we’re all like deeply embedded in.
1:34:03 There is kind of a matrix style waking up moment that we have to have here because I feel like
1:34:10 we’re all stuck just so heads down in this race to oftentimes we don’t know what.
1:34:15 But like this, this kind of like environment, I remember my childhood, which was very much
1:34:17 like this where I didn’t pay attention to anything.
1:34:22 I was just like, okay, I’m just going to do whatever’s fast, as quick as the easiest
1:34:27 extra big gulp, like extra size, like the largest I could possibly get like crappy McDonald’s
1:34:28 food I was buying.
1:34:34 And it was like, it wasn’t till later in life where I finally, and especially now, to still
1:34:38 learning in these last few years that you have this moment where you realize, I need
1:34:43 to step outside of all this and to your point about getting outside and just realizing that
1:34:47 there’s so much more to explore here as a human.
1:34:53 And part of it is waking up from this cycle and breaking the cycle of alcohol, of shitty
1:34:55 eating, of binge eating.
1:34:59 And for me, some of these things like you mentioned cold plunge, some of these things
1:35:02 like sauna, cold plunge, there are tools to kind of like help you wake up a little bit
1:35:04 because you’re like, wow, I didn’t know my body could feel like this.
1:35:08 You know, I just got out of my cold plunge this morning, I’ve been doing it every single
1:35:09 day since I quit alcohol.
1:35:14 And it’s like, when you finally realize how depressed you’ve been, and I don’t say depressed
1:35:19 in like the like suicidal kind of way, but just like your emotions and like it just weighs
1:35:23 you down, you know, and then you’re like, wow, there’s a different way to feel.
1:35:28 And that can be through changing my diet, it can change my relationship to exercise.
1:35:31 And do you feel that we all kind of need that wake up moment?
1:35:32 We do.
1:35:33 What do you think is the catalyst for that?
1:35:38 What causes someone to go from like stuck to kind of waking up to something bigger?
1:35:39 Yeah.
1:35:43 Oh, well, I think we can probably do another hour podcast about this alone.
1:35:46 I think there are people, everyone kind of knows that something’s not right.
1:35:47 We all kind of know.
1:35:48 Things aren’t going well.
1:35:49 You’re right.
1:35:50 Like everyone knows.
1:35:55 Like our kids aren’t supposed to be like doing all the stuff that they’re doing.
1:36:00 Like all the kids shouldn’t really be depressed and glitching out on their devices.
1:36:03 Like we’re all kind of feeling a little flat.
1:36:05 So I think we’re at this beautiful time.
1:36:09 I think COVID accelerated it where everyone’s things aren’t quite going right in here.
1:36:10 And we all know.
1:36:14 And so this is where there’s, I think, real opportunity for light.
1:36:20 We, I believe, you know, we can be so high on life and we can feel incredible.
1:36:24 We truly, that’s why I put the word limitless in the book because it’s so possible, but
1:36:31 it does require like ripping the cord out from like we’re all matrix batteries right
1:36:32 now.
1:36:36 And it’s very scary, but I think like the vision is like on the other side, it’s very
1:36:37 beautiful.
1:36:44 I can just speak to what I experienced in healthcare as a microcosm of this conversation
1:36:49 that we’re having, which is what I saw was that the healthcare system.
1:36:57 And even in my medical training, I was in some way taught to weaponize the fear of mortality
1:37:05 and the fear of death in a very dramatic way against patients to get them to essentially
1:37:09 do whatever the healthcare system wanted them to do.
1:37:17 And so for the financial goals of the healthcare system in these insidious ways, we actually
1:37:23 weaponized fear against patients specifically about mortality to get them to take the pill,
1:37:28 to have the surgery, to be dependent at the teeth of the system, because you look at the
1:37:33 Western culture, which is so different, like you look at the Stoics, Indigenous cultures,
1:37:40 Eastern cultures, all of these cultures deeply meditate on, you know, Sufi, Rumi, all of
1:37:45 it, you know, look at Hephaeus, Rumi, Roki, Stoics, Marx, everyone’s thinking about death
1:37:51 like all the time, meditating on it, curiosity about it, thinking about it, writing the cycles
1:37:54 of life except for us in America.
1:37:55 We don’t talk about it.
1:37:56 We’re scared.
1:37:57 We hide it.
1:37:58 We hide it.
1:38:02 We put people in boxes so they can’t in the ground, so they can’t decompose.
1:38:06 We’ve literally put formaldehyde in people’s bodies so that they won’t decompose.
1:38:12 I mean, this is fucked and what I and then the system, the healthcare system and being
1:38:18 a surgeon with that scalpel, you know, it really feels very poignant because you tell
1:38:24 people if you do this thing, you take this pill, you get the surgery, the subtext is
1:38:28 you just might not die and it’s like we’re all going to die.
1:38:32 And this is part of the eternal connection cycle.
1:38:33 Death is scary.
1:38:37 We don’t fully know what’s on the other side, but it also is totally natural.
1:38:43 So there’s this funny thing of where when we actually examine the things that scare us
1:38:49 and meditate on them and engage with them, we become much more powerful because we, the
1:38:56 footing comes from a place of reality, from a place of curiosity, from a place of acceptance.
1:39:03 And then we can make decisions with just a lot more grounding as opposed to from a sense
1:39:08 of being petrified and feeling that this is a scarce world.
1:39:15 So this is why getting outside is so important because nothing is a greater teacher towards
1:39:20 overcoming the existential fear of mortality than just being outdoors around plants and
1:39:21 animals.
1:39:23 Because what you find is that there’s actually nothing to fear.
1:39:29 Like there is always spring after winter and there is always high tide after low tide.
1:39:31 And we are in a continuous cycle.
1:39:34 The morning comes after every dark.
1:39:37 It just keeps going and we are not separate from that.
1:39:40 We are totally a part of that.
1:39:44 And by keeping us inside 93% of the time, sitting in a chair, we’re literally only
1:39:48 bipedal organism on the planet and we lock ourselves in a chair, 80% of the time inside
1:39:52 a box and 93% of the time, of course we’re fucking sick and scared, right?
1:39:56 And of course we’re going to take whatever pill to try and mitigate that anxiety and buy
1:39:58 Netflix and buy this and that.
1:40:02 That is the foundation of the health journey is actually going on that path.
1:40:06 And then you think about we circling all the way back to the beginning of the conversation.
1:40:13 If one of the roots of our sickness and our deep illness in this country, mental and physical
1:40:17 is mitochondrial dysfunction bleeding up into chronic inflammation, which is fundamentally
1:40:24 a fear response in the body, what could be more scary to a body than a mind that is constantly
1:40:28 afraid of its own mortality from birth?
1:40:33 Like every single day we’re sitting here afraid and not knowing what to do with that fear,
1:40:35 that’s living in our bodies.
1:40:40 And so there is a liberation that is very deep, that needs to happen, that starts I think
1:40:47 on that spiritual level, that makes all these other things more joyful, like the cold plunge.
1:40:52 It’s not like I’m trying to avoid death by cold plunging so I can have mitochondrial
1:40:53 biogenesis.
1:40:57 It’s like I’m trying to be present and feel alive today and see what my body can do this
1:41:02 miraculous thing like you’re talking about, like it makes you feel, whoa, I didn’t know
1:41:03 I could feel that way.
1:41:05 So coming at it from joy rather than scarcity.
1:41:06 It’s so important.
1:41:11 I will say that on one side of this that scares me is like there’s people that don’t pay attention
1:41:15 that are like still in the matrix plugged in, there’s people that have unplugged a little
1:41:19 bit and then now are on this health journey and then there’s people like anything politics
1:41:22 comes to mind, but the extremes can also be bad.
1:41:29 And so I see a whole subset of these longevity people that are like I want to be the live
1:41:31 forever people.
1:41:35 And it’s you’re not embracing death, you’re actually trying to prevent it and that is
1:41:42 anxiety provoking alone because you’re taking it too far and then it becomes an obsession
1:41:44 rather than I just want health span.
1:41:49 I just want to be playing with my kids and meeting their potential partners or whatever
1:41:55 it may be when I’m in my 70s and 80s and seeing that joy and watching life unfold.
1:41:56 I’m down with dying.
1:42:00 I still have fears around it and I’m working through that stuff and I think the spiritual
1:42:04 stuff is a big component to helping alleviate some of that stuff.
1:42:08 But I also worry about taking it too far as well because some of these longevity experts
1:42:11 are coming in and being like, oh, no, we have to live forever.
1:42:13 I’m like, actually, what if it’s cool when we die?
1:42:14 Like, why do we want to live forever?
1:42:17 Like maybe that’s a great new chapter.
1:42:18 Yeah.
1:42:23 And then, you know, I think you think about a mental moray, you know, and there’s a native
1:42:25 saying that’s today is a good day to die.
1:42:29 It’s like there is something that feels very in conflict between the longevity conversation
1:42:32 and the more acceptance conversation.
1:42:37 And I think we all know like when you go down almost any spiritual path, like the true suffering
1:42:44 that we’re all actually trying to get away from is the suffering based on attachment.
1:42:49 And being attached to life is a form of attachment that causes suffering.
1:42:53 And that feels very caught up in this like what I do think is the extreme of the longevity
1:42:54 conversation.
1:42:59 Ultimately, this conversation, everything we’re all doing in the buying the coal plunges and
1:43:02 the saunas and the NAD and all of it.
1:43:08 It fundamentally is to reduce suffering because we wouldn’t do it otherwise.
1:43:09 We want to move towards happiness.
1:43:11 We want some type of fulfillment.
1:43:15 And what’s so interesting is that if you look at almost any spiritual tradition, like they
1:43:20 talk about attachment is the root of suffering and cravings are a form of attachment.
1:43:24 And we live in such a rich like cravings is just such a big or craving all the dopamine
1:43:25 hits and everything.
1:43:33 But where almost every spiritual tradition leads us is that really the only way to overcome
1:43:40 attachment and cravings and suffering is by connecting with our divine nature by finding
1:43:44 God, essentially, whatever that means to you, connecting with source spirit, something bigger
1:43:45 than us.
1:43:51 So I’ve moved more, I think, into this perspective of like, it’s that internal meditative almost
1:43:57 like separating from our senses, like being very present, being with nature and going
1:44:07 inward to find that connection with whatever you want to call it, God’s source, the field,
1:44:11 but the foundation of the health journey really has to start on because everything else will
1:44:18 never get us to like the true happiness that we’re seeking because it’s all about avoidance
1:44:19 of suffering.
1:44:28 But the only way you can truly avoid suffering in my paradigm is connecting with God and
1:44:34 God being a term that I just mean like our truest eternal nature, like, you’re not saying
1:44:37 any one genre of religion.
1:44:45 The reality is that like we are in an infinite eternal universe.
1:44:51 The mistaken thinking is us thinking we’re separate from that.
1:44:57 And if we believe we’re in a dualistic situation right now where there’s sort of a material
1:45:03 and energetic confluence that is our lives, what we forget is that part of that is the
1:45:04 eternal infinite.
1:45:08 We focus so much on the material part of the body, but not the other part.
1:45:11 So we also focus on just the sensors that we have.
1:45:15 Like there’s this idea that like everyone seems to think that I’m separate from everything
1:45:20 else because of the data that’s at the ready, which is our sensory perception, the few little
1:45:23 tiny lame sensors, they’re not lame, they’re amazing.
1:45:27 It’s not the entire spectrum and we’ve seen even with science like on what we can now
1:45:32 observe with just even like infrared or x-rays are all these different ways of looking at
1:45:34 our observable world.
1:45:38 There has to be just an infinite amount of ways to look at the universe that we can’t
1:45:39 even perceive.
1:45:40 For sure.
1:45:43 And if that’s the case, how can we act like we know it all?
1:45:44 It’s crazy.
1:45:45 It’s crazy.
1:45:46 It’s, that is our suffering.
1:45:47 Yeah.
1:45:48 That is our suffering.
1:45:52 And one thing I love to think about is so the body, it’s so cool.
1:45:55 Like we think of the body as a thing, which is totally false, right?
1:45:59 It’s completely not woo-woo, it is false to think of the body as a thing.
1:46:05 We are quadrillions of atoms that are a buzzing hive that are constantly in exchange with
1:46:06 everything else.
1:46:10 Literally every time we breathe and take in oxygen, we are changing our, our form.
1:46:11 It’s not coming through us.
1:46:13 It’s literally binding to our electron transfer.
1:46:18 And so we are a buzzing hive of matter and it’s literally a limitation of our visual
1:46:21 system that we don’t understand, that we are actually constantly in flux.
1:46:25 We shed our entire gut lining and reprint it every two to four weeks.
1:46:28 We shed our entire skin lining every 40 to 50 days.
1:46:30 We are a swirl, not a thing.
1:46:37 And I love the Taoist saying the human body is a process, not an entity.
1:46:42 I think if we just built the healthcare system on that foundation, realizing that we’re a
1:46:47 process, not an entity, we’re not a thing, so much would get better because we’d be
1:46:53 focusing our interventions on our true nature, which is a flux, which is a process as opposed
1:46:58 to thinking of, I’m a thing separate from other things and I’m alive and then I’ll die.
1:47:05 We build our entire medical system on those foundations, which are false, right?
1:47:10 Then you look at, you think about the body, this swarming hive of matter and energy.
1:47:17 And in between each atom, you know this, like 99% of it is just empty space, right?
1:47:26 And for some reason, we identify with the atoms and not the space, even though the space
1:47:28 is 99%.
1:47:34 If we identified more with the space, we’d realize that we actually are the space and
1:47:37 the space is infinity, right?
1:47:43 But yet for some reason, we identify just with the atoms.
1:47:48 So I think that a big part of the problem, why our healthcare system doesn’t work is
1:47:54 because it literally isn’t even looking at the body for what it is, which is a process.
1:47:58 And what’s so empowering about meditating on the body as a process, not an entity, is
1:48:05 that you realize that every day are lifestyle choices.
1:48:10 What that really means is how are we going to shift the process to the process that we’re
1:48:11 going to be tomorrow?
1:48:17 So we have the choice of essentially interacting, lifestyle choices fundamentally, or how are
1:48:21 we going to interact with matter and energy in a way to change the course of the process
1:48:23 of the body.
1:48:26 There’s different energy forms we get to choose from.
1:48:32 Thermal energy, sonical plunge, light energy, blue light, artificial light, more physical
1:48:40 material potential energy, food, sound energy, music, mechanical energy, hugging your partner.
1:48:46 And each of these things shift the process towards either more function or more dysfunction.
1:48:49 But I think just all this gets a little bit out there.
1:48:59 But I think the core thing to realize is that we are not basing our choices or our system
1:49:03 on a realistic view of what the body actually is.
1:49:07 It will not work if we don’t do that.
1:49:11 And so a lot of the process of unplugging from the matrix, I think, is just literally
1:49:15 stepping back for five minutes and thinking about what actually is my body?
1:49:20 And then how do I interact with the energetic opportunities and forces around me, light,
1:49:26 sound, thermal energy, mechanical energy, et cetera, to build something that is somehow
1:49:38 conducive to a more positive and joyful and connected, subjective experience of this life,
1:49:39 essentially.
1:49:40 I love that.
1:49:41 Yeah.
1:49:42 Your next book has to be a spiritual book.
1:49:43 That would be amazing.
1:49:44 Yeah.
1:49:48 You go deep into the science and I think it turns you into thinking more about spirituality.
1:49:50 That’s been my journey for sure.
1:49:51 Yeah.
1:49:52 Yeah.
1:49:53 I love that.
1:49:54 Awesome.
1:49:55 Well, I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but this has been amazing.
1:49:56 Thank you.
1:49:57 I love to find you on the internet.
1:49:59 You have an amazing Instagram, by the way.
1:50:00 Thank you.
1:50:01 I love the videos you’re putting out.
1:50:02 Thank you.
1:50:03 Yeah, I’m on everything.
1:50:08 The book comes out May 14th and it’s Everywhere Books Are Sold, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, all
1:50:09 of it.
1:50:10 Good energy.
1:50:11 Yes.
1:50:12 Good energy.
1:50:13 I’m at CaseyMeans.com.
1:50:15 I have a newsletter that comes out every week called Good Energy Living.
1:50:20 I am on Instagram at Dr. Casey’s Kitchen and I’m on every other channel at CaseyMeansMD,
1:50:21 so come find me.
1:50:22 Amazing.
1:50:23 Awesome.
1:50:24 Well, thank you for being on the show.