← Extend Podcast with Darshan Shah, MD
Extend Podcast with Darshan Shah, MD
188. James Beshara: How to Find Productivity Without the Hustle
01:06:57
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- [00:00]
A
Before we get started with this episode, I'd like to invite all of you to the first ever next Health Longevity Summit happening in Nashville, Tennessee at the Conrad Hotel on Saturday, September 12, 2026. This is an all day summit where you're going to be hearing from some of the best speakers in longevity medicine, including Dr. Vonda Wright, Dr. Luisa Nicola, many of the podcast guests that you've heard here on the Extend podcast, and of course I'm going to be there curating the entire day. We also have incredible vendors coming so that you can try the latest technologies in health, wellness and longevity. Go to next health.com summit and buy your ticket today. We only have 400 spots and they're going quickly. That's next health.com summit. I look forward to seeing you all there. Welcome to Xtend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting edge science, research, tools and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21 and trained and board certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results. When it comes to your health span, we are living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world renowned experts offering you a step by step guide to proactively avoid disease and most importantly, extend your health span. Today I'm thrilled to introduce a truly extraordinary individual, my friend, James Bashara. James is not just an entrepreneur, he's a visionary who has successfully founded three different nine figure companies. This is a testament to his unparalleled priority productivity and strategic thinking. Beyond his remarkable business achievements, James is a deep philosophical thinker, a musician and a dedicated father of three. He's also the brilliant mind behind Magic Mind, a company born from his profound understanding of biochemistry and personal optimization. In this episode, James will share his unique philosophy on productivity, moving beyond the traditional hourly focus to a more sustainable long term approach. He'll reveal the pin action strategies that has allowed him to achieve incredible success while maintaining grace in avoiding burnout. Even discussing how he manages to be at Inbox 0 by 7am get ready to transform your understanding of efficiency and well being with James Bashara. Hey everyone. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to talk about something that you hear me talk a lot about. Your biomarkers And I want to tell you how I'm approaching this situation right now with all of the patients that are calling me from listening to this podcast. So what happens is every day patients are writing to me saying they feel exhausted, they can't lose weight, they're having brain fog. And they see their doctor and the doctor tells them all their blood work is normal. But the problem is this doctor usually is only checking about 10 to 15 biomarkers that only tell you if you have a disease developing. Meanwhile, your body has 160 different systems that are running. Then all of these have blood tests that we can test on how effective they're working for you every single day. So if someone is not close to one of my clinics, one of my next health clinics, then I tell them go to their local laboratory and get on Function Health. Function Health gives you access to 160 different biomarkers, the same kind of comprehensive testing that we do at all of our next health clinics. And if you tried to get this on your own through your regular doctor, it can cost you thousands of dollars. Hormones, inflammation, toxins, nutrient levels, they're all tracked over time in this one plat called Function Health. They could even help you get an MRI scan or a CT scan if you want one. So what I love most about this company is that they don't have a crazy incentive to do this. Function doesn't push supplements. They don't have pharmaceuticals they're trying to get you to take. You're just getting the data and you're getting insights from the data. And you can bring this data to a clinic like ours, and we then have the information that we need to tell you how to improve your health. Membership is now only $365 a year. Literally, it's just a dollar a day. And right now, if you're one of my listeners, you can get a $25 credit towards the membership. You just go to the link in the bio or go to functionhealth.com Dr. Shaw and use the code DrShaw25 for a $25 credit towards your membership. James, it's so incredible to have you here, man. Thank you so much for joining me, Dr. Shah.
- [04:42]
B
Thank you so much for having me.
- [04:43]
A
I love getting to know you over the last few months that we've really started talking and we've been learning so much from you. So I'm excited to bring to all my guests.
- [04:51]
B
Well, it's a nice repayment because I've learned so much from you over the years and love this podcast. So it Is really fun to go onto a podcast that I myself really love.
- [05:02]
A
No, thank you, man, that's so good to hear.
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B
Yeah, you're great at it.
- [05:05]
A
I love it. So, you know, we'll tell the story about you being Santa Claus later. Cause I want people to hear that. Yeah.
- [05:10]
B
I have been to this location dressed as Santa Claus, giving out magic mind to staff at Next Health three years ago. Three years ago, lo and behold, organized by our social media teams. And then lo and behold, now we're here talking on this podcast.
- [05:23]
A
Here we are. I know, it's incredible and I've gotten to know you as an incredibly successful guy. You've started multiple three different nine figure companies, is that correct?
- [05:32]
B
That's right, yeah.
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A
And then to know you personally, like you're an incredible father of three children, you love philosophy. I mean, you're a deep dive into philosophy and you host events, you stay fit, you do all these things. And you're a musician too, is that right?
- [05:50]
B
That's right, yeah. Got a show on Sunday in Marina. Yeah.
- [05:54]
A
That's incredible. And you really take the time to do a deep dive on the science and the biochemistry of your body as well, which then led to magic mind. And then you apply those learnings into your day to day routines. And I just, I'm so blown away by you. You're the most productive human I know.
- [06:13]
B
Oh, well, thank you, Darshan. I'll say, by the way your name, Darshan, meaning sight and vision.
- [06:19]
A
Yeah.
- [06:20]
B
That is the philosophy that I study each day. I was just mentioning on this philosophy podcast that I have yesterday that the. In the west we have Philo Sophia, love of wisdom and great pointer for timeless truths. But in the east, it's the word Darshan, which means sight, vision, Darshana, seeing clearly. And yeah, I think my philosophy on life productivity building companies to try to see as clearly as possible.
- [06:52]
A
Yeah. And I think that's what really attracted me to you was because not only do you do so much in the little time that we have, but you do it with grace and you do it with a lack of the normal stress response that people feel as they're trying to build new companies and do all these things in living on this planet, you know, having families and doing all the things that we have to do to just stay alive. It's just mind blowing to me. And so, you know, you've really thought deeply about this. You've created a structure around that that you've told me a little bit about and I want to do a deep dive with you. On that structure and just talk about not just productivity, but also your philosophy around life. Why do people feel so stressed when they're trying to do a lot of things and get through life on a day to day basis? And kind of how you've also applied some biochemistry, kind of hacking that system as well. So that's what we're gonna talk about today.
- [07:43]
B
I hope it's helpful for the listeners.
- [07:45]
A
Yeah, it's gonna help me at least. So that's for sure. So tell us a little bit about kind of how you think about productivity in your day to day work.
- [07:53]
B
This is a topic that I think a lot about and this maybe comes from my Silicon Valley background. We were up in San Francisco for a decade and the first decade of my career, the first two years of my career was in poverty alleviation and then the first or the next decade was building software and one led to the other. But being at the heart of Silicon Valley for a decade, everybody there shares the slightest optimizations. And I know you know this, the tiniest little optimizations, someone, someone figures out a way to, I don't know, get to inbox zero a little bit faster and they're going to spend 30 minutes writing a blog post on it and sharing with everybody.
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A
I don't know this actually.
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B
Oh, it's such a huge.
- [08:33]
A
To me.
- [08:33]
B
Oh, it's a productivity prawn is what it's called. So this productivity prawn and this whole love of sharing these insights is almost like a subculture within Silicon Valley where there'll be blog posts and essays written around, I don't know, a compiler that's a little bit faster or programming languages that are a little more efficient, how to hire, recruit a CMO or a cto and all the way down to the productivity of how to get to Inbox zero three times a day. I still remember that blog post from this great founder. And there's so much knowledge sharing in that realm that I would see being down here in la. Now I don't see that type of knowledge sharing in the music industry and the entertainment industry. Being from Texas, it's just not in the water to share these types of optimizations. And there's no wonder that someone like Andrew Huberman is huge in Silicon Valley and got his start in San Francisco. I would imagine NextHealth is loved by all of these tech entrepreneurs that are listening to these connectivity podcasts. And there's just a huge subculture of sharing these insights. And when you tap into some of these insights, like the best professional Advice I ever got. The best professional advice ended up being the best. Some of the best personal advice that I ever got was from a sleep doctor about 12 years ago. And she told me, wake up every morning at the exact same time and it will set your body's 24 hour circadian rhythm to where you can drop into flow and into a rhythm within 15 minutes of waking up. She told me that a little over a decade ago. And I still. When people are like, what's the best business advice you ever got? I'm like, wake up every morning at the same time.
- [10:23]
A
What time is that?
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B
For me, it's 4:30.
- [10:25]
A
Oh, wow.
- [10:25]
B
But wake up every morning at the same time. And that single piece of advice, it's almost like in bowling, there's. It's called pin action, where in any setup of the pins, there is a mathematically optimized angle that all the best bowlers know. Okay, that's the place for that set. I'm going to have to hit the pin action at this angle and I'm going to have to hit it from this specific pin at this specific angle and you can knock all the other pins down. And I think about that metaphor. With life or with any type of set of challenges or dynamics in front of us, I look at it all and try and understand what is the highest leverage thing that will knock down all the pins. And the professional advice. I think the best professional advice I ever got comes down to this pin action metaphorical point of wake up every morning at the exact same time so that you hit the ground running within 15 minutes and you are able to maximize the time you have with the people you work with, with the work that you have before you. For me, that's been the biggest pin action item in my professional life. And I'd say with three little kids, same thing. Personal life.
- [11:38]
A
Yeah. No, it's great to wake up early because I feel that for me and being a father, just like you are, the kids are still asleep, so I get some time to myself to do my morning routines. And then when they wake up, I'm already ready to go. Like, I've already got a lot of things checked off my list. And for me, it's the most creative time of my day as well. So I really try to protect that time with creative pursuits like knocking off big projects. I would love to know, kind of like your morning routine after you wake up, what happens?
- [12:03]
B
Well, yeah, and to your point, by seven, I'm at Inbox zero, typically Inbox zero to do list zero.
- [12:10]
A
Wow.
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B
By the time the kids wake up, or at least their little green light lets them out of the room at 7 and I'm playing with house money, it feels like I'm playing with house money the rest of the day.
- [12:21]
A
Amazing.
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B
But the morning routine is pretty set to where I wake up at 4:30 and then and you can skip if travel if kids wake you up every once in a while I'll have to wake up at 5:15 or maybe 6 if I'm really jet lagged and trying to readjust or a real late night for some professional and personal reason. But at 4:30 the typical structure wake up and then 90 minutes of spiritual study, stillness and quietude. So listen to a lecture from an ashram that I study with in India with this philosophy called Advaita Vedanta. I've got two podcasts on this obscure
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A
what's the name of your podcast by the way?
- [13:02]
B
One of them is called Yoga for your intellect, which is a conversational 45 minute episode podcast on this philosophy called Yoga for your intellect or Y FYI with one of my teachers. And then I have a daily podcast on this philosophy called the Daily Vedantic just right off the page from Daily Stoic. And I was like man, stoicism's good, but man, the philosophy of ancient India in my view far more helpful for me when I discovered it when I was 30. So I do that for 90 minutes, listen to a lecture, reflect on it and then do a little bit of journaling and then at from 6 to 7 start knocking out emails and the to do list items. And then usually because the day before I got to inbox zero, maybe around 8pm it's pretty easy to get back to inbox zero and to do list zero, which just means getting to zero. I've got all my emails replied to and whatever to do list items that that I've put together. I've usually knocked those out unless there's like a three hour one that I have to leave for later in the day. And I use Superhuman for email. I love that's what I use as well. Oh I love it. It just allows me to if there's a to do list item that I can't do until 7 or before 7 and I need to do it for let's say for three hours in the afternoon. I'll just have it to where it reminds me comes up in my inbox at 12pm so my inbox and Apple reminders ends up being my 2 go to compasses for my productivity. But that's kind of in the real detail, nitty gritty details of productivity, even the two tools that I love leaning on. But the other thing on this topic that I be remiss to not mention is I think societally we think of productivity in terms of hours, even how I talk about morning routine. And I think we're far better served by thinking about productivity in terms of weeks, months, years, decades.
- [14:57]
A
What do you mean by that?
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B
Meaning finding the rhythms that allow you to wake up 700 days in to your work and the energy is still generating.
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A
Right.
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B
Instead of, all right, productivity, I gotta knock these things out. I'm gonna do these unsustainable things over the next two days. I'm gonna pull an all nighter with one of my last companies. We had sold to Airbnb and I was there for two years and there were just times where I thought, okay, we got to pull all nighters for this and it becomes radically unsustainable, throws you off for multiple days. And if you can fine tune the details and things like waking up every morning at the same time, then you can wake up in seven weeks and you're just building more and more momentum. Seven months. And now with two separate helping lead two separate companies with magic mind and an AI career coach company called apt, I feel like I have more energy now than I ever did in my 20s when I was spending seven days a week, 14 hours a day, obsessing over the one company I was running and ultimately running myself into the ground.
- [16:06]
A
Yeah, makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of people think that the more time they spend on work, the more that they're getting done. But there's the law of diminishing returns. For sure, that happens if you're doing your work with lack of flow or lack of energy and you actually get burnt out towards it. I just did a podcast on burnout, and burnout actually is the most detrimental thing to your productivity because now all of a sudden you've lost your passion to getting the work done right and
- [16:34]
B
you've treated people probably pretty, pretty shittily on your way to burning complete burnout. And then you have to spend. And I've been in that burnout. When we sold our last company, I was in burnout Mode for the 12 months leading up to it. I was so exhausted, just ptsd, even opening my email inbox because I was like, I can't handle any more or any more unexpected tasks that people are now putting on my plate. Then when we sold, it was probably eight months of needing like Two hour naps every afternoon to then recover. And Darshan, I'll tell you, I thought a two hour nap every afternoon was normal. I had convinced myself it's like, well, I stay up late and I work and I worked so hard, a two hour nap. And then probably eight months after the acquisition, when I no longer needed a two hour nap, I realized, whoa, that was actually pretty weird that I needed a two hour nap every afternoon to get through the day and so many cups of coffee that it sent me to the ER with a heart condition. And I just thought like, well, if, you know, it'll all be worth it if I can make it to that eternally eluding destination and sold the company. And there was no feeling of we did it. Honestly, it was just, all right, now we got to integrate the company into Airbnb. And then it was like, now we got these crazy big goals, now there was no destination. And it was just a whole lot more burnout. Luckily, when you're bought by another company, you get to relax a little bit. And I was able to get over the burnout, but it was destructive to relationships, to my family, to myself for months and months.
- [18:14]
A
I think about this a lot because in my own personal life as well, whenever I have a goal, it's almost counterproductive for me because it seems like there's a time limit between now and the achievement of the goal. And the harder I work and the more I do all nighters, maybe the goal will come a little bit sooner. Right. And then my brain tells me that once you achieve the goal, then on the other side of there will be less work, potentially more happiness. And the reality is there's always more work to do.
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B
Right?
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A
Right. And so it sounds like what you've done is had a mindset shift from goals to just how is the work fulfilling, how is the work itself building upon itself to the goal and then even well beyond the goal.
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B
Right? Yeah. And this is the cliche that we hear a thousand times and at least for myself, never paid attention to or didn't really understand what the hell these people were talking about when they'd say, fall in love with the process.
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A
Right.
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B
And find work where it's, you know, Joseph Campbell quote, in his earlier years he said, follow your bliss, and then his later years he said, follow your blisters. It's like I should have said, follow your blisters. And when you follow, I think when you surrender into the work that you don't mind whatever blisters comes, it feels like play to you. And when you surrender into that, which is the cliche that we hear from so many different sources. And for me it was. And I would hear this of like, just manage the process and the results take care of themselves. I hear that a thousand times. And then I found the work where I would do that, even if the only result was that I got to do more of that. Creating things, making things, helping people, whether it's with Magic Mind and just I would tell people about these ingredients. I wrote a book on this whole world of these ingredients that are in magic mind and 50 others in this book called Beyond Coffee. Way before I ever started a company in this space, I couldn't wait at a dinner conversation to talk about the improved blood flow if you consume enough choline or the detrimental effects of excess caffeine. I would talk about that stuff. Yeah. In my sleep if I could. And then it was like, okay, well I'm talking about it. And it's 14 bucks a day. If you order each of these ingredients wholesale. Maybe it'd be fun to build a brand universe around this and a small little shopify store. Now I thought the biggest it would be would be like a two person side project. And so it's been so wild to see how big it's gotten. But following your blisters, it's like, what are you aligned for? That is absolutely fundamentally key to your productivity. Because that is the only input in the beginning that will allow for an output 10 years into where you're generating more energy as a 55 year old then even as a 25 year old. It's work that you're aligned for. It's looking at productivity in terms of years and decades instead of hours and days. It's the daily rhythms of recognizing, well, how do I get the most out of that process each day or that workflow while waking up at the same time, everybody listening, just try it for seven days in a row and by day eight, you won't need an alarm clock. And you'll see what I mean of like, oh, damn, that's a way to do it. But then the other aspect that on this topic of goals that I think about is I used to obsess over the goals to exactly what you're talking about where like, okay, it'll make all of the work worthwhile. And it would be honestly like 90% of my energy focused on the goals, goals, goals. And now, and this is a very vedantic principle, this philosophy that comes from the vedas, it is 1% around the goal. The goal Gives direction, but it does not give purpose, does not give peace. And process gives direction. Process gives peace, meaning that process, you ultimately find the process where you are so. And livened by and energized by the process.
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A
Right.
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B
And you have to. This is all. Everybody's got to do their own personal homework to figure that out. But where the process is so rewarding that you think less and less about the goals. You're like, okay, the goal is the direction, but did I sail around the world 5,000 times if my family would let me? And, okay, for this trip, I'm going to look every once in a while at the compass and the goal to make sure we end up there. But I'm just built to sail. Find whatever that is for. For your life. And then you wake up each day so energized for that work. But also you're thinking about the goal 1% of the time and you're thinking about sailing the other 99%.
- [22:43]
A
Yeah, I totally agree with that.
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B
How was your relationship? And I would love to know, just as a scientist, as a doctor, what does the science say around goals? What have you applied to the framework of goals?
- [22:55]
A
I think that based on the science, I think that the science really focuses on the things that prevent you from achieving your goal from, like a psychological and a physical state. Right. I think a lot of people are trying to achieve goals and they're working themselves to the bone and they're using all sorts of, you know, whether it be drugs, even, like, caffeine is a drug. Right. There's more drug usage now for achieving productivity than ever before. Right.
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B
Caffeine's the most widely consumed drug in the world. Right?
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A
Exactly. And then, you know, like, I can't tell you the number of entrepreneurs I know that are on Adderall.
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B
Oh, God, it's mind blowing. Oh. And I think it's one of the most prescribed drugs in America. And yeah, there is a real epidemic of that in Silicon Valley specifically. And that's, I think, the misorientation around productivity and hours and weeks instead of years and decades. Because I know the people I've worked with that are hopped up on a lot of Adderall, they think a meeting went great. And the other seven people are like, holy shit, that was a train wreck. And they walk out thinking it went great, or they think, all right, let's set these seven ambitious goals knowing that what makes you good is what you do, what makes you great is what you don't do. Maybe set one and have the hyper focus to achieve it instead of. Yeah, a drug addiction that makes you feel like you can do seven all at the same time.
- [24:18]
A
I know, exactly. And then the other big thing I think also is in related to stress. Right. I think stress is a. Another factor that people don't really take into account a lot because you know, our bodies are just innately very resilient. But until they're not. Right. And so I think a lot of people function with a chronic low level of stress from the moment they wake up until the moment their head hits the pillow at night. And that chronic low level of psychological stress builds up into physical detriment over time. All right.
- [24:47]
B
Yeah. I'd say that is one of the. And we've chatted about this before. One of the primary causes of procrastination is low grade pervasive stress and anxiety. It's not. We think of procrastination as a function of motivation or lack of motivation. We think it's a function of energy. I'm just not, I'm tired. It's rarely a function of energy and fatigue. It's also paradoxically to our cultural misapprehension around or mistaken views on procrastination. We think it's tied to motivation. You might be really motivated for that big presentation, that big paper you gotta write in college, or that big work project that's gonna take you three hours, or that home project that you know you need to do. You might be greatly motivated to do it. But this low grade pervasive stress and anxiety keeps you from doing it. And how that ties to the most widely consumed drug in the world. Caffeine is. I know, for in my 20s I thought, okay, for that big thing, I just need to grab another energy drink.
- [25:44]
A
Yeah.
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B
And you grab another cup of coffee. And what is ironic there is that's the thing that's going to. Maybe it gets me through the next hour work, but it's going to spike my cortisol, my body's stress levels to where it's going to be the very thing that the next item on my to do list I don't want to do because of that thing I drank an hour before. And for me it was this very torturous. It was this kind of compounding, negatively compounding cycle where, where I was putting off these big tasks, these hard conversations. And it was cause of this just low grade pervasive stress anxiety. But if you can attack that, you could attack that with exercise, you could attack that with breath work, you could attack that with adaptogens, which magic mind Is one of the. It was when I developed it, when I started to develop it for myself 10 years ago and when we launched it as an actual product. And it's so cool to see you drinking it, see you talking about it on just as someone that's see you from afar. Well, probably 70 million people have seen you from afar on super bowl commercials. And then to see you just bringing up magic minded conversations, it really blows me and the team away to see your love for the product.
- [26:49]
A
I love it. Yeah, we take it every morning now.
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B
Well, it really just, it's so cool to see. Yeah. And the sleep product works so well. We're really proud of just put 14 months of development into Magic Mind Sleep, which also has natural adaptogens like Ashwagandha. But when we launched Magic Mind into the market as a product, it was the first energy drink that was formulated not only for energy, but also for decreasing stress and anxiety. And it was because of this aha moment. Once I saw the science around procrastination, I was like, well, damn, I should be putting in as much thought around naturally decreasing stress and anxiety in my morning routine as I'm thinking about energy or cognition. So the three, the the three parts of Magic Mind are around energy, they're around cognition, focus, memory recall, and then also decreasing stress naturally because of this,
- [27:42]
A
all at the same time. Which is incredible. To decrease stress while increasing energy and cognition. I think caffeine kind of does the opposite. Right. You increase your energy temporarily. Your stress levels also go up at the same time.
- [27:57]
B
Yeah. And it's a real, like I said, really vicious cycle. Especially as you lean on the caffeine more and more to do the thing that you've been putting off or to go into the meeting you don't want to go into or ah, okay, today's gonna be I got seven people I'm gonna be interviewing for this open roll. And you start chugging caffeine and you leave the office physically at 5 or 6pm and mentally depleted with your kids, or you're with your significant other, with your friends and your head's still at the office. And I thought that was just because I was an entrepreneur. And then I've been building companies without that massive caffeine addiction and stimulant addiction. And then like, oh, this is how it not only can be, but this is how it should be. Applying the science around this. And you really can. And that's what flow ends up being is your to do list is melting away. Your task is melting away. The process is just like you're rewarded by it and you're loving it and time disappears and you leave the office or you shut down the laptop and you're completely present in the next thing.
- [29:07]
A
Yeah. I think it's, you know, to have a life that you can lead like that where you're on at work but then also on afterwards. It does take a complete rethinking of, of what you're putting in your body because you're right. I mean, I think about your two hour naps. That was probably a time where you were drinking a lot of caffeine.
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B
A shit ton.
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A
Yeah. Because it suppresses your identity.
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B
Seven cups of coffee a day, Right?
- [29:28]
A
Yeah.
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B
Ended up sending me the ER with a heart condition that I still have to this day called atrial fibrillation. That, that, that was kind of the inception of, of needing to figure out a different morning routine and, and how to get the most out of minimal caffeine for me.
- [29:42]
A
Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, you're the one actually taught me with Magic Mind when you and I started talking about the negative aspects of having caffeine throughout your day. And so I've really switched to obviously using Magic Mind, but also using like decaffeinated versions of coffee as well myself personally, and I feel so much better. Yeah.
- [29:59]
B
And for people listening, I'd say 70% of our customers, they drink Magic Mind alongside their morning cup of coffee or their morning tea. So it doesn't need to replace it. But yes. Yet is a fascinating, fascinating world of excess caffeine and what it does to us.
- [30:12]
A
Yeah. And then I think what Magic Mind does is it replaces your need for caffeine throughout the day. So if you do that, like combine it with your morning. Because the morning coffee is a ritual for people. Right.
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B
For sure.
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A
And so it's, it's hard to give that up for people. But it's not a ritual to drink caffeine all coffee all day long. Right. That's something that we do to ourselves to try to stay alert, to try to focus and then ends up trying to cope. Try to cope. Exactly. Right, right.
- [30:35]
B
Yeah. Yeah. That's a. Was there any point in time when you were drinking excess caffeine as an entrepreneur, as going through medical school, or were you always kind of like a one cup?
- [30:46]
A
No, my whole life I've been drinking excess caffeine until just like recently, to be honest with you. Yeah, it's been a problem because of just the stress of entrepreneurship and having a practice and all these things. It's the Only way to. I thought it was the only way to get. Get through my day. And then I would suffer for it every evening. Like you said, I would not be present with my family. I'd have trouble sleeping later on, all of it. And so just recently switched the model and especially when I learned about adaptogens. Right. And I think it's great to talk a lot, a little bit more about adaptogens, if you don't mind, because they come in all different forms and how. And I'd love for you to tell the audience like the science of adaptogens, how do they work and what are some of the forms they come in?
- [31:29]
B
Yeah. Magic mind has three. And like I said, I wrote a book on this whole world of a sustainable approach called Beyond Coffee. A sustainable approach, a sustainable guide to nootropics, adaptogens and mushrooms, functional mushrooms. So with a sustainable approach to these things. And there's basically three buckets with all of these nootropics, adaptogens, functional mushrooms. There's three buckets. There's hype and not backed by science. And it just doesn't really work for cognition, for energy, for it could be for decreasing stress and people might be folklore and just doesn't really work, at least according to the science. And then there's another bucket where it works. Like I agree a comment called Modafinil comes to mind where it can work, but it'll give you crazy headaches or gave me crazy headaches the next day leads to dehydration, terrible sleep quality. But for that, like I said, that misorientation around productivity in terms of hours instead of weeks, months, years, you might feel like you got a lot done in 10 hours on something like Modafinil. And then you crash hard and you recover for two days. That was my experience. And there's. And the science confirms that. Quite right.
- [32:38]
A
I mean it's a drug too.
- [32:39]
B
Yes. Yeah. And it's a well studied one to where it's like we got 40 years of science around many of these compounds. Or you have something like cordyceps mushrooms that they'll increase the body's production of ATP, body's fuel currency. It's where we actually derive our energy. And that increase. You'll feel great 70 days in, you'll feel even better 70 days in than day two, day three. So it's a very sustainable approach to energy. And then this third bucket would be. It's safe but not effective. So you have this bucket of hype and there's no. No science around it you have this bucket where it's effective but not safe, and then you have a bucket where it's safe. But ultimately what you want is safe and effective. It's a beautiful intersection of safety and efficacy and all of these compounds. In the book that I spent a little over a year and a half writing, I sum up the book with, Here are the 12 things you could add to your morning ritual that are right at the intersection of safety and efficacy. And then a year after that of enough people just being like, just tell me the 12. I don't want to read the whole book. Friends, being my brother very loudly was like, dude, I don't want to read your book. Just tell me what I should take in the morning. Exactly. I put together a Google Doc. I was like, Here are the 12 things you can buy off Amazon. Here are the links. And the best suppliers of these things are the ones that I felt like were the most reputable suppliers. Because you can also get lion's mane as a small example. You can accidentally buy the stock instead of the fruiting body, which a lot of people wanted, sell you lion's mane cheaply. And if you buy the stock instead of the fruiting body, you get nearly none of the value of the product. So you want to buy it from the right suppliers. I would list these off and then friends would be like, this is like 14 bucks a day to buy all of these things individually. So then three different people were like, we should get this into. Buy it wholesale into a commercial kitchen in the South Bay of San Francisco where I was living at the time. And it turns out it would make it about three bucks a day. I was like, yeah, let's do it. And then after 27 different people were pooling their money to do this and it becoming kind of like the nootropic stack of Silicon Valley. I was like, all right, there's probably a small little, like I was saying, shopify business to be built around this and I'll do that.
- [34:56]
A
So like a social scientific committee forum out there that are like doing this with you.
- [35:01]
B
Yeah, I was like. I was like one of my buddies, Lenny Rachitzky, who's this really well known product manager, it has one of the best substacks. I think it's the highest grossing business substack on the planet. He's a really great writer and he would joke that I was like the Silicon Valley drug dealer. Silicon Valley nootropics drug dealer. So I was just like at Airbnb handing him these little dime bags of pills. Of like here are the things that wholesale but, but the, that adaptogenic side of this equation is so under discussed. For energy, people typically take things like ashwagandha, rhodiola that you could take ashwagandha at night and it'd be great for decreasing stress leading into going into bed or relaxing after work. But it's actually really, really helpful in the morning, your morning routine, like we're saying, to decrease that low grade pervasive stress so that you can drop into your work and, and your to do list melts away the other adaptogens that something like Magic Mind includes, which these are my three favorite adaptogens on the planet. Ashwagandha, Rhodiola and then Bacopa moneri.
- [36:09]
A
Yes.
- [36:10]
B
So rhodiola, it's an alternate to caffeine and stimulants for energy that doesn't jack up your cortisol, doesn't spike your body's stress hormone.
- [36:18]
A
And how does it do that?
- [36:19]
B
The mechanisms. I actually, I'm not the scholar to know exactly how the. In fact a lot of these things. As a doctor, I'm sure you're well aware we don't know the mechanisms of action. We just know, okay, it's safe. And this is our hypothesis on how it works. But rhodiola also activates ATP production, like I was saying, cordyceps. So caffeine, the MOA on that. The mechanisms of action for caffeine is really interesting in that it does not give you a whole lot of energy. It just blocks the neuroreceptors, the adenosine receptors that tell you you're building fatigue. So it's like turning off the check engine light instead of fixing the engine, instead of improving the engine.
- [37:02]
A
That's a good analogy for it.
- [37:03]
B
It's going to turn out, it's going to block those neuroreceptors that tell you you're building fatigue, where you're like, all right, I'm ready to rock. I no longer feel fatigue. It's very different than I'm no longer fatigue or building fatigue. And then those adenosine receptors, those blockers, they wear off and then adenosine rushes the system. And that's why we feel the crash.
- [37:21]
A
Exactly.
- [37:22]
B
And it does spike a little bit of our adrenaline. So we get a little energy from the spike of adrenaline from caffeine. But it's far inferior to something like cordyceps mushrooms or rhodiola that actually improve the body's production of ATP, the fuel currency. As I mentioned, for the body when you do that, then you actually have more energy at the office, at the gym, at the park, with the kids. But one downside of adaptogens is that it takes five to seven days for you to start to feel the full effect. For some people for ashwagandha, it can take up to 10 days, up to 14 days in rare cases, but it can take a while. So if we're sitting in someone's lounge 400 years ago and they give you a cup of coffee or a distilled cup of ashwagandha tea, within 30, 45 minutes you're gonna be like, no, it's the coffee that's giving me. Because we don't, we didn't know the science. We didn't have the understanding to know that, oh, it's not giving you energy, it's just blocking the neuroreceptor that you're building. Fatigue versus, hey, actually that cordyceps T, that's going to give you better energy. It's just going to take seven days of taking it for you to feel it. So the subjective experience led the whole world to oh, caffeine must be the end all be all for energy. But now as we've gotten the scientific literature in front of us and for decades of study around these compounds, we now it's well understood scientifically, but mainstream, the mainstream audience has not caught up quite yet, but it's starting to around the benefits of these adaptogens. Bacopa. Can I mention one thing about Bacopa, which may be my favorite ingredient in magic mind and by the way, anybody listening, they can buy all of these ingredients from great suppliers just directly. You don't need to drink magic mind to get these benefits. Bacopa. Bacopa moneri is an Indian herb that's in India and in China. It's given to children and adults way before a pharmaceutical grade stimulant for focus is given for a pharmaceutical like ones that anybody can think of when you think of ADD or adhd. But COPA is phenomenal for decreasing impulsivity. And we typically think of focus issues as you want to be dialed into the thing in front of you instead of what if. You can also at the same time put blinders on from the distractions that continue to pull at your attention. And one is to lock you in. It's almost like a magnet locking you in further. The other is a blocker that blocks off all the distractions that pull at your attention. And Bacopa is phenomenal for decreasing impulsivity by up to 45% within 30 minutes of, of drinking it.
- [40:07]
A
Oh, where's that fast?
- [40:08]
B
It's very fast after about seven days of a loading phase. So then after seven days of getting to, like I was saying, of reaching full effect, then within 30 minutes you're dialed into whatever you're working on, whatever conversation you're in, whatever three hour task you know you need to finish and you're not reaching for your social media or the 15 different text messages that are pulling at your attention. So I always, whenever I'm talking about my favorite ingredients of anybody's morning routine, I mentioned those. And then I also mentioned the detrimental effects of caffeine, of excess caffeine consumption as well.
- [40:45]
A
Right. You told me about a structure that you have or mnemonic around this cpp.
- [40:51]
B
Pcc.
- [40:51]
A
Yeah. Pcc. Yeah. What is pcc?
- [40:54]
B
I'm sorry, cpp. CPP is. And really I only mentioned that mnemonic. I don't think about it in terms of cpp, but in terms of going into our podcast and I was thinking about your audience. Yeah, it's like, you know, I think what could be helpful is these three areas that are wildly under discussed and it's really just a mnemonic device for you to remember and it's based on just being a pod, having a podcast.
- [41:18]
A
I think we talked through most of it. Right.
- [41:19]
B
Caffeine and we have, I would love to mention a little bit on the C part, the caffeine side of things. And yeah, I've been being a podcaster for a while. I just try to put myself in the listener's shoes. What might be interesting for them and
- [41:33]
A
for this now our audience knows what
- [41:34]
B
they need to know about this AUD audience. I think CBV might be relevant for them. We already talked about procrastination, we talked about productivity, procrastination, low grade stress. Right, Low grade stress. If you can exercise, breathwork, magic mind, whatever you on your own, just consuming things like Ashwagandha in the morning and consulting with your physician to know that it's going to be a great option for you and all of those kind of caveats. But breath work is a phenomenal one for decreasing. Anybody can do it. You don't need to consult a physician for that. You can do five minutes of breathwork to decrease the body's cortisol levels for you to dive into your work. And that five minutes is going to serve you well for the next eight hours. The C portion is the detrimental effects of caffeine consumption. So caffeine is like we said, it's the. I mean, 90% of adults every day are consuming caffeine for the cognitive benefits, the perceived energy benefits, but we're consuming it every day. It's the same thing we've been doing for 400 years. Our favorite kind of black soup to start the day. Or it might be green tea or black tea for others. But there is a downstream cascade that happens when we consume caffeine. And you and I might have figured this out experientially, subjectively, of consuming too much caffeine. But the detrimental effects of excess caffeine consumption is you get burnout, you get decreased sleep quality. But what people, I don't think many understand, is that it spikes our body's stress hormone, cortisol, that leads to those issues with our to do lists, the issues of procrastination. One hour, two hours, three hours later. The caffeine in our body will peak around two to three hours after consumption. And then it's decreasing. But that stress can remain elevated for hours after. And you're reaching for the next cup and then it's compounding the stress hangover after that. But the other thing that's really interesting around the science of caffeine is that it's a vasoconstrictor, meaning that it is going to decrease the blood flow to the brain. And this. If you're in a manufacturing plant in 1962 and you're doing the same repetitive task over and over and over again, by all means, drink three cups of coffee.
- [43:51]
A
Yeah.
- [43:52]
B
But if you're in the midst of a modern kind of work culture where you got 27 different emails with 27 different contexts, the academic term for creativity is lateral thinking. So if you want to improve lateral thinking, the ability to switch contexts, the ability to make novel connections to solve some problem that you're working on, if you want deep creative work, the last thing you want to do is drink three cups of coffee, where you decrease the blood flow to the brain. Vasoconstricting blood flow to the brain and decreasing the oxygen that's reaching your brain throughout your workday. The optimal approach would be to increase blood flow to the brain. Ways that you can do that could be exercise, it could be breath work, it could be city choline. Choline, which is naturally found in eggs. Magic mind, has choline for this very reason. Improve blood flow to the brain. A side note here is that'll also improve your REM sleep 12 to 15 hours later.
- [44:49]
A
Really? Choline?
- [44:49]
B
Will choline increase choline consumption? I didn't know that improve REM sleep 12 to 15 hours later or it's been known to. And for many individuals it'll improve your sleep quality. Something you took in the morning can improve your sleep quality at night. And I mean, there's so many benefits for magic wine. I rarely ever get to mention these other benefits, but like I said, you could consume six eggs and get the same choline that you'd get for a magic mind. And that increased choline consumption will improve blood flow to brain, improve the oxygen that's reaching your brain, for improved lateral thinking, creativity, context switching. And the modern workflow requires a lot, I would imagine your workflow a lot of times.
- [45:35]
A
Absolutely. Like you said, from email to email, you're thinking about totally different things constantly. And yeah, when you're all caffeined up, it's really hard to make those switches and it's more exhausting and you get fatigue actually going through your day trying to mentally switch from one topic to the other. And with not doing caffeine and adding like an ingredient like choline, like you're discussing, it could make that process so much easier.
- [45:59]
B
Yeah, it's a huge cost of excess caffeine consumption is that that problem gets worse and then you get into excess caffeine consumption that our site never talks about. If we talked about the pervasive stress. But there are areas that I've never heard on a podcast, but it's clear as day and anybody can look it up on ChatGPT and Claude, of the detrimental effects on fertility for sure, with excess caffeine consumption. And there's a fertility crisis in the US and over the last 30 years, every single decade, our average caffeine consumption has gone up. The latest, the latest innovation from Starbucks is a triple shot espresso. I saw a TV commercial for that recently where I'm like, this is like just, just overtly we're going to add even more caffeine in that same little, that same little can that used to be double shot espresso. Now it's triple shot espresso. And the average caffeine content of a, of a Starbucks is over 300 milligrams.
- [47:05]
A
Right. It's like become three times what a coffee was. Yeah.
- [47:09]
B
So three times what a coffee was in 1995. But go ahead.
- [47:13]
A
No, I'm just saying that it becomes an addictive level of caffeine. And so then when people get addicted to the caffeine, it keeps on coming back to the store to buy more.
- [47:19]
B
Right.
- [47:20]
A
And so it's, you know, the other thing that you had mentioned briefly was that you had atrial fibrillation. The cardiovascular effects of excessive caffeine are real.
- [47:29]
B
Yeah, it's hypertension, blood pressure. For me, it. I had many people have the prewiring predisposition for cardiac issues. Like I had that for atrial fibrillation. And drinking six to seven cups of coffee, not only spiking my stress like crazy. And like I said, this is such a small little sentence I buried in one of our previous topics that I just thought I was stressed because I was running a business. I think there's nine out of 10 people that could be listening to this that think they're attributing that that will be told, well, it's a high stress job or, well, you're working really hard. Oh, you got ambitious goals, dude. With MagicMind, we're unabashedly trying to build the next Red Bull in our own way. And healthier, organic, better for you. We're unabashed about that as well, in a sustainable way. Where I want to love my work each day 20 years from now, instead of trying to just condense it all into seven years and burning out. So there's a lot of caveats to that big unabashed statement. But at the same time, I'm not stressed at all. There hasn't been a single morning in the five years since launching the company that I've woken up in the middle of the night stressed. And that was not the case in my 20s with the three companies and three failures where I thought I was doing all the right things and working seven days a week, 14 hours a day. But yeah, there is a real message in our heads where we justify being stressed all the time. And I look back and I'm like, no, I was stupidly addicted to a drug that I was drinking, consuming in excess every day and had no idea it had these effects.
- [49:06]
A
Yeah, it's so funny how we relegate our symptoms to something else, like our stressful lives or just working too hard, but it's really the drug that's causing it. And caffeine in excess is a drug, right? I mean, like you and I both said a small amount every morning is fine. Right?
- [49:22]
B
A cup of coffee, great.
- [49:23]
A
Right, right. But people do want that additional level of lateral thinking, for example, focus. And there's other ways to get that besides caffeine, which is the adaptogens and the ingredients that you're talking about, like choline, et cetera. And these are safer and cleaner ways of getting the same effect but without all the side effects.
- [49:43]
B
Right. And people also will consume that. They'll, they will rapidly reach for their, their cup of coffee in the morning to improve mood. And an ingredient like turmeric curcumin. Turmeric curcumin can rapidly improve mood, even better than caffeine, really. And almost 40% of depressive disorders are now tied to inflammation in the body. And you could go to hesitate to say this because I don't want to lead anybody astray, but because there's so many benefits of things like talk therapy. Yes, there's so many benefits for clinical therapy with a trained therapist, but there is also a subset of people that might be consuming dairy on a regular basis and they're allergic to it. And it is spiking the eosinophils that is spiking cytokines in their system. Spiking inflammation, the biomarker waves saying spiking inflammation, that inflammation. If you twisted your ankle in nature, a deer twists a leg or a hip joint in nature, right now, that deer is going to get these biochemical signals of go sit under a tree and lay low while you heal. And similarly, if we're inflamed, the body's going to say, hey, go to a dark room, rest. Don't go out and about into huge crowded spaces for those same biochemical reasons of your body knows you need to rest and recuperate and heal. And if someone's, let's say, consuming something in their diet that is spiking their inflammation, it might very well benefit them to also do talk therapy. But something like getting that out of their diet or consuming turmeric curcumin in their morning routine to get rid of the inflammation that could improve their mood. It's been shown, turmeric's been shown twice in 2013 and 2017 in large scale studies to be as effective at improving mood as leading pharmaceuticals. It's so easy to try it with. No, it's in 95% of Indian dishes. It's so easy for anybody to try it. And yet it just. There's no big turmeric. There's no marketing initiative that's able to go around and say, all right, everybody should try this, as it might not be the last line of defense if you need something else. But it can be a first line of defense and anybody can incorporate in their morning routine to try it out.
- [52:15]
A
Yeah. And I think you and I are talking a lot about brain benefits, but everything you're mentioning also has an equal benefit in our physiology beyond Just the brain. Turmeric curcumin, for example. We had Dr. Gupta on the podcast a few weeks ago. She's done a PhD in turmeric, believe it or not. A PhD, yes. And all of the benefits of turmeric, beyond mood benefits, are it helps to heal your gut, it reduces cardiovascular inflammation, it can reduce pain from injuries. And also people suffer from chronic pain like neck and back pain, and really helps even replace the need for Advil and non steroidals, which cause a lot of damage as well. So turmeric curcumin has benefits throughout the body and brain. Benefits that are very powerful.
- [53:04]
B
Yeah. And these natural herbs just don't have. They lack the marketing and profit centers to lead to a $400 million marketing budget. And so we hear or we think inflammation, and we think, okay, Advil. And what's so great about the last 10 years is now we're starting to wake up to, well, one. Now we're aware of the detrimental effects of long term usage of NSAIDs like Advil. But also we're starting to wake up to maybe there's some more natural remedies that we should try as well.
- [53:37]
A
Like turmeric. Magic man has turmeric in it. You get it every single day. And a lot of people are living with a chronic low level of inflammation, either through something going on with their gut or even their oral cavity. And this can help with that as well.
- [53:51]
B
I just did my blood work with NexHealth. I was telling you on the drive here, I did, I think it was last Monday, so it might take a few more days for y' all to see the results. But every time that I do my blood work, I love that it comes back and shows with biomarkers the same thing that I subjectively yell from the mountaintops of no stress. So I have very low biomarkers than any of my stress biomarkers. And then I have no inflammation.
- [54:16]
A
Amazing.
- [54:17]
B
Like zero inflammation. Zero biomarkers for inflammation. And that wasn't the case.
- [54:22]
A
Yeah.
- [54:23]
B
Six, seven, eight years ago, before I started to put these things together in a formula for MagicMind.
- [54:28]
A
Yeah. And you know, stress and inflammation are interrelated in a big way. When people have more stress in their life, psychological stress, they actually do show higher biomarkers of inflammation and vice versa too. So, you know, you're kind of getting both of those with an ingredient like turmeric curcumin as well.
- [54:44]
B
Yes. And it is a. It's one of these things where I. I feel like I almost want to say it three times in every podcast, especially with AI tools, is one. Any listener can check anything that anybody says on a podcast right there so easily and get a plain English answer, two sentences in two seconds. But they can also just ask and do their own research to say, okay, I'm dealing with this. Or I have. Let's say you're feeling like you're in a real low mood stage of life. You can start asking it all the questions of what are the natural, organic, safe and effective things that I could try out.
- [55:26]
A
That's a great idea.
- [55:27]
B
And do it all on your own and advocate for yourself, Research for yourself and do a bit of really pretty safe trial and error that I'd argue is way safer then. Well, the pharmacist recommended Advil and you wake up in six straight weeks of Advil. And I can tell you that is just as easy to look up on ChatGPT and see how detrimental that can be for your health.
- [55:53]
A
Yeah, yeah, it's very detrimental. Okay, so we mentioned like four of the ingredients in MagicMind. I know there's 12 ingredients, right? I'm going to have you pick one more to talk about. What's your next most favorite ingredient in there?
- [56:06]
B
So the source of pretty minimal caffeine in magicmind is. Is Matcha. That's why I say it's pretty minimal.
- [56:13]
A
So you can love Matcha. Let's talk about Matcha.
- [56:14]
B
You can pair it with your morning, your morning routine, your morning cup of coffee or morning tea. You can pair magic minds pretty easily with it because of that minimal caffeine. But the minimal caffeine, about a third of a cup of coffee in our original shot. Magic Mind Max is the first. It's the world's first by the way. Thank you for letting me ramble about the science and the ingredients behind this product. I did write a book so I will talk about it for that thing was like 18 months and I loved every minute I talk about loving the process. I love thinking, talking about these ingredients. Magic Mind Max is the world's first time release energy shot on planet. So for eight to nine hours of mental performance and you couldn't do liquid form of time release version of these ingredients. You could do pills but not liquid form until about two years ago. The technology just wasn't there until about two years ago. But in original it's about a third of a cup of coffee with 55 milligrams of caffeine. And that comes from Matcha. Matcha, which is the ground up green tea leaf. The ground up Tea leaf. So you get all of the compound of the green tea leaf itself, in addition to everything that comes from the dilution and the solubility of that tea in the water, as opposed to green tea, where you don't get the ground up tea leaf. Matcha has 140 times the antioxidants of green tea, right? 140 times.
- [57:37]
A
That's crazy.
- [57:37]
B
And up to 100 times a glass of red wine, like anybody that's like, well, I drink it from the antioxidants. You could consume green tea and it would be 100 times better. Antioxidant benefits. The Matcha also has these ingredients called catechins, polyphenols that are great for decreasing stress, extending your body's absorption of something like that caffeine over a longer period of time. That's why it's called nature's time release caffeine. The caffeine binds to these complex molecules called catechins. So this is great for any Matcha drinkers out there. If you ever want to know why you have this steadier energy over a longer period of time, it's because the caffeine molecules bind to these much more complex molecules called catechins and it's harder for the body to break down and metabolize. So for caffeine and coffee, it doesn't have that binding to a complex molecule, so it's metabolized much quicker. So you have a peak much faster and a crash much faster. But for Matcha, people know this subjectively, they just feel it's a steadier, cleaner, calmer energy. And that's because of the longer time it takes for us to metabolize the caffeine molecules. But Matcha has all of these other benefits like the antioxidants, the L theanine that comes just built into Matcha, L theanine helps for this calmer, steadier feeling. That doesn't it's not in coffee, but, but a caffeine to L theanine ratio of typically 2 to 1. So 2 molecules of L theanine to 1 for every 1 molecule of caffeine leads. It's this optimal ratio is what it's called, this optimal ratio of just steady energy. And Matcha is so great because it has all of everything that I'm mentioning. It has it built into, into the green tea leaf that gets ground up.
- [59:24]
A
And there's a lot of studies on green tea and other longevity benefits as well.
- [59:29]
B
So yeah, the longevity of magic mind and any of these ingredients, Lion's Mane. I didn't mention that lion's mane is so great for neuro longevity.
- [59:37]
A
Right.
- [59:38]
B
But what were you going to say about Matcha and longevity?
- [59:40]
A
No, I was going to say like, you know, there's studies around brain health and people that live in areas of the world where they consume more green tea have less of a risk of Alzheimer's disease, for example, and neurodegenerative conditions, they have less.
- [59:53]
B
Really? I didn't know.
- [59:54]
A
Yes. And so this can be. Yeah, it's considered one of the longevity ingredients that you can have out there.
- [59:59]
B
Yeah, it is. Like I was saying about choline and improved lateral thinking and then the side effect of or the additional benefit of the improved REM sleep. We rarely get a chance to talk about neurologevity around these ingredients. And when you have something like lion's mane mushrooms that can leads to neurogenesis and improve synaptic connections. We used to think it was like, all right, well, we used to think 25. Now many researchers are saying the brain will continue to develop to 30 and some in the last two months. I don't know if you've seen this. They're saying it could be up to 35 for individuals. So just anybody with thinking that it's like, all right, my brain's done. Now it's time to, I don't know, hit the bong. You might want to wait until much later in life than what we thought because the brain is still developing. It's looking like until 35 now. And who knows? I feel like we know so little about anything with certainty that we might as well know nothing. Maybe it's going to be 40 by the time this episode airs. But all of that is to say that now we're seeing that actually, no, the brain is not this static organ that develops and then is good to go at 35. And you've talked about this on your episodes before, around the synaptic connections that can still be generated with exercise, with the right mental exercises, as well as ingredients in our morning or daily routines. Like lion's mane mushrooms.
- [61:24]
A
Right. I think the moral of the story is, obviously everyone needs exercise, they need a healthy diet, they need to sleep well. But we have evolved with these plants for thousands and thousands of years and they have benefits and then they have even more benefits. Very rarely do they have side effects like drugs do. Right. And so if you can find the right ingredients, like you've put into magic mind and combine it with a good exercise and sleep routine, it really becomes magical. Right. You have all of the things that you're talking about. You get your day started with energy. The same time every day. You sustain the energy throughout the day, sustain the focus, the creativity throughout the day. And then when you're done with your workday, you get to apply those same benefits to your evening with your family and your friends and like, what an awesome life. And then you sleep great. Right? It can all combine together to be just creating the perfect ritual for yourself.
- [62:16]
B
Yeah, it is. I wouldn't fault any listener thinking, well, of course these guys love talking about this stuff because, well, for my case, of course he loves talking about this stuff because he started the company. But God, they come to any cocktail conversation six, seven, eight, nine years ago and I was talking about the same things and it's kind of the reverse. I loved introducing people to the best that the globe and the best that our science has and the best that nature has to offer on these topics versus the conventional. Same thing we've been doing for 400 years. When it comes to productivity, when it comes to our work, we don't do anything that we did 400 years ago in terms of we're not riding horses around, we're not using, we're not sending telegrams from 200 years ago. But when it comes to our morning routines, we're like, well, this has to be the only thing, only game in town because we've been doing it for 40 years with four cups of coffee. Exactly. Versus well, maybe we can't improve it.
- [63:19]
A
I think for me, like what made me very attracted to the product is like I have a lot of patients that are on supplements, right? Almost every one of our patients on some supplements and they have supplement fatigue. Right. There's so many different things that you can take. And I want everyone on some core supplements like vitamin D, a good omega supplement, creatine, like these are all for me like basic core supplements that most humans will benefit from. But the problem is, is that there's so many other things out there and people don't want to take more than three to five pills a day. Right. And so Magic mind gets you 12 science backed supplements all in one daily shot. And it's just so much easier and I think it tastes great and I just make it part of my morning routine.
- [63:59]
B
Yeah, that was good.
- [64:00]
A
And then I get these ingredients every day.
- [64:01]
B
That was the goal. The two goals for Magic Mind, the kind of the 1% and then 99% was on focus on the day to day work to get there was to create the most effective health shot in the world. And then also to make it the best tasting, there's a pretty low bar there with most health shots, but we've worked so hard to make it taste great too. So thank you for that note. But two months ago, it's now the number one health shot country in the Natural Channel. So Whole Foods sprouts, places like that.
- [64:34]
A
And I know like high performers in sports are doing it too. Like Matthew Stafford talks a lot about how it's the only supplement he takes
- [64:41]
B
every day outside of creatine. Yeah. I couldn't believe that when he said that in an interview that, yeah, the only supplements he takes are creatine and Magic Mind and yet just won the MVP for the LA Rams.
- [64:54]
A
Yep. Fantastic. Well, you created something amazing here and I really appreciate you for it. I really appreciate it, you bringing this knowledge to our community out there and I'd love for people to give it a try. So if, you know, we're going to, I think have a discount code in our. In our show notes.
- [65:09]
B
Yeah. If we. If I haven't given you one, I'll make sure that your listeners have one.
- [65:13]
A
Yeah. In the show notes. And where can people learn more about Magic Mind and more about you as well?
- [65:18]
B
They can find out everything they'd want about magicmind.com, you can also I love just telling people go ask their favorite AI product about Magic Mind and all the ingredients, are they legit? What's the, what are the benefits? All of those things and get it from a third party like ChatGPT or Claude or something and then they can find out as much as they want about me and the things that light me up on Instagram. Just James J. Bashara on Instagram. Or you can just Google creator of Magic Mind.
- [65:46]
A
I think your next book needs to be on productivity because you still got that figured out.
- [65:50]
B
I would love to. It's a world that I think a lot about and have to with the different projects on the plate and wanted to be a present husband and father.
- [66:01]
A
Well, you're amazing man. Thank you so much.
- [66:03]
B
Thank you, Dr. Shah. Thank you for having me.
- [66:04]
A
Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you like this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps to support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shows shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions. Or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best, and it's always important to seek their guidance.