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The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
209. TJ Power: How Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin & Endorphins Drive Happiness and Longevity
01:06:26
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- [00:00]
A
Dopamine has been one of the most important desires for our whole human evolution. As a man and woman in a tribe, you would have got your dopamine from making the fires, chasing down the meat, and that was such a pivotal thing that we needed.
- [00:12]
B
The absence of dopamine is the presence of addiction. And when dopamine was absent, they were driven to dopamine seeking behavior.
- [00:19]
A
You scroll videos for a while, after you eventually finish, you don't kind of think in your head like, wow, that was such a good scroll. If anything, you think like, shit, how do I get more of that feeling? Because it didn't feel like enough.
- [00:29]
B
Social media is not necessarily the enemy itself. It's that social media makes us feel connected. And we're actually not connected.
- [00:37]
A
We're living in a world now where we're almost thinking, screw the connection, screw the connection to nature. Let's just only focus on dopamine. Once the dopamine goes, oxytocin can become a priority. Oxytocin is designed to make sure we have a deep sense of belonging and purpose in our tribe.
- [00:51]
B
We know from the big data that sense of community and purpose into later in life are so important to longevity.
- [00:58]
A
And no matter how successful you become, your money, your fame, whatever it might be, you just think, more, more. We're too driven by dopamine. And in the pursuit of oxytocin, your system starts to think, well, actually my life's pretty good. And that's a nice feeling for a human being.
- [01:11]
B
Why is society becoming so disconnected? Are we seeking these neurotransmitters in other areas?
- [01:18]
A
I would say deep connection is.
- [01:29]
B
Ultimate human. Hey, guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brecke, where we go down the road of everything. Anti aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And I happen to be over here in London right now at the Health 2025 summit. Massive summit. 10,000 people. The UK has really gotten woke to wellness. It's been incredible. And I got a chance to sit down with a neuroscientist, T.J. power. And you guys are going to love this guy's mission. So welcome to the podcast, tj.
- [02:04]
A
Thanks for having me, Gary.
- [02:05]
B
Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you. You know, first of all, I love the fact that you have an English accent and your wife has an Australian accent. So, like, your kids are going to have the blend of, like, the best accent ever.
- [02:17]
A
Yeah, I'm kind of wanting it to lean towards Australian. I almost think the Australian's Cooler, but maybe England's cool, too.
- [02:22]
B
Yeah. I think the Australians are. They're. You know, the English are pretty, like, outspoken, but so are the Australians. I real. Man, that was an aggressive crowd in Melbourne, Sydney. You know, I think. I think the British sense of humor is, like, a little darker.
- [02:37]
A
Yeah.
- [02:37]
B
And, like, the Australians are a little, like, more straightforward with their humor. Like, I always. I have a lot of British friends, and a British compliment is like, hey, you look pretty good for a fat guy.
- [02:48]
A
Yeah, it's a little bit.
- [02:49]
B
Can you just give me a straight compliment? But I'm so excited to run this with you today because, you know, I did a stage talk earlier.
- [02:58]
A
Cool.
- [02:58]
B
And we were actually talking about just the effect of neurotransmitters on the body, forming our mood, forming our emotional state. You and I actually almost ran a podcast before. The podcast started early, and we were talking about your dose lab and, you know, your research and dose standing for dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. Yeah, that worked out beautifully for you.
- [03:23]
A
I mean, God was at play at that point.
- [03:26]
B
Yeah.
- [03:26]
A
Making that acronym exist just felt crazy.
- [03:29]
B
Instead of some weird acronym, you know, like doge.
- [03:32]
A
I know. I don't know if it would have landed as hard.
- [03:34]
B
No, it doesn't land as hard. This is amazing. But you often talk about, you know, the road to happiness and the role that these neurotransmitters play, how we can get more of them, how we're artificially getting them, how we've actually replaced our sense of connection, very often with artificial ways of getting dings for these different neurotransmitters. We used to have a saying in the mortality space. The absence of dopamine is the presence of addiction, and people got very addicted. There was a lot of research centered around how when dopamine was absent or people had difficulty methylating this neurotransmitter, dopamine, they were driven to dopamine seeking behavior.
- [04:21]
A
Yeah.
- [04:21]
B
Drugs and alcohol addiction, promiscuity, you know, thrill seeking. And, you know, it's fascinating. I spoke to one of these guys that used to jump off a cliff in a squirrel suit.
- [04:36]
A
Okay.
- [04:36]
B
You know this.
- [04:37]
A
You know those things you, like, literally jump? Yeah.
- [04:39]
B
It's a wingsuit. You know, they call it squirrel suit. And you just open up the wings, and you're going 200 miles an hour, 8ft off the ground, like, inches away from death. And, I mean, the dopamine would be.
- [04:50]
A
Soaring at that point.
- [04:51]
B
But, you know, what he said was, I, you know, When I do it, I feel normal.
- [04:55]
A
Okay. It almost gets him to the average level.
- [04:58]
B
I'm like, wow, dude, life must really suck otherwise, if that's like a day in the office for you, you know, Interesting. But talk a little bit about the interplay with these neurotransmitters and tell me a little bit about your journey into the authoring, the dose effect, and coming up with dose labs. You know, fascinating what you showed me on your computer that you're doing with technology actually beginning to gamify the way people look at these neurotransmitters and how they interplay with happiness. So talk a little bit about that journey.
- [05:30]
A
Yeah. I mean, for me, almost not too dissimilar to your wingsuiting friend there. I grew up from as early as I can remember as, like, a dopamine addict. I would describe myself as, like. Even if I think back to being a young kid, like, five years old, I remember my mom used to hide the sugar in our house on, like, a top shelf of the cabinet in the kitchen, so we couldn't get it as kids.
- [05:49]
B
Wow. So she knew.
- [05:51]
A
She knew this kid, like, wanted, like, fast pleasure effectively. And, I mean, I don't even think dopamine was understood as a word back then, but she knew. Okay. My kids seems to, like, want quick hits. I was pretty, like, a daredevil type kid, and when I became, like, a teenager and discovered, like, cigarettes and alcohol and partying and pornography, I just got, like, lost in that world. That world, to me was just, like, really fun, really exciting. It felt, like, cool to me to go down that dopamine path. About 22, I'd been studying in psychology and neuroscience and begun lecturing in this world, But I was still struggling a lot with my own habits and behavior. I still felt lost in a lot of these different addictions. And when I was about 19, 20, I heard the word dopamine for the first time, and I was like, what's this word? Dopamine. And when I went deep in studying it and reading the papers on it, I thought, wow, that is what I'm looking for in all of this partying. Like, there's something in that chemical that I'm looking to chase that I'm artificially accessing through this lifestyle I'm living. And at the time, I became really interested in the world of evolutionary neuroscience. Like, how did humans evolve over hundreds of thousands of years start thinking about how men were spending their time hunting and making fires and eating naturally and physically working super hard out in the sunlight? Out in the sunlight. We were just a real physical deterrent, natural being. And I set myself on almost this experiment. I kind of left where all my friends were, where the partying was happening. And I went and lived with my grandpa because I knew he lived out in nature. And I thought maybe I'll just try and like, live more of a hunter gatherer.
- [07:18]
B
Dude, that's drastic, man. You just pulled the plug.
- [07:20]
A
I was just like, maybe there's something in there that I could feel like, happy, happier in. Almost like build a better career in and like find better relationships in. And discovered over like 90 days throughout this specific summer holiday from university that there was like this alternative high that I could chase during that journey. I was like going deep into these brain chemicals. Had this magical moment of noticing it spelled dose and thought like, holy shit, there's a formula here.
- [07:45]
B
Yeah.
- [07:46]
A
And I just spent my time, like every day waking up thinking, like, how do I live in alignment, what my brain chemicals evolutionarily want me to do? And in that journey, like, I discovered a whole new world of happiness.
- [07:57]
B
And what does that look like? Because, you know, in a world where we were exposed to nature, we were really exposed to sunlight, we spent a lot more time connected with other human beings.
- [08:08]
A
Yeah.
- [08:09]
B
I believe our senses were probably a lot more acute back then.
- [08:12]
A
Yeah.
- [08:13]
B
And now connection. You know, I talk about this a lot with the, with the blue zones. When you look at the big data on blue zones, no continuity between diets.
- [08:23]
A
Okay.
- [08:23]
B
But there were two non negotiables. One of them was mobility. Until later in life.
- [08:29]
A
Yeah.
- [08:30]
B
There's no replacement for mobility and exercise.
- [08:32]
A
The hunter gatherers had that.
- [08:34]
B
Yeah, they had that. But the other one was sense of purpose and community. Okay, so where, where do these neurotransmitters come into play in the sense of purpose and community? Because I feel like modern society, it's. Social media is not necessarily the enemy itself. No, it's that social media makes us feel connected and we're actually not connected.
- [08:56]
A
Yeah, we're moderately satisfying. An incredibly important ancient desire on social media. Because it's moderately satisfying us, it's reducing our desire to really go out and get it. Like if, for example, tonight, like the Internet just disappeared, our phones all disappeared, we'd all sit at home and think like, oh, this is pretty boring. Just like sitting on my sofa doing nothing. And eventually, if that continued for a number of weeks, we would all be back out socializing. We'd be back in the nature talking to each other. Cause we wouldn't have something to Moderately satisfy that need. And because it kind of ticks the box, we're just not really chasing deep, deep human connection as much like. My partner and I consistently do different experiments based on these brain chemicals to just see if we can improve our life. Like, we see if it can make us more connected to each other, more intimate with each other, happier together. We ran this experiment recently where we tried to get rid of our TV for four weeks. And we just thought, what if we just don't have a tv?
- [09:47]
B
I think I've heard you talk about this. This is really cool.
- [09:49]
A
Yeah, we just thought we try. And in terms of the dopamine scale, TVs actually almost better for you than, like, social media videos. So it's not to demonize television necessarily, but we just thought, like, what will happen if we don't have anything to watch in the evenings? No dopamine. I'm super into, dude, I'm already mortified.
- [10:03]
B
Yeah, it's just horrible.
- [10:04]
A
I watch, like, a lot of YouTube. Like, I like that the evening comes and it's like, okay, so you finish work for the day and it's like, what am I going to do for the next, like, four hours or so until I, like, go to sleep? And in that time, we started obviously walking for longer in the evenings, trying to entertain us. Cooking much slower, healthier, more nutritious meals, because that was, like, an activity to entertain us. Then you sit down on the sofa about 8 o' clock and you're like, what are we going to do then? And you start talking, and then you get into bed and you start talking and there's this, like, magical moment at the start of a relationship where you have, like, that quote, unquote honeymoon period where you lie in bed and you get to know each other and you fall in love with each other. And it's magic. And that moment is deep oxytocin. That's like a feeling of falling in love that humans crave. And we've now been together a while, so we're technically out of what would be described as a honeymoon period, but without that, like, addiction. So I have to check my phone the whole time. I have to go on Twitter the whole time. YouTube the whole time. You end up talking and you get deep into conversation as we are, like, in these conversations.
- [11:00]
B
Yeah.
- [11:01]
A
And in that, like, deeper discussion, like, magical oxytocin activates. And we're living in a world now where, like, communication is becoming more surface level with our friends, our partners, our colleagues, our comms. Like, when we're direct Messaging people on social media. And we need, like, slow, long conversations, like our ancestors sitting around fires for, like, three hours, four hours every night, like, dreaming about what's going on in space. Humans are built for that, like, deep, deep bonding. And we're losing it in the face of our addiction to dopamine.
- [11:27]
B
Man.
- [11:27]
A
Yeah.
- [11:28]
B
You know, and. And there's a correlation between this and longevity. I won't say that I have the exact answer what the exact correlation or cause and effect is, but we know from the big data that sense of community and purpose into later in life are so important to longevity. We know also from a Harvard longevity study that was recently published. It was the longest longevity study ever run.
- [11:52]
A
Yeah.
- [11:52]
B
Cool. A little over 70 years. Almost. Almost 80 years long. That life expectancy was largely determined by the depth of your relationships. And. And when we say terms like depth of your relationships, you know, what does that really mean to you? Is that how neurochemically we are connected? That we're actually. That we're actually getting a reward like oxytocin reward or a serotonin uplift or dopamine hit from our relationships? And why is society becoming so disconnected? Are we seeking these neurotransmitters in other areas?
- [12:30]
A
Yeah, I would say deep connection is like open, vulnerable, loving conversation and where we meet different parts of ourselves that we feel, like, afraid to talk about. Where we, like, ask amazing questions to the person we're with. And we don't focus too much on ourself, but we, like, really let them speak. We listen carefully. And we have those phrases in the world where, like, you think of a certain friend and you think, oh, they're such a good listener. We literally have that as, like, a phrase and say, oh, they're such a good listener. And, you know when you're with someone and they really make you feel seen and you feel like, wow, this person's, like, really listening to me, and it feels good. And oxytocin is just like the biochemical affirmation that. That is taking place between you. And ask your, like, question of why are we not in that pursuit as much anymore? It's because the only chemical we figured out how to artificially hack is dopamine. We're not hacking oxytocin and serotonin and endorphins. There are little things you can to hack them, but primarily we're hacking dopamine. And dopamine has been one of the most important desires for our whole human evolution. Like, as a man and woman in a tribe, you would have Got your dopamine from making the fires, building the shelters, foraging for the fruit and nuts, chasing down the meat. And that was such a pivotal thing that we needed. But it wasn't the only thing we needed. We also needed to come back from that hunting and building and fires so that we could deeply bond with each other and make people make each other feel safe and loved and laugh and connect. But we're living in a world now where we're almost thinking, screw all the rest of it, screw the connection, screw the connection to nature. Let's just only focus on dopamine. And like, when you lie in bed with your partner, like, my partner and I had this last year. We were getting pretty into reading Twitter last year. Last summer, for some reason, we got really hooked into Twitter. We'd get into bed and we were reading it on the iPad. And like, for a while, like, it was nice that we were like finding different, like, stories that were taking place last summer. Quite, like, fascinating to follow. We were enjoying that journey. But then it reached a point where I was lying in bed and I was thinking, we're just like staring at a screen, consuming dopamine and we're completely missing out on the oxytocin.
- [14:22]
B
Yeah, she's right next to you, right?
- [14:23]
A
She's right next to me. I'm not looking at her, not talking to her, I'm not cuddling her. And then we start thinking, okay, let's try and get these devices out of the bedroom. And then you see this big transformation of like, once the dopamine goes, oxytocin can become a priority, but oxytocin is slow. And we don't like slow anymore. Like, we can barely even read books.
- [14:39]
B
We want it now.
- [14:40]
A
We want it now. We want to feel good right now. And unfortunately, with how brain chemistry works is for our ancestors, nothing really made you feel good right now. Like when you scratch rocks together for three hours. It was a long journey till that fire lit. Or it was a long journey till you found that deer. And we're evolutionarily programmed to earn the feeling of love and hard work and reward, not have it instantaneously. And the instantaneous nature of the modern world is what's breaking our desires.
- [15:04]
B
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- [16:05]
A
Yeah.
- [16:05]
B
Versus serotonin, which is a main driver of mood imbalances in these different neurotransmitters are linked to all kinds of psychiatric definitions, mood disorders, mental illnesses. I hate these categorical terms because we don't ever talk about the fact that you have an imbalance in these neurotransmitters or deficiency, let's say, in serotonin or dopamine or, or you're not producing or seeking oxytocin, and those are labeled as disorders. Mental illnesses, mood disorders. And then, of course, we try to fix the absence or the imbalance in these neurotransmitters with chemicals and synthetics and pharmaceuticals.
- [16:47]
A
Yeah.
- [16:48]
B
And so now we've become a very heavily chemically dependent society.
- [16:53]
A
Yeah.
- [16:53]
B
And you know, where we think, well, if you have a broken relationship with your mother, if you take this chemical, this pharmaceutical compound, it will just fix that.
- [17:05]
A
Yeah.
- [17:05]
B
You've had a 30 year torn relationship with mom and dad, but just take this and you're going to somehow magically fix it. That's never made sense to me.
- [17:12]
A
Yeah.
- [17:12]
B
Right. So if we were to just go through that acronym and start with dopamine, first of all, how do you define dopamine? I mean, everybody's heard of it. How do, how do we define it as a neurotransmitter?
- [17:23]
A
I'd say it's the chemical that creates two very important things. Your motivation to do hard things, your desire to do hard things, is driven by dopamine. And then your capacity to have any kind of attention span and focus on those hard things you're trying to win from is driven by dopamine. And it's designed to elevate very slowly in our brain. Like when you look at a graph with dopamine, if, for Example, you going for, like, one of your workouts. Like, obviously exercise would be an important thing for dopamine. You don't step in the gym and think, like, fuck yeah, like, I feel amazing. Now, some people might, if you really love the gym, maybe. But for a lot of people, It's a good 15 to 20 minute climb to experience, like, a nice feeling of reward. And dopamine is designed to slowly elevate over time. We've got this beautiful area of our brain called the ventral tegmental area, the vta. And this is like the dopamine factory where we're generating this dopamine. Then we have this area called the nucleus accumbens, our reward center. And in that scenario where you're going to the gym, your brain and your vta, your dopamine factory starts to manufacture dopamine vesicles, these little dopamine bubbles effectively. And then occasionally, as you get some reward from that workout, you begin to ship some of these bubbles towards the nucleus accumbens, towards your reward sensor. You start thinking, it's kind of good that I'm doing this workout, actually, in the same way our ancestors would have thought, it's kind of good that I'm hunting for this food. Actually. Like, these are important drivers for us. In a scenario like in the modern world where we open our TikTok feed or our YouTube shorts feed or Instagram effectively, what happens is your brain just mass dumps the bubbles from the factory towards that reward center. Feels good, like, when you're doing it. So, wow, this is pretty fun. Like, now I'm not thinking about any of my worries and I feel like present and enjoying this experience. But then after a period of time, you put the phone down. Like, people have that feeling where you're kind of like, shit, now I'm not motivated and I've lost my attention span. And it's driven by the factory now being empty and reduced in this capacity to have these dopamine molecules in there. So if you have, like dreams in your life and you're trying to attain them, you have to be able to make sure there's an abundance of dopamine sitting in that factory.
- [19:18]
B
Otherwise you want them attached to dopamine, right?
- [19:20]
A
Yeah. You need to be generating a lot of natural dopamine and, like, the life you're in pursuit of. For example, like, I'm sure you feel like a motivated human. And so many of your actions you're taking. I'm meaning that factory is thinking, holy shit. Like, Gary trying to do a lot because he's trying to do a lot. I'm going to make sure we generate a shit ton of dopamine on the other side. When you get into a pathway where, like, you're smoking weed all the time and you're, like, scrolling your phone all the time and you're watching loads of porn and eating loads of sugar, the brain just starts to, like, break down and the factory starts to not produce dopamine anymore, and you end up in, like, this apathetic state. And I think many people and myself included, have, like, struggled with that experience. Like, how do I get this engine working again?
- [19:55]
B
So that's dopamine, and then we have oxytocin. And this is. They say that's what's in Cupid's arrow. You know, I've just heard that, you know, reference. I don't know what's in his arrow, but they say it's called the love hormone. And. And that's what Cupid, you know, shoots you with. But, you know, I know it's involved in the psychosomatic response. It's involved in, you know, arousal, libido, you know, all of the sort of, hell, yeah, I won the lottery kind of emotions. So talk a little bit about oxytocin's role in. In human beings and human interplay as a neurotransmitter.
- [20:30]
A
Yeah. I mean, again, if you think evolutionarily, this chemical isn't designed so that we're, like, really motivated to hunt for food. This chemical is designed to make sure we have a deep sense of belonging and purpose in our tribe, and that was imperative. Like, we couldn't have selfish individuals in these little tribes that were like, I'm just gonna go find some food, and then when I find, I'm just gonna eat it all and not bring any back for myself. Yeah. Like, it was very important that we had this, like, collectivistic understanding.
- [20:52]
B
That sounds like me in the morning. Just, I wouldn't have done good in the tribe. My wife is off camera going, yeah.
- [21:01]
A
And this chemical program in that desire to, like, have a bond with human beings and to make sure you are in service to those human beings. And when we go through the process, like, of the modern world, we're a little bit obsessed with dopamine. Like, our capacity to make sure that that's our goal is reducing. And any time in which you find yourself each day thinking, right, my day is about others. My day is about, like, how do I make my partner feel great, my colleagues feel great with your work, serving with your work, when you're in that state of like, how do I create more love for the people that I care for? That's when you're generating a shit ton of this chemical.
- [21:33]
B
Yeah. Wow. So that's, you know, and that must be what they talk about in blue zones when they talk about sense of community and sense of purpose. You know, it's, it's actually caring for the people that are around you and for your loved ones. That sense of belonging. I found it really interesting in, in a lot of these areas of the world, there's no such thing as assisted care living facilities.
- [21:53]
A
Like, you know, that's interesting.
- [21:55]
B
Yeah. Assisted care is mom and dad move back in with the family and until they pass and they really honor their elders, like the, the elderly are held in very high esteem. They're looked as, you know, looked at as having wisdom and something to be honored and gratified. And I think, you know, very often now when, you know, our, our loved ones age to the point where we find them no longer relevant or no longer useful and it creates distance, you know, that has to, that must have to do with this oxytocin connection.
- [22:29]
A
Yeah. And the important thing to understand there is oxytocin is like a deeply fulfilling and rewarding chemical. And it's very easy, for example, like when your parents get older, to almost choose the dopamine path, which would be, put them in a care home so I can continue living my life that I want to live. And I'm sure like one day I'm going to face this decision, let's see what kind of decision I make. But the oxytocin based decision would be I'm going to sacrifice.
- [22:51]
B
Hopefully you wrote a book on this, so hopefully you hang out with your parents for a while.
- [22:55]
A
Yeah, I think I will be like, it's a, it's a massive priority for me. And the oxytocin led decision might require sacrifice but will be more fulfilling. And what I mean by that is when you, for example, like take some form of cheap dopamine, like you scroll your phone, for example, you scroll videos for a while. After you eventually finish scrolling the videos, you don't kind of think in your head like, wow, that was such a good scroll. Like, I feel so satisfied.
- [23:17]
B
That was some good doom scroll.
- [23:18]
A
That was like, I'm so happy with that scroll.
- [23:22]
B
That never crosses your five top five easy.
- [23:24]
A
If anything, you think like, shit, how do I get more of that feeling? Because it didn't feel like enough. If you take like a real oxytocin experience which would be maybe like holding a newborn baby, for example, like, if you've ever held, like, your own baby, like someone's baby in that moment, you don't think, like, oh, I Wish There were 10 babies in my arms. I need loads of this. You just think like, wow, this is just pure presence and deep connection and love. Oxytocin is that feeling. It's deeply calming for us. It's deeply fulfilling. And so many of us are feeling, like, unsatisfied with our experience in life.
- [23:52]
B
So true.
- [23:52]
A
And dopamine will never satisfy us. That's how it's programmed within our biology. Because the hunter gatherers had to always keep hunting. They had to make better fires, better spears, better building, like, shelters that they could survive in. And that was programmed into us by nature so that we would evolve. And now we live in this crazy world because of that incessant need for progress, driven by dopamine. But it would never feel like enough. Only what would feel like enough to them? Just lying by the campfire and, like, giving love to people. And that's, like, why, like, our bodies feel uneasy. And no matter how successful you come, you'll become your money, your fame, whatever it might be. You just think, more, more, more. And that's because we're too driven by dopamine. And in the pursuit of oxytocin, your system starts to think, well, actually my life's pretty good. And that's a nice feeling for a human being.
- [24:34]
B
You know, it's. That's really fascinating because my. My wife and I have recently reached this point, really in the last two years, where we talk about all the time how just satisfied and gratified we are with our life. Like, we've actually been present enough to notice and take account and say, we're so grateful for where our life is right now. And we always talk about how we. We truly, I think, for the both, for the first time in our lives, for both of us, don't want for anymore. I actually fear that it would change. I want it to stay right where it is because, you know, we've got a great team around us. You know, we've got an incredible marriage, but we most of all, you know, our family has largely been on this journey with us.
- [25:24]
A
Cool.
- [25:25]
B
And you just for the first time made me realize that that's likely exactly what's happening in our life. Like this really deep sense of gratification. You know, we were just on a flight coming from Australia to. We're on our way to London. We're going Through Dubai. We must have talked five times on the flight, right, babe? She's off camera about, like. I'm just so happy with where we are in our life right now. Oh, man, that's good to see the message resonating. Where we are as a couple, where we are as parents, and where we are in our careers. And I couldn't think of a thing that I wanted other than to be present in that moment. And that happened so rarely for me in the first 45 years of my life.
- [26:14]
A
Wow.
- [26:15]
B
I always delayed my happiness. I was like, as soon as this happens, that's going to be amazing. You know, as soon as I get this, I'm going to be so happy. As soon as, you know, I make this much money, I'm going to be so happy. As soon as I get this car, I'm going to be happy. As soon as we move into this new apartment, I'm going to be happy. But now I don't. I don't think about our. Our dwellings and our surroundings. I just think about, you know, where we are in our life and the connection that we have. And it makes so much sense that maybe we're just finally coming in to balance because, you know, it was always about building our careers in the beginning and. And then there's the risk of trying to survive and is the business going to make it? Is it not going to make it? And now that it's stable, our wish is not bigger, more, faster. It's just if we could stay right where we are, cool, we wouldn't ask for another thing.
- [27:09]
A
It's interesting, though, because you mentioned the physiological indication of oxytocin as well. Like, we see different things about how the nervous system will interact with oxytocin. And many people these days are feeling like this real speed within their nervous system. Their HIV might be really low because their bodies are running so fast. And you'll see in research with HIV that, like, gratitude seems to have a really significant impact on elevating someone's hiv. Of course, sleep, other factors are really important. But in our nervous system, it wants to be, like, happy and safe with what it has. And we are in this, like, dopaminergic state where our nervous system's like, fuck, how do I get more? How do I get more? Because that will one day make me feel calm, but it actually won't. Of course, when you navigate difficult times, like, you're going to have to lock in and you're going to have to figure out how to navigate that time. But as you Immerse yourself in that deep, grateful present state which everyone's aware of. Like, I feel like people know, like, yeah, I should do that gratitude thing. I still think people continue to not really immerse themselves in it. Not, like, frequently discuss it with their partners. Not spend time, like, deep in these maybe like, breathwork states in the silence, like in those breath holds, you sometimes can get, like a real powerful emotion come through to you. And I think the interesting thing you see with all this anxiety we have in the modern world is if a individual in a tribe was suddenly disconnected from the tribe and they were suddenly in a serious lack of oxytocin, obviously there'd be an immense fear response and, like, increase in the speed of their nervous system because they'd be like, how the hell am I going to survive? Like a human being in the wild?
- [28:33]
B
I'm out of the herd.
- [28:34]
A
You can't survive when you're in the wild against, like, tigers and stuff like that. You're screwed as a human being in the wild. But as a group, we smashed it. We got to this point, and I think it's so important that people start realizing, like, if they want to find, like, peace and peace is a nice feeling, like, it's almost even nicer than success. It's almost better peace than success. Really.
- [28:50]
B
Totally agree with you.
- [28:51]
A
And it's why I think we're almost in this, like, oxytocin epidemic in our world where we think all of our dreams are in dopamine, but they're actually living in that oxytocin world.
- [29:01]
B
Wow. So. And then serotonin, obviously, I think everybody's heard of serotonin. There were. There was, for a very long time period of time, the serotonin hypothesis of depression. It was an oversimplified view of depression that said if you're low on serotonin, you are by definition depressed.
- [29:19]
A
Yeah. Interesting.
- [29:21]
B
And I always kind of found that definition fascinating because if you took medication for low serotonin, the medication didn't raise serotonin. So you define depression as too little serotonin, but the treatment isn't to raise serotonin. It's just to freeze it where it is, you know, keep you from using it.
- [29:42]
A
Reuptake inhibitors.
- [29:43]
B
Yeah, yeah, serotonin. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which selectively slow the reuptake of serotonin, ostensibly. So you wouldn't want it out of it and then go off a cliff.
- [29:54]
A
Yeah.
- [29:55]
B
And then like most times that we mess with our physio neurochemistry, we Realize, wow, there's actually an increased rate of suicidal ideation and, and crushing depression. But when we talk about serotonin, how what bucket do you put serotonin in? Its influence on mood and emotional state. Where does serotonin fit in? You know, I'm all about optimizing performance, and lately I've been using the Ion weighted vest during my workouts, and it's been a game changer. It isn't your average weighted vest. It's designed to fit like a second skin, activating your core, improving blood flow, and even helping you with recovery or while you train. What I love most is that the weight is perfectly distributed. It doesn't pull on your shoulders or throw off your alignment. Whether I'm doing strength training or cardio or just taking a walk, I'm burning more calories, building muscle, and pushing my endurance even further. If you're serious about leveling up your training and unlocking your full potential, check out the ion weighted vest@iongear.com that's a I O-N gear.com and you can use code ultimate for 10% off and start training smarter today. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast.
- [31:04]
A
Yeah, very, very significant on that joy you can experience in your mind, that stability of your mood. Like, a lot of us have very significantly fluctuating moods where it's like, cool, like, I feel really happy now, maybe that's like dopamine connects and then suddenly you're like crashed out, irritable, pissed off, anxious, and then you're like, up and down. It's a bit of a roller coaster. And our serotonin levels are very low in the modern world because they're. It's a chemical that deeply wants a connection with nature and to live in alignment with a natural way of operating. Like, we see obviously in the research that 90 of it is being generated within the gut. And there's that beautiful vagus nerve that's connecting our brain and body to the brain, and it's communicating, like, what kind of serotonin is going on here? And it's this. It's distributing that information to your mind. When you go into the research of what activates our serotonin, you look particularly at, like, Japan, for example. I think one of the blue zones is in Japan.
- [31:52]
B
Yeah, yeah, they're one of the longest. I think they just took over as the longest average life expectancy in the world.
- [31:59]
A
Cool.
- [31:59]
B
Yeah.
- [32:00]
A
One of the scientists I love in Japan I wrote a lot about in the book is Dr. Ki Ling, and He's done a lot of research into nature and Japan has had significant challenges with mental health in the cities. They actually term this specific word karoshi, which meant like kind of burnt out, overwork, too much time on technology in an individual that began to suffer quite significantly with their mental health. Japan also has the best forests on Earth and actually they're like Avatar forests in that cool movie about nature.
- [32:27]
B
Wow.
- [32:27]
A
It's an interesting thing. There are based upon the forests you see within Japan. And Dr. Keeling started like theorizing back in like early 2006, how can we find a scalable solution to this mental health challenge? Because you can do lots of therapy and you can do medication, but you also need to try and treat the root of what's happening here. What is this high stim city technological environment doing to their brain chemistry and their body? And he started putting people into nature and called it Shinrin Yoku, this forest bathing idea, which.
- [32:54]
B
Forest bathing? Yeah, yeah. Dr. Ax and I just did a whole podcast on it and he was talking about how they would prescribe forest bathing.
- [33:02]
A
Yeah, like as like a medical treatment almost. And you see.
- [33:07]
B
Fascinating.
- [33:07]
A
Yeah. With this serotonin chemical that there's this significant increase in what we call serum serotonin. When an individual walks in nature and has alignment with nature and they didn't send them out there, like with therapists or like with a specific goal of any kind, you just have to walk in nature slowly, effectively. And you think about how we spent 300,000 years running around out there. Like, when you walk there, your body is at home effectively. Like, your system thinks, oh, yeah, this is where we kind of like grew up. And there can be this challenge, like in the modern world where you might be on your computer all day, on your phone all day, and you think, I should probably go for one of those walls, because that's something people say is good for you.
- [33:40]
B
Something people say is good for you. Yeah.
- [33:42]
A
And you kind of like wander around out there and you.
- [33:44]
B
I read it on TikTok and, and Instagram when I was doom scrolling for sure.
- [33:48]
A
And you kind of like walk out there for a few minutes, you think this kind of shit. And your brain still in these beta brainwaves, like these fast brainwaves. And it's like, is there anything out here for me then as you walk for longer and longer. And they were getting prescribed sort of four or five hours a week to like really transform mental health. And I know New Zealand has also adopted this now with these green prescriptions where they're having a similar treatment protocol for mental health for individuals that are struggling with many of the things that you would utilize, like serotonin based medications too, that could also accompany it. Like they could work together potentially. But when someone's in that natural environment, your serotonin levels go crazy. And obviously as a species, we are just heading in the opposite direction of nature in every single facet in our relationships, our food, in our sleep cycles, in our relationship with the sun. And it's just so important to consider, like this serotonin chemical wants you to be bonded to where we came from.
- [34:37]
B
Wow, that is so fascinating because we were actually just talking about this before the podcast started and it's going to sound like I'm trying to just agree with you and jump on the bandwagon, but you can actually look back on my Instagram stories because I never had an explanation for it. But you know, we have this beautiful condo penthouse in Miami and has all the toys in it. Hyperbaric chamber, hydrogen nanobath, you know, red light therapy, cryo, cold plunge, sauna, steam, like all the, all of my biohacking toys. And it's very elegant. And when I'm there, I love using all this equipment. But Sage and I, my wife and I also have a one bedroom log cabin.
- [35:16]
A
Okay.
- [35:17]
B
It's probably 40 years old. Cool. At 10, 500ft.
- [35:21]
A
Colorado natural hyperbaric.
- [35:23]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's a hypobaric. Yeah, it's the opposite.
- [35:27]
A
Yeah, of course.
- [35:27]
B
Yeah, it's a hypobaric. Yeah. And you know, it has running water, but it has. Well in septic, no electricity. It's, it's got solar power, glacier fed spring water. Well, in septic, the oldest beat down stove that you ever seen in your life. This, you know, propane stove.
- [35:50]
A
Okay.
- [35:50]
B
And we go there and I swear we never want to leave. And I, I would do these stories about. I just don't know how to put it into words. I would wake up in the morning, I would have coffee, I would put on a rucksack, like a little weighted ion vest. And I would just go for this three, three and a half mile walk in the woods.
- [36:09]
A
Okay.
- [36:09]
B
And I would come back and sometimes I would post about, I would go, I feel amazing. And like I don't want to throw myself under the bus because I advocate all of these modalities, you know, like red light and hyperbarics and all of this fancy stuff. But I will tell you, nothing makes me feel as good.
- [36:27]
A
Wow.
- [36:28]
B
As a three and a half mile ruck. Walk in the woods and. And then my wife and I talk about it all the time too. So we have this little thing where, you know, we're. We're building another log cabin on the property. And so we actually go out for these walks and try to find like pieces of cool wood or fallen trees.
- [36:47]
A
This is hunt together.
- [36:48]
B
Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, it's our hunter gatherer thing. And you know, it's like, what? Oh, that would be a really good coffee table. You know, that would be cool. You know, wall sconces that we could put some lighting in between. And it's become one of our favorite things. And when we're not there, we deeply, deeply miss it. And so much so that we're in this 14 city on 18 day tour right now. And we are so looking forward to this two day window that we get to spend at our place in Colorado. And that makes a lot of sense now. You know, it's this deeper sense of connection with each other and then reconnecting with nature.
- [37:28]
A
Yeah. And there's a real connection there. Like, nature's a real thing. It's alive.
- [37:31]
B
Yeah. I kept doing it to be like, is it really that good or did I just make this shit up? You know? And then I would get up the next day and I would go for a walk and I would come back and I go, nope, I still. I feel amazing.
- [37:42]
A
And I take it in the walks in the morning, there's no kind of like headphones in at that.
- [37:47]
B
No headphones. There's no WI fi out there. There's no. There's no cell phone reception. Well, we have a starlink at the house, so we could turn it on and turn it off. But if we turn the starlink off, we are off the grid.
- [37:59]
A
Yeah.
- [37:59]
B
And there's this funny little place we call the phone booth, which is where it's an intersection of four dirt roads.
- [38:05]
A
Yeah. Okay.
- [38:06]
B
And it just happens to. They cross. If you stand right there, where they cross, you actually have. Can get cell signal. It must like be where the tower comes. So we. You actually drive up there and you can be on the phone in this one spot.
- [38:19]
A
Amazing.
- [38:20]
B
It's called the phone booth.
- [38:21]
A
And I think.
- [38:22]
B
Yeah, your phone doesn't work in the woods, so we don't even bother taking it.
- [38:25]
A
We're so lost in the Internet world, like this deep connection with it that I think we think we have to be on it all the time. Like the Internet isn't that dissimilar to the advent of fire. Like it's One of those things. It's like a huge significant thing that evolved humanity. Fire was one thing. Then we had electricity and obviously got the Internet. We've got AI obviously coming in super hard now. I imagine, obviously I wasn't there as a hunter gatherer, but I imagine when we invented fire, we didn't just think, oh my God, we've invented fire. Let's all just look at it for 12 hours a day and do nothing else. Fire, fire, fire, fire. We probably like, wow, this is pretty useful. It can like help us with our tools, our building, our food, our warmth. But we also probably did other things. And I think humanity needs to consider, like, is there a world where the Internet exists? And it's freaking amazing. It enables so much of our work, connection, financial opportunity. But also there's other things to do as well. Like there's opportunity to go out into nature and just live a completely different life where you tune out, then you tune back in. And in that world, like humanity will thrive in the face of the technological. Technological revolution.
- [39:26]
B
Yeah.
- [39:26]
A
But in the face of just like only living in it, our system can't take it.
- [39:29]
B
Yeah, I totally believe that. And so then there's endorphins.
- [39:32]
A
Yeah.
- [39:33]
B
And I think that we all are somewhat familiar with endorphins. You know, the runner's high official ender fins. You know, people get that from. I get that feeling from, from working out. I get that feeling from cold plunging. You know, I always, my audience knows, I call cold plunging my drug of choice because nothing really makes me feel better for longer.
- [39:51]
A
Cool.
- [39:52]
B
If I get back from one of these walks and then I get in a cold plunge, I'm like, that's it. It's like, I won the lottery. God take me now. I feel the best I've ever felt.
- [40:00]
A
You know, And I'm sure our answers has got back from their walks. Jumped in the river, like you're just.
- [40:04]
B
Living probably did they probably go plunging, you know, 600 years. And just. I think I'm the one that invented it. But, but so talk a little bit about endorphins role in this whole dose effect.
- [40:17]
A
Where I think endorphins are fascinating is actually in stress and how humanity can cope with stress. Because we see stress obviously deeply interconnected with cortisol, like the stress hormone. And obviously that is accurate. There's a significant cortisol hormone at play in our stress. And we think of a lot of stress as kind of calming ourselves down. How do we calm ourselves down? Which is also true. Like we do need to Calm ourself down. But if you think evolutionarily about stress, stress is very different to all the micro stress we experience today on our phones and politically and different opinions and messages and financial trouble and all these, like, little things just, like, niggling at us and stressing us out and causing cortisol activation. Stress for our ancestors would have been, holy shit, like, I'm starving hungry. There's no food, there's no fruit on the trees, there's no meat out here. And you're going to have to work physically incredibly hard to work to find that food. And your body is going to have to activate hard. Another form of stress would have been like, there's a bear over there that's going to be pretty intense and I'm going to have to attempt to fight it, run from it, hide from it. But again, extreme physical activation under stress. And in these intense moments of stress, our body evolved to go into deep physical activation. And because our body needed something to help it cope with that intensity on the mind and intensity on the body, endorphins evolved as this thing that would just flood our system and take the stress out of the mind and the stress and the physical pain out of the body so that you could get super dialed in and survive that situation. So you're not running away from the bear thinking, oh, I've got a stitch. And like, oh, my God, there's a scary bear. Your body just suddenly goes into, like, super drive with no stress in it at all. Wow. And these days, like, you might get stressed out, like little emails, things are stressing out, and you're just dead sedentary. You're just sitting in your chair, dead sedentary, and you think, fuck, I've had, like a stressful day today. And you think, oh, I know what will kind of chill me out, Like a glass of wine and a scroll of my phone and some chocolate on the sofa, like, that might be our stress coping strategy. And I did that for a decade. I drank my glass of red wine and tried to kind of get rid of my stress using those tools. But evolutionarily, stress literally needs to be physically released from us because that's how our brain evolved. And if you can start having a framework where you think, shit, like, I've had a stressful day today, like, I feel a bit like, angry, tense, annoyed, like, I've snapped at my partner or whatever it might be. I've got annoyed at my colleagues. You think, okay, so if I was a hunter gatherer, like, I would have gone into intense Physical activation. So I've got to get this out of me. I can't just go chill on the sofa to get this out of me. Chilling on the sofa will be great later on. Like, it's also important to rest. Rest is key. But if you think, right, I've got to walk, I've got to run up a hill, I got to push some weights, I got to freeze myself to death in an ice bath, I've got to get in a sauna and try and stay in there a while. To that point where your body's like, wow, this is tough, but I'm going to stay in here. That's how we activate the endorphins. That's how we get this, like, tension, stress out of us.
- [42:50]
B
Yeah. Knowing what you know about these neurotransmitters, their interplay and human emotion, happiness, mood, you know, life, connection. You wrote the Dose effect.
- [43:02]
A
Yeah.
- [43:04]
B
And. And then you came up with the Dose lab.
- [43:06]
A
Yeah.
- [43:08]
B
And what. What is the purpose of the Dose lab? I mean, is this to help people understand how these neurotransmitters affect their mood and emotion, their relationships? Is it a way for people to get a gateway of view into being more in touch with themselves? What does the lab do?
- [43:26]
A
I mean, something like, the underlying philosophy is, like, the deeper purpose behind it is I. I've experienced lots of loss in my life. That's been one of my biggest drivers, seeing people pass away. In my family, I've seen quite a lot of young people pass away, which is, like, quite a painful journey to observe. And it makes life seem really precious. And you think, like, wow, like, we're getting this, like, experience of life as a human being and then we'll, like, have our. We'll move into whatever, another land, or maybe it ends. Who. Like, who knows what's on the other side? And that precious nature of life has made me have a deep purpose to think. I wish people could love that experience. Like, whilst you're here, wouldn't it be great if it was a good time?
- [44:01]
B
Yeah. Seems pretty simple. Yeah. It seems like a great idea.
- [44:06]
A
Seems important. And I think for a lot of people, it's not a great time. I think it's very stressful. I think they're very addicted to things. They're shackled to their phone and sugar and booze. And I think they're struggling with their mood, their mental health, depression. And that pains my heart. And it pained my heart when I spent 10 years in that state. And I just think it'd be magic if humanity knew that if you lived in alignment with what your brain chemicals wanted, so much of that pain could leave you and this beautiful life could follow. Wow. And I think as I look at our real focus in our research, it's very inside our relationship with technology. We're looking a lot at screen time and attention and that addiction to technology. We spend a huge amount of time in schools with teenagers with their phone relationships. And I grew up as someone that, like, loved technology. I loved it when I got my iPhone. I loved gaming. I just loved that world. And I think technology has its utility, but I think we're in a very unique time as a species where we're in this almost century where we've had 300,000 years of natural humans, then we're in this century where we are merging with a new being. We're creating artificial intelligence and robots, and there's this interesting interplay where humans are literally becoming a new form of species in this life that we're in today. And I think after 300,000 years of evolution as humans, as we make this merge with machine, it's very, very important we don't forget what made us human for 300,000 years. And I think we will thrive in the face of this technological change if we hold on to those human characteristics. But I think if we just go in blindly and think, oh, maybe that dopamine land in there. We just nailed chatgpt and porn and all these things, if we think that's going to create happiness, it's not. And I think if we can hold on to that human nature, I think we're going to feel good in the face of it. Wow.
- [45:44]
B
And is the. The dose effect about helping people manage these neurotransmitters or just be aware of what's triggering these different neurotransmitters? Because as we walk through the interface of, you know, the website that you showed me, I thought it was really interesting. You had scales for different neurotransmitters, and then you actually had solutions for how to return these baselines to normal.
- [46:11]
A
Yeah.
- [46:12]
B
And. And some of them were force bathing. Yeah. Actually very cold water makes it.
- [46:19]
A
Yeah. Deep breathing does.
- [46:22]
B
So is the idea to first make people aware of what these neurotransmitters do in the body? And then how do you measure them? I mean, how. How do you know that I'm having a dopamine rush or an endorphin rush, or that I actually lack oxytocin? Because, you know, I'm not having the deep, meaningful relationships in my life. How can I, how can I take that information and create something practical in my life where I could make a change to deepen the meaning, the satisfaction of my life?
- [46:51]
A
Yeah, cool. So those ideas I shared before, those are kind of the deeper goal. The goal then of the dose effect is to make it as easy and fast and simple as possible for the change to occur. And it is easy, fast and simple. It actually can change incredibly quickly. And we've effectively really pursued the gamification process of how do we make it almost slightly dopaminergic? Like, I'm having to use some of these dopamine tools that we've learned to understand that, like, if you can get some kind of quick win quite fast in change, you start thinking, oh, maybe there's something in there for me. And we've gone through this process of effectively selecting, based on the literature, the 20 most scientifically backed habits that will optimize the chemicals. And then five live within each chemical. So you've got 20 total, five within each one. And we then take you on this journey of like, how can I complete challenges within each of these different chemicals in order to begin to create change? Then once someone takes these different actions, like one of my favorite, for example, is flow state in dopamine. Like, our brain loves flow state. It loves deep immersion in a task for a prolonged period of time, just as we did when we made those fires and built those shells and hunting for that food. We love flow state. People will begin experimenting with identifying their flow state. We, for example, actually help people identify their flow state in their social media feed because it's actually quite interesting because as humans now, we've actually got into this almost like sedentary, passive state where rather than doing the thing we're really good at, we're watching someone else do it for us on our social media feed. And if you think, like, what is my thing? Like, what would be my flow state? If you look at your social media feed, there'll be frequently reoccurring videos like cooking or art or sport or music or fitness based things. The reason you're watching it is because your brain is desperate to do it, not just to watch it.
- [48:29]
B
Oh, wow.
- [48:30]
A
So in that world of flow state will get something, someone like testing like each day, like, okay, how can I access this deeper state of focus? Which is just so fun because then someone starts to like gamify this process with themselves. And in terms of that question of how do we actually physically feel change, we'll measure deeper stuff when we're doing Our actual intervention based studies where it's like big questionnaires that people will have to complete and observations in terms of how they are operating. But if you're just like naturally thinking, okay, how do I get a good idea as to what's going on? We'll look at these eight different metrics across your chemicals, two within each chemical, and they will give you a very good understanding of where your baseline might currently be on each one. So if you look at dopamine, for example, if you were to think about your motivation level, like, how willing are you to do hard things each day? Like, how willing are you to spend 20 minutes cooking a healthy lunch versus, like buying some crap from the supermarket? Or how willing are you to get out of bed when you wake up versus, like lie in bed and scroll your phone? If you're very willing. Your baseline dopamine is probably actually pretty high at the moment. If you're thinking, fuck, life is hard, I can't bother to do anything, I feel apathetic. Your dopamine is probably quite low. The other baseline metric for dopamine would be your attention span. If you can open a book today and read it for longer than 15 minutes, it's probably likely that your dopamine is actually doing all right. If you think, wow, this is hard, and you do that thing, which I've done so many times, where you read a few pages and you think, I was actually thinking about something else the whole time.
- [49:49]
B
Yeah, yeah. And you get through those pages, you.
- [49:51]
A
Don'T remember anything, then you go back and if it's lower, then your dopamine apple site is lower. And the good thing to understand is that we can all rebalance these things. You can create changes in that motivation, that attention fast if you live in alignment to what your dopamine desires.
- [50:04]
B
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- [51:31]
A
Okay, cool.
- [51:32]
B
Captain John Brecker. And. And my mother was a flight attendant. And we. I'm an only child, but my parents were militant about dinner time. Okay, seven days a week when I was young and, you know, a little less as I got older. And I didn't realize how much I would miss it when I didn't have it. But, you know, that was our time. And we. We, you know, we. My mom always cooked, and then we would all sit down at the table, and that was like our hour or 90 minutes. And parents would ask me all kinds of questions. I felt very connected to them during that time. I desperately try to do that with. Even with my adult children now. You know, we try to once a week, get the whole family together. And, you know, they. When. When they leave the house and I'm going to bed that night, I just feel this deep sense of satisfaction, like something really good.
- [52:25]
A
Feel full.
- [52:26]
B
Yeah.
- [52:27]
A
Oxytocin.
- [52:27]
B
And nothing magical happened other than I. I spent some really, you know, unique moments with my kids and with my wife. So I think the younger generation really desperately needs this. I think they're seeking connection in this electronic world in a way that we never did. Like, my kids don't know what it's like to be bored. They have a choice to just never be bored.
- [52:54]
A
Yeah, right.
- [52:55]
B
I remember being really shockingly bored as a child. You know, like, if I got off the bus and we lived in a farm town and our driveway was like a quarter of a mile long by the time I made it around the barns and made it up to the house. We only had a telephone. We didn't have a, you know, cell phones. There was nothing on TV at that time.
- [53:13]
A
Yeah.
- [53:13]
B
And, you know, if you're in your 50s, you're old enough to remember, like cartoons were on Saturdays.
- [53:19]
A
That was the big dope of me.
- [53:20]
B
Programming during the day sucked. Unless you were watching, you know, you know, soap operas or something. Really, really boring stuff. So I would never turn the TV on. And sometimes I would just be bored. I would go out and take a stick and go look for a frog in the stream. You know, it just for sure, but. But I spent a lot of time bored. I don't remember the last time I was bored. I don't think my kids have any idea what it's like to be bored.
- [53:44]
A
Cool. Okay.
- [53:45]
B
Because they have the choice to not be bored. Because they can just pick up their phone and then here's somebody getting kicked in ahead and here's a tragic event going on and you know, and here's, you know, goofy meme and they're just so distracted. So going through this exercise of the dose effect, what is the end result that most of the folks, clients that are coming to see you? What drives them to see you? What's the result that they're seeking?
- [54:12]
A
Yeah, to share some of those points there. One of the points when we're talking about these young people and their mental health, Scandinavian countries seem to be doing a lot better than the rest of the world in terms of youth mental health. One of the highest variables in terms of that benefit and improvement is actually based on family based meals, which is interesting you mentioned that because eating meals together is not just like some insignificant thing. It's very important for a kid to feel seen, to engage with adults, to ask questions, to be asked questions. So that's cool that you experience that. And I think that'll be like a central thing that definitely with my new baby that's coming, like I'll make sure that's a priority. In terms of what the core is. The core is to break up with the phone. That is the core thing people are coming towards. And we'll cover these different things, the nature and all these different areas. But the central theme is I'm fricking addicted to my phone and I really want to know how to use it with intention, but not like having this life where it's just totally in control of me. And we created this framework and we've had about 50,000 kids come through this intervention.
- [55:08]
B
50,000.
- [55:09]
A
50,000 kids have come through this intervention. About 35,000 adults come through this intervention. So we've really got some good data as to why they're coming and the outcome they're looking for. That outcome As I say, is phones. And we created this framework called phone fasting, which as I'm sure you can understand the word, I've got a three.
- [55:25]
B
Day water fast coming.
- [55:26]
A
So yeah, I mean you're a good proponent of fasting.
- [55:29]
B
Yeah.
- [55:30]
A
And as it's great with our food, with our intermittent fasting, with our longer fast to really get the body clean and vitalized, it has to be considered with the phones too. We need phone fasting as a consistent protocol within our lives, life and for periods of time that could be longer phone fast. Like if it's ever possible to go to a cabin, spend a couple days off the phone, like that's a magical thing to take on.
- [55:51]
B
I love the word intermittent phone fasting. And so, yeah, it's awesome. We need it.
- [55:55]
A
We need it. I would argue we need it just as much as the food fasting. I think it's really integral and we can have these longer fasts from the phone and that's cool when it happens, but we also need like a consistent regime that's happening day in, day out on our phone fast fasting as the intermittent fasting has offered for the food fasting world. And we will effectively get them to embed this idea of how do I reach a point where I can go for 30 minutes when I wake phone fasting before I first see the device? And that's hard. Like it's hard to go 30 minutes before you see the device. And we'll start with 5 and we go to 10 and 15, 20 and we gradually work it up. The reason this is so integral to the addiction to the phone and the reason we see in the data the screen times drop so significantly. Like we'll see for example in our school based data in the summer holidays, screen times are between 10 and 15 hours a day on the phone.
- [56:42]
B
Oh my gosh.
- [56:43]
A
We're looking at about 10 to 15 hours of binging social media content a day. And that you think about what I shared with you earlier about this kind of like dopamine factory and these vesicles we need and how we don't want to dump them all into the reward center if that dopamine factory is really low. No matter how magical your life is, no matter how much love you receive, how good your food is, how anything is, you're going to feel pretty depressed if there's no dopamine in that system. You just are. Because it needs that molecule to give you that spark in your life. So we'll see that for teenage sort of generation 10 to 15 for adults, we'll see anywhere between 3 and 8. It varies between about 3 and 8 as they embed these foam fasting principles for everyone. You'll see about two to three hour drop in daily screen time, two to three hours a day for the kids. Sometimes we can get a kid from 15 all the way down to three. But obviously it's a gradual journey. Like, it's a, it's a big process for the younger generation. For adults, it can drop super fast if you adopt the strategy. The reason the morning phone fast is so integral is our brain as hunts gatherers. Woke up and it was like, where's my dopamine? Where am I starting the fire? Am I going straight out hunting? Am I looking after the kids? Am I rebuilding the shelter that broke in the wind? In the wind. Wherever it finds that source, it's going to think, cool, that's my dopamine source. And I'm going to attack the shit out of that for the rest of the day and I'm going to find my dopamine in that source. If you were to wake up and go straight into the device and it's, oh, just get a little bit of WhatsApp, a little bit of Instagram, quick check, bit of email.
- [58:02]
B
Just a peek. I'm just gonna peek and it doesn't matter and then I promise I'm gonna put it down.
- [58:06]
A
It's only a few minutes.
- [58:07]
B
Yeah.
- [58:07]
A
Your brain is then primed as like, all right, this is my source. This is where I'll get my dopamine from the day. What's the point in the pursuit of anything else? And then all day you crave it. And if, for example, like, we help people with vaping, that's another dopaminergic addiction. If you wake up and bang the vape, your brain's like, cool, vape is my source of dopamine all day. And then you're constantly pulled back towards it. And your brain will either crave the easy path or crave the hard path, depending on the decision you make when you open your eyes. And if a young person, for example, we're not telling them to go meditate in the woods for two hours, they just have to wake up immediately, go to the bathroom and brush their teeth because there's a boring, effortful action. The dopamine begins to generate. They got a splash cold water on their face like, it's a journey towards the cold shower. So they don't have to do the cold shower yet. We'll work it towards that. And then they Got to go back and they got to make their bed. And this is the same for adults, very simple. Then they can go on their phone the first day. So they wake up, they brush their teeth, they splash cobbler on the face, and they make their bed. Easy enough to do. Then they've experienced this feeling of like, oh, I've got a little bit of motivation in me today. And then they check their phone, and gradually we start adding different protocols to that morning in order to begin to progressively increase the length of the phone fast. That transformation of the morning routine then begins to plummet the screen time.
- [59:17]
B
Wow, that is amazing. It makes so much sense. If that's your first source of dopamine, that that will be your constant source of dopamine. Yeah, yeah.
- [59:26]
A
Like, if, for example, you've ever had one of those crazy days in your life where you've drunk alcohol in the morning, like some kind of crazy holiday or party or whatever it might be.
- [59:33]
B
The hair of the dog, they call it.
- [59:34]
A
Yeah, it happens. Like, if people at times like, I party pretty hard when I was younger.
- [59:38]
B
You'Re like, I need a martini. Just.
- [59:40]
A
There were certain days, and when alcohol comes in the morning and then it drops back out, you start thinking, like, oh, I might need that alcohol to return to baseline. Like, you start thinking, I'm going to require that source. If you've ever, like, drunk, for example, like two in the afternoon, you've had, like, a rose or a beer in the afternoon, whatever it might be, and say you weren't getting drunk that night and you just had it in the afternoon, you might notice this, like, sudden plummet in how you feel a few hours later as the alcohol detoxifies through your body and the dopamine baseline crashes, then your body starts going, well, the only way back up is the alcohol. And we've got that exact scenario taking place with the phone all day, every day for all of us, where we're plummeting it, and then we just live in this wave of addiction. Whereas if it's beaten, it's, like, cool, I'm in control.
- [60:20]
B
I love that. And I think, you know, again, you know, when we talk about connection, I think it's. We should cautiously say, you know, human connection, you know, connection. Connection to each other, the people that we love, connection with our. Our purpose, our sense of community. And I think so many people, since they don't have any alone time, like, they never been bored. They've never actually had that time to be introspective and say, you know, who am I? What am I doing here? What is my purpose?
- [60:50]
A
Yeah.
- [60:50]
B
You know, what really brings me joy. I'm so out of touch with my feelings that time is just passing. And I don't know that I'm really getting deep, satisfying meaning out of my life because I'm just trying not to be bored.
- [61:06]
A
Yeah.
- [61:07]
B
And inability or, or lack of. Of willingness to just occasionally be bored doesn't allow us to create a lot of the connections I've I feel in our lives.
- [61:18]
A
It doesn't. Both. I'd love to add something on that boredom thing because boredom is so fascinating because it's not like a desirable word. Boredom. It's right. Oh, I'd love to be bored.
- [61:27]
B
It's like my wife says it all the time.
- [61:29]
A
By the way. She likes being bored. Yeah. Like she's like, that's a unique.
- [61:32]
B
Because our life is pretty fast paced. And she's like, yeah, true.
- [61:35]
A
Like you always.
- [61:36]
B
It's like to be bored. But I, I would like that.
- [61:38]
A
And you could almost reframe it. We like to call it with the young people, low stim. We call it like low stim. So it's like we have high stim.
- [61:44]
B
Okay.
- [61:44]
A
Not bored.
- [61:44]
B
Low stim.
- [61:45]
A
Low stim. One of the things we've got super fascinated by at dose lab and now we're really pumping our work towards this is these two different brain networks which you may have heard. We've got the executive network and then the default mode network.
- [61:56]
B
Yes.
- [61:56]
A
The executive network being the center that's active when you're engaged in something, when you're doing tasks, when you're working, when you're scrolling your phone for us right now. Like our executive network will be active and it's a specific collection of areas within the brain that enable you to focus on something. A very useful machine. We then have the default mode network, which is very different. It will activate when we're bored, when we're daydreaming, when we're in deep states of imagination. The interesting thing we're seeing in the recent research is that an individual that is spending time in the default mode network will begin to naturally, without any intention, strategize and dream of their future and how they're going to access that future they desire. They'll begin to naturally ask themselves big questions. Because you start wandering along and you're walking out there and you're in your default mode network and naturally your brain, it's programmed to start thinking like, how do I make a better contribution to the tribe? How do I improve my life? How do I hunt better, build better, and so on. But in our reality, you start asking yourself, like, how can I, like, sort out that specific health thing, my relationship with alcohol, how I contribute to my partner's life, my specific work goal? I'm aiming at particular piece of content I need to create and work on. You start to ideate and dream of, how am I going to access that future? And if you spend your life always in distraction, you're simply reducing your odds of accessing your dreams. And that's the biggest switch.
- [63:12]
B
Wow.
- [63:12]
A
Yeah, because I'm just like. Because I don't like boredom. Like, I was a dopamine addict my whole life. I just want to stimulate. I used to have my, like, Xbox on with my iPad, with my phone, like, smashing them all at once.
- [63:22]
B
Yeah.
- [63:23]
A
And then I came to realize, like, I, of course, want to achieve my dreams. I want my dreams with my family, my dreams in my work, my dreams with how I'll live. Like that. That's the number one goal, is to experience a life that I really love. And when I started to understand that boredom was how I was going to get it, then it all changed. I was, all right, I'll open my eyes to the boredom.
- [63:41]
B
I like low stim better than boredom, it sounds.
- [63:44]
A
So I just put myself in your morning routine, like, after work. How can I just go low stim as often as possible? Even when you go to the toilet, can you not take your phone? So you're just low stim for a moment. Can you eat your food without YouTube on low stim for a moment?
- [63:57]
B
Yeah.
- [63:57]
A
When your partner's cooking, could you sit on the sofa and just do nothing for 10 minutes? Like, low stem is where you're going to find the answer to getting to your. Towards your dreams, and we need that.
- [64:06]
B
Yeah, yeah, I've heard you talk about that, and it makes so much sense. Tj, you're amazing. Amazing, man. I mean, this is. This is. This is awesome. I think this is a conversation the world really needs to hear. Where can my audience find out more about you? Find your book, Find more about your work?
- [64:22]
A
Yeah, definitely. So the book is called the Dose Effect.
- [64:25]
B
Yeah.
- [64:25]
A
You could either read it and it's very visually driven so that it's easy to journey through this book. Like, I know how hard it is.
- [64:32]
B
So we're gonna get some dopamine from it. Okay.
- [64:34]
A
Good reading is not the easiest task now compared to scrolling the phone. So the dose effect to read it would be good. It's, of course, on things like Spotify, so you can Listen to it. If that is your choice, I then have that ironic moment of saying, I'm on Instagram, of course. And effectively, my Instagram is almost like standing in McDonald's handing out salads like, I'm on Instagram teaching people, like, how to maybe use it a bit less and build a better relationship with. That's jpower on Instagram. And then all these live experiences. We run schools, companies all over the world. That's tjpower.co.uk.
- [65:05]
B
That'S amazing. So I wind down all my podcasts by asking my guests the same question. There's no right or wrong answer to this question. And it is, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?
- [65:18]
A
I would say to be a dad that can provide and create a beautiful life for the family that will come in my way and in the face of it, feel calm and present with them as I navigate that experience, like, that's my ultimate dream, is that I feel, like, healthy. I'm here for a long time here to watch, like, grand grandkids and great grandkids come and that I could just, like, love that experience with them and teach them and learn from them and, like, be a great partner to my fiance, soon to be my wife life. I think that would be, like, as I end my life, I would think I was an ultimate human if that reality came true.
- [65:57]
B
That's amazing. You'd also leave a really powerful legacy if you did that.
- [66:01]
A
That'd be fun.
- [66:02]
B
Yeah. What a great conversation about connection, man. I'm so thankful that you came on the podcast today. I hope my audience looks you up. We're going to continue to follow York. I hope I can have you back again in the future to check in and see how this is going. As you get more and more data, I think this is going to be more and more fascinating. So thank you, my friend.
- [66:20]
A
Thank you.
- [66:20]
B
I really enjoyed it.
- [66:21]
A
Appreciate it.
- [66:21]
B
Until next time, guys. That's just science.