← Biohack-it
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- [00:00]
A
My guest today, we get into something really interesting, controversial, because the health community is always talking about intermittent fasting. And my guest today is here to tell you he used to be a massive advocate for it. He was writing a book on it and it messed up his health.
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B
Cortisol gets elevated with intermittent fasting.
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A
If you've been following me for a while, I used to intermittent fast and I do not intermittent fast at all anymore.
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B
At any given day, stress drives cholesterol
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A
and it has drastically also improved my health.
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B
We have 10,000 years of history prior to the 20th century when we started making processed food. Higher testosterone, the better you feel.
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A
So I want to hear what you think. How much Seedos do you consume in your diet? What are your thoughts on it? Let's get into it, let's debate it. You might like it, you may not. So I want to hear from you guys in the comments below. As always, please like share. Subscribe. Most of travel for intermittent fasting and you know, for a long time. So what happened?
- [01:05]
B
Podcasts about it. You know, I hit a wall, basically. I hit a stress wall, metabolic stress.
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A
Okay, and how long ago was this that you just like hit that wall? How old were you at the time?
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B
Oh, wow. It was well that I really started feeling it. I was probably 51, 52. I was writing a book about it, almost recommending it at the time. That I'm figuring out like this is, this is catching up with me, right? I've been doing it about 12 years since about 2010. And so I'm 55 now. This was 2023. I finally realized it was screwing up my sleep. I think it was elevating my blood sugar just slightly out of normal range because of the stress hormone. And my thyroid was not in optimal ranges. It was in the, it was in the normal range but wasn't functional.
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A
And how long were you traditionally fasting and for how many days till this point?
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B
Oh, well, I would do typically, so I would do a 24 hour fast usually Monday and then the other four or five day, four or five days of the week. It was like a 15 to 18 hour sometimes and I would usually finish my fast. I was working out four days a week. So on one of those days I was usually or four of those days some sort of strength training fasted right before I broke my fast. So it was like, you know, metabolic stress, fasting, big stress moment because I'm working out and then, then I would eat and I probably wasn't even keeping up with adequate calories at that point. Because of all the fasting. So it'd be like a 15 to 18 hour fast with a workout at the end.
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A
Right.
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B
And then eat.
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A
So I was really over 12 hours. Sorry. For 12 years up to this point.
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B
I think I, I at that, on that level, it was probably five.
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A
Okay.
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B
But I started playing with intermittent fasting and 24 hour fasting, that kind of thing in 2010. It's kind of ramped into it, but y was at least five or six years of that kind of schedule. And it really, it, I think I got old enough for me to really start feeling it and seeing it, my blood work and realizing my sleep was suffering and I wasn't recovering and I was kind of like run down all the time, just burning, you know, fatigued.
- [03:13]
A
So you went from basically writing almost a book on this. You were in the process of writing a book, talking about it in all the podcasts and really promoting it to being like, wait, I need to come clean. It's not working for me. It's bro, I'm getting, I'm feeling a little broken here. And what did you do then to switch it up?
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B
Well, it was, it was somewhat gradual, so I stopped the fasting. I was talking to a sleep coach friend of mine who's actually based here in Austin, Molly Eastman.
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A
Right.
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B
And, and I said, you know, I think it was really screwing up my sleep. It worked. And she said, yeah, it works until it doesn't. And I'm like, okay, this is it. I've got to so stop fasting. And then about six months, I was still playing with, well, maybe I should increase carb intake as well. Maybe I need to start fueling a little better. And so that same year, 2023, started tracking carbs and really jumped my carbs up from anywhere. Might have been usually 100, 150 grams a day to like 250300. And I did that for a couple years until this last year. I, I, I took it up even further, dropped the fat back and took it up to about 350400 plus grams of carbs. But I noticed each time I did that my blood work improved. My blood sugar actually came down, which was not expected. My A1C came down. And that's when it was those kind of aha moments where I'm like, okay, what was I, what was I doing wrong? I was over cranking metabolic stress. And so hormones like glucagon, cortisol that stimulate fuel to be released when we're under fueled or stressed. And so I was over leveraging these stress hormones, which was having a downstream impact on, on the blood sugar recovery, sleep, as we would expect. But I didn't realize the impact that my, my diet and my routine was having on it.
- [04:57]
A
And when it comes to stepping back and really looking at the levers that you had to pull and you're bringing introducing, you know, kind of carbs back in. What kind of carbohydrates are we talking about? Like sweet potato? Are we talking about like white rice? Like what kind of, what are we talking about in terms of carbs?
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B
Fruit, sweet potato, regular potatoes, white rice, all of that. Whole food? Yeah, so whole food, carbs, you know, little honey here and there, a little. Basically not being so afraid of anymore. Once I realized what was really driving problems and really kind of dug into like metabolic disease or they're not, they're not sourced from glucose. And right now I realize glucose is not driving carbs are not driving metabolic disease.
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A
Okay.
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B
And so that's, that's a problem with the mitochondria. That's a, that's a fuel quality problem really. I would say if we're going to say an encompassing driver in our diet would be ultra processed food. And so we can pick out different ingredients in there, we can argue over which ingredients it is, but I think most of us should be able to agree ultra processed food is what's ruined our diet for the last 120 years or so.
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A
So you touched upon something which I think is really important, talking about the role of the mitochondria. So we can break down on why the mitochondria is so important in the body and also why the disruption to mitochondria essentially producing energy, what it's doing to us when it comes to aging, inflammation, chronic disease.
- [06:20]
B
Right. So mitochondria is where we make cellular energy, which is called ATP. Right. So fuel, the food that we eat is potential energy. It is the building block, sort of, it's what we ingest to convert into ATP, which is what our body actually uses. And the fuel that we bring in has affects that production in different ways. Some are more inflammatory, some create more oxidative stress in the mitochondria. But basically that mitochondrial efficiency that impacts how well our body makes energy. And then our body responds to that efficiency or inefficiency with, if we're making plenty of it, if it's clean energy, you know, we're making good energy. It's, it runs well, we build muscle, we sleep well, we feel good when it's low, then we have Our stress hormones kicking to make up for the, the lack of energy like you would for any stressful state or even almost like a disturbation state, whether you're eating or not. It, it's going to release more fat from fat stores, more free fatty acids, more glucose from the liver. But what's happening in that mitochondria is, is really the, it's considered a pacemaker for aging. So the makeup of that mitochondria, it's. Without getting too nitty gritty in the processes, it's very sensitive to oxidative stress primarily because it's made up of a lot of. There's a lot of polyunsaturated fat in there which are very sensitive to that. And then our diet can reflect the level of oxidation that it's sensitive to based on how much polyunsaturated fats in it. And this is, this is studied across all number of species to the point that makeup of polyunsaturated fat in there, that, that mitochondria is considered a pacemaker of so energy efficiency, but also of mitochondrial aging. The efficiency determines the pace at which we age over time. And we can impact what's going on in there within a matter of days to weeks with our diet. That efficiency is really where I see the beginning of metabolic disease. All these things we're concerned about. Diabetes, fatty liver disease, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, cardiovascular disease for sure, even neurodegenerative disorders. When we have that, that oxidative stress going in there, say in a heart muscle, right, it's gonna oxidize the cholesterol that is coming through the mitochondria in the heart muscle, which then when you have oxidized ldl, we know that's what attracts some macrophages which then turn that into plaque in our arteries in the brain. Well, the brain's very sensitive oxidative stress and that's why it prefers glucose. And so when we have oxidative stress within the fat, so cholesterol is like 20% of the weight of the brain is in, is cholesterol as well as lots of fat. The brain is just a big fatty organ. So if we're oxidizing fats and lipids through our inefficient mitochondrial processes, we're going to have all these basically energy inefficiency in the brain, which is dangerous cell death. You're going to have the, all the, the tank, all the problems with the tangles and so forth in the brain that we talk about for, you know, with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and so all those get, get kind of gummed up essentially from the inflammation that you mentioned. And that's where most of us, when we say inflammation, this is the root of it, right? This is the root of inflammation.
- [09:45]
A
So you're basically saying that when you were over fasting, you were causing so much oxidative stress onto your body, which was affecting your thyroid, it's affecting your sleep, everything. So it was a negative cascade, essentially. So a lever that we're taught is like, oh, intermittent fasting is good for you in some cases, obviously bio individual as well. It was actually working in reverse for you. So it's actually destroying your mitochondrial health because of the chronic inflammation and the disruption to all your other key markers that it was causing.
- [10:11]
B
Right. So I overdid it. And so these days if someone said I want to do some fasting for autophagy, because autophagy is so important. Yeah, but a lot of things cause usually we have autophagy because we have a disruption or some sort of breakdown. I mean, heavy metals will cause you to have autophagy, right? Excess lack of sleep, sucking in diesel fumes will cause autophagy. So just because something causes autophagy, it's not good for you, doesn't necessarily mean it's good for you.
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A
So what is, how do we cause a healthy autophagy in a way that our body does not, doesn't have to be, you know, kind of, we're not destroying it in the same time?
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B
Well, we do it in small amounts, we do it in acute. So like a workout, a one hour strength training workout creates some level of autophagy. And if you're, if you're working out two, three, four times a week, that's probably enough autophagy for, for your body to be efficiently, you know, mobilizing or utilizing the response without overdoing it.
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Okay.
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Or you could do some people, if they really want to fast, you want to do a two or three day fast, once a quarter, once every three months. So make it very acute, do your fast, get the autophagy you're after, if you really feel that's a need, and then move on and go back to eating a good, healthy, nutrient dense diet.
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A
Right.
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B
But stress is something we have to account for. All the other stressors in our life, our careers, if you have a family, travel, you're sleeping well. Travel workouts are productive stressors, jobs productive stressors, but we still have to account for them.
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A
Okay?
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And so we're, we're in a, we're in an Environment where we're constantly hitting stress. If we're not managing that stress in inputs.
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A
Right.
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B
You can, you can wrap up a pretty wrapping around and make it, make it. Oh but it does this and this. It's good for me and there's studies on it.
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A
Overstressing is also not good.
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B
Yeah, we have to look at how everything is impacting.
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A
Right. I tend to do that. So there are days that let's say I have a lot going on with work or a lot of travel and I'm overstressed then I'll pull back a little bit on workout. I for example don't personally intermittent fast. I need to, I wasn't taking enough calories, I was running on fumes. So me personally as a woman, my hormones are sensitive. I'm in my early 40s, I want to be careful with like perimenopause and not over stressing out my body and pushing myself further into menopause. So I personally do not fast at all. I try to eat by 7:38 and then kind of like just that's my window. Right. It's a regular window. I'm not going out of my way to fast. And if anything from a female perspective we actually need to start our day with healthy fats and, and protein cuz that's what stabilizes our blood sugar throughout the day. So for me personally I wake up and within the first 20 to 30 minutes of waking up I'm drinking a bone broth before I drink my coffee and then trying to take in a protein shake before I go to the gym. The protein shake's giving me about 35 to 40 grams of protein. So I'm starting my day like that and I feel so much better. I'm not crashing, I have more energy, I'm building more muscle mass. So I do think intermittent fasting is bio individual. It depends on where you are in your life. It depends on the stressors like you said, you just pointed out that you are experiencing. And it also depends on how the other I always look at as our health as a stool with different legs. How is everything? How's your thyroid functioning? How is your sleep that you just discussed? What are the other factors that are going into and can your body perform well under this sort of stress which is intermittent fasting.
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B
Yeah, well cortisol gets elevated with intermittent fasting, right. Over time depending on the timeframe. But any of those stressors and with metabolic disease and with low or zero carb dieting you have glucagon, cortisol. These are all stress hormones that can elevate and they stimulate that I, that response I mentioned where it's stimulating free fatty acids and glucose being released. And that sounds like a good thing, but not under those conditions.
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A
Right.
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B
And so cortisol, when it becomes elevated and women are particularly more sensitive than men, as they should be, because it impacts, it's just usually a starvation or stress response if you have a body that's in a position to make another human to get pregnant.
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A
Correct.
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It's not a good, good time to do that if there's a lot of stress, if there's a food, not food available.
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Yeah. Because your body instantly goes, I don't, I'm not gonna be able to survive.
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B
Right. So why bring another person into the world at that point? But cortisol has a negative impact on thyroid production, on sex hormone production, both at the pituitary with the LH and FSH being released, which stimulate sex hormone production, as well as directly at gonads where it's ovaries or testes. It's going to reduce testosterone or estrogen directly as well. So cortisol really has a impact on all those things, all our metabolic hormones, sex hormones, as well as sleep patterns. So, you know, it's supposed to be high in the morning, low in the evening. What they find with people who are doing a lot of fasting, it can start. Flip that rhythm.
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Yeah.
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Low in the morning, so you're groggy, high in the evening, you don't sleep as well. And so these are things that people don't even grasp or realize are impactful. They aren't discussed because they don't fit into a 90 second reel.
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Right.
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Very well. Exactly. So this, the human body is not
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just an Instagram highlight.
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It's not an Instagram highlight. It's really much more difficult than it's complex. And we're looking at a top down chasing symptoms, chasing blood sugar chasing. And everything starts much deeper.
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A
Right. So for our audience listening, and let's say if they want to experiment, if it's men or women, want to experiment with intermittent fasting 1 and see if it works for them, because everybody's individual, what should they start with and what are the markers that they should look out for and signs and symptoms that come up to see, is it working for me or is it not?
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B
I hate to even, I hate to even recommend it. I would do it infrequently.
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A
Okay.
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If you're going to do it.
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So maybe try two days out of the week and see how you feel Correct. Okay.
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B
Yeah. And not back to back.
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Okay.
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I would space them.
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A
Okay. So how.
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B
I'm not sure what they're after. It's like, what it, what, what goal are you after? I don't think it's a great weight loss tool, personally, because of the elevated cortisol. Just like I wouldn't recommend caloric restriction because you're not fixing the fuel problem. So it's like, what are you chasing with this? Some guys love the energy. Oh, I feel like I'm on, I'm on fasting brain. I'm like, those are stress hormones. Isn't your body, isn't your, aren't you stressed enough with your job? And so I guess if someone were to do that, play with it, I would say space it out. Make sure when you start eating you're getting, you're, you're hitting your maintenance level of calories. So you're not creating a, this huge caloric restriction when you do it. And, and make sure you're refueling with very clean food. Food. But don't do it. If you're already stressed with your job, with your family, with anything else, you're hitting a hard workout.
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A
Like, don't add that to the mix as well.
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B
Don't add to the mix. Fasted workouts are not ideal.
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Right.
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B
I just wouldn't recommend, especially someone over 40. You know, we can tolerate a lot of stress in our 20s and 30s. Doesn't mean we should.
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Right.
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We tolerate a lot of things. Staying out late, drinking too much, waking up, eating pizza first thing in the morning. Those were dumb things. We, we can't continue to live and survive our 20s into our 40s, 50s, and 60s.
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Right.
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That's not a good plan.
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A
I interviewed. Do you know, you know Dr. Amy Shaw? Right. She's incredible. So I interviewed her for the, for the show like I think it was last year when we were in Saudi. And she talks about how like women, when we're in our 20s and 30s, we have such a different. Our response to stress is so much easier because our hormones support that. Right. You have estrogel progesterone. Everything's kind of moving. Testosterone is kind of all in play as we get older and our hormones start getting affected and you start going towards a little bit edging towards perimenopause, the same stressor that we would have experienced in our 20s and gotten up and said, oh, it's not a big deal. We get stuck in fight or flight. It takes us longer to recover. It disrupts our sleep. We get more overwhelmed quickly. Because our brain is not getting fueled properly. Right. And then if you add in the other layers of doing too much, overworking out, not getting enough sleep and then intermittent fasting, it's chaotic on women's health. So I think even cold plunging, I have a take on cold plunging for women is, it's different to men. Same thing with men. If you are chronically inflamed, if your body's under way too much stress, you're releasing too much oxidative stress as it is. Maybe cold plunging is not a good thing for you.
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B
Right.
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A
If your nervous system is not regulated, maybe you shouldn't do that. Because then again, it's another brick that you're adding in to a body that's already screaming saying, I don't have space for anymore.
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B
Go on a walk. Yeah. Because, oh, there's oxytocin released. So what? A walk and a nice conversation is
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going to do the same.
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B
How about get some closeness with it with a, with another human, Go on a nice conversation on a walk and, and release some oxytocin that way.
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Right.
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But because there's, because again, you've got, you're, you're definitely stimulating cortisol.
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Right.
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And it's that, it's kind of that, you know, that addiction to dopamine. Yeah. That we, we tend to thrive on now. And you can blame devices if you want, but it's just human nature.
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Right.
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And if you're already type A and you're kind of driving, driving, driving, you've got enough of that. It needs, they bring it down. Small, short, intense weight training workouts, lots of walking, you know, hit, may not hit five or six days a week. High intensity interval training, probably not a good idea. Especially perimenopausal or post menopausal women.
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A
Right. 100%. You also are the, the problem with hard biohacking. You're definitely against that. You have been set to say, you said that chainsaws don't work when a chisel is needed. So you have the stance of like less is more essentially when it comes to your body, comes to getting into shape, getting comes to your health overall.
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B
Well, I think being strategic is probably a better way to say it. Let's be strategic about it. Does it fit the need? What's it accomplishing? Or are we just trying to over leverage stress to feel better in an environment where maybe we're under fueled, under slept, what are we masking over? What are we plastering over? Is it our bad sleep? It's our relationship, job, job stress and, or you're trying to hammer your body back into shape because you haven't been paying attention to what you eat or how you work out or how you sleep. Or we're, we're trying to crank things back in healthy like we did it twin or twenties and thirties when we could just go, oh, I'll go all out for eight weeks. And then I suddenly I'm, you know, I'm beach ready.
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Right.
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And our bodies don't work that way anyways. You're probably more likely to get injured. Backfire.
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Right.
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We need to be thinking strategic. So I think again managing the stressors, understanding when we have enough of them going on and figuring out what's going to really move the needle in a positive direction without, without the risks that we're limited risks. Let's manage risk to benefit ratio.
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Right.
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B
And that's where I think better quality fuel strength training should be managed with recovery. And sleep needs to be just as important. Recovery needs to be just as important as your workout.
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A
Right. On average when it comes to women, I know it's anywhere from eight to nine hours is, are what we should be getting every single night. When it comes to men, what is the optimal sleep range?
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B
Not one that I get. I can, I'll be, I'll be honest, I get. Not when I get on a regular basis.
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A
I don't get 8 to 9 either. So don't.
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B
No, I mean, come on. I think if most guys got seven to eight, they'd feel amazing.
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A
And how much REM sleep and deep sleep from that seven to eight ideally.
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B
I mean RIM is, I mean you think too. I mean I wear. Whoop. You know, HRV is another thing to pay attention to. Try, try to increase an individual basis. But I mean, yeah, two hours of REM would be amazing how often I get that. You know, I think on average if most of us could get an hour of REM and an hour of deep sleep, we'd feel better than normal in a, in a six and a half to seven hour of actual sleep. Not just in bed, but actual sleep. Not Laying away at 3:3am Thinking about all the things you didn't do yesterday and you need to do tomorrow. That's where I think it's, it's. That is where we really have to think about what we do during the day impacts the quality of our sleep.
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Correct.
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At night. So it's not just what you do right before bed, it's what you've done all day that impacts that. Whether it's light exposure, phone exposure Again, the how we eat, how well fueled we are, what we're supposed to get, what's practical sometimes don't line up.
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A
Don't always line up. You also recently produced and hosted the documentary called Animal. You interviewed all these global personalities. What is the single most dangerous lie you think the modern food industry has told us about the relationship between red meat and chronic disease in humans?
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B
So I think red meat's a vital part of the human.
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A
Thank you diet.
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B
I don't think it should be exclusively the human diet, contrary to many of the people I interviewed in that film. You know that the vilification of, of meat I think is much like the vilification of carbs. It's like we're chasing, we're looking for a villain. We're looking at top down again, symptomatic. Oh, your cholesterol is too high. Don't eat red meat. Well, that's the, that's not necessarily what's increasing your really cholesterol.
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A
So let's talk about cholesterol then for a minute because that's what a lot of people get told you're. And a lot of guys get told that, right? Your cholesterol is high, it's a red meat. So what else could it be?
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B
Stress drives cholesterol.
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A
Okay.
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B
So I noticed, let me just anecdotally and I know a number of other people who've noticed this who, who actually there's a big experiment with this. So, so people who are exclusively like very low carb, they will tend to have high cholesterol because they're mobilizing lower, more fat, okay, for fuel because they're on these little, these little protein carriers called lipid proteins. So ldl, ldl, all those and they're carrying fat to different tissues. There's also a stress level with lower thyroid that tends to happen with, with a very low carb diet. Pretty common. When someone adds carbs back into their diet, their cholesterol drops. So my total and LDL cholesterol dropped by about 30%. 25, 30%. When I added the first time, I increased my carb intake and again I wasn't totally keto or carnivore at this point. I was still 150 grams, but I was very active. But the stress level was there to, to bring that. I was relying on fat for fuel and it dropped about 30%. When I took it up to 400, it dropped another 30%. So I'm basically cut my cholesterol in half. There's this guy, Nick Norwitz, who's at Harvard. He's getting his MD at Harvard. I think he's got a PhD from in England. I can't think of the school at doing. But he's brilliant kid, brilliant guy. He's probably like 30 and he's full on keto guy. So he added his high, higher cholesterol. He wanted to compare adding carbs to a. The impact of a statin. And so the typical impact of a statin is about a 20%, 25% decrease in cholesterol levels when you have a typical statin protocol. He added a hundred grams of carbs to his keto diet via Oreos. He started eating Oreos, not a healthy food. So he purposely picked an unhealthy food. But he added a hundred grams of carbs and his cholesterol dropped 40%, give or take 35, 40%, because he offset that usage of fat and those little fat carriers with carbohydrate. Now, I would take it a step further. When thyroid is lower so that we, that actually impacts the cholesterol receptors on our liver. So cholesterol when thyroid is low, like say your T4 to T3 conversion is low, so you have less T3, which is what happens when routinely on a very low carb diet, the receptors on your liver that, that pick up cholesterol actually retract. And so you have more cholesterol in circulation. And when thyroid comes back up, those receptors come back up. So there's, that's not the only mechanism in play. But that's just one example. The other thing is you're just, you're using less fat for fuel, so you have fewer of those little carriers running through your body delivering fat. So to say that we know one, cholesterol causes heart disease routine, you know, independently.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And then two, that red meat raises cholesterol, they're very over. I think you're overshooting.
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A
You're also the statements without like necessarily all the different.
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B
There's a lot of nuance.
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A
Exactly.
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B
There's a lot of nuance to that.
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A
Do you think that if people generally have more muscle mass, they would have less issues with cholesterol because there'd be a way to cycle around? You know,
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B
that's a good question. I've seen some muscle up guys with pretty high cholesterol. So I think it, I think it's much more impacted by diet and hormone levels and stress hormone levels.
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A
So in hormone levels, we're saying that men either have too high testosterone or too low testosterone. Correct.
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B
We're talking about testosterone no, no.
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A
When we're talking about hormones, essentially what hormones should men be looking for when it comes to cholesterol? Right. What, what hormones are impacting them?
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B
Well, what's impacting cholesterol would be stress hormone.
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A
Right.
- [27:05]
B
Routinely beginning of the clon, the cortisol or cortisol, the DHEA ratio if you want to get start nitpicking very functional about it. It's like how much cortisol is driving stress. Because cortisol really is what is driving the cholesterol. Yeah, we'll drop the cholesterol. Well, we'll drop the testosterone levels down as it will with women. To drop your estrogen progesterone production. Yeah.
- [27:26]
A
And then also the thyroid plays a role in that, Correct?
- [27:29]
B
Yeah, thyroid plays a role with. So if thyroid is low, again, getting a little nerdy with it. But in the. Let's just say with men, when the testy. There's a star protein in there, that which is directly impacted by thyroid hormone impacts the production of that star protein, taking cholesterol and converting it into sex hormones. And that's men and women. So we have star protein that, that is. So cholesterol is a building block for all sex hormones. Yeah, and some stress hormones.
- [27:59]
A
So that's why I thought because cholesterol is the building block. What are some markers if somebody does their diagnostic testing and either their testosterone is too high or too low, that would be an indication of where to also start fixing the cholesterol.
- [28:11]
B
Yeah, testosterone is really too high.
- [28:13]
A
Okay, that's what it is.
- [28:15]
B
Yeah. Naturally, I mean you want high testosterone, the better, the higher testosterone, the better you feel. Men and women. Right. It's a dominant hormone in women as well. You have 10 times more testosterone than estrogen. So women really should be tracking their testosterone as well. Probably long before menopause, like 39, 40 years old. Start looking at your testost your testosterone. Men for sure at 40, usually by your late 40s is starting to dip. And that's long term health. I mean hormone optimization, not to take another path I think is the single best biohack we have as we age for improving our not just longevity, but health, health span, like how good we feel, how, how much drive, mental drive, not just sex drive. Right. Muscle retention, bone density, metabolic health. I mean to keep performing at a high level in your 60s and 70s and you're going to need sex hormone supplementation in my opinion. Unless you're like one of the small, like a single digigit percentage who just happened to, to be able to maintain that but women, it's like menopause is, is, is happening. It's going to happen at some point, right? And you're going to feel a whole lot better with some hormone on board than trying to muscle your way through it. I see these people, they want to live primally. Oh no, I don't need peptides, I don't need hormones. Like okay, why, what is the benefit of being sub optimal? Because you're doing it just with food.
- [29:46]
A
So talk about getting the stuff from our food anymore.
- [29:48]
B
We're not getting, we're not. Well, at some point you can't out eat your sex hormone production.
- [29:55]
A
Correct?
- [29:56]
B
Tanking, like just dropping significantly. That's going to happen. Why are we trying to muscle through that just with food and exercise? I mean these are people arguing this, but they're still, they're still using phones, they're still flying on planes, they're driving cars, they're living air conditioning homes. They have all these other modern conveniences that you didn't have when your ancestors were living in a cave. Why are you trying to mimic what your so called ancestors did 2 million years ago just with your health, with your diet and exercise and hormones. But the rest of your life looks quite modern, right? You have all the modern stressors, all the modern impact, but you're not using the modern fixes we have. That doesn't, that just doesn't make sense to me. So not to go on a tangent there, sorry, that's my little soapbox.
- [30:43]
A
No, no, but it's important for people to know because I think a lot of times people do their diagnostic testing, things come back and they're like, let me remove the red meat to do this or let me do this right away. And they're not fully thinking through things. And this is where I think the traditional medical system has done such a disservice. And now functional medicine or alternative medicine or whatever, it is the only way to practice medicine. Because the American healthcare system is a sick care system versus we want to stay out of the system, which is all of this other stuff which is kind of was seen on the fringe. Functional medicine, alternative medicine, holistic medicine is actually what's keeping you healthy. So things have changed.
- [31:18]
B
It's, it's, it's a educated consumer as well. I think that's the difference with a, with the functional medicine is you have much more communication between the practitioner and the, and the custom, the client. Let's say you're a client, you're not just a patient. You aren't subject to, to Them you're a client, they work for you. And that's why we need to take that attitude. We cannot, we can no longer move forward in health, in ignorance and fully trusting that practitioner with everything they say, what they're supposed to know.
- [31:46]
A
So going back to like the, basically the documentary, what was the most shocking finding for you personally to do this documentary?
- [31:54]
B
What was a finding, like, what was
- [31:56]
A
the most shocking thing for you? You went into, we were just talking about it outside with a really different perspective. But when you got into it, you're like, that's not what I signed up for.
- [32:04]
B
Well, it's great question. So initially it was the role of meat in the human diet, which I'm all for. And we're going to look at not just the role of meat, but also how processed food impacted our diet, which we did very well with Dr. Kate Shanahan. And then regenerative agriculture and what the way forward is. And regenerative agriculture is not just on cattle or livestock production, but also on how we make all of our food. Right, right. Which improves the soil, improves the quality of the food. But there this theme started coming through and I have great relationship with the director and writer Josh Feldman. He was, he's a great guy, very creative. We were great friends. But what came through with a lot of the people we interviewed, who were all carnivore doctors and they're very strong proponents of, of meat only as a way to, to fix it long term, non stop, you know, as in.
- [33:06]
A
Which is very dogmatic.
- [33:07]
B
It's, it's very restrictive.
- [33:09]
A
Yeah.
- [33:09]
B
And I found very limiting all these stress hormones we're talking about, I think they get stimulated very well without, or very strongly without carbohydrate intake. And, and so when it was this theme of plants are trying to kill you, which is the, the, the mantra of one of the doctors we interviewed that I, I just thought you're. To me that sounded like something that would kill the validity.
- [33:37]
A
Right.
- [33:37]
B
Of the entire message was let's move away from processed food.
- [33:41]
A
Correct. Not vilify.
- [33:43]
B
Right.
- [33:43]
A
So not a food group that could be beneficial in some capacity.
- [33:46]
B
Right. Red meat and whole food plants that are all beneficial and how humans have always survived. Right. We have 10,000 years of history prior to the 20th century when we started making processed food. We have 10,000 years of history all over the globe. Cultivating potatoes in South America and Africa, rice in Asia, wheat in the Middle east were made nine or 10,000 years ago. And without an epidemic of metabolic disease. We had health, we. And that's when we started cultivating. That's when we stopped being so nomadic and we built villages and then cities and then empires were built on cultivation of food because it was safety, it was convenient, it was there. We weren't subject to war, famine, drought, starvation. We could actually thrive. And we can think about things besides just surviving day to day. I mean where agriculture is, what has created the modern worldwide. That's why you and I are able to sit here and talk on technology with a bunch of other people listening and watching. Because we created, but it, we created cities and technology, but that started with the cultivation of food predictability.
- [35:00]
A
Yeah, but it's when processed foods were basically introduced to the human diet is when things started declining. Yet that is what we still turn to. So much of the time you go through, you go into a grocery store, even, even whole foods sprouts, even the healthy food stores still have so much stuff on their aisles. It still has so much junk in it. And we're going to get into seed oils because I know that's a hot topic for you as well. But I'm just shocked with even like how health food companies are marketing themselves. And you turn around the label. I always tell people when you are at the grocery store and if it has too many ingredients in it, just walk away. That's not healthy anymore. If you can't read the label or if it's got just way too much in it, that's not health food anymore.
- [35:38]
B
Right.
- [35:38]
A
It's all greenwashing.
- [35:39]
B
It's been greenwashed. Exactly.
- [35:40]
A
It's all greenwashing.
- [35:41]
B
Yeah.
- [35:41]
A
So seed oils and mitochondrial health, this 680 day detox. So you've highlighted that linoleic acid from seed oils has a half life of 680 days in human tissue. That's really sad because we get seed oils, unless we're eating only at home a lot of times from eating out. So it's basically stuck in the body for 680 days. So if somebody wants to remove the seed oils, that's about two years of metabolic damage easily.
- [36:10]
B
Well, so there's this, there's a study. So before processed food, before the seed oil started getting processed in 1910 or so, if you were to look at, or look at a, at an indigenous population now, modern indigenous populations, they're out there that don't eat processed food. The level of, of, of polyunsaturated fat, which is what these are, the little lake acid in their body would be about, would make up about 2, 3, 4, maybe 5% of their total body fat. There was a study, this guy, Steven Guillen, who, who he looked at the, the biopsies of fat of, of subcutaneous fat of Americans from 1959. So he took several studies in 1959 to 2009, it's 50 year period where in 1959 this polyunsaturated fat made up about 9% of the body fat. By 2009 it made up 211 1/2 percent. So it doubled 2 1/2 times, 2 1/2 times more of this polyunsaturated fat. Where our body doesn't make polyunsaturated fat, it makes saturated fat which can convert some of it to monounsaturated fat. But if you have polyunsaturated fat increasing in your tissue where because we're eating it, we're eating more of it and so now it's 20 plus percent of your body fat, it should be a single digigit percentage. So that's going to impact our body's ability to make energy inflammation, especially since
- [37:25]
A
it's very oxidated and inflammation at a
- [37:27]
B
cellular level in the mitochondria. Specifically the. So to get nerdy, if someone wants to start looking the stuff up or use ChatGPT, I realize there's a lot of studies out there that say, oh, there's no problem, it doesn't raise. We don't see a change in C reactive protein and we don't see oxygen. If you, let's, if you start. If I get, if you don't smoke and I give you a pack of cigarettes and you start. Are you going to develop cancer next week or in eight weeks or however long this study takes? Six to eight weeks? Study, no. The other thing we have is who is, who's your control group?
- [37:59]
A
Yeah. What's their baseline that they started with to begin with?
- [38:03]
B
Right. Sometimes the diet they put them on with a pufa, the linoleic acid, the seed oils is less than what they're eating already.
- [38:10]
A
Right.
- [38:11]
B
But you'd have to have a three year washout to get a control group that didn't have any exposure to seed oils like back to a normal level. So they're very flawed. What we need to be looking and there are studies looking at the impact of PUFA in the mitochondria, in the silos of neurodegenerative studies or on heart failure. They're just not in the nutrition space. And so the impact of these PUFAs, we can, they show they can change within a matter of 10 weeks. The inner Mitochondrial membrane. So the inside of the mitochondria can change with a matter of 10 weeks based on our diet. Susceptibility to oxidative stress is directly tied to the amount of PUFA polyunsaturated fat that's in there because it's already very. It's already part of the, of the, the, the makeup of the inside of that mitochondria. But the more of it, the more susceptible oxidative stress we have.
- [39:02]
A
Right.
- [39:03]
B
And that's when we start seeing high levels of it. They see more of the electrons backing up. We have proton leakage, which basically means you have an inefficiency of making ATP. You have damage to the mitochondrial DNA, higher degree of or higher risk of apoptosis. So basically, as, as those protons start leaking, what happens is we get a signal for apoptosis to shut down the cell. So we have cell death, way mitochondrial death. The cortisol we mentioned earlier also reduces mitochondrial biogenesis, which means we have fewer mitochondria being made. So we have this basically an inefficiency at making energy, which leads to, again back to the stress hormone responses. We don't have enough energy. What are we going to do? It's a stress response catac. So adrenaline, cortisol, release more fat, stimulate more glucose from the liver, and we have this flood of energy trying to make up for a cellular energy problem which started with food quality. And that is the beginning of metabolic disease. That's, that's, that's a stimulant.
- [40:07]
A
And so for you, like everybody's human. We need to live when we go out. What do you do when you go to a restaurant?
- [40:13]
B
Fortunately, a lot of restaurants are starting to use, especially in asp. Here. I've, I've seen some in Florida.
- [40:19]
A
Okay.
- [40:19]
B
A few.
- [40:20]
A
Yeah.
- [40:21]
B
Where I'm in Nashville, it's all about fried food. I really can't go out. You have to limit it. I don't.
- [40:26]
A
Right.
- [40:26]
B
You know, ask for grilled things. Nothing. Sauteed baked potatoes. I'm a big potato guy.
- [40:34]
A
You know, it's like I love a loaded baked potato.
- [40:36]
B
Yes. It's like it's baked. They have painting in it, grilled meat and, and kind of keep it simple.
- [40:43]
A
Right.
- [40:43]
B
But it's. It really is ubiquitous in our, in our food system.
- [40:49]
A
Right.
- [40:49]
B
And it's very hard. It's. You have to be deliberate and intentional.
- [40:54]
A
And intentional with everything that you do with our health. Are there any supplements that you recommend which are really good for one metabolic health and mitochondrial health and good for you know, damage to, to our cell membrane to counteract everything going on with the seed oils.
- [41:11]
B
There are a few. I mean the main thing is don't put it in there. Healing help can help with what's called CoQ10 or ubiquinone can be, can be helpful because of, of how that helps with the electron transport chain there in the mitochondria. And then everyone's big on nad. NAD is involved in the beginning phases of energy coming in the mitochondria. But the nad, most, most when you get an infusion, you just get overwhelmed by it. Right.
- [41:44]
A
So I want to break that down for people. Our body does not actually have NAD receptors. So unless you're doing NAD for a very specific protocol like you're about to do a round of IVF or you're getting ready to, you're trying to get pregnant or something else specifically that the doctor has given you, you can flood dose your body for that little amount of time. But when you take infusions or even injections in, that's too much NAD for your body. So it's always the precursors like NMN and NR are generally so much better for you and they're at a fract off the price. Unless you have severe brain fog and you're absolutely exhausted and you're doing it for a short period of time, by all means go into it and spend your money. But there are better ways to deal with it.
- [42:21]
B
Yeah, precursors, which I just mentioned. Yeah.
- [42:23]
A
And they're cheaper, cleaner, easier. And there's some great companies I love a company called Wonderfeel. They have one of the best NMNs on the market. It's mixed with a lot of other things that throw off the oxidative stress. Because the other thing is when you take a precursor like NMN and nr, if your body has a lot of oxidative stress when it goes into you, it, it destroys it anyways. So you need to make sure you're offsetting inflammation at the same time. So I know that's a company that I love. People really like a couple of other brands. I think they like True Nigen and stuff. That's just a company that I prefer, but it's also a fraction of the cost.
- [42:57]
B
Yeah, it is. And it's, it's a supplement.
- [43:00]
A
Correct.
- [43:01]
B
It is not going to correct you going out and eating. No, no chicken.
- [43:04]
A
Of course not.
- [43:04]
B
You know, you can't outdo. That's the thing is we don't try to out hack our bad habits.
- [43:08]
A
Right.
- [43:09]
B
So these are not band aids.
- [43:10]
A
For a bad lifestyle.
- [43:12]
B
For, for. Yeah, they just aren't. But those things that can help. Glycine and magnesium can help with really glycine more so with, with, with glutathione production. Glutathione is our major endogenous antioxidant which can help with these oxidative stress. And so when we do things that, that reduce glutathione production, that's when we start hurting it, like the seed oils, alcohol, things like that. So. But glycine is a good. Most of us don't supplement enough of these. We think of meat protein, but these are proteins that would be in more like collagens and gelatins which we just don't have. Like you have bone broth in the morning, so you're getting that in. Yeah, but glycine can help with that glutathione production.
- [43:52]
A
Right.
- [43:52]
B
Which is very helpful within the mitochondria.
- [43:54]
A
Also, just to point out that if you have a lot of oxidative stress and inflammation in your body, even though you're trying to eat your nutrients and your supplement, your body doesn't know how to absorb them. So I think that's another thing to also remember is check your levels of inflammation because you are, if you are extremely inflamed and you have a lot of oxidative stress circling around, no matter what you put in your body, sometimes it just can't get absorbed because you're in a state of fight or flight. So if your body's in a state of fight or flight, it actually does not know what to even do. So that's why I think the nervous system plays such a key integral role both in men and in women, in order to fuel itself correctly. And that's why you see a lot of. All over the Internet people are talking about regulating your vagus nerve, regulating your nervous system, bringing yourself out of a state of fight orf flight. Because if you look at our DNA back in the day we used to live in a state of rest and digest. And only when we saw a saber tooth tiger would we be like, okay, now we have to go into fight or flight. Now because of modern living, we're living in these like high rise buildings. We're surrounded constantly with things getting inbound and bombarding us with technology. You know, we're instant gratification on everything. Our nervous systems are constantly hyper alert. We're like living on the edge, changing
- [45:03]
B
time zones, your time travel.
- [45:04]
A
Yeah, all of it.
- [45:06]
B
Yeah.
- [45:06]
A
And so our bodies are hyper vigilant and so we've gone from being 80% in, you know, like a parasympathetic essentially state, constantly living in this like fight or flight state. And so we're living for. Firstly we're living completely out of design. And so when we're in that state, we can't absorb all of the stuff from the food or the supplements or any of this stuff. So it's important to understand health is not. You don't live in a vacuum. Different things add to it. So if you want to live your healthiest and best life, you have to address all the different things.
- [45:37]
B
Things, yeah, everything overlaps. Digestion is real important. Impacted by. So again, these processed foods, not great. Not a surprise. Not good for your tummy, not good for your digestive system. I think one of the other major drivers of metabolic disease, which is like my personal focus is the endotoxin created in the gut from these foods. And that endotoxin and, and can escape through what we call, you know, as a leaky gut. When you have inflammation in the gut, then you have those, those joints in the gut are released, you have endotoxin and that releases, that stimulates the cytokine release which are inflammatory markers. So like TNF Alpha, Interleukin 6, Interleukin 1. Those actually have a direct impact on heart liver muscle tissue to create ceramides, which is the fat that gets built up in those tissues and creates insulin resistance. So here's another driver of insulin resistance. And metabolic disease starts in the gut, right? And it's again inflammatory markers, the cytokines, when they were. They've actually do studies where they basically aspirin to. They compare two groups. One thin, healthy, metabolically healthy, the other obese and metabolically unhealthy. When they reduce the inflammation in the obese medical, they, their metabolism improves, their blood sugar improves just with aspirin. So that it's just to show that reducing those inflammatory markers, it didn't fix their problem, but it reduced the amount, the degree of the metabolic distress just by reducing inflammation. So when we're talking about inflammation, I understand where it comes from, but that
- [47:11]
A
is the trigger, right, of all chronic disease and everything else. You also are really famous for saying you shouldn't train like you're 20 after you're 40. So for anybody listening for, for, for men who want to get fit or healthy, what, how many times a week should they be working out in their 30s and their 40s and their 50s? So it goes up from there and what type of workouts should they be doing? So the decade of your 30s, the decade of your 40s and the decade of your 50s.
- [47:36]
B
I mean your 30s, you could apply it like it just think about, you could probably handle a little bit more stress, but should you? And so that's really the question where I think we, if we go back, I look back at where do we get this idea that we're supposed to train, do separate body muscle groups five or six days a week with strength training. And that came out of the 50s when steroids hit the bodybuilding era. But prior to that, the bodybuilders of the 30s and 40s were doing full body workouts three times a week. Spaced out with at least a day arrested between like a Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Those were the guys on Muscle Beach. Those are the guys playing Tarzan and Superman in the movies. They were training three days a week, full body workouts, not doing these split routines, which, which are really only facilitated by these, these five or six days of strength training with separate body groups. That, that was facilitated by steroids. So it's not realistic for people, especially as we get older, to maintain that level up. That is stress. Again, recovery needs to be intentional. And so I'm a big proponent of full body workouts or maybe a, maybe a two day like upper body, lower body split at most with at least three days of rest without strength training per week. So maybe, maybe even four. And that's enough to stimulate the muscle and then move on. Not multiple high volume sets, but you know, work to that muscle close to fatigue, close to failure, within one or two reps of failure and then move on. Yeah, work something else and allow for recovery and then a lot of walking cardio.
- [49:19]
A
I think, I think a cardio in what sense? Because sometimes men can overdo it with the cardio. Women, Absolutely.
- [49:25]
B
No, I'm not a big fan, especially over 40. I'm not a big fan of dead center zone 3. Slogging out for half an hour, an hour of like hardcore.
- [49:32]
A
Right.
- [49:32]
B
It's like low, like low zone two or maybe a little bit of zone one, which means walking, walking uphill, could be swimming, could be some light jogging in there. And then if you do some high intensity stuff, it's very short. It's like 10 seconds or 30 seconds or maybe a minute with a lot of rest in between. And maybe it's six or eight bouts of that and then you're, you're done. It's not a half hour, an hour of it. It's like 15, 20 minutes, maybe once or twice a week.
- [50:00]
A
Okay.
- [50:01]
B
Not five or six days. A week. So high intensity, short bouts, lots of recovery, and lots of just movement.
- [50:08]
A
Right. And so it's safe to say kind of in your 40s and 50s, strength training takes number one priority for both groups, men and women. I swing train about four days a week because I really. It takes me time to gain muscle mass. I'm not genetically gifted like that. I'm South Asian, so it takes a lot more effort for me to maintain and gain muscle mass. So I strength train about four days a week, and then I kind of mix it up with kind of Pilates or whatever. So I kind of very much limit my cardio. I didn't feel really good doing cardio. My. My joints would hurt. I'd feel aches and pains. My sleep wasn't great. So for me, I was like, cardio isn't a thing. And unless I'm doing something like paddle or essentially tennis and then. Same thing with men. I think they have to really focus on is it true strength training should be bucket number one if they're gonna
- [50:49]
B
make sure you get that done.
- [50:50]
A
Yeah. And that's like three to four days or three days on average.
- [50:53]
B
Three to four. Three to four is a good amount.
- [50:55]
A
Three is not gonna make any difference to your body. Right. So anybody's going to the gym twice a week, I'm like, yeah, twice.
- [51:01]
B
You might maintain three to four. You can make progress. But it's. It's not about and change and change and change, but recovery. But I think Pilates, swimming, aerobics, yoga, I mean, it's like all. You're still getting your heart rate in the same zone. And that's what's about. It's about the heart rating shows train based on your heart rate zone, not based. Not because you want to go run off your stress. And so it should not be another way to like, manage your dopamine, you know, or to. To be a dopamine hit because you're stressed out. So you're going to go pound your body into exhaustion because you. You can't handle. I mean, that's.
- [51:36]
A
That's like counterproductive.
- [51:38]
B
Yeah, a lot of people do it, though. That's their excuse. But when we see even the best marathon runners, they spend very little time in the zone three, zone four, like 5, 6, 7% of their training. The majority of it, 85, 89% of it is spent in zone one, low zone two, a little bit more zone two of like, you know, maybe 8 or 10%. And then the high, high intensity is. It's. So it's it's really. And those guys are, you know, talk about putting pressure in your joint. They're a special group of people as far as genetically usually who are really professional, you know, but they manage that stress and that volume by staying everything
- [52:16]
A
else with the lifestyle. Yeah, they're not the average.
- [52:19]
B
And they get a lot of sleep.
- [52:20]
A
Correct.
- [52:20]
B
10 hours of sleep, 85, 90% of the time zone one or low zone two. And then very rarely get up in that, those high intensity cities.
- [52:28]
A
What do you think is the number one movement mistake that's actually accelerating biological aging instead of reversing it in men and women?
- [52:35]
B
Movement mistake, Movement mistake. That's. I think it is over training.
- [52:42]
A
Okay.
- [52:43]
B
Yeah, it would be over training. It's, it's that I'm gonna go work off my stress. I hear that from so many. I wouldn't grow that way. I wouldn't, I would stress. I just like to do it to work my stress. I think it's over training for those that you basically have two groups of people with people who don't exercise at all. That'd be one don't move at all. And we have people who over exercise. Right. We have extremes and over exercising will. Because again, back to the stress hormones, especially overeating and under fueling or a restrictive diet with a lot of over training. I think that's where we see very negative, very negative, very parallel hormonal stimulation that we also see in metabolic disease. High cortisol, high stress hormone. Some of the levels are lower, but the relationships are the same. In other words, like glucagon to insulin is higher glucagon, lower insulin. It's just we see a higher blood sugar, stress, cortisol, sleep. It's basically our body responding to stress and it doesn't matter what stimulus it is, it's still stress. You have a car accident intersection, you can argue about what caused it, but the damage is still done. Right?
- [53:52]
A
Right.
- [53:52]
B
The damage is the damage. You know, we can try to, we can argue about what caused it to try to prevent it, but we're still causing damage with stress, stress hormones.
- [54:01]
A
So I'm going to go into like a little bit of a quick prior round with you now.
- [54:04]
B
Ooh, I'll try to, I'll try to talk a little faster.
- [54:07]
A
What is the most expensive biohacking gadget you see people buying that is a total waste of money if they haven't fixed their protein intake first.
- [54:15]
B
A lot of it is, and I hate to make a lot of people mad, but I mean a lot of people are spending money on peptides.
- [54:21]
A
Thank you.
- [54:22]
B
And they haven't fixed their diet, they aren't recovering like they should or maybe they aren't working out. And this is supposed to be the band aid. This is supposed to be the fix to help them recover. It's like get some sleep, take a day off from the gym, you know, stop putting fried food in your body. So I think the peptides are, they're, they're, they're winning that, that with in the billions.
- [54:43]
A
What do you think? That brings me to one. What do you think is the biggest biohacking like disservice the industry is giving people to try to convince besides peptides to try to convince them that this is a solution to your, your health problems.
- [54:59]
B
Boy, you just want me to make all sorts of enemies, don't you?
- [55:02]
A
You want the controversy. Zane.
- [55:04]
B
Oh man. You know, I think cold plunging is one of those that just took off and it's like okay, stress, stress, stress. Especially someone with metabolic disease or already stressed out job, that's the last thing they need. You know, that's, that's one of those big ones that really took off that it's not in itself a bad thing but it gets over leveraged and, and sensationalized without really looking at the impact. So I'm not, I'm not keeping your fast wrap it around.
- [55:29]
A
No, no, it's, it's the perfect answer because for me I said it already. I think, I don't think cold plunging is for everybody. You also need to see where what's state you are in your life, what other stressors are affecting you. What are your overall inflammation markers. If you are very stressed, chronically inflamed, have a lot of oxidative stress. I would not do cold plunging. It's not going to fix.
- [55:46]
B
You get in the sauna.
- [55:46]
A
Correct. If anything go for a walk. If you could go back and talk to 30 year old Zayn. What's the one healthy, what's the one health habit you tell them to stop doing immediately?
- [55:57]
B
Low carb. I was like hardcore low carb telling everybody to do low carb. Uh man, that was like sugar, glucose, whatever you want to call it. Carbs are not causing metabolic disease. It's the seed oils.
- [56:11]
A
Right.
- [56:11]
B
Or endotoxin, but it's not the, it's not the, you know, heavy metals, anything that disrupts metabolic function. Yeah, making ATP, but it's not the sugar.
- [56:20]
A
So definitely the environmental toxins are a big piece of that group. All the endocrine disruptors, personal care products, things in your kitchen. Home care products, light lighting, huge ones. Completely messing up our circadian rhythm. I mean, the EMFs, huge contributors. So I have one of my best friends on my. She actually works for me on my team. She's my vice president. She was in burnout, complete fatigue for like seven months. Couldn't recover. Couldn't recover. Taking time off, sleeping. Couldn't recover. She goes to this place that we go to in Sarasota called a warehouse. That's amazing for a nervous system reset. She was so burnt out. Dating for six months, a girl could literally not function. She went there and they told her that you're over EMF exposures. What? Destroying your sleep recovery is terrible. You're not getting good sleep, whatever. She came back a different human being. And she is obviously being a little bit more careful to light exposure. And then it's being really mindful of the EMF exposure in her house and her apartment. And it's improving her health. Like, it was just. It was. And it was. It was seen very drastically within a course of two weeks, she saw such a positive impact on her health.
- [57:19]
B
Wow, that's amazing. They could.
- [57:20]
A
Right away, they detected it. So when she got there, she's like, I'm burnt out and fatigued. I'm trying to do all the things. And her nervous system was just stuck in fight or flight and wouldn't get out. They're like, when. When you're sleeping, you're not getting the right amount of sleep. And your sleep is very dysregulated because of the EMFs. And it's. Your light exposure is completely off something. Those two simple things.
- [57:38]
B
How many people sleep with their phone right next to.
- [57:40]
A
Yeah, so when I'm, by the way, when I'm traveling here, normally when I'm. When I'm, you know, in Miami or Dubai, I put it onto airplane mode, but I'm here. I don't have another alarm. I normally at home, I have an eight sleep. So it's easy because it just vibrates me and wakes me up. But I don't have that here. So it's super annoying. Even though I put it a little bit far away, it's there.
- [57:56]
B
I know I'm the same way.
- [57:57]
A
And so travel throws so much of us, so much of our schedule off. And at the end of the day, in our industry and kind of our careers, we're traveling so much.
- [58:05]
B
Right.
- [58:06]
A
So you think about it and how negatively the impacts you are that people that want to go. Go to sleep watching an iPad or TV at night, that's that's messing you up. These little things make such a big difference. And I don't think we're built to sustain all of this toxin overload that our body is currently going through. Our bodies are fatigued, they're broken, and they're telling us they're tired.
- [58:27]
B
I, I agree. And. And getting out of the cycle is difficult.
- [58:30]
A
Yeah.
- [58:30]
B
Because.
- [58:31]
A
And even those of us in this space, I can sit here across from guests, and I've interviewed so many incredible people like yourself. I can talk about it all day. I know what the problems are. Can I immediately go and fix it? I'm like, I'm somebody who's in complete burnout right now. And I saw my functional medicine doctor last night. He's in Austin as well right now. And we were having dinner. I was like, john Kim, can you fix me? He's like, listen, your lifestyle has to allow for us to help you and get you there. And I know all the information. I have this show. I eat, breathe, sleep, the space, but I sometimes cannot myself get myself out of that funk. So I can relate. Yeah. Right. So we have all the information, yet we get overwhelmed ourselves. So I think it's really important to take it piece by piece and make the lifestyle changes are going to outweigh any peptide, any diet you do. It first starts with those lifestyle changes. No amount of supplements is going to fix the core foundations of your health.
- [59:21]
B
Correct. Yeah. So shutting off the WI fi at night before you go to bed can be that simple.
- [59:26]
A
Right.
- [59:27]
B
That's why one thing is I got my Woo strap because it has a little vibrate.
- [59:32]
A
It wakes you up in the morning.
- [59:33]
B
It wakes me up in the morning. I have to wear a watch. I don't have to wear, you know, a watch that's tied to the WI fi. It's Bluetooth. Okay. And it just, it's little things like that. And so I think, is it easy? Well, the solutions are simple. Is it easy to put into your schedule? Is it easy to put into your life? No. You have to, as you said before, you have to be intentional. It's strategy.
- [59:57]
A
Right. And building your life to withhold and with stain whatever positive health changes you want to make. And it does not happen overnight because we've spent so many years damaging our body in so many different ways. So it's piece by piece. Thank you so much for being here in Austin and coming on the show. I appreciate you so much. We've been trying to film this for like, almost since last year. And I was really excited to sit down with you and introduce you to our audience. And I think the whole thing with people being so obsessed with instrument and fasting and you having this different take on it after being an advocate of it for so long, I think our audience will have drive so much value from this conversation. So thank you, Zane.
- [60:34]
B
Appreciate that. If I can mention I have a free guide, people want to see a little bit of insight as to how I train my clients and approach my own health. It's called free 40 plan because for fit over 40 plan. But it's free40plan.com or they can find on my website if they want it@zangrix.com but just insight from diet, exercise, recovery and some optimal since we're all getting that age optimal ranges for sex hormones and metabolic hormones. So you know when you go to your doctor, hey, this is what I'm aiming for, right.
- [61:05]
A
This is what I want to be doing. This is my, my gold standard.
- [61:07]
B
This is my targets.
- [61:08]
A
Right.
- [61:08]
B
So we're our own best advocate.
- [61:11]
A
Absolutely.
- [61:11]
B
For our health. And I think that's, that's where it starts is with starting to educate ourselves.