I Tested 100,000 People's DNA. This Diet Will Kill You - Gary Brecka

No one really tells people that have anxiety what it is. And this is why very often people don't have a specific trigger they can point to. So, they're trying to pin it on their outside environment, but the truth is that they are deficient. Usually in Gary Brecka. He's a human biologist. Who spent 20 years working in life insurance predicting when people are going to die to the nearest month. And now he's on a mission to extend your life. A couple of days ago someone did a swab inside of my mouth. What was that test and why did I do it? You did it to look at whether your parents gave you a gene mutation. And it's one of the most overlooked things in all of modern medicine because it's this deficiency that leads to some of the most common elements that we suffer from. Mental illness, ADHD, OCD, manic depression, bipolar, sleep disorders, very severe gut issues. I mean, there are so many that don't seem to be fixable with conventional therapies or dietary changes because very often disease is not happening to us, it's happening within us. And I'm not going to stop getting the message out to the masses because I just think about all the times I could have made a real material change in somebody's life and I didn't have the opportunity to do it and felt like I was you know, sitting behind a thick glass wall just watching blind people walk into traffic. Now I got a chance to make a difference. So, what are like the simple things that we can be doing to prevent us even getting these chronic diseases? So, there's five things that I would commit to doing on a regular basis. Number one is upon waking, I would I wanted to invite in Dr. Carrie Saida who's going to give me those results of my test. I want to know there's any sort of health implications that I should be aware of. Okay. So, that right there is an issue. Congratulations Diary of a CEO gang. We've made some progress. 63% of you that listen to this podcast regularly don't subscribe, which is down from 69%. Our goal is 50%. So, if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted, if you like this channel, can you do me a quick favor and hit the subscribe button. It helps this channel more than you know and the bigger the channel gets as you've seen, the bigger the guests get. Thank you and enjoy this episode. Gary. Steven. Good to see you back. Don't throw me off. It's good to have you I was saying I knew I'd do your game off there. Steven. Great to be back, man. It really is. If someone's just clicked on this podcast and they're wondering why they should stay and listen. You're going to direct the conversation. I'm going to go where you want to go. I'm going to follow my curiosity and ask questions. But what are they going to get from this conversation today if you are at the driving wheel? I'm just data on how to live a healthier, happier, longer life and maybe answers to some of the most um pesky health related challenges that they're having and I and when I say pesky health related challenges, I mean, everybody has these little tiny anchors off their stern, right? Weight gain, water retention, brain fog, lack of focus and concentration, poor waking energy, lack of deep sleep. And it's shocking how many of these conditions have a common repository. I mean, they like the hub of the wheel where they all meet. All these individual spokes to come together to common hub of methylation. And they and and methylation is essentially nutrient deficiencies in the human body. And I don't usually start off with this analogy, but I'll start off with an analogy. Um when I was in grad school, first of all, I'm a human biologist. I'm not a physician. I My undergraduate degrees are in biology. My post-graduate degrees are in human biology. But when I was in my second four years of of grad school getting human biology degree, I had to I had to take all these plant botany courses, which I hated cuz I was like I wanted to study like anatomy and physiology in human beings, but I'm studying algae and and but the one thing that stood out to me about plant physiology was let's say you have a a palm leaf that's rotting in a palm tree and you call a true arborist, a true botanist out to your house and they see that that leaf is rotting in the tree. They won't touch that leaf. They will core test the soil. And then they'll say, "You know what, Steven, there's no nitrogen in the soil." And they'll add nitrogen to the soil and the leaf will heal. Only we've stopped thinking about human beings this way. We've lost a lot of faith in humanity and mankind, the body's ability for this to heal this. And we believe very often, and this is true in some cases, that disease and pathology are happening to us, not something that happens within us. And if you go back to the tree analogy, you know, you could put it anything you wanted on that soil, right? You could supplement for the sake of supplementing. And I think a lot of people get lost in this realm where well, I heard NMN is good and resveratrol is good and CoQ10 and St. John's Wort and ashwagandha and vitamin C and I should take a multivitamin and you know, and pretty soon you have this paralysis of analysis because you're supplementing for the sake of supplementing. And in the tree's case, if you didn't find the nitrogen, the leaf never would have healed. And and the reason why most of us supplement for the sake of supplementing is that we don't have data. We just don't get data on our bodies. You know, when when when I bring and you you run into a lot of a lot more young entrepreneurs than I do, but when I run into them and I'll bring them up sometimes when I'm doing a stage talk and you can question them um about their priorities. Like, what's the most important thing to you? My health. Um how important is health to you? Oh, it's the number one priority I have. And I say, well, come come on up here and let's let's talk about, you know, how much you're you're prioritizing your health and you say, um you know, what kind of business do you have? A marketing agency. What does your business earn on a monthly basis? $148,000 a month. What's your net income? $38,250 a month. How many employees do you have? 16. What's your hemoglobin A1C? Blank. Right? Where are your testosterone levels? Um how about your triglycerides? Do you ever look at your C-reactive protein? And their face is just blank. And we have more data on our businesses than we do on our temple. And you know, I I I actually saw you on a stage talk, I believe it was. Um and you talked about how you could take anything away from me in my life. You know, you you you referred to your dog and your girlfriend. Yeah. So, hopefully you still have the dog and the girlfriend, but Yeah. you said, you know, if you took my girlfriend away, you took my dog away. I don't want I don't want to get you in a fight with your girlfriend. So, let's talk about the dog. So, you took my dog away, I'd still have my business. I still have my life, right? But if you took away my health, I'd lose everything. Right? And I think most of us don't realize the importance of it until it is taken away. And so, recognizing that that the temple is the most important vehicle that we have, I just really encourage people to get data, basic data on their body so they have some kind of road map so they are supplementing for deficiency, not just the sake of of of supplementing and that they're getting the most out of their body because that's what they're going to get That's how they're going to get the most out of their business. You know what I mean? Just picking up these little tiny anchors that are nibbling away at productivity. You know, people that suffer from ADD and ADHD don't really realize that ADD and ADHD very often are not attention deficit disorders or attention deficit hyperactivity disorders. They're actually attention overload disorders. And we characterize people that have ADD as as not being able to pay attention, but the truth is they they don't lack the ability to pay attention. They lack the ability to pay attention to so many things. And if we understand that this is an overactive mind, not a mind that's trying to pay attention to too many uh too many things, then we can go about quieting the mind and not stimulating the central nervous system to match that pace of the mind, which is kind of what Adderall and Five-Ams and and um uh amphetamines do when you when you you when you take them for ADD and ADHD. So, if we understood that as normal or as good as we think we feel, we have no idea how good normal feels until we find the missing raw material in our body and we put it back. You want to see magic happen in human beings? Find the raw material that's missing and put it back in their body. And by raw material, I mean simple things. You know, I mean, depending on who you talk to, there's 72 minerals. I think 16 of those are essential minerals. There are there are two essential fatty acids. There are eight essential amino acids. It is astounding how many people are clinically deficient in some of those basics. And then they go searching in all of the esoteric super supplements and red light therapy and and NAD boosting supplements and they're actually just missing that one of those raw materials. Basic essential amino acids, basic fatty acids, and basic minerals. And that's where all human beings should start. And then from there, we should do some testing, biomarkers in the blood. In my opinion, every human being should do a genetic methylation test, the very same test that you did. Whether they do it through me or not, a genetic methylation test is a test you'll do once in your lifetime and it will tell you exactly what raw materials your body can convert into the usable form and what it can't. Because in human beings, just like in that tree analogy, when you have a deficiency, you get the expression of disease. You know, when we say you talk about deficiencies, Mhm. it brings me back to something that I think we talked about briefly last time, which is it makes me feel like humans are being born broken. Is that true? Because if I've got if I'm deficient in something that my body needs, then does that not mean that my body was born broken? It's not that it's born broken, it's just not functioning optimally, right? And and all of us have um genetic snips. We have these that are called single nucleotide polymorphisms. We have these um our genes which are coding for enzymes to conduct these different activities in the body. And what is astounding about human beings is is how beautifully intricate the human body is. We take one raw material, we put it into a physiological process, and then we take the waste product from that process and we feed another process and on and on. So, for example, we'll take um folate from green leafy vegetables. We'll convert that into methylfolate. Methylfolate becomes one of the most prevalent nutrients in the human body. It helps to downregulate an inflammatory amino acid called homocysteine, which then turns into something called methionine, which then goes up to the brain and helps to quiet the mind. So, you start with this green leafy vegetable and it winds its way all the way up to helping you sleep. And it's not that the spinach leaf is helping you sleep, it's what the spinach leaf has become that's helping you sleep. And this sequence of events is called methylation. And what's astounding about methylation is that in many cases when it's broken, while we can't fix the gene, we can just supplement for its function. So, the most common gene mutation in the world, which we talked about last time on your podcast, MTHFR, affectionately called the [ __ ] gene, um 44% of the population has this gene mutation. I talk about it all the time and it's a simple inability to to to to convert folic acid and its derivatives um folate into the usable form called methylfolate. Well, it's very easy to supplement with methylfolate and very inexpensive, I might add, to supplement with methylfolate. And deficiencies in methylfolate are are linked to all kinds of conditions, including neural tube defects, because it's not folic acid that prevents neural tube defects, it's methylfolate that prevents neural tube defects. It's what the body converts it into, the usable form. And so, when we look at um methylation in the human body, we get an exact roadmap of what we need to supplement with, so that we're not wandering around just supplementing for the sake of just supplementing. You mentioned the entrepreneurs that you meet that you bring up on stage and you ask them various questions and then you ask them about sort of biomarkers in their body. What are the simple biomarkers you think that everyone needs to understand because listen, I'm not a chemist, I'm not going to be a biologist. So, if there's a couple of them, I can probably get my head around them and stay on top of them, but I can't stay on top of everything. Yeah, so there there's I would say three. Okay. Number one is um what's called glycemic profile, which is a a check of how well your insulin and sugar metabolism is. Yep. And it has three markers, glucose, hemoglobin A1C, 3-month average of your blood sugar, and insulin. So, definitely your glycemic profile, because blood sugar, I promise you, is the root of all evil. So, first I would I would do your glycemic profile. Second, I would do um your hormones. Can I just check on the glycemic profile? That's basically my relationship with sugar. That's your relationship with sugar. And it's it's also your relationship with insulin, because, you know, very often even people that don't eat high amounts of refined sugar and Ben & Jerry's ice cream every night have issues with insulin sensitivity. And so, as insulin rises, it causes a whole myriad of conditions. It's one of the hallmarks of something called metabolic syndrome, which we're seeing in younger and younger populations. And it's generally easy to catch early on. You have three markers that look at how well you're regulating your blood sugar, glucose, which is a measure of your the amount of sugar in your blood right now, hemoglobin A1C, which is essentially a 3-month average of your blood sugar, and then you have your insulin. And the higher your insulin relative to your blood sugar, the more insulin resistant you are, right? So, the more insulin it takes to drop your blood sugar, the more resistant you are to insulin. This is an early warning sign of metabolic syndrome. But it's not just the metabolic syndrome, it's that when insulin rises, there's a whole downstream cascade of events, because insulin's not just responsible for helping us metabolize sugar, it's also responsible for blocking other forms of energy use in the body, one of which is fatty acid metabolism. And so, generally people that have very high insulin have very high blood triglycerides. They have high blood fat. And high blood fat and elevated cholesterol are other markers for cardiovascular disease. So, by actually bringing down one biomarker, you have a positive effect all the way downstream. And I would say if you're only going to look at three things, I would look at um your glycemic profile, your your blood sugar, and your insulin, and your hemoglobin A1C. Hormone panel. Okay. Um so, looking at your hormones and then specifically looking at what contributes to healthy hormone production, DHEA and a protein called SHBG. And then I would look at basic nutrient deficiencies, um vitamin D3, magnesium, potassium, and um vitamin B12, which are on most blood panels. And that is a great place to start to get the basics. How am I regulating my blood sugar? Are my hormones balanced? What nutrient deficiencies do I have? And then the second piece of information I would get, which you only do once in your entire lifetime, is is a methylation test. And these are these are widely available, you know, all over the world. I'm sure they're very easy to get in the UK. And you want to look at five genes, MTHFR, MTR, MTRR, AHCY, and COMT. And just to be clear, so I I can dumb this down for myself here, those five genes relate to how my body processes the things I put into it at different stages in that sort of processing line. Yes, I mean, to to take for example that gene at the top, COMT. Um if you look at what COMT does, it stands for catechol-O-methyltransferase. So, it's a fancy way of saying it transfers a methyl group from the category of neurotransmitters called catecholamines. And that's a huge mouthful, but essentially what this means is these four neurotransmitters that are called catecholamines are responsible for our fight-or-flight response. So, for example, if you drove home tonight and you got out of your car and somebody was standing in front of you with a knife. Mhm. Right? You would instantly have a fight-or-flight response. Your pupils would dilate, your heart rate would increase, your extremities would flood with blood. You would begin to have a fight-or-flight response based on that stimulus. But you could also be laying in your bed at night and you could start thinking about getting eaten by a shark. And you could have the exact same response, because the brain doesn't really know the difference between perception and reality. The the similarity between these two events, a very real fear and a reaction to it, and an imagined fear, is they both meet at catecholamines. It's a rise in the same class of neurotransmitters. So, now some people are very slow to break these down. And what are the consequences of this? Well, if you've ever had anxiety or know somebody that's suffered from anxiety, no one really tells people that have anxiety what it is. They describe the feeling. So, they say it's a fear of the future. It's it's a sense of impending doom. It's a sense of anxiousness. But what is it? Physiologically, what's going on in the body? Well, very often it is a rise in catecholamines, the same class of neurotransmitters that are that are involved in a fight-or-flight response. And this is why very often people that suffer from anxiety don't have a specific trigger they can point to. They could be on a podcast like you and I are going doing right now, and all of a sudden as those catecholamines rise, they get that sensation of anxiety. And they're trying to pin it on their outside environment. They're trying to look for a cluster of symptoms outside their body. But this is because they are deficient, usually, in a complex of B vitamins, um a very specific form of B12 called methylcobalamin, methylfolate, these methylated nutrients that that downregulate these catecholamines. What else could it be? Well, I mean, there are true anxiety disorders, right? Um and generally people that have true anxiety actually know what the trigger is. They're afraid of heights, they walk to the edge of a 30th floor balcony, they have an anxiety um attack. They have a fear of flights. Is this different from So, someone's been through a trauma in their life, say they had an early trauma, and then certain things in their adult life end up triggering that. Mhm. This is that's very different from what you're saying here. So, some people that have trauma and they wake up, for example, consistently in the past, right? Their first thought of the day is about the pain that they are already suffering from. Well, these thoughts, fight-or-flight thoughts, these these thoughts have a tendency to be worst-case scenario, because they are also highly related to catecholamines. In fact, people that have that gene mutation fall into one of two categories. Think about it this way. If catecholamines rise very fast, you're a worrier. And the nickname for that gene is either a worrier or a warrior, because as those catecholamines, they call it fast COMT or slow COMT. So, just looking at this one gene mutation, if you're slow to break these catecholamines down and they rise, what are the consequences of that? Um I lay down to go to sleep at night and I'm body tired, but I'm mind awake. Right? My mind is just clicking through the day, thinking about the most innocuous little thoughts. Um I have a tendency when I consider scenarios to go straight to worst-case scenario. I'm an overthinker. Um I I am prone to anxiousness and anxiety. I walk around at a six instead of walking around at a two. So, things that would only move somebody from a zero to a two take me from a six to an eight. Very often people in their surrounding environment will say the punishment doesn't fit the crime, the way that they react to certain situations. So, this means that the mind is in awakened state, a heightened state of alertness. Think about a fight-or-flight response, but not quite to that level, but they're in a heightened state of alertness. And this gives you that that feeling of anxiety. Now, what's driving the catecholamines can have different drivers. It could be this gene mutation, it could be trauma, it could be the presence of a real fear, could be that you're claustrophobic in stepping on a crowded elevator. But for people that have not isolated trauma in their life, they have a tendency to consider worst case scenario. They find that their mind is very active at night, interrupts their sleep. Or if they get up to go to sleep at night and they go back to bed and they can't fall asleep because their mind is awake thinking about the most innocuous little thoughts. They have a tendency to be anxious. They have a tendency to be a warrior. They have a tendency to have feelings of anxiety that are not tied to their outside environment. Those are all hallmarks of that gene mutation. So can I view this as a predisposition? I you know, I often wonder why we can all be in the same situation, but we can have entirely different experiences. In the case of anxiety, some people as you report just for some reason they're just more anxious in the in the modern world than some other people are. The modern world has changed. We use screens and we have notifications. We have all this stimuli. They're struggling more in the modern world than others. Um What you're suggesting is that they could have a predisposition to worry more because of these catecholamines? Because of the catecholamines, yes. Because of these catecholamines, norepinephrine, epinephrine, ephedrone, dopamine. One of those we can also call adrenaline. And so you have the main driver of behavior and you have catecholamines. And we all know what adrenaline does in the body. So when these four neurotransmitters are not down regulated, right? Then our mind is awake and it is very often fearful. Think about somebody who has a sensation of impending doom or anxiety without any any trigger. And and and the other hallmark is they will have had it on and off throughout their entire lifetime. Even when they were a child. When they were a child, they might not have understood the complex sensation of anxiety, but they had that sensation. And then as they grew to be an adult, they understood that this is anxiety. I mean, when you when you're when you're a child, you're just fearful, right? I mean, you don't know how to explain to your mom, "Hey, I'm worried about something that is might happen in the future, that's probably not likely to happen, that's never happened, but I'm still afraid it's going to happen." It's a very complex emotion, right? So they've had it on and off their entire lifetime. It's very hard for them to point to the specific trigger that causes it. The majority of the time if they try to anti-anxiety medications, they don't work. They just make them feel like a zombie. So this is time to look inside and make sure the body has the raw material it needs to do its job, which is the complex of B vitamins to dismantle catecholamines. So if we went out into the street now and I pulled in a hundred people just off the street that were walking past, Mhm. and we did these three tests on them to look at their glycemic profile, their hormone panel, their nutrient deficiencies, what are some of the most popular things that a random group of people off the street would be missing that are central to their high performance? Um so let's let's take men and then we'll take women so so we can be specific about hormones. So in 50% of that population, you would see a clinical deficiency in vitamin D3. I have to say you've actually you actually run a lot of tests every single month. Yes. Tens of thousands. We run 20,000 a month. We do about 20,000 gene tests a month. I mean, so we so one of the unique things about the perspective that I come from is we have voluminous amounts of data. You know, we see 20,000 of these new um patients a a month testing for for genetic methylation. And on a lot of these patients, we also have blood work. So we have a full what's called a CBC, comprehensive metabolic panel, lipid panel, hormone profile, a full thyroid panel. We have their nutrient deficiencies that I'm speaking of. Um we have cholesterol, triglycerides. So we have a pretty We have about 74 biomarkers on them. Then we also get this genetic test. And then we look at what happens to certain biomarkers on average when you when you simply supplement for a deficiency. So for example, I'm not saying that every person that has high blood pressure or hypertension has this gene mutation, but two of these genes are highly linked to poor homocysteine metabolism. And there have been plenty of peer-reviewed studies. We can put the link to the one below in the Journal of Hypertension, which linked higher levels of urinary catecholamines to an and urinary homocysteine to cardiovascular disease. Because what happens is when you have a certain amino acid in particular rise in the blood called homocysteine. As this amino acid rises, it has a tendency to cause the vascular system to constrict. And if we make the pipes smaller in a fixed system, pressure goes up. But there's nothing wrong with the heart. Right? And so think about the fact that 85% of all diagnosis of hypertension is idiopathic. It's of unknown origin. Well, of unknown origin means we can't find anything wrong with the heart. We've tested the heart, EKGs, EEGs, stress tests, dye contrast studies, cardiac cath, what have you. But we we haven't looked at the vascular system. We haven't looked to see was there a simple nutrient deficiency keeping this person from breaking down homocysteine, which caused the vascular system to constrict? Because we know that there's a correlation between this amino acid homocysteine and its elevated nature and and increased risk of cardiovascular disease. So before we actually went the routes of chemicals and synthetics and pharmaceuticals, why wouldn't we just test to see see if we have an issue um dismantling this amino acid, you know, breaking this amino acid down into or something called methionine. And why don't we supplement for that deficiency and see if by putting that raw material back into the body and bringing homocysteine metabolism into normal, we can normalize this person. So So back to your question about the people in the street, you would see that 50% of them are clinically deficient in vitamin D3, cholecalciferol, you know, the sunshine vitamin. Um the darker their complexion, the higher the uh risk that they would be clinically deficient in vitamin D3. And if if you put that vitamin D3 at the center of a hub of a wheel and looked at all of the different spokes, it's one of the only vitamins that human beings make on our own. I have argued and and um people have counter-argued, but I take the position that it's arguably one of the most if not the most important nutrient in the human body. You need all You need a lot of essential nutrients, but if you really start isolating them, you know, vitamin D3 is the only vitamin that human beings make on our own. Um every cell in the body has a receptor site for vitamin D3. And when we're deficient in this vitamin, um this nutrient acts like a hormone sometimes, it acts like a vitamin other times. We make it from sunlight and cholesterol. When it's deficient, we have a compromised immune system. We know that it leads to osteopenia, osteoporosis. There are all kinds of consequences that you wouldn't think stem from a simple nutrient deficiency, but they do. One that we get from going outside in the sun. We get it from going outside in the sun. We make it from sunlight and cholesterol. Um and and you know, if you look at you know, COVID statistics, it was the second leading cause of morbidity in COVID. Um and so you if So first you would see that they're D3 deficient. The majority of them are also B12 deficient. If you look at the vitamin B12, you'd see it's less than 500. Um the higher end of B12 is around 1250. And then you would see 25 to 40% of that population would be hormone deficient, meaning that their hormones would be out of the optimal range, but not because they have an endocrine system issue per se, generally because they have especially in younger ages nutrient deficiencies. Things like elevated SHBG, sex hormone binding globulin, deficiencies in DHEA, raw materials that the body needs to manufacture hormones. So a good hormone panel will tell you not only what your hormone levels are, but what some of the nutrients are that are your body's using to make those hormones. And again, by by putting some of these raw materials, very often DHEA, not all the time, but very often putting DHEA and vitamin D3 alone back into men with deficient levels of testosterone or deficient levels of free testosterone or looking at a protein that interrupts the conversion of testosterone into free testosterone called SHBG, by actually just addressing these, you see that the hormone levels rise back to the normal range. They don't need to take hormones from outside the body and shut their production down. They need to put nutrients and raw materials back into the body so their body can produce hormones on their own. And then if you looked at at their glycemic control, you would see a shockingly high percentage of people that are pre-diabetic. It is an absolute pandemic right now because the amount of processed foods we we think that the pre-diabetes um you know, is only because people that are eating a ton of sugar. So they must be drinking soda and eating chocolate cake and Ben & Jerry's every night, but that's actually not true. When we overload the body with high glycemic carbohydrates, even if they ate a lot of white flour, white rice, white bread, white pasta, white potatoes and fruit, you know, they I'm not saying any of those things are going to kill you, but when we eat diets high in refined carbohydrates, even things that we don't consider to be sweets, it overpowers our pancreas and our blood sugar gets out of control. But wouldn't you want to know that? Wouldn't you want to know that um do I have some of these nutrient deficiencies or hormone imbalances or poor blood sugar control that could be nibbling away at my performance? Am I maybe one raw material, one methylated multivitamin away or an amino acid away from being in a state of being optimal? Maybe even not having to deal with little things like um intermittent feelings of anxiousness and anxiety or poor focus and concentration or even mild states of mood numbness. Remember that nutrients, amino acids for example, in our gut become neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters form the basis of all mood. They drive our emotion. They they um they govern our behavior. And so is it possible that an amino acid like tryptophan or phenylalanine or tyrosine, which becomes serotonin and dopamine, that deficiencies in these amino acids could lead to deficiencies in hormones, which could actually lead to deficiencies in neurotransmitters that would be labeled a mental illness. Yes. So again, I feel I feel like I'm eating your face a little bit, but but what I what I really mean to say is that you know, if if we would get basic information, basic data on the body, hormone balance, um glycemic control, nutrient deficiencies, if we would actually look at what our body can convert into the usable form and what it can't and supplement for that deficiency, you would see your body begin to thrive in ways you never thought possible. You work with a lot of high-profile individuals as well. I do. What are some of the high-profile names that you're you have permission to share? Well, clearly anyone that's shared their their journey with me on on on the podcast. Um there's a great hit piece on me and in the Daily Mail that listed I listed a lot of them. Um but uh Dana White, um Steve Harvey, uh Stephen A. Smith, um Steve Aoki, um Kendall Jenner and and I were on a uh one of her Hulu specials uh together running some IVs. There are a few others that will be public here very shortly that have gone on podcasts with me and I and it's I don't necessarily want to be known as like a celebrity biologist or working with um just working with professional athletes and A-listers. It's my message is for is actually for the non-woke biohacker. Like I don't feel like my job is to sit here and impress you with how smart I am. I feel like my job is to put information out to the masses that that is educational enough to inspire them to make a change. And and I think all too often we you know, we're we're we're all competing for eyeballs in this in this space and we're trying to become the biggest influencer and we we really forget about the mission of speaking to the masses and we just start speaking to each other. Like we we want to get on podcasts and stage talks and interviews and impress people with how much we know about the carboxylic acid cycle or you know, electron transport chain or something going on inside of the mitochondria and and those minute nuances are not what's going to impact humanity. A lot has changed since we last sat down in your life. It has. Yeah, it really has. I feel like I feel like I live somebody else's life. I really do. What's what's changed? I mean, when I when I first reached out to you, it was because I saw a clip on YouTube which had 20,000 views. And that clip on YouTube I found really interesting. So I think I I personally sent you a DM and said, "Hey, Gary, do you want to come on my show?" which I, to be honest, never personally send a DM. Because Yeah, because my team the way our system works here is the um they understand what I'm interested in and curious about right now. So they'll go out into the market and try and find people for me. They'll bring those people those people to me as a pitch. They'll pitch the individuals to me and then I have the say whether I'm curious enough to sit down and have the conversation right now. it twice. All right. Yeah. So in this case it was I I'd seen something you'd you'd done online, I don't know, more than a year ago now it feels like and it was really compelling to me. So I wanted to sit down with you. Since then I've observed you're you've kind of had this sort of meteoric rise um on loads of different podcasts and social media and your business has exploded. There is something different about you. Mhm. And the thing that's different about you that strikes me is you strike me as a man that has been through some [ __ ] Oh, yeah. Frankly. Yeah. Cuz cuz the the Gary that I met the first time versus this Gary slightly different and it's the type of thing when someone's been through some [ __ ] Mhm. And with all good things come the opposite. Yeah. It's unavoidable. Yeah, I mean you you you you go under a level of scrutiny, you know, you start off you're like so excited, you're like I'm going to get the message out and God God's blessed me with the ability to take ultra-complicated information, distill it down and get it to the masses and then you realize that there are people that are watching your videos like a 3-hour podcast and they're looking for the one gotcha moment. Right, he said sodium chloride, not sodium hydroxide. Scam artist, charlatan, you know, he pretends to be a doctor, he's not a doctor. I've never pretended to be a doctor. You will not find a a video, a stage talk, a podcast, anything in the media where I've ever represented that I'm a doctor. I go out of my way to say that I'm not licensed to practice medicine. So yeah, I have become a little more gun-shy and a little more guarded um with what I say. It's an effort to be more precise with what I'm saying. Um but I'm not going to stop getting the message out to the masses because I know that this is God's calling for me. I know that. Because I spent so many years of my life not in service to humanity. And I think a lot of people find their purpose in their pleasure and I found my purpose from my pain. What pain? You know, when when um when I was doing life expectancies and and and mortality predictions, um we were sort of brainwashed to believe that this was just data. Right? You weren't responsible for it. You didn't have anything to do with this person. I was on a mortality team and uh we were charged with predicting the life expectancy of people for um large life insurance and investment companies. So when you apply for a large life insurance com policy, you know, everybody's on an actuarial curve. Right? So you're on one, I'm on one, everybody listening this podcast is on an actuarial curve. What happens is when a life insurance company is getting ready to put 10 million or 20 million or 50 million dollars worth of risk on your life, only one thing matters. How many more months do you have left on Earth? And the science of predicting that mortality is a very accurate science. I get a lot of flak about it, but if you want to know how accurate life insurance companies are at predicting death, just look at what happened during the 2008-2009 financial services crisis. We had we had 364 banks fail. Not a single life insurance company failed. A valid death claim in the United States has never failed to have been paid. They are some of the most solvent institutions in the world. There's not another financial services enterprise anywhere on the planet that would take that level of risk on one variable. I mean, you have an investment fund. You wouldn't put that level of risk on a single variable. Right? How many more months does this person have left on Earth? And they have data that no other medical enterprise has. They have data that no other collegiate university has. Not even the government has. They know the day, the date, the time, the location, and the cause of death for millions and millions of lives. So they know what leads to early mortality. And so How do they get your sort of health biomarkers to overlap that with? Well, first of all, they they do a blood test on you. So if you've ever had a large life I'm not talking about term life insurance where you get a hundred thousand dollar two hundred thousand or even a million dollar term life insurance policy. I'm talking about permanent universal life or whole life life insurance. Um also annuities. When when you um there's something in in the states called a a SPIA, single premium immediate annuity where you give the insurance company, for example, a check for a million dollars. They guarantee you an income stream for life. Well, how do you think they're determining that income stream? They They're predicting how many more months you have left on Earth. And they they use morbidity factors and comorbidity factors and yes, they factor into to your your recreational profile, your demographic profile. It's not as simple as a blood test or a gene test, but essentially what you do is you start on a curve in a pool of a thousand lives that are similar to yours. And and your life expectancy is the dead center of that curve. So if your life expectancy is 200 months, that means in 200 months you have the exact same chance of being dead as you do of being alive. Now, what determines your increased probability of death or your mortality factors? Are you obese, diabetic, anemic? Do you have cognitive decline? Are you compliant with your medication? You know, there are all of these different debits. And then there are certain debits that we called comorbidities. Right? So if you were hypertensive, that was a debit. If you were if you were diabetic, that was a debit. If you were um obese, that was a deb- debit. But if you were hypertensive, diabetic, and obese, it wasn't 1 + 1 + 1, it was 1 + 1 + 1 = 10. Right? These were massive comorbidity factors. My job was to read the medical record and do the medical record extraction. And we had incredible data on on on these people. You saw their trust um you saw their wills, their trusts, their divorce decrees. You knew that they were treating their children differently in their in their estate, um bank accounts, brokerage accounts, tax returns, um and their medical records. And you have recent blood work on them. But when you read a medical record on somebody, there's more than just their height, weight, and blood pressure and the medications that they're on. You really start to get a profile for a lot for the for the person. And a lot of times I felt like I was really getting to know these people, oddly, because I had so much personal information on them. And you know, a lot of these people's came alive to me. I know that sounds very strange, but when you're reading about their repeated, you know, visits to the doctor and they're constantly talking about, you know, their grandchildren and then all of a sudden you see in the medical record where the husband passed away and then you see the antidepressants creeping in and you see um their their weight change, their body mass index change and you you actually as you're going through years of their medical record, you really get a real profile for them. And I started to realize that there were human beings on the other side of these spreadsheets. And there were cases where I knew that if I could have picked up the phone and just contacted that patient, I could have completely changed the trajectory of their life. And I was prohibited from doing so by law. And even at one point in my career, I was threatened with prosecution for threatening to call a patient and warn them about um a a a life-threatening potential life-threatening drug interaction that I'd spotted in the medical record between two physicians that had written contraindicated scripts in something called the MIB, the Medical Information Bureau, hadn't uh picked it up. And the data that I had said that this was going to lead to a thrombolytic event, like a plugged a blood clot, a stroke, you know, a heart attack, an embolism. And um I remember calling the human resources director and just, you know, basically saying that I'm going to contact this patient. And and and being threatened with prosecution. And I I think about it a lot. And I just think about all the times I could have picked up the phone and just made a real material change in somebody's life. And I didn't have the opportunity to do it. And big part of my career felt like I was, you know, sitting behind a thick glass wall just watching blind people walk into traffic. And so I wasn't in service to humanity. All I wanted to do was be wealthy. I was very unauthentic. And then I just woke up one day and said, "What the hell am I doing? I mean, I I have so much information. I'm a human biologist. And I have I I've been studying this database for 20 years. I could help people live healthier, happier, longer lives. And and I quit my career. And I went home and told my fiancée at the time, now my wife, that I wanted to start a wellness firm. And that was the the the genesis of of my firm, Streamline. And part of the trajectory that I'm on. And so It still sits with you? Everyday. Really? Oh, dude, it's it's Well, it it sits with me in a good way because you know, whereas before it's it's really hard to imagine, you know, somebody coming into your office and going, "Hey, you know, Gary, you know, my god, remember the um you know, the Mrs. Smith life expectancy we we we did 13 years ago, you know, you did this life expectancy was 188 months. You predicted 188 months. She died in 184 months." Oh my god, you did great job. It's amazing. The death claim just paid. And I'm like, "Is it really amazing?" You know, um when you start to realize that was somebody's, you know, it was like somebody's sister or somebody's daughter or somebody's mother, you you you start to realize that I I allow myself to be brainwashed and just think that it was data and and forget that there was human beings on the other side of the the spreadsheet. And so now I'm sorry, I'm getting emotional, but but um you know, now I wake up every day and I look over my eyes and I go, "Fuck yeah, you know, I got a chance to to make a difference." And and I talk about the research and and the fact patterns that we saw in predicting death. And I want to counter those so that we can extend life. Yeah, so we can help people live longer, healthier, happier lives. So the counter arguments that you've experienced, you know, you used the word counter argument in hip hippies. What do those sort of counter arguments tend to center on as it relates to your work? Obviously, you talked about the doctor thing. I've definitely made some mistakes, you know, I I I made a mistake early in my career of of quoting articles and not and not research, which I regret. And I and I've made the most mistakes. I think very often what I try to do is is simplify the message. I talk, for example, about a 2018 study. We should put the link to this, um which was in the journal of um uh headaches and face pain. There's a journal of headaches and face pain. I want to say it was 2018. There were 8,819 participants in this meta-analysis. So a very large um analysis. And they found a direct inverse relationship between sodium intake and migraine headaches. And meaning that as sodium levels went up, migraine headaches went down. Now, by no means am I telling everybody that has a migraine headache that you need to take a little bit of salt and you're going to be fine. What I'm saying is on your on your comprehensive metabolic panel, you can see your sodium level. When your sodium level gets to a critically low level, which believe it or not quite a few people have, people that regularly salt on their plate, people that exercise and don't remineralize with electrolytes, people that drink um filtered bottled water in an effort to filter out fluoride and microplastics, but don't remineralize their water, get nutrient deficient sodium. And you know, remembering that the brain actually doesn't have any pain receptors, but the covering of the brain does. You know, something called the dura. And the dura hates two things. It hates being stretched and hates being contracted. And what what determines whether or not it's stretching or contracting is something called the osmotic gradient, the movement of water across the membrane. And yes, it can be as simple as supplementing with sodium. Um my preference would be Baja Gold sea salt or Celtic salt, um so that you get all of the other trace minerals as well, um to permanently put migraine headaches in into remission. And then, you know, out come all of the physicians saying there's no evidence of that. Where are the clinical trials on that? And the other the other tool that I have in my chest is for 20 years I worked with one of the largest databases in the world. And we're at the point now where we see 20,000 new gene tests a month. I don't know many clinics that are that busy. So we have voluminous amounts of data. We see what happens when you have a high homocysteine and you put them on you put a patient on an amino acid called trimethylglycine and the homocysteine comes down. And then they go to their doctor and their blood pressure is normalized. Not once, not twice, not anecdotally, thousands and thousands of times. You see what happens to people when you bring their hemoglobin A1c and their insulin back down into the optimal level and their triglycerides return to normal and their risk for cardiovascular disease declines. You see what happens to C-reactive proteins when people take simple things like silica clays um and activated charcoals. And so I want to keep getting the message out that very often disease is not happening to us, it's happening within us. And very often it's happening because of deficiencies in the human body, not pathology in the human body. And you know, in in in in in the United States we're we're by far the largest spender of on health care. You know, we spend 4 and 1/2 trillion dollars a year on on health care in the US. We have the highest infant mortality rate. We have the highest maternal mortality rate. Um even though we lead the the world in flu vaccinations and breast screen um and breast cancer screening and colorectal screening, we also lead the world in cancer. Um we're ranked 52nd in life expectancy. We're ranked 39th in in health care delivery. Um we're one of the most obese nations on the planet, twice the rate of obesity of any other civilized um nation. And yet modern medicine being you know, medical error being the third leading cause of death, is where we're going to get information on how we extend our life. And I watched in medical records, I've probably read thousands of times more medical records than most physicians cuz I read medical records all day, every day, 6 days a week for for almost 20 years. And I would see what would happen when simple deficiencies would be mistaken as a pathological condition. And I've talked about these a lot. Um you know, like clinical deficiencies in in vitamin D3 for prolonged periods of time eventually present as rheumatoid arthritis-like symptoms. People get joint aches and pains and and stiff and sore ankles and they have a hard time making a fist. And and you know, when you're speaking to the wrong physician, very often a doctor will diagnose you based on your medical history. Not before they do said rates in rheumatoid arthritis, you know, actual blood uh checks, they'll say, "You know what, Stephen, you've got rheumatoid arthritis." And they put you on on things like corticosteroids. And in the mortality space, we had data. So we had data on all of these pharmaceuticals. So we knew the trajectory of of hormones and cell walls and cell membranes and um production of vitamin D3 when somebody took a statin and reduced cholesterol. And we looked at, you know, they the studies will look at cholesterol in a complete vacuum. So LDL cholesterol high, so that's bad. Let's bring LDL cholesterol down with a statin, so we decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease. But then you have a concomitant outcome where you you're reducing the ability for the body to make hormones and cell walls and cell membranes. And so you buy yourself a consequence downstream. When really, if we go back to just studying the physiology of the human body, when we in in the mortality space, I don't think I saw a single centenarian once, and we processed hundreds of these death claims. I don't think I saw a single centenarian that at the time of death did not have clinically elevated levels of LDL cholesterol. So begs the question, is simply having high LDL cholesterol a marker for um longevity or is it a a marker for cardiovascular disease that needs to be intervened with a chemical or a synthetic? And and these corticosteroids that people are put on, you know, very often they they they're they're anti-inflammatory in the beginning, but then they eat the joint like a termite. And and so these were resulting in voluminous amounts of joint replacements so accurately that we would we were able to predict that the course of some of these medications would result in a joint replacement in roughly 6 years. And so we would artificially advance people's age 6 years and we would actually schedule the joint replacement for them. And then we would reduce what's called their ambulatory profile, how well they ambulated, how well they moved. And as we reduce their mobility, we could bring in all of these diseases that exacerbated with reduced mobility. And in my mind, I'm just watching all this happen and I wanted to call this these people and say I'm not qualified to do that cuz I'm not licensed to practice medicine, but I I wanted to call them and just say Mrs. Jones, stop taking the corticosteroid. Start supplementing vitamin D3. Get your B12 level to here. Let's fix your hormones because this is killing your red blood cell count and this is what's leading you to be so exhausted. And and no one was looking at at these basic nutrient deficiencies that we would see run in blood work that would cause all of these diseases to exacerbate and people were succumbing much earlier to death or to the loss of their health span. How many records do you think you saw in your time where you saw the full picture? I would be working on two or three of these four of these cases at a time. Some were shorter cases, some were longer cases, thousands. I mean thousands. And in the tail end of my career, I started to manipulate the um record artificially just to see what would happen to the life expectancy. I would never submit that as a report, but I would say, what if I fix the anemia? What if I actually just corrected the D3 deficiency? What if um you know, I I and I was able to um take out the pre-diabetic condition or reduce their hemoglobin A1C and you would see the life expectancy jump. Right? And so these are modifiable risk factors and I think how many times you know, I would be reading a medical record and go, what? I know what this is going to happen. This is just going to get worse cuz this patient has anemia. Like the classic treatment for some anemias is folic acid, B12 and and iron. And they would give them folic acid, B12 and iron and it wouldn't correct. Then they give them folic acid, B12 and iron and it wouldn't correct. Folic acid, B12 and iron wouldn't correct. And they wouldn't realize that um that person can't process folic acid. If they gave them methylfolate methylcobalamin and iron bisglycinate the anemia would correct. But these are all sort of symptoms of further upstream issues, right? Like something that a decision that someone has made in their life typically typically Mhm. that has caused them to develop these conditions which far down the stream, like the tree you talked about with the bad leaf doctors then point at the leaf and go, we need to fix the leaf. Mhm. But it's down in the roots somewhere. Mhm. So what are the what are like the societal and individual level things that we can be doing to prevent us even getting these chronic diseases? Like the the simple simple things. I'll tell you the simplest thing that we can do. First I you know, we should think about having an an invisible fence around us. Right? Like a like a little force field. And we should filter things before they make it to the temple. Um because either we can filter things for the temple or we can let the temple be the filter. So you can drink tap water and if you drink tap water, your body will filter out the fluoride, the chlorine, the microplastics, the pharmaceuticals or you can filter your water before you drink it. Right? And and take one toxic load off your body. So what I would say is probably five things that I would commit to doing on a regular basis. Number one is upon waking, I would I would drink a mineral mineralized water. I would take 10 oz of water and I would add either a Celtic sea salt or a Baja gold salt to my water. The reason for that is that most of us are deficient in some or several of the trace minerals in our body. The boring ones, boron, manganese, molybdenum, selenium. And stir it up and just whack it back. The second thing I would do is Wait, you know what I'm talking about table salt here. No, no, no, not sodium chloride. No, I'm talking about Baja gold sea salt. That's probably the best salt that you can put in the human body because it has all 91 trace minerals. It's tested down to 250 parts per billion for microplastics and glyphosate. Um only about 75% of that sodium crystal is actually sodium. The rest of them is all of these trace minerals. You can get very close to that with Celtic salt. Right? And if you can't get Celtic salt, then you could move to a pink Himalayan sea salt. The problem with pink Himalayan sea salt recently is that a lot of it has um heavy metals cuz it's coming out of China. So I would say the best salt is Baja gold. A a great salt is Celt Celtic salt. And a decent salt is pink Himalayan sea salt. Forget table salt. I would just get that permanently out of your life. Okay, so number one, I have my Baja Mineralized. Mineralized. Um and then number two, I would I would take a DHA EPA fish oil supplement or a a fatty acid supplement with DHA or EPA oil. Um an MCT oil. I'll take a fatty acid um oil in the morning. An omega supplement. An omega. Omega 3. An omega 3 supplement. And then I would develop a morning routine that included the basics from mother nature, sunlight, grounding breath work cold shower. Okay, so I wanted to zoom in here on grounding. Mhm. I'm a huge fan of grounding. My girlfriend grounds and again, listen, my girlfriend's much smarter than I am at it transpires because everything she says, I think I said this to you last time. Everything she says to me eventually I sit here with like a neuroscientist a year later and turns out she was absolutely right. I thought she was a bit a little bit kooky for thinking that getting outside in the morning and putting her feet on the ground were at all beneficial, but I've been told time and time again it is. What is grounding and why does it help? So we get three things from mother nature, right? We get magnetism from the earth, we get oxygen from the air, we get light from the sun. The further we get away from those things, the sicker we become. Really? Yes. So the magnetism Absolutely. piece of it sounds like like a spiritual kooky stuff. I you know, I mean probably 10,000 years ago they probably thought the same thing about gravity, you know, but um but the earth has a low Gauss current. Right? I mean we were meant to spend 85% of our time outside. We spend 97% of our time indoors now. The truth is most of us are not getting enough sun. We're not getting too much sun. We're not getting enough sun. And you know, because of the way we eat and seed oils and everything that are that are oxidizing in our skin, our cancer rates are are are exploding, but not because of our sun exposure, it's because of our our diet. We could talk about that later, but when you touch the surface of the earth, when bare feet touch a pair of soil, grass, sand, we discharge into the earth. And by that, I mean you actually change the polarity in the body. And this is measurable. In fact, if you want to do a little experiment, um find find somebody that has a microscope, a basic microscope and get a slide and just take a prick prick your finger and take a drop of your blood and put it on that slide, smear it around and look at it under the microscope. I think I have a video of this on my Instagram. And what you'll see when you look at your blood in real time is you'll see most of your red blood cells are stuck together and clumped up. Not clotted, but they're attracted to each other. Because when cells have the same charge, they repel. When they repel, it increases the amount of surface area that that cell has to contact the outside environment. So now it can exchange waste. It can eliminate waste, detoxify, repair, can regenerate. So imagine that you have bloodstream full of red blood cells and they start to get opposite charges. So they attract. And when they attract, they touch and everywhere that they touch, that cell loses surface area to exchange with the outside environment. When you touch the surface of the earth for a few minutes, you will repolarize those. Prick your finger 10 minutes after you come inside, put it back on that same slide, look at your blood, it's going to look like eggs slithering around in a bowl of oil. They will bump into each other and they'll be sliding around, but they will not be clumped together and stuck. So what's going on then? May I must be coming through my feet. The charge coming through my feet. Yeah, so you're actually discharging into the earth, you know, you're exchanging um ions. It's a low Gauss current. So like a magnet, you're exchanging ions with the earth and you're discharging. You're you're you're grounding. What if I live on the ground floor, do I still have to go outside? Yes, you got to touch bare dirt, soil, grass, sand. Why can't I if I live on the ground floor, why doesn't the floor on the lower floor of the house Because they they that insulates you from um from the earth's magnetic field. There's usually steel, concrete, wood. There's other barriers, tile, asphalt. There are things that actually prevent you from actually contacting the surface of the earth. You know, there there are there are grounding mattresses that you plug into the ground wire and then um that ground wire, if you if you look at how, you know, the grounding of a circuit occurs, at some point is running directly into the ground. There will be a pole in the ground that is connected usually by copper to that wire and connected to your outlet to ground that outlet. Can I just get some kind of mat that does has the same charge? you could get a PEMF mat. But again, you know, one of the things I get a lot of flack of is is saying that you have to buy all this expensive equipment. So there's two ways to do it. You can buy a pulse electromagnetic field mat, a PEMF mat. I have one. Um they cost about five grand. Um so if you got five grand lying around, it's one of the best investments you can make. You put it in your bed, you go to sleep on it, you you run it you run a low Gauss current at night, it will help get you into a deep sleep. You'll wake up alkaline every morning. Um it will push the electrosmog right out of your your body um cuz PEMF gets rid of electrosmog, 5G, Wi-Fi. When you say you wake up alkaline every morning. So when you change the um so the pH of the blood is a it's a pretty narrow range. It's about it's about 5/10 of a point. It's about half a point. And it's a complete fallacy that you can change the pH of the blood by drinking alkaline water. Alkaline water will actually not actually change the pH of your blood. If you want to change the pH of your blood amongst other things, you you apply a low Gauss current. pH stands for potential hydrogen. It's a charge. And so by running a low Gauss current through the body or touching the surface of the earth, you actually can move the pH of the blood slightly. And that does An alkaline state is a disease-free state. The more acidic we get, the sicker we become. And so um and so if we want to move the pH of of the blood slightly, if we want to wake up alkaline, if we want to run a low Gauss current through our body, we can either touch the surface of the earth or wear a bio PMF mat. See, so they've done tests where someone lays on a PMF mat for a certain amount of time. They then do a blood test and they find that their blood is more alkaline. Yes. Mhm. Yes, and that that separation of blood cells, you can see instantly on getting off of a PMF mat. Again, I've got videos of me doing this to my production manager on um you know, I'm in my house breaking his finger, putting it on the on a slide, putting it on the uh the PMF and actually looking at it afterwards. The second thing I would do is I would learn to do breath work. I use something called a HyperMax, which is based on um Dr. Van Arden and Dr. Otto Warburg's um Nobel Prize winning work and that is the it's called multi-step oxygen therapy where you actually take an oxygen concentrator, you fill up a bag full of 900 L of 95% O2 and you actually just breathe that 95% O2 for 10 to 12 minutes while you're active on a treadmill. But if you don't want to have an EWOT, exercise with oxygen therapy machine, you can learn to do breath work, engage the auxiliary muscles of respiration, get oxygen down into the lobes of your lungs and out of the apex of your lungs. One of the one of the articles that I quoted that turned out not to be a study and I still can't find the reference for it was that after age 35 90% of people will never sprint again. And again, I haven't been able to find if that came from a clinical study or if it was an an article, but whether or not that's true, the vast majority of people stop engaging their auxiliary muscles of respiration. You know, really exercising our diaphragm, using the intercostal muscles between our ribs, pushing air down into lobes of our body. And as our posture collapses and our CO2 rises, you know, if you think about the expired air in your body from the tip of your nose to the tip of your mouth all the way down your esophagus out your bronchioles into the farthest reaches of your lungs, that's all expired air. Until you get the oxygen all the way down and out to the edges of the lung, you're not getting oxygen into the bloodstream. So as we age and our posture collapses, our respiratory rate gets more and more shallow. We're essentially hyperventilating carbon dioxide. Right? And which is accelerating aging. I mean, aging is the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease. And so by just learning how to do breath work. So one, I would ground. Two, I would I would learn to do breath work. I do a Wim Hof style of breath work. I do three rounds of 30 breaths with an extended breath hold every single morning. It is the one thing that I never ever ever ever miss. Why? Ever. Because I make little promises to myself and I try to keep them. And I find that I lose confidence in myself when I consistently break really small promises to myself. Um and I think a lot of people do this. And our bodies crave consistency. And so You lose confidence in yourself. You say, you know, I'm going to go to bed at, you know, 10:30 tonight and you go to bed at 1:00 a.m. You know, and then you say I'm going to work out and first thing in the morning and you actually don't work out. Or you get up in the morning you say, I listened to that podcast, I'm going to do what Gary said, I'm going to ground and get some sunlight and I'm going to do some breath work. And then you actually don't do it. So these are little internal promises that you make to yourself. And I feel like a lot of people break these little promises to themselves. If they're not making them to their spouse or to their kids or to their partners or, you know, they're they're they're not the big promises that everybody knows about. And I think it nibbles away at our self-confidence and our own ability to trust ourselves. And so I have a morning routine. Um I'm very consistent with it. But the one thing that is portable for me is the ability to get outside and ground and do breath work. And I never ever ever miss. I can't even tell you how many years I've gone without missing a single morning of breath work. The other thing that it does for me because, you know, human beings crave consistency. So if within 30 minutes of waking every day, no matter what time zone you're in, you're doing three rounds of 30 breaths, your body begins to zero in on that and it begins to understand that that's the morning. This is go time. And so simple to do. You know, when I'm here, I wake up. I might be at a different time because I'm usually on the East Coast, so I wake up earlier here, but I go I open the door, I go out on the balcony, I sit on the chair, it's nice and cool outside, I face the sun and I do three rounds of 30 breaths every single day. My partner brought me one of those big red light panels for Christmas. It was my Christmas present. And funnily enough, guess what my Christmas present to her was as well. A [ __ ] Yeah. You got a bed or did you get the panels? The panels. It was so sweet. like JuveXo or what did you get? idea. What did you get? Okay. I've no idea the brand. But it but she brought me one. It's like a small one. And then I was like, "Babe, open your present." And then I opened them and she opened hers and hers was like a big one. She's like literally half the size of me, so it was quite sweet. So we swapped. Um but but we now both use it. It's a bit of a routine in the morning. We both wake up. Amazing. and sit down by it. And I'm not really sure what's it's doing. I've just kind of noticed it's doing positive things. I've done a little bit of my own research on it and how to use it to make sure I'm not like killing myself somehow. But um what is it doing and why should everyone consider getting one? So it's it's referred to in the literature as photobiomodulation, photobiomodulation. So if you want to look up any of the clinical studies, put photobiomodulation and then put and dementia and Alzheimer's and skin and um inflammation and and the studies will come up. But basically, different nanometers of of of light have different effects in the body. And um so they are um well researched and and publicized to reduce inflammation, um increase microvascular circulation, so the smallest of the capillaries in our body are affected by light. Um they have a very specific effect in the mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell. So if you actually went through the wall of a cell and into the cytoplasm and found the mitochondria and you went into the mitochondria, you'd see that there's a motor in there that's spinning around. It's called the Krebs cycle. And this motor, when it spits out energy called ATP, um it you know, essentially it has two choices every time it makes a revolution, right? It it can either create two units of energy or it creates 36 units of energy. It's either 16 times more efficient or 16 times less efficient. And what determines that is whether or not oxygen enters that cycle. So one of the things that red light does is it goes through the wall of the mitochondria and it kicks out a gas called mitochondrial nitric oxide and forces oxygen to dock. So when you get into a red light therapy bed or use red light therapy panels, one of the things that's happening is you're essentially forcing oxygen into the mitochondria. You're forcing the oxygen to use mitochondria and release a gas called mitochondrial nitric oxide. This is also measurable, by the way. You can get saliva nitric oxide strips, you can put it in your mouth and before you got in a red light therapy bed, and you could look at the saliva um the amount of nitric oxide in your saliva and you'd see it's like a pale kind of yellowish pink. Then you get in one of those red light therapy beds for 20 minutes and about 10 minutes after you get out, test it again, you'll see that your nitric oxide levels are through the roof. That's a positive sign that the mitochondria has thrown this gas out and brought oxygen in. And it's to imagine what happens in a cell when you give it 16 times the amount of energy. So imagine upstaging trillions of cells to allow them to eliminate waste, repair, detoxify, regenerate just by using light. It also has a very positive effect on collagen, elastin, fibrin. Um it's known to improve angiogenesis, the new blood vessel formation. Um I was I was on the uh Joe Rogan's podcast a few months ago and um he ended up buying one of these red light um beds uh from me and we installed it in his house and he told me about four or five weeks ago that he's no longer in wearing readers anymore. Like his his eyesight has improved that much. And he said he's starting to really notice the changes in his skin. So photobiomodulation is very real and it absolutely works. But um you know, without people having to think that they have to spend that kind of money on a red light therapy bed, you can also just expose your skin to sunlight, especially during first light, the first 45 minutes of the day when there's no UVA, there's no UVB, there's high amounts of healthy blue light. Um you can still generate vitamin D3. Let me just run that back so I'm clear. Um on the point about Rogan's eyesight, uh I did some I was looking through some research about the impact of red light on eyesight and it said that it's good for eyesight and so Incredibly good for eyesight. Cuz I was wondering whether I should be looking at this thing while it's on. Yes. And then I went online, Googled it, had a rummage around and it said you can look at it, you can stare at it. You can. Yeah. You can. Because remember, there's no UVA, there's no UVB. Um and and and some of the marginal information that comes out about red light being damaging to you, you have to remember that red light is a spectrum. Infrared, for example, is a spectrum. Most most red light therapy beds run from 600 um nanometers to about 1,000 nanometers wavelength of light. As you get above that, you're you're in the infrared spectrum, but you're going all the way to 1,100, maybe even above. So so in other words, when you say infrared light, this is a non-visible spectrum of light. But there's a there's a broad number of wavelengths, right? So an infrared um red light bed will have infrared light, but it will be very low in the spectrum, so it doesn't create heat. It doesn't excite a chromophore that creates vibration and makes you sweat. When you get an infrared sauna, you're getting very high into those wavelengths. You're exciting a different chromophore in the body and your water water to be specific and it vibrates and creates heat and you start to sweat. So, you don't sweat in a red light therapy bed even though it's infrared, low in the spectrum, but you do sweat in an infrared sauna um even though it's infrared light, it's high in the spectrum. So, the infrared light and the red light that comes from red um red light beds and red light panels and face masks is incredibly beneficial for you. I mean, I've I would be scared to even tell you all the the positive outcomes that we've seen people that regularly use red light therapy because you know, you can't really make medical claims around them, but I can tell you firsthand we have seen just astounding things that people would probably consider miracles with red light therapy. You mentioned the first 45 minutes of sunlight. Mhm. First light. Uh cuz I'm try I always try to try and figure out the sort of evolutionary backstory to red light and where it came from in nature and why it was good for us as humans and why we've lost it. Those are the three sort of questions I Well, we're really photovoltaic beings. I mean, we're very tied to the circadian cycle of the sun. I mean, light causes the body to behave in very special ways. I mean, you know, you probably heard that getting first light can actually reset your circadian cycle and do more for you to sleep that night than probably just about any other sleep habit. So, your sleep routine really starts with your morning routine and it has a an effect on cortisol receptors. It has effect on dopamine I mean, on on melatonin receptors. Remember, cortisol is a hormone that responds to light, right? I mean, um when our light when our eyes are closed and light is passing through our eyelids, it has a tendency to raise our cortisol levels, which is why they tell you not to use blue light at night, right? You're stimulating cortisol and you're stimulating a waking hormone when you actually are trying to go to sleep. So, by getting first light, you're you're you're telling the body that it's that it's morning. You know, you're you're raising cortisol, you're downregulating your melatonin receptors, you're getting healthy blue light into your eyes, you're getting healthy light onto your skin. There's no UVA, there's no UVB, none of the damaging rays of of the sun. And and in 15 or 20 minutes, if if you stack them all together, you can ground do breathwork and get sunlight. I mean, just try it for 7 days. What if I have the red light at night time? Is that going to trick my body into thinking it's the morning? No. The red light won't won't do that. It's completely different. It's not the it's not the blue light spectrum that we're talking about. have red light anytime of day. Dope. You can have red light anytime. In fact, red light I find it very relaxing. I sometimes will do my um my red light bed right before bed. Sleep like a baby. We've been doing that as well at home, so I was just checking cuz I I did Google to to see if it was something that would wake me up, but no, yeah, you're right. Blue light is the thing that wakes us. Um bit of a tangent, but I just saw you have a gulp of that water. Mhm. What is in that water? Hydrogen water. Why hydrogen water? This is a little hydrogen generator I get. I don't know if you can just see that, but there's um what it's doing is a there's a little Pick it up and and you'll be able to see it in the Yeah, a little electrolysis pump down there and it's and it's basically adding hydrogen gas to the water. It's not much left in there, but if you if you fill it with water, you can see that. I mean, it is fascinating. I am so convinced that hydrogen water is the best water that you can put in the human body and there's a there's a website called hydrogenstudies.com that has about 1,350 studies um on the site. You can go to hydrogenstudies.com. When you get to that site, you can actually search um by human clinical trials or animal clinical trials, so you could sort out and look at human clinical trials and look at all of the ways that hydrogen gas is used in therapeutic treatments, reducing inflammation, improving the absorption of supplements, improving proving athletic performance, delaying um the uh addressing delayed onset muscle soreness, reducing neural inflammation. I mean, there are so many clinical trials proving the efficacy of hydrogen gas in the body. And people do hydrogen gas through a nasal cannulas, through ear cannulas, through eye cannulas. You can breathe hydrogen gas, but by drinking um hydrogen water, you have a very positive effect on inflammation in the body. When you pump the hydrogen into that, doesn't it just come out the top? No, it's sealed. So, it's under pressure. So, what it does is it forces the gas back into the liquid. Okay. And so, the liquid actually gets has a high part per million concentration of hydrogen gas. The colder the liquid, the more gas you can dissolve. So, it takes about 5 hours for it to dissipate from that. Um some people use hydrogen H2 tablets. Um I just use this this hydrogen bottle and I take it literally everywhere I go. I notice when I don't have it. How many of you started thinking about your long-term health when you hit 30? For me, this was a wake-up moment of me thinking to myself, okay, I probably need to start paying a little bit more attention now. I already felt a change in myself when I hit 30 with things like my metabolism, my energy levels. So, this year is no different. Zoe, which is a company I've invested in, but also a company that are a sponsor of this podcast, helps me to make smarter food choices all based on their world-leading science and my own test results. If I'm ordering food, I know how to make my takeaways so much smarter by adding things like a side of vegetables to eat first or choosing the option with the most fiber. Zoe helps me to make that choice. It guides me and coaches me. It's my personalized nutrition coach that I have on me 24/7. And to help you start your Zoe journey and start making smarter food choices, I'm giving you guys 10% off when you join Zoe now. All you've got to do is use code CEO10 at the checkout when you sign up. Enjoy and let me know how you get on. One of the subjects that's been really sort of pertinent culture at the moment is this subject of Ozempic. Mhm. You know, since we spoke, it's got even more popular. Um and it's everywhere. I looked yesterday at the company that make Ozempic and I believe if my Apple stock app wasn't deceiving me, the company's worth trillions now. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, it was Ozempic and so, Ozempic is is um a peptide called semaglutide. Um it's GLP-1 inhibitor. There's a there's another one called tirzepatide, which actually did better in side-by-side clinical trials than semaglutide and that's the Wegovy version um or the Mounjaro version. Um semaglutide I think is Ozempic and Wegovy. But, these are great for for people that have um that are type 2 diabetics or that are morbidly obese and have issues with cravings um and that have that have either diabetes or or or significant obesity. I think that they become drugs for vanity and what people are realizing now is all of the issues with gastric emptying, paralytic gut, um the fact that when you start to Paralytic gut? Paralytic gut, which is where you actually get paralysis in in the gut. Because one of the things that they slow is gastric emptying. And so, if you slow the rate of gastric emptying, very often contents can putrefy um in the gut. And it's not that I'm totally against these these peptides. If you use these peptides, you have to be in a weight training program. So, you have to be um doing resistance training because a third of the weight that you lose, as much as half of the weight that you lose in some in some of the studies is lean body mass. So, if you're taking a semaglutide or tirzepatide, then you want to make sure that you're also on a I would our clinical team would put you on a peptide, a growth hormone peptide like uh sermorelin, ipamorelin to muscle protect and then also make sure that you're on a a a good strength training regimen because just taking these you you don't get to spot remove fat. And so, what happens is you start to aggressively mobilize and metabolize fat very often from the cheeks and from the face and people are getting semaglutide face or Wegovy face, they're saying now, where like their cheeks get really sunken in, their eyes, the fat pads beneath their eyes um are metabolized, their eyes start to look like they're sunken in. So, if you're morbidly obese or or have a significant amount of weight to lose, you struggle with cravings, you have you're either severely pre-diabetic or you're diabetic, I mean, they can be a life-changing. But, for vanity purposes, I I don't I I think there are a lot better peptides and a lot better ways to do it. What's your life like these days? It's amazing. You know, I I think I was telling you before I got on the show today that I feel like I live somebody else's life. I really do. I I've I can't believe that I found something that I would like otherwise do for free and somehow monetized it. And you must feel the same way, you know, when you're when you're doing a podcast and you know, your your message starts to resonate, the caliber caliber of people that it attracts. I mean, the rooms that you get to get in. And for me, I have a insatiable level of intellectual curiosity. Like I'm super super curious. And the fact that I get to sit down with people like yourself, but some of the greatest minds um you know, in in the in the world that are studying longevity, anti-aging, biohacking, um cancer, mortality, um sports performance, it's it's just I pinch myself. I really do. With all privilege comes our pain. Yeah. What's the pain? Um You need to be honest with me here cuz this is why we did start this podcast many years ago. Um you know, for me um the pain is as I've as I've become more popular, I guess, um and as the message has resonated I've become a little more distant from the the folks that I initially sought to serve and support. I had a lot more individual reaction. I mean uh interaction in the beginning. And now I just simply can't interact with a number of people that would like me to, that actually do need me. And I've turned my attention to trying to train and support the training of as as many qualified people as I can so we can really touch the masses. And I had no idea how much the message would resonate. And it resonated in a way that overpowered my company. And you know, one of the worst things is kind of collapsing under the weight of your own success. And that didn't quite happen, but you know, the the message began to resonate and there were so many people coming to take our test and seek our services that really really needed us and I felt the burden of of that need. Um we were for a period of time unable to respond. We were overwhelmed and that turned to vitriol in some cases. Um that's stabilized now, but um you know, it's kind of the it's kind of be careful what you ask for. Because you might get it, but by the same token I wouldn't I wouldn't change a thing. I feel like the most blessed person in the world. What about the family impact cuz you got kids and and all that? You know, that is the greatest blessing for me. My my kids are landing at LAX in in within a few hours. They're they're in the air right now. Um So I've got three children and the oldest two work for me full-time. And my daughter just graduated from nursing school. She's starting her PhD in nursing. My son's about 14 weeks behind her. So they're both going for their their PhDs in nursing. So they'll both have their doctorate in nursing. And that is the greatest blessing in life is when your you see that your kids have a passion because I feel like you can teach your kids anything, but you can't give them a passion. And the and the fact that they think enough about me and what I'm doing to want to follow in my footsteps is that is beyond anything I can even put into words. Because I travel with my kids. I I see clients with my my my kids. You know, my wife is also in in the business and I think the pace of our life would be a lot more difficult if I didn't have my family around. I saw Dr. Peter Attia talking on a podcast once and he I'm paraphrasing so I don't know if I'm getting right, but he said you get 19 years with your kids. The first 18 is from when they're born to when they're 18 years old. And then they're gone. The last year is spread out over the entirety of the rest of their lifetime. And I thought how sad. Cuz I spend more time with my kids now than I did almost since the day they were born. And they're just becoming these adults that really inspire me. And so I think that of all the blessings that God has given me, that's the biggest one. There are a couple of other things that I was really curious about um when I knew I was going to speak to you today. One of them was kind of what we were talking about there with your family, which is just like the role of community. Mhm. Which we're clearly in a bit of a loneliness epidemic. And I Well, um you know, we knew in the in the life expectancy space um this is a material fact that if you wanted to cut somebody's life expectancy in half at any age put them in isolation. So if you put a human being in isolation, you will cut their life expectancy in half. How could you see that in the data? Because you would there there was something we we call the broken heart syndrome or caregiver syndrome um and it's it's well documented in the elderly. Um you know, when you have a companion that you've been with for 40 or 50 or 60 years and that companion passes, very shortly thereafter the second companion goes. And I always thought that was a myth, like a nice tale of heartbreak and love. Well, we call it the broken heart syndrome. It has nothing to do with a broken heart, but I mean the the emotional state, I mean the frequency in their body changes. Um and when this surrenders, this surrenders. The mind and the body. Mhm. When the mind surrenders, the body surrenders and there's a lot of emerging body of evidence that that's actually putting some science behind the the the theory that emotions can make us sick and and I think everyone's believes that in the in the stress can actually um lead to pathology and lead to disease, but um so you know that when we isolate human beings, it's hard to completely isolate them, but we know when you isolate human beings that that it it has dramatic effect on life expectancy. Some of the worst science that we and research that we do is when we study components of the body or cells from the human body in isolation. You take a cell out and you put it in a Petri dish and you look how it behaves in vitro and then you assume when you put that cell back into the body that it's going to behave that way because cells exist in communities, too. They exchange with their outside environment. They eliminate waste. They repair. They detoxify. They're they're very active community. Um and so um you know, the impact of community has a meaning all the way down to a cellular level. They do animal studies on this kind of thing, right? Oh yeah, no question. On loneliness and On loneliness and and and and isolation and it and it has a dramatic effect on life expectancy. It's been a while since I've read an animal study, but we knew that isolation had a dramatic effect on mortality. So if when when a loved one got moved into an assisted care living facility or we looked at the proximity of family members to a mother or a father that had just lost a grandmother or grandfather that had just lost one or the other spouse. Um and you knew that the family wasn't going to visit frequently and then now that person was in isolation. Um and when I mean isolation, not completely isolated, but they were isolated from daily activity. That had dramatic effect on life expectancy. It was it was a comorbidity factor that we used. And mainly in the elderly, but it would happen in younger ages as well. So I I think that community is increasingly important for me. You know, I remember when I sold my company, my my partner Grant Cardone at the time told me, he said, "Your sphere is about to get a lot smaller." And I was like that doesn't make sense. Um my sphere is about to get a lot larger. And it was true. What he said was very true. You know, my I spend the majority of my time with my kids. Um they're working for me full-time. We travel together. We see clients together. Um we're in the hunt together. Um they're big supporters of the business. They caught the bug. They're in school together. You know, my youngest still still lives with me. So my my circle has gotten so much smaller even though you see me out there with like Dana Whites and you know, and and and celebrities and athletes and those are those are the flashbulb moments. But in my day-to-day and week-to-week and month-to-month I'm I'm intensely surrounded by my family and a very small team that I have a high level of trust in that is really helping me continue to be in service. You know, to to the clients that I'm working with. What about retirement and and purpose and the role that plays in our longevity? It's been a while since I I used to have the VBT, the variable basic table memorized, but there is a probabilistic factor um um for retirement and communal interaction and um I forget exactly what that the level of impact was, but we had we had a probabilistic model where we would use this demographic data. Um but there is no question that mortality accelerates post-retirement. I don't know that I've dealt enough into the science to really accurately comment on it, but it must have something to do with the loss of the sense of purpose. When you look at blue zones and and centenarians, you know, one of the one of the key themes even beyond the diet because you know, the diets were very different. You know, Singapore has one of the longest life expectancies on earth. They eat the highest amount of meat. Sardinia has very long life expectancies. They eat they high amounts of bread, pasta, and flour. Um you know, the the Mediterranean blue zones eat high amounts of of oils, fish, and fats. But what was a common theme between all of them was mobility into older ages and a sense of purpose. And there was no such thing as assisted care living facilities where you assisted care was when grandma and grandpa moved back in with their kids and live with the kids until the day that they died. And maybe her purpose was just to get vegetables that night for for dinner. Um and grandpa's purpose was maybe to continue to make belts for the a leather smith down the road, but they they had a sense of purpose. When you think back to your your job in life insurance and the the role that you had, is there any parts of it that you look back on now and you think about that industry that are unethical? Because you can't reach out because of law and privacy to these people, as you've said. You know, that'd be a violation of a variety of different sort of policies and stuff. But is Is anything else it within the the practice of it that you find unethical? Just the fact that you know I wasn't allowed to have any contact with the patient or the training physician and I understand for good reason because most of the people that are doing this work are not licensed to practice medicine. They don't want them jumping Yeah. into the practice of medicine. Um but when you notice things that are obvious and then maybe you know that a doctor would have appreciated appreciated that phone call. Oh my gosh, I didn't know that she was on that other script. Thank you for calling me. I mean wasn't to besmirch them or or take over their practice of medicine. But I really wish that the database would see the light of day. The databases that are used in predicting mortality in my opinion could change the face of humanity. I know why they won't because it would upend modern medicine in a way in in my opinion that would be catastrophic. Destroy that business as well, wouldn't it? Cuz they need people to die, really. They do. Because they don't want to be paying out. Well, you know, annuities um need people to die. Life insurance wants people to to live a little bit longer. Okay. Oh, yeah, cuz the longer they live, the more they pay. The longer they live, the more they pay. want But annuities You've put down a deposit, basically. So, they want that deposit They guarantee me an income stream for life. Wow. So, if you could kindly expire tomorrow, that would be good for me. And the same companies do both? Same companies do both. Okay. Um there's something called a life insurance life annuity contract, a lilac. Where you actually put an annuity and a life insurance policy on the same life and you can't lose. As you know, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. Um The question that has been left for you is this one. I wish I knew who your last guest was. Okay. So, they said they're quoting someone and it says Gundalini said, "Be the change that you want to see in the world." What is the change you want to see? God, it looks like Gundalini. Gundalini. You try to read this. Gandhi. Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world." What is the change you want to see and how will you be it? Wow. Well, I want to see people live healthier, happier, longer lives, more fulfilling lives. And I will be that by continuing to get the message out. And that's why I'm here. And that's what I wake up and do every day. And I can't hold a candle to Gandhi. Um but I will spend the balance of my adult lifetime continuing to get the message out. Gary, thank you so much. Um having getting to know you on and off camera, you're such a a genuine, true lovely human. Thank you. And your intent and your intentions are so clear to me and so pure. So, you know, I've had loads of people reach out to me since our last conversation and speak to the value that your advice has had on their lives. Oh, man. Thousands and thousands of people, I mean Dude, that makes me I mean, I looked at the last conversation, I looked at my emails around that time. I searched your name and when I say thousands, I mean thousands and thousands of people that are reporting to have better lives, happier lives because they listened to that conversation. So, So awesome. They probably won't be able to reach you. So, on behalf of those people, I wanted to say thank you so much for doing what you do because it's very important. Oh, man. It's not always easy. Yeah. But you know, it's an occupational hazard. Yeah, it is. Putting yourself out there in the world as I would know. So, thank you so much, Gary. I appreciate your time. Super welcome.