Daily Habits to Boost Energy & Longevity - Gary Brecka

[Music] what are daily habits to boost your energy levels and allow you to live a longer healthier life Gary brecka is the co-founder and Chief Human biologist at 10x Health who has helped thousands of people implement the right routines to optimize their biology welcome to the best you podcast where we help you explore how to improve all six areas of life Health personal career Financial spiritual and relational my name is Nick carrier an entrepreneur fitness trainer and motivational speaker I was going down the traditional path of working a nine to five until my mentor saw something in me I quit my job and started my own business my mission is to help you gain Clarity on how to become your best you Gary brecka is a world renowned biologist who is going to help us design a daily and weekly routine to make you live as long and as healthy as you want to when you know biohacking techniques and health habits that bring you more energy and release stress about your personal health and you can become Unstoppable let's dive into optimizing your health and getting closer to your best you with the one and only Gary brecka [Music] thank you [Music] all right what's up everybody welcome back to the best you podcast today I am super excited to be joined by the one and only Gary brecka uh I'm super excited uh to talk to Gary today about so many different things I mean he's one of the top human biologists in the world and he's going to teach us today about how to live more vibrant more energetic longer lives and so we're going to talk about habits and human optimization a lot today and so Gary's joining us from his beautiful place out in Colorado and if you guys are watching this on YouTube just an amazing background he just walks me around a little bit there's so many different tools that he uses to further optimize his own biology and his own potential and we'll get into some of those stuff today but Gary I want to start off kind of back to the basics like we had kind of talked about um what are some foundational healthy habits that people like on a daily basis and on a weekly basis need to be going to and and we'll start off kind of big picture and then we can dive into some more of like the nitty-gritty like protocol stuff afterwards as well but I just want to start high level what are some healthy habits that people need to be doing on a daily and healthy basis to be more energetic and set themselves up for a longer healthier life yeah sure um you know it's interesting um you know as I travel the world and I meet some of the top phds and clinical researchers and MDS in the space of longevity anti-aging you know bio optimization it's it's astounding to me how um all of this research has come full circle and it's all getting back to the basics you know it reminds me of I had a 22-year career as a mortality expert for uh the life insurance industry which meant that if I got 10 years of medical records on you and 10 years of demographic data we could tell the insurance company how long you had to live uh to the month and the fascinating thing about what was limiting people from living longer healthier happier lives um were what we call modifiable risk factors um and they were a category of two things changes that they could make to their lifestyle um their diet their daily habits or changes to make what they could make to how they were taking prescription medication or supplementation and it would have had a demonstrative effect on the number of years they had left on Earth but more importantly on their health span and what I mean about things getting back to the basics is you know it can be very scary place uh to get out on uh Instagram or Tick Tock right now and and listen to health advice from qualified people because you know one's telling you vegetables are going to kill you one's telling you meat's gonna kill you one's telling you that um you know your supplementation is full of you know heavy metals and then other ones telling you if you drink tap water you're gonna die um so the truth is that you know when when we look at what really creates optimal human beings it's it really is the basics and God gave us everything that we need to thrive and aging is just the aggressive pursuit of comfort you know we aggressively pursue comfort that we accelerate our aging and so you know three Basics that we've gotten way far away from in humanity and Mankind just because of the nature of how we live are the three biggest things that we get from Mother Nature you know right outside this door you get three benefits you get magnetism from the earth you get oxygen from the air and you get light from the sun you know we were really meant to spend more than 85 percent of our time outdoors and we spend more than 95 of our time indoors and so um you know when you when we see what do we actually get from Mother Earth well first we get magnetism from the earth think about the last time that you had bare feet touching bare soil I mean like dirt grass sand that was the last time that you discharged into the Earth you know the the Earth is a grounding Force and earthing and grounding is a very real thing and it will cost you absolutely zero you know I sell a five thousand dollar pemf map in fact I just got off of it um and you could spend five grand on a pmf mat and put this sophisticated device in your bed and mimic the the the Earth's um low Gauss current or you could take your shoes off and you could touch the surface of the Earth because we know that the PH range of the body is very narrow and but the closer we are to the alkaline range the less hospitable we are to disease and pathologies of all kinds we may have heard cancer cannot survive in you know environment so it makes us alkaline well certainly not drinking alkaline water right that was the biggest marketing myth ever sold to the public um you know you cannot change the pH of the body by putting alkaline water um through first pass metabolism but you can change the pH the potential hydrogen to charge in the body by contacting the surface of the Earth and so what happens when you Earth or you ground is you instantly change the um the logos current in the body and what happens is cells all throughout your your system especially your red blood cells go from being attracted to each other and sticking together to being repelled from one another and free-floating and just like taking a a roll of quarters and looking at the surface area and then taking that roll of quarters and throwing it on the ground and when it splatters open look at the increase in surface area all those surfaces from those Corners the same thing happens in the bloodstream when cells coagulate and I'm not talking about a blood clot I'm talking about just Clump up because they're they have opposing charges then we lose all that surface area to exchange with the outside environment eliminate waste repair detoxify and regenerate so by contacting the surface of the Earth or using a pmf mat this would be my first step 6 to 15 minutes a day that's it um just contacting the surface of the Earth and then the second is oxygen right I use something called a hypermax oxygen system um also costs five grand you could get the same benefit by learning how to do um breath work there is an eight-minute breath work routine that I do every morning like clockwork um I'm so committed to it I haven't missed once in 38 straight months um I would miss a commercial flight to not miss breath work um because you know the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease you know if I was to boil my entire 22-year career down in the Life settlement I mean in the uh life insurance space the mortality space it would be that statement the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease I defy anyone to find a single disease ideological pathway from Parkinson's to alzheimer's to dementia to type 2 diabetes to psychiatric disorders that do not have their Roots the deficiency of blood oxygen or are not exacerbated by deficiency in blood oxygen so it takes eight minutes you know I do three rounds of 30 brass I didn't invent the breath work it's a Wim Hof style of breath work he's the father of breath work um in fact there's a fascinating documentary on Netflix it's called The Iceman if you ever really want to see the true power of learning to change the oxygen tension in your tissues but if I told you that you had that there was a um you know a pill that in eight minutes could elevate your mood improve your emotional state rid the body of waste and toxins increase your energy prove redboxyl concentration and prove that um the motility in the digestive tract um and then it would last seven to nine hours you'd be like that's amazing that's exactly what breath work offers us so I get three rounds of 30 really deep intense breaths and on my on my 30th exhale I hold my breath as long as I can remember that contrary to popular belief nitric oxide is not the main vasodilator in the body carbon dioxide is in fact Nitric uh nitric oxide and all the nitric oxide supplements are absolutely terrible for you they actually destroy your mitochondria but um but if I can put a voluminous amount of oxygen into my bloodstream and then exhale and allow carbon dioxide to build up I will not only get a very positive vasodilation all those cells begin to scream for oxygen when you restart your breath work that oxygen leaves the blood and enters the tissue use it's called the change in oxygen tension you get lightheaded it's a great sign your fingers and toes tingle that's a great sign um and I would start at five or ten breasts and work my way up to three rounds of 30 breaths and then the last thing is light um again I manufacture a red light therapy bed I love this all your listeners are red light therapy bed um the truth is that'll set you back 120 000 or you can go right outside for zero take your shirt off if you're a woman just a sports bra and and shorts and when you're doing your breath work expose your body to natural sunlight you know the safest time to do this is the first 45 minutes of the day we call it first light there's a voluminous amount of healthy blue light not the blue light like you get from your screen and your phone um there's no UVA or UVB damaging Rays to age the skin but interestingly the wavelengths of light that pass through the skin and help the body convert cholesterol into Vitamin D3 the single most important nutrient in the human body those are are readily prevalent in first light so if I was to say I don't have a penny to spend on biohacking and I want to do most that I could do to permanently change the trajectory of my life I would do grounding breath work and expose my skin to First Light in the morning and those three things and then you can add to that um a cold shower you know where we're only now really to beginning to understand the benefits of cold water immersion yes if you can afford a cold plunge I sell those two uh you can afford a gold lines buy a cold plunge but if not you're gonna take a shower um so when your shower's done and you've lathered up and soaked off step back out of the shower turn it as cold as it will go let it run for about 30 seconds and take a deep breath and then step into that ice cold stream and just deal with it deal with it for one to three minutes you'll survive um because we know now that when we shock the body with um dramatic changes in temperature and and water is 29 times more thermogenic than air meaning it removes heat from the body at 29 times the rate of air so it causes a panic in a sense your liver panics and it floods the bloodstream with something called cold shock proteins reserved proteins in your liver that will scour the body of free radical oxidation it will quadruple the rate of protein synthesis which is muscle repair um it elevates your mood and improves your emotional state causes a peripheral vasoconstriction which drives blood to the brain to the liver lungs pancreas and the kidneys and it also activates something called Brown fat which is our thermostat that can increase our metabolic rate and all of these things are readily accessible but the majority of your listeners will not put this to work in their life number one because they're too simple and number two because they're uncomfortable yeah yeah most people won't do it just because number one it's too simple um you know it's not it's not shrouded in in biohacking theory and complex complexity um and number two because it's uncomfortable and and this is where I coined the term aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort you know we we know now that sedentary lifestyle is the leading cause of all cause mortality right sitting is the new smoking and um and there's a process in the human body called hormesis hermesis is where you stress the body and it strengthens and responds not all stress is bad for the body we got to stop telling Grandma not to go outside it's too hot not to go outside it's too cold just to lay down just to relax to eat at the very first hang of hunger um because this is collapsing all of our natural um defense mechanisms and Longevity mechanisms we know if you don't load a bone it won't strengthen if you don't tear a muscle it won't grow and if you don't challenge the immune system it weakens you're seeing this coming out of the pandemic the worst thing to ever happen to humanity and I'll probably lose half the listeners because saying this as you know was masking residential quarantining and and social distancing um because you're taking human beings out of what we were designed to do which is interact with other human beings and combat these pathogens so what happens is you caused a progressive weakening of the immune system and then we pop the top on the pandemic we wonder why we're hearing about all kinds of strange viruses monkey pox well it's nonsense I'm like what the hell is monkeypox um and uh you know we're on our eighth variant of omnicron now um the reason why these variants are so prolific is because we globally weaken the immune system man these are these are so good and I love how it is truly back to the basics with some of the stuff and like you said it's so nice because all of this is can be zero cost or you can go with uh with the more expensive stuff um you talked about with the you know you talk about magnetism changing the pH of the body by contacting the surface of the Earth for maybe six to 15 minutes a day then you talk about breath work your eight minute routine is there reasonings behind those durations of 6 to 15 minutes a day and eight minute routine in the sense that like if you do it for that period of time you're going to feel the benefits of it for the remainder of the day like does the 6 to 15 minutes and eight minute breathing routine provide the body biologically with the benefits for like that 24 hour period and then you need to do it again rounding the last 24 to 48 hours um so that so for the surface cell polarity to change again remember pH stands for potential hydrogen it's a charge right so if you want to change charge in the body you run a low Gauss current or charge through the body and you can do this by contacting the surface of the Earth right um in fact there's a I just did a post on my Instagram um to prove this and I held the positive post of um a voltage meter a very sensitive voltage meter and I plug the negative pole into the ground and I was standing on top of my running shoes and I was holding the pole and it was in the ground and you could see that the um um that it was just resting on the post it as soon as I stepped off my shoes and stepped onto the ground you could see it jump so you can actually see that I was completing that circuit which means that I was discharging into the Earth and so um and this is very true it's why we ground electricity in the earth it's the reason why lightning you know strikes uh strikes the Earth to be grounded and um and and you know with two and a half inch you know rubber soles and leather soles and and car tires and tile floors and wood floors were just not were insulated from from Mother Earth wow that's awesome that's that's powerful um I I love stuff like this so much and I I kind of want to stay on some different topics like this that are outside of Me Maybe Just Fitness and Nutrition because we talk a lot about Fitness and Nutrition on this podcast we might be able to dive into that stuff a little bit but the next thing I want to kind of dive into is blood work and in particular the the numbers that are talked about a lot like cholesterol levels and like triglyceride levels and things like that and I want to start off with the cholesterol portion of it talk to us about what cholesterol is debunking myths about it talk to us about LDL HDL and what people need to actually be concerned about not concerned about and how to maybe positively influence those numbers yeah so um so I I believe that cholesterol is one of the most maligned and misunderstood compounds in the human body right so if we talk about what cholesterol is and what it's not first of all um cholesterol is not a fuel source okay so your body cannot use cholesterol for energy you absorb virtually zero cholesterol from an egg for example um through the lining of the gut so the cholesterol in your bloodstream um is not as highly linked to the cholesterol that you eat as you think 85 percent of all the cholesterol in your blood um is manufactured by the liver so the first thing is if it's not a fuel source and if it's manufactured by the liver then what is it well it's a construction material we use cholesterol to build every cell wall every cell membrane every hormone in the human body and we make it to make we use it to make the single most important nutrient in the human body which is vitamin D3 remember vitamin D3 which we make from sunlight and cholesterol is the only vitamin that a human being can make so just think about that for a second how important must that nutrient be it also acts like a hormone um but how important must that hormone and vitamin B if it's the only one that human beings make on our own there's 100 bloodstream right now you are only capable of making one so cholesterol is used for all of these things where cholesterol gets uh you know blamed for is that cholesterol um is very often at the scene of the crime but it does not pull the trigger so in other words it's not the amount of LDL cholesterol in your blood that matters it is two things the size of the cholesterol molecule and it is whether or not um that cholesterol molecule is um in the presence of what we call pufas polyunsaturated fatty acids seed oils mainly which essentially make the cholesterol rancid and it is this type of rancid cholesterol that causes plaquing coagulation aclero arterial sclerotic blocking and all of the contributions to cardiovascular disease so first of all what makes cholesterol large or small well remember that cholesterol is like a tennis ball and if cholesterol was a tennis ball the surface the fuzzy yellow surface of cholesterol would be a triglyceride it it's the fat in your blood so blood fat is transported around the bloodstream on the surface of cholesterol so let's say that your amount of cholesterol stays stable but you increase the amount of blood fat what's going to happen is the cholesterol molecule is going to get smaller hyper scientific on you but if you went back to high school geometry and you remember that as the size of a sphere gets smaller its surface area to volume ratio goes up so in other words a basketball has less surface area to volume ratio than a golf ball so let's say you had two basketballs sitting on your kitchen counter this represents the cholesterol in your bloodstream and you add more blood fat more triglyceride well if I keep adding more triglyceride those two basketballs are going to become for baseball or softballs and if I keep adding triglyceride they're going to become eight baseballs and then they're going to become 16 golf balls and then they're going to become 32 little BBs do you notice I never change the volume of cholesterol change the size to accommodate the increased triglyceride fat if you look at the peer-reviewed published clinical literature on LDL cholesterol you will find virtually zero evidence linking elevated levels of LDL cholesterol on its own to cardiovascular disease so what raises blood fat triglyceride sugar people that eat the most sugar have the highest blood fat so the long and short of it is if you remove processed sugars and a refined carbohydrates from your diet you bring your glycemic profile down you will see your cholesterol improve because your triglycerides will improve remember when we eat sugar glucose rises in the blood insulin Rises to bring sugar down the primary role of insulin is not to lower blood sugar the primary role of insulin is to block any other form of energy use in the body so this means if I have high insulin I cannot burn fat if I cannot burn fat the first place fat shows up is in the blood when it shows up in the blood it decreases the size of cholesterol when it decreases the size of cholesterol it increases the risk of cardiovascular disease so if you want to dramatically lower your risk of cardiovascular disease eliminate processed foods refined carbohydrates and sugars from your diet um you know I'm trying to change the Bible right now from the love of money is the root of all evil sugar is the root of all evil yeah um I haven't no luck but you know uh you're me you're you're making a dent that's for sure um that was that was awesome and I think that was a very clear description I feel like I have a whole lot better of a grasp of it and I feel like everybody else probably has a whole lot better of a grasp of it as well I love the analogy of the basketball to softball to baseball to golf ball to BB's I think that's great uh to kind of just retouch on it with regards to how to ensure that these numbers are where they're supposed to be it's it's mainly about making sure triglycerides are on the are on the lower side of things you want to have triglycerides below 150. okay preferably between 75 and 125. um you'll get this on a lipid panel um you wanna have your HDL your high density lip of protein which is your healthy cholesterol above 39. preferably above 50. um and you want LDL cholesterol between 100 and 220. um if it's over 99 your doctor's going to tell you it's elevated and you need to go on a Statin um and that would be an absolute crime because you know one of the things that we studied in the mortality space and that my 22-year career was what was the impact on all cause mortality from some of these different medications that people are on thyroid medications antidepressants um um blood pressure medications corticosteroids statins these sorts of things and you're seeing this medicine is beginning to come full circle right we know now that the serotonin theory of depression has been completely debunked even though there are tens of millions of people on selective serotonin reuptake Inhibitors that may permanently cause a tachophylactic response in your brain meaning a desensitization response quadrupling your um the incidence of of suicide and potentially leaving to leading to crippling permanent depression we know that when people take corticosteroids which are um you know uh oral not steroids for your muscles but these are these are steroids to reduce inflammation um uh you know prednisone steroids like this we know that initially they're anti-inflammatory but then they begin to eat the joint like a termite like I knew in the mortality space that if you were diagnosed with something like rheumatoid arthritis and put on a corticosteroid you had six years and one day until you're having a joint replacement it was so accurate that if your 60 year old male or female I would artificially Advance your age six years and one day and I would schedule the joint replacement and then what I would do is I would begin to reduce something called your ambulatory profile how well you ambulate how well you move and as I reduced your Mobility I could bring in all of the diseases that exacerbate with reduced Mobility so it would bring your future from decades ahead right into your present and you would eventually succumb to a disease that you never would have had because you are on a medication that wasn't required because you may have been diagnosed with a condition that didn't exist and so you know one of the one of the biggest challenges that we saw in the space that I used to work in in the mortality space was something called iatrogenic illness which is physician induced illness um if you look at the 2016 Harvard University study or the 2019 um Johns Hopkins study you'll find that modern medicine medical error is the third leading cause of death right so medicine kills more people than morbid obesity and diabetes combined only cancer cardiovascular disease kill people more people than medical error and so we're very good at crisis medicine we're very poor at bio optimization um and that's why we got to take these things into our own hands yeah this is this is great um I appreciate you sharing the those numbers with uh the triglycerides and the HDL and LDL as well so why if somebody has numbers that they just heard the numbers and they just had blood work done and they're like holy crap I'm off on these things so it's not about eating less cholesterol it's about eating less less sugar less processed foods and less refined carbohydrates no question I mean there is virtually zero correlation between dietary cholesterol intake and blood levels of cholesterol versus zero um and so you could cut all of the cholesterol out of your diet entirely and you will not move your LDL cholesterol maybe marginally but not yeah any significance at all less less than ten percent but if you want to have a demonstrative move on on cholesterol then you bring down your glycemic profile your your the three month average of your blood sugar it's called the hemoglobin A1c you bring down your glycemic profile meaning you actually lower the amount of sugar that you're taking into the body um and you know you can do this with any form of diet carnivore keto paleo raw food vegan vegetarian you know the the the the dietary myths that are out there that you have to be all keto or all Carnival or all vegan or all raw or all vegetarian they negate the most important point and that is the the caliber the quality of the whole food you see our food supply is not so much about the food that we eat it's about the distance from the from the um seed to the table right I mean I just did a huge post about uh um you know the the negativity you know of uh seed oils the toxicity and Seed oils and I didn't say that seed oils were bad for you I said industrial processed seed oils were bad for you because you know we take a lot of things in modern agriculture that are non-toxic that are actually very good for you like grass-fed meat and between the cattle and the table and this is what you know the challenge happens here you know between glyphosphates that they're spraying onto the grass that the cattle's eating to the um what they're doing um when they feed them corn syrups and and soy uh which is very unnatural in fact I was walking through the woods here in Colorado with my wife a few few days ago and I found the decomposed um uh elk uh skeleton and I picked up the skull and I turned it over and I asked my wife I said do you notice anything special about this skeleton she goes no I said notice that he has all of his teeth and none of the teeth a single cavity there's no rot you could tell there was no gum disease this was a very very very healthy animal because he was out here eating what he's supposed to eat if you looked at the skull a commercially raised cattle you would find all of the teeth have rotted up into the gum and into the bone they have no teeth left they have type 2 diabetes by the time they're slaughtered they cannot chew crud anymore so they actually feed them a combination of um uh corn syrup and and soy and they have to actually just slurp it they're so close to dying of diabetes it's one of the calculations that they use to determine the slaughter timing and so but if you took that same cattle and put it in a grass field like this and it passing worms and bugs and do color uh covered grass and flowers um you'd find the omega-3 omega-6 ratio changes in the fat there's no there's no pus and hormones in the fat no vaccines and really focus on whole food sources super important yeah I think I love how you acknowledge the fact that a lot of these diets can work for a lot of different people I mean I think it's hilarious when people try to completely demonize one habit or one diet when there's thousands of people who are doing it and probably seeing pretty good benefits and people will demonize the other side and say that that's going to kill you when there's a thousand people doing it Millions people doing it and they're and they're doing just fine like you said the through line on if you're doing all of them the right way is you're eating real foods and you're making it as close to the source yeah breeding Whole Foods I mean you know that was my argument with seed oils I said look would you take a canola plant and you put it in a commercial press and it comes out dummy right and now you decomp it with hexane which is a no neurotoxin and now you have a de-comed neurotoxic oil and then you heat it to 405 degrees and you make this d-gum neurotoxic oil rancid and then it begins to stink so deodorize it with sodium hydroxide sodium hydroxide is a well-known carcinogen and then the oil is cloudy so we bleach it with mild amounts of chlorine so you have a sodium hydroxide hexanated chlorinated oil that's been heated to a rancid temperature now you put that on the Shelf one of the most toxic compounds you can put in the human body but it didn't start that way right and that's where the argument goes awry it's the industrial processing you know it's it's the non-grass-fed raised cattle it's the glyphosphate laden Fields I mean one of the other worst things you could put in the human body are GMO Foods Russia have banned these Foods the EO is looking to potentially ban these Foods in Russia it is a felony to grow genetically modified crops um here it's the fastest growing area of Agriculture and we genetically modified seeds to make them resistant to glyphosphate which is a um insecticide a poison and um I mean an herbicide a poison and so the seed is resistant to glyphosphate but when you genetically modify it there's words of evidence now that that genetically modified plant is not only non-digestible but it also can potentially alter the epigenome in a human being unnatural Foods um it also just outlawed lab-grown meat that was the first country in the world to do that um you know the United States is one of the few civilized nations in the world that uses something called single dose toxicity to determine whether or not something's poisonous for you so I'm actually legally allowed to poison you in small doses um as long as the dose is not enough to cause a physiologic effect this is why a lot of our energy drinks and our supplements have something called cyanocobalamin you want to throw those things in the trash that is a cyanide based B12 we make that B12 from hydrogen cyanide a chemical weapon and the cobalt metal in small doses it's harmless in cumulative doses it can be toxic just like Mercury nobody got mercury poisoning from eating one piece of tuna fish right it's the cumulative dose toxicity not the single dose toxicity that matters and so when we have an entire industrial complex like the FDA that's based on single dose toxicity and it says this is safe for you Nick because this dose will not harm you but those dosages are cumulative so that over time you create toxicity um you know that's why I built this whole Retreat out here is to get away get away from that yeah that's that's profound I never heard of that phrase a single dose toxicity before and that makes so much sense as to why we have so many different things off um when you were talking about energy drinks I think the the ingredient that you're gonna say to make sure to avoid I we got cut off really quickly when you were saying that what what are the and if you're looking at energy drinks and stuff like that what is it what thing you want to make sure you're not having it's called cyanocobalamin um okay I'm gonna show you something uh because nobody believes me when I say this so I'm actually just going to take you to the National Library of Medicine at the National Health can I share my screen for a second yeah let me see if I uh so for those that are listening I'll talk my way through it but for those of you that are watching you you know you can just um see this firsthand um but let's go to can you see my screen yep okay so I'm going to put in cyanocobalamin which is the most common form of B12 in the world we make it a laboratory it does not occur anywhere naturally in nature three other forms of B12 occur naturally in nature the most beneficial of which is called methylcobalamin um and what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to the National Library of Medicine you see this at the National Institute of Health and I'm just going to look up this form of B12 so I'm going to say if I wanted to Source this form of B12 let's say and put it in a multivitamin here's where I go and I scroll down here to section 5.3 and it will tell me its component compounds see this right here where it says component compounds yep okay well it's made from the cobalt metal which all B12 is and it's also made from something called a cyano radical well what's that well that's hydrogen cyanide that is a flammable acute toxic health hazard environmental hazard um I wonder what else they um use this sin oh here you go it is a these are not my words hydrogen cyanide is a highly toxic conjugate acid of cyanide that is used as a chemical weapon agent we use it exactly to make a cyanide-based form of B12 synthetically in a lab and we sell it cheaply to the public and we are allowed to do it because we use the basis of single dose toxicity to slowly poison um now you could take an energy drink that had methylcobalamin or a supplement that had methylcobalamin or what's called hydroxycobalamin and be fine um but the truth is this single dose toxicity is terrible the same thing's happening with fluoride you know I I just did a huge expose on fluoride and um you know one of the national toxicity foundations um actually sued the federal government and got the data on fluoride it was just released in March of this year they found zero safe levels in drinking water in fact if you want to make a real material change on the trajectory of your health make today the day that you never drink tap water again and I'm not saying you have to buy expensive bottled water or super expensive water filter go online and find a water filter they might be as cheap as 16 or 20 bucks make sure that at a minimum that it filters fluoride and chlorine out of the water in 3600 municipalities across the United States without a single exception they found an inverse relationship between a higher amount of fluoride and a decrease in IQ as far I goes up IQ goes down and shame on the dentist that promulgated this because they extrapolated a study from the from the mid or from the early 1990s that showed that fluoride could create a micro nanoparticulate layer over the enamel of the tooth and if you laid sugar on top of it it would not um erode the enamel well I mean so would candle wax but and then we extrapolated that really shoddy study into fluoride toothpaste and fluoride in your drinking water and fluoride in uh you know treatments for dental hygiene and there's zero implications for fluoride and the prevention of dental decay and it has serious systemic neurotoxic effects in the human body wow man that's so good you're giving us so many good things here do you have about 10 more minutes with me uh yeah sure okay cool um I would be we have a lot of Fitness enthusiasts on this podcast and so I would be remiss if I didn't ask you something about Fitness talk to me about I know you're big into fitness you showed me outside with your your bike and the different things some some of the different things that you do talk to me about from a more of like a longevity standpoint and a health span perspective of being able to live in a manner that we're independent and we and we don't rely on other people to do different things and from a longevity and health span perspective with regards to our cardiovascular health what are some of the different things from a fitness perspective that we really get a lot of bang for our buck from when it comes to our fitness routines well there's no no question that the most significant is weight training um you know weight training beats cardiovascular training hands down in every published peer-reviewed human clinical trial study that I've ever read um if you don't think you can get a good cardiovascular workout when you're weight training you're not you know weight training properly anybody that is um you're remotely familiar with you know the pace of uh you know keeping up a certain Pace when you're weight training knows that you can keep your heart rate really elevated and you can also get cardiovascular benefits um I also sit on the board of the you know NFL alumni sister we have 22 000 members in our um in our uh organization and so you know post um um professional years in in in the league is where we really take over and help them maintain that level of Fitness for the balance of their lifetime we know now that muscle is our metabolic currency muscle in my opinion is the largest organ in the body I don't believe that it's the skin because muscle is our repository it's the sponge for glucose we absorb sugar into our muscles in the form of something called glycogen it also stabilizes our skeleton it secretes endorphins it raises our metabolic rate it decreases the incidence of um all-cause cardiovascular disease we know now that age-related muscle wasting which is called sarcopenia leads to Frailty and Frailty is one of the highest risks of early mortality and so and and you know if you're in your 20s or your 30s or your 40s right now and you think that that's far off it actually begins now and so um if you want to live a long time lift heavyweight and I'm not saying they go in and back Squad and go to CrossFit and do complicated compound Olympic moves but um grip strength is related to longevity I mean for most men they should actually be able to do a dead hang for two minutes um you should be able to single step your um you should be able to put your leg at 90 degrees on a box jump and slowly single step your your self up and slowly single step your foot down a lot of people can't do that balance is another one where you close your eyes and extend your foot um closer to 10 seconds the worst that um uh core balances the closer to 30 seconds the better it is and remember remember in weight training and muscle training um if you boil all the research down to kind of one concept it's it's that um you know the last rep really matters right it's how much muscle have we torn and to tear a muscle through its full physiologic range seems to be the best way to create muscle hyper hypertri and muscle hyperplasia meaning at some point um a drop set to failure for each of your body parts if you're doing bench it's fine to bench heavy and do a chest routine at the end of that chest routine start with a heavy weight you can do six times to failure and try to increase to 10 and 12 times to failure dropping the weight tear the muscle through its full physiologic range and um you know I'm oversimplifying a lot a lot of science there but um and then cardiovascular training is excellent too um I just read Dr atia's book you know he's a huge fan of rucking which I'm also a huge fan of um I think that's a great book by the way if you're in your 20s 30s and 40s um in your and you're looking to live a long happy healthy lifetime he talks about preparing for something he calls the uh uh the centenarian decathlon which is by 10 things you want to be able to do when you're 100 years old and how much weight do you need to be able to lift on your 35th birthday if you want to be able to um do those things on your 100th birthday um you know interestingly the the the centenarian that broke the world cycling record on his 100th birthday just came back and broke it three years later on his 103rd birthday so you can actually improve your cardiovascular and your physical conditioning Foods never too late to improve those throughout your lifetime yeah that if you really want to get serious about biohacking I mean breath work grounding um cold showers uh Whole Foods getting fluorides out of your um water all these things will cost you nothing um you know getting a inexpensive water filter to get fluoride out avoiding GMO Foods you know these are things that you can do by just being conscious you really want to go next level you have to get data on your body right I mean nothing that we don't measure is is changeable and you know most young entrepreneurs know more about their business than they do about their bodies it's astounding to me you know my partner's Grant Cardone he's a real estate billionaire um you know he hosts seminars all over the countries he's an absolute Beast um he actually does not look act or perform like a 65 year old man um yeah it looks like a 40 year old man he thinks and acts like a 25 year old man he's got the energy of a teenager and um and this isn't by accident you know we've designed it but but when I talk to most entrepreneurs they know more about their income statement their balance sheet their their p l than they know about their own biome like this is your temple if you get data on this then you can optimize it most of us are walking around right now at about 60 percent of our true state of Journal you're listening to this and you think that you're optimal you very well may be 60 of the way there you have no idea how good normal could feel and when you you know my suggestion is that you there's two tests that I believe that people should do one is an absolute must and you have to do it once in your lifetime and it's a genetic test it's called a methylation test you do not have to do the test through me you Google it there's tons of companies that do it um um you know we also have Duo genetic tests but you do a cheek swab you send it to a lab and it tells you exactly what raw materials vitamins minerals amino acids nutrients your body cannot convert into the usable form and it is this deficiency that is holding you back from being optimal it's interrupting your it's creating brain fog it's interrupting your focus your concentration your Delta wave of sleep your response to exercise your waking energy your short-term recall all these little things that are nipping at you anxiousness anxiety um ADD ADHD and so to become more mentally fit we need data and once you do this test once in your lifetime you'll never guess on what you need to supplement with most people are just supplementing for the sake of supplementing instead of supplementing for deficiency you want to see magic happen in the human body start supplementing for what your body's deficient in and get out of its way it is astounding what can happen that's great what uh so you said genetic testing was there another test that you were going to mention I got you the second is a blood test and you want to ask your doctor to look at three things okay what's called glycemic control how well are you controlling your blood sugar glucose hemoglobin A1c insulin a hormone panel full hormone panel on males and females and nutrient deficiencies specifically vitamin D3 which is called um vitamin D 25 hydroxy on a blood test um and B12 and this is the basics of where you start this is the casting net that you throw out to decide where is my Baseline and you can get your blood work done once a year maybe twice a year look at your hormone balance because most people that qualify for hormone therapy actually don't need hormones they need raw materials that their body uses to make hormones so for example if you're clinically deficient in vitamin D3 and clinically deficient in DHEA you will be low on testosterone and you don't need testosterone injections you need to give your body back the raw material it needs to make testosterone because the primary role of testosterone contrary to popular belief is not male characteristics it's not deep voice facial hair regression muscles um it's none of those things the primary role of testosterone is called erythropoliesis to put pressure on the bone marrow to create new red blood cells and when you have healthy red blood cells in the bloodstream in the right amount your energy level is through the roof people that are low on testosterone are generally low on red blood cell and hemoglobin and this is why they're tired and this is why they have brain fog and this is why they don't sleep and you might not need hormone therapy you might simply need D3 and DHEA to give your body the raw material to make that hormone and that's the fascinating thing about the human body magic things happen when we just give it the raw material it needs to do its job um man that's so good that's so good uh so many different great things here you guys you guys if you if you don't follow Gary on Instagram yet get to following Gary on Instagram at Gary brecka we'll have all this stuff linked up in the show notes uh if you want to go get that genetic testing they do genetic testing with 10x you can go to 10x your health.com and learn more about that if you're interested on taking it to the next level uh any other good place that people should go learn more about you and what you're up to besides those places it's it's 10x healthtest um.com but um um all I do is teach on Instagram so you know if you're interested in taking a deeper dive into these you know all I do is is teach on Instagram all my podcasts including this one will eventually be available there on my um link tree you know I'm I'm embarking on a project that I call the ultimate human um which is a combination of a podcast that will eventually lead into a place where people can go to find all things ultimate human they won't be my products but my team will clinically and critically evaluate them so if you wanted to know what are the best cleaning products for my house that um what are the best lotions for my skin what are the best you know hair care products what kind of water should I be drinking you know I want to really give a platform to companies that are doing things right that are creating you know metal free chocolates and seed oil free um um foods and and just give them a platform so people can easily find them beautiful that's awesome well I'm I'm super excited for that to come out y'all there were so many good things here today that Gary talked to that we can start to change in our daily and our weekly Habits Like magnetism getting out and do grounding work just six to 15 minutes a day breath work sunlight cold showers getting those different genetic testings done and ensure that we're staying close to the source with our food staying as minimally processed as absolutely possible um Gary so many different great things today you provided a lot of value for everybody and I know that people are going to start to take action on a lot of this stuff on a daily and weekly basis because they can do simple things and they can do things that are a little bit uncomfortable I know you guys can uh Gary that's all we got today I appreciate you I appreciate you too man thank you so much for having me on [Music]

[Music] what are daily habits to boost your energy levels and allow you to live a longer healthier life Gary brecka is the co-founder and Chief Human biologist at 10x Health who has helped thousands of people implement the right routines to optimize their biology welcome to the best you podcast where we help you explore how to improve all six areas of life Health personal career Financial spiritual and relational my name is Nick carrier an entrepreneur fitness trainer and motivational speaker I was going down the traditional path of working a nine to five until my mentor saw something in me I quit my job and started my own business my mission is to help you gain Clarity on how to become your best you Gary brecka is a world renowned biologist who is going to help us design a daily and weekly routine to make you live as long and as healthy as you want to when you know biohacking techniques and health habits that bring you more energy and release stress about your personal health and you can become Unstoppable let&#39;s dive into optimizing your health and getting closer to your best you with the one and only Gary brecka [Music] thank you [Music] all right what&#39;s up everybody welcome back to the best you podcast today I am super excited to be joined by the one and only Gary brecka uh I&#39;m super excited uh to talk to Gary today about so many different things I mean he&#39;s one of the top human biologists in the world and he&#39;s going to teach us today about how to live more vibrant more energetic longer lives and so we&#39;re going to talk about habits and human optimization a lot today and so Gary&#39;s joining us from his beautiful place out in Colorado and if you guys are watching this on YouTube just an amazing background he just walks me around a little bit there&#39;s so many different tools that he uses to further optimize his own biology and his own potential and we&#39;ll get into some of those stuff today but Gary I want to start off kind of back to the basics like we had kind of talked about um what are some foundational healthy habits that people like on a daily basis and on a weekly basis need to be going to and and we&#39;ll start off kind of big picture and then we can dive into some more of like the nitty-gritty like protocol stuff afterwards as well but I just want to start high level what are some healthy habits that people need to be doing on a daily and healthy basis to be more energetic and set themselves up for a longer healthier life yeah sure um you know it&#39;s interesting um you know as I travel the world and I meet some of the top phds and clinical researchers and MDS in the space of longevity anti-aging you know bio optimization it&#39;s it&#39;s astounding to me how um all of this research has come full circle and it&#39;s all getting back to the basics you know it reminds me of I had a 22-year career as a mortality expert for uh the life insurance industry which meant that if I got 10 years of medical records on you and 10 years of demographic data we could tell the insurance company how long you had to live uh to the month and the fascinating thing about what was limiting people from living longer healthier happier lives um were what we call modifiable risk factors um and they were a category of two things changes that they could make to their lifestyle um their diet their daily habits or changes to make what they could make to how they were taking prescription medication or supplementation and it would have had a demonstrative effect on the number of years they had left on Earth but more importantly on their health span and what I mean about things getting back to the basics is you know it can be very scary place uh to get out on uh Instagram or Tick Tock right now and and listen to health advice from qualified people because you know one&#39;s telling you vegetables are going to kill you one&#39;s telling you meat&#39;s gonna kill you one&#39;s telling you that um you know your supplementation is full of you know heavy metals and then other ones telling you if you drink tap water you&#39;re gonna die um so the truth is that you know when when we look at what really creates optimal human beings it&#39;s it really is the basics and God gave us everything that we need to thrive and aging is just the aggressive pursuit of comfort you know we aggressively pursue comfort that we accelerate our aging and so you know three Basics that we&#39;ve gotten way far away from in humanity and Mankind just because of the nature of how we live are the three biggest things that we get from Mother Nature you know right outside this door you get three benefits you get magnetism from the earth you get oxygen from the air and you get light from the sun you know we were really meant to spend more than 85 percent of our time outdoors and we spend more than 95 of our time indoors and so um you know when you when we see what do we actually get from Mother Earth well first we get magnetism from the earth think about the last time that you had bare feet touching bare soil I mean like dirt grass sand that was the last time that you discharged into the Earth you know the the Earth is a grounding Force and earthing and grounding is a very real thing and it will cost you absolutely zero you know I sell a five thousand dollar pemf map in fact I just got off of it um and you could spend five grand on a pmf mat and put this sophisticated device in your bed and mimic the the the Earth&#39;s um low Gauss current or you could take your shoes off and you could touch the surface of the Earth because we know that the PH range of the body is very narrow and but the closer we are to the alkaline range the less hospitable we are to disease and pathologies of all kinds we may have heard cancer cannot survive in you know environment so it makes us alkaline well certainly not drinking alkaline water right that was the biggest marketing myth ever sold to the public um you know you cannot change the pH of the body by putting alkaline water um through first pass metabolism but you can change the pH the potential hydrogen to charge in the body by contacting the surface of the Earth and so what happens when you Earth or you ground is you instantly change the um the logos current in the body and what happens is cells all throughout your your system especially your red blood cells go from being attracted to each other and sticking together to being repelled from one another and free-floating and just like taking a a roll of quarters and looking at the surface area and then taking that roll of quarters and throwing it on the ground and when it splatters open look at the increase in surface area all those surfaces from those Corners the same thing happens in the bloodstream when cells coagulate and I&#39;m not talking about a blood clot I&#39;m talking about just Clump up because they&#39;re they have opposing charges then we lose all that surface area to exchange with the outside environment eliminate waste repair detoxify and regenerate so by contacting the surface of the Earth or using a pmf mat this would be my first step 6 to 15 minutes a day that&#39;s it um just contacting the surface of the Earth and then the second is oxygen right I use something called a hypermax oxygen system um also costs five grand you could get the same benefit by learning how to do um breath work there is an eight-minute breath work routine that I do every morning like clockwork um I&#39;m so committed to it I haven&#39;t missed once in 38 straight months um I would miss a commercial flight to not miss breath work um because you know the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease you know if I was to boil my entire 22-year career down in the Life settlement I mean in the uh life insurance space the mortality space it would be that statement the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease I defy anyone to find a single disease ideological pathway from Parkinson&#39;s to alzheimer&#39;s to dementia to type 2 diabetes to psychiatric disorders that do not have their Roots the deficiency of blood oxygen or are not exacerbated by deficiency in blood oxygen so it takes eight minutes you know I do three rounds of 30 brass I didn&#39;t invent the breath work it&#39;s a Wim Hof style of breath work he&#39;s the father of breath work um in fact there&#39;s a fascinating documentary on Netflix it&#39;s called The Iceman if you ever really want to see the true power of learning to change the oxygen tension in your tissues but if I told you that you had that there was a um you know a pill that in eight minutes could elevate your mood improve your emotional state rid the body of waste and toxins increase your energy prove redboxyl concentration and prove that um the motility in the digestive tract um and then it would last seven to nine hours you&#39;d be like that&#39;s amazing that&#39;s exactly what breath work offers us so I get three rounds of 30 really deep intense breaths and on my on my 30th exhale I hold my breath as long as I can remember that contrary to popular belief nitric oxide is not the main vasodilator in the body carbon dioxide is in fact Nitric uh nitric oxide and all the nitric oxide supplements are absolutely terrible for you they actually destroy your mitochondria but um but if I can put a voluminous amount of oxygen into my bloodstream and then exhale and allow carbon dioxide to build up I will not only get a very positive vasodilation all those cells begin to scream for oxygen when you restart your breath work that oxygen leaves the blood and enters the tissue use it&#39;s called the change in oxygen tension you get lightheaded it&#39;s a great sign your fingers and toes tingle that&#39;s a great sign um and I would start at five or ten breasts and work my way up to three rounds of 30 breaths and then the last thing is light um again I manufacture a red light therapy bed I love this all your listeners are red light therapy bed um the truth is that&#39;ll set you back 120 000 or you can go right outside for zero take your shirt off if you&#39;re a woman just a sports bra and and shorts and when you&#39;re doing your breath work expose your body to natural sunlight you know the safest time to do this is the first 45 minutes of the day we call it first light there&#39;s a voluminous amount of healthy blue light not the blue light like you get from your screen and your phone um there&#39;s no UVA or UVB damaging Rays to age the skin but interestingly the wavelengths of light that pass through the skin and help the body convert cholesterol into Vitamin D3 the single most important nutrient in the human body those are are readily prevalent in first light so if I was to say I don&#39;t have a penny to spend on biohacking and I want to do most that I could do to permanently change the trajectory of my life I would do grounding breath work and expose my skin to First Light in the morning and those three things and then you can add to that um a cold shower you know where we&#39;re only now really to beginning to understand the benefits of cold water immersion yes if you can afford a cold plunge I sell those two uh you can afford a gold lines buy a cold plunge but if not you&#39;re gonna take a shower um so when your shower&#39;s done and you&#39;ve lathered up and soaked off step back out of the shower turn it as cold as it will go let it run for about 30 seconds and take a deep breath and then step into that ice cold stream and just deal with it deal with it for one to three minutes you&#39;ll survive um because we know now that when we shock the body with um dramatic changes in temperature and and water is 29 times more thermogenic than air meaning it removes heat from the body at 29 times the rate of air so it causes a panic in a sense your liver panics and it floods the bloodstream with something called cold shock proteins reserved proteins in your liver that will scour the body of free radical oxidation it will quadruple the rate of protein synthesis which is muscle repair um it elevates your mood and improves your emotional state causes a peripheral vasoconstriction which drives blood to the brain to the liver lungs pancreas and the kidneys and it also activates something called Brown fat which is our thermostat that can increase our metabolic rate and all of these things are readily accessible but the majority of your listeners will not put this to work in their life number one because they&#39;re too simple and number two because they&#39;re uncomfortable yeah yeah most people won&#39;t do it just because number one it&#39;s too simple um you know it&#39;s not it&#39;s not shrouded in in biohacking theory and complex complexity um and number two because it&#39;s uncomfortable and and this is where I coined the term aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort you know we we know now that sedentary lifestyle is the leading cause of all cause mortality right sitting is the new smoking and um and there&#39;s a process in the human body called hormesis hermesis is where you stress the body and it strengthens and responds not all stress is bad for the body we got to stop telling Grandma not to go outside it&#39;s too hot not to go outside it&#39;s too cold just to lay down just to relax to eat at the very first hang of hunger um because this is collapsing all of our natural um defense mechanisms and Longevity mechanisms we know if you don&#39;t load a bone it won&#39;t strengthen if you don&#39;t tear a muscle it won&#39;t grow and if you don&#39;t challenge the immune system it weakens you&#39;re seeing this coming out of the pandemic the worst thing to ever happen to humanity and I&#39;ll probably lose half the listeners because saying this as you know was masking residential quarantining and and social distancing um because you&#39;re taking human beings out of what we were designed to do which is interact with other human beings and combat these pathogens so what happens is you caused a progressive weakening of the immune system and then we pop the top on the pandemic we wonder why we&#39;re hearing about all kinds of strange viruses monkey pox well it&#39;s nonsense I&#39;m like what the hell is monkeypox um and uh you know we&#39;re on our eighth variant of omnicron now um the reason why these variants are so prolific is because we globally weaken the immune system man these are these are so good and I love how it is truly back to the basics with some of the stuff and like you said it&#39;s so nice because all of this is can be zero cost or you can go with uh with the more expensive stuff um you talked about with the you know you talk about magnetism changing the pH of the body by contacting the surface of the Earth for maybe six to 15 minutes a day then you talk about breath work your eight minute routine is there reasonings behind those durations of 6 to 15 minutes a day and eight minute routine in the sense that like if you do it for that period of time you&#39;re going to feel the benefits of it for the remainder of the day like does the 6 to 15 minutes and eight minute breathing routine provide the body biologically with the benefits for like that 24 hour period and then you need to do it again rounding the last 24 to 48 hours um so that so for the surface cell polarity to change again remember pH stands for potential hydrogen it&#39;s a charge right so if you want to change charge in the body you run a low Gauss current or charge through the body and you can do this by contacting the surface of the Earth right um in fact there&#39;s a I just did a post on my Instagram um to prove this and I held the positive post of um a voltage meter a very sensitive voltage meter and I plug the negative pole into the ground and I was standing on top of my running shoes and I was holding the pole and it was in the ground and you could see that the um um that it was just resting on the post it as soon as I stepped off my shoes and stepped onto the ground you could see it jump so you can actually see that I was completing that circuit which means that I was discharging into the Earth and so um and this is very true it&#39;s why we ground electricity in the earth it&#39;s the reason why lightning you know strikes uh strikes the Earth to be grounded and um and and you know with two and a half inch you know rubber soles and leather soles and and car tires and tile floors and wood floors were just not were insulated from from Mother Earth wow that&#39;s awesome that&#39;s that&#39;s powerful um I I love stuff like this so much and I I kind of want to stay on some different topics like this that are outside of Me Maybe Just Fitness and Nutrition because we talk a lot about Fitness and Nutrition on this podcast we might be able to dive into that stuff a little bit but the next thing I want to kind of dive into is blood work and in particular the the numbers that are talked about a lot like cholesterol levels and like triglyceride levels and things like that and I want to start off with the cholesterol portion of it talk to us about what cholesterol is debunking myths about it talk to us about LDL HDL and what people need to actually be concerned about not concerned about and how to maybe positively influence those numbers yeah so um so I I believe that cholesterol is one of the most maligned and misunderstood compounds in the human body right so if we talk about what cholesterol is and what it&#39;s not first of all um cholesterol is not a fuel source okay so your body cannot use cholesterol for energy you absorb virtually zero cholesterol from an egg for example um through the lining of the gut so the cholesterol in your bloodstream um is not as highly linked to the cholesterol that you eat as you think 85 percent of all the cholesterol in your blood um is manufactured by the liver so the first thing is if it&#39;s not a fuel source and if it&#39;s manufactured by the liver then what is it well it&#39;s a construction material we use cholesterol to build every cell wall every cell membrane every hormone in the human body and we make it to make we use it to make the single most important nutrient in the human body which is vitamin D3 remember vitamin D3 which we make from sunlight and cholesterol is the only vitamin that a human being can make so just think about that for a second how important must that nutrient be it also acts like a hormone um but how important must that hormone and vitamin B if it&#39;s the only one that human beings make on our own there&#39;s 100 bloodstream right now you are only capable of making one so cholesterol is used for all of these things where cholesterol gets uh you know blamed for is that cholesterol um is very often at the scene of the crime but it does not pull the trigger so in other words it&#39;s not the amount of LDL cholesterol in your blood that matters it is two things the size of the cholesterol molecule and it is whether or not um that cholesterol molecule is um in the presence of what we call pufas polyunsaturated fatty acids seed oils mainly which essentially make the cholesterol rancid and it is this type of rancid cholesterol that causes plaquing coagulation aclero arterial sclerotic blocking and all of the contributions to cardiovascular disease so first of all what makes cholesterol large or small well remember that cholesterol is like a tennis ball and if cholesterol was a tennis ball the surface the fuzzy yellow surface of cholesterol would be a triglyceride it it&#39;s the fat in your blood so blood fat is transported around the bloodstream on the surface of cholesterol so let&#39;s say that your amount of cholesterol stays stable but you increase the amount of blood fat what&#39;s going to happen is the cholesterol molecule is going to get smaller hyper scientific on you but if you went back to high school geometry and you remember that as the size of a sphere gets smaller its surface area to volume ratio goes up so in other words a basketball has less surface area to volume ratio than a golf ball so let&#39;s say you had two basketballs sitting on your kitchen counter this represents the cholesterol in your bloodstream and you add more blood fat more triglyceride well if I keep adding more triglyceride those two basketballs are going to become for baseball or softballs and if I keep adding triglyceride they&#39;re going to become eight baseballs and then they&#39;re going to become 16 golf balls and then they&#39;re going to become 32 little BBs do you notice I never change the volume of cholesterol change the size to accommodate the increased triglyceride fat if you look at the peer-reviewed published clinical literature on LDL cholesterol you will find virtually zero evidence linking elevated levels of LDL cholesterol on its own to cardiovascular disease so what raises blood fat triglyceride sugar people that eat the most sugar have the highest blood fat so the long and short of it is if you remove processed sugars and a refined carbohydrates from your diet you bring your glycemic profile down you will see your cholesterol improve because your triglycerides will improve remember when we eat sugar glucose rises in the blood insulin Rises to bring sugar down the primary role of insulin is not to lower blood sugar the primary role of insulin is to block any other form of energy use in the body so this means if I have high insulin I cannot burn fat if I cannot burn fat the first place fat shows up is in the blood when it shows up in the blood it decreases the size of cholesterol when it decreases the size of cholesterol it increases the risk of cardiovascular disease so if you want to dramatically lower your risk of cardiovascular disease eliminate processed foods refined carbohydrates and sugars from your diet um you know I&#39;m trying to change the Bible right now from the love of money is the root of all evil sugar is the root of all evil yeah um I haven&#39;t no luck but you know uh you&#39;re me you&#39;re you&#39;re making a dent that&#39;s for sure um that was that was awesome and I think that was a very clear description I feel like I have a whole lot better of a grasp of it and I feel like everybody else probably has a whole lot better of a grasp of it as well I love the analogy of the basketball to softball to baseball to golf ball to BB&#39;s I think that&#39;s great uh to kind of just retouch on it with regards to how to ensure that these numbers are where they&#39;re supposed to be it&#39;s it&#39;s mainly about making sure triglycerides are on the are on the lower side of things you want to have triglycerides below 150. okay preferably between 75 and 125. um you&#39;ll get this on a lipid panel um you wanna have your HDL your high density lip of protein which is your healthy cholesterol above 39. preferably above 50. um and you want LDL cholesterol between 100 and 220. um if it&#39;s over 99 your doctor&#39;s going to tell you it&#39;s elevated and you need to go on a Statin um and that would be an absolute crime because you know one of the things that we studied in the mortality space and that my 22-year career was what was the impact on all cause mortality from some of these different medications that people are on thyroid medications antidepressants um um blood pressure medications corticosteroids statins these sorts of things and you&#39;re seeing this medicine is beginning to come full circle right we know now that the serotonin theory of depression has been completely debunked even though there are tens of millions of people on selective serotonin reuptake Inhibitors that may permanently cause a tachophylactic response in your brain meaning a desensitization response quadrupling your um the incidence of of suicide and potentially leaving to leading to crippling permanent depression we know that when people take corticosteroids which are um you know uh oral not steroids for your muscles but these are these are steroids to reduce inflammation um uh you know prednisone steroids like this we know that initially they&#39;re anti-inflammatory but then they begin to eat the joint like a termite like I knew in the mortality space that if you were diagnosed with something like rheumatoid arthritis and put on a corticosteroid you had six years and one day until you&#39;re having a joint replacement it was so accurate that if your 60 year old male or female I would artificially Advance your age six years and one day and I would schedule the joint replacement and then what I would do is I would begin to reduce something called your ambulatory profile how well you ambulate how well you move and as I reduced your Mobility I could bring in all of the diseases that exacerbate with reduced Mobility so it would bring your future from decades ahead right into your present and you would eventually succumb to a disease that you never would have had because you are on a medication that wasn&#39;t required because you may have been diagnosed with a condition that didn&#39;t exist and so you know one of the one of the biggest challenges that we saw in the space that I used to work in in the mortality space was something called iatrogenic illness which is physician induced illness um if you look at the 2016 Harvard University study or the 2019 um Johns Hopkins study you&#39;ll find that modern medicine medical error is the third leading cause of death right so medicine kills more people than morbid obesity and diabetes combined only cancer cardiovascular disease kill people more people than medical error and so we&#39;re very good at crisis medicine we&#39;re very poor at bio optimization um and that&#39;s why we got to take these things into our own hands yeah this is this is great um I appreciate you sharing the those numbers with uh the triglycerides and the HDL and LDL as well so why if somebody has numbers that they just heard the numbers and they just had blood work done and they&#39;re like holy crap I&#39;m off on these things so it&#39;s not about eating less cholesterol it&#39;s about eating less less sugar less processed foods and less refined carbohydrates no question I mean there is virtually zero correlation between dietary cholesterol intake and blood levels of cholesterol versus zero um and so you could cut all of the cholesterol out of your diet entirely and you will not move your LDL cholesterol maybe marginally but not yeah any significance at all less less than ten percent but if you want to have a demonstrative move on on cholesterol then you bring down your glycemic profile your your the three month average of your blood sugar it&#39;s called the hemoglobin A1c you bring down your glycemic profile meaning you actually lower the amount of sugar that you&#39;re taking into the body um and you know you can do this with any form of diet carnivore keto paleo raw food vegan vegetarian you know the the the the dietary myths that are out there that you have to be all keto or all Carnival or all vegan or all raw or all vegetarian they negate the most important point and that is the the caliber the quality of the whole food you see our food supply is not so much about the food that we eat it&#39;s about the distance from the from the um seed to the table right I mean I just did a huge post about uh um you know the the negativity you know of uh seed oils the toxicity and Seed oils and I didn&#39;t say that seed oils were bad for you I said industrial processed seed oils were bad for you because you know we take a lot of things in modern agriculture that are non-toxic that are actually very good for you like grass-fed meat and between the cattle and the table and this is what you know the challenge happens here you know between glyphosphates that they&#39;re spraying onto the grass that the cattle&#39;s eating to the um what they&#39;re doing um when they feed them corn syrups and and soy uh which is very unnatural in fact I was walking through the woods here in Colorado with my wife a few few days ago and I found the decomposed um uh elk uh skeleton and I picked up the skull and I turned it over and I asked my wife I said do you notice anything special about this skeleton she goes no I said notice that he has all of his teeth and none of the teeth a single cavity there&#39;s no rot you could tell there was no gum disease this was a very very very healthy animal because he was out here eating what he&#39;s supposed to eat if you looked at the skull a commercially raised cattle you would find all of the teeth have rotted up into the gum and into the bone they have no teeth left they have type 2 diabetes by the time they&#39;re slaughtered they cannot chew crud anymore so they actually feed them a combination of um uh corn syrup and and soy and they have to actually just slurp it they&#39;re so close to dying of diabetes it&#39;s one of the calculations that they use to determine the slaughter timing and so but if you took that same cattle and put it in a grass field like this and it passing worms and bugs and do color uh covered grass and flowers um you&#39;d find the omega-3 omega-6 ratio changes in the fat there&#39;s no there&#39;s no pus and hormones in the fat no vaccines and really focus on whole food sources super important yeah I think I love how you acknowledge the fact that a lot of these diets can work for a lot of different people I mean I think it&#39;s hilarious when people try to completely demonize one habit or one diet when there&#39;s thousands of people who are doing it and probably seeing pretty good benefits and people will demonize the other side and say that that&#39;s going to kill you when there&#39;s a thousand people doing it Millions people doing it and they&#39;re and they&#39;re doing just fine like you said the through line on if you&#39;re doing all of them the right way is you&#39;re eating real foods and you&#39;re making it as close to the source yeah breeding Whole Foods I mean you know that was my argument with seed oils I said look would you take a canola plant and you put it in a commercial press and it comes out dummy right and now you decomp it with hexane which is a no neurotoxin and now you have a de-comed neurotoxic oil and then you heat it to 405 degrees and you make this d-gum neurotoxic oil rancid and then it begins to stink so deodorize it with sodium hydroxide sodium hydroxide is a well-known carcinogen and then the oil is cloudy so we bleach it with mild amounts of chlorine so you have a sodium hydroxide hexanated chlorinated oil that&#39;s been heated to a rancid temperature now you put that on the Shelf one of the most toxic compounds you can put in the human body but it didn&#39;t start that way right and that&#39;s where the argument goes awry it&#39;s the industrial processing you know it&#39;s it&#39;s the non-grass-fed raised cattle it&#39;s the glyphosphate laden Fields I mean one of the other worst things you could put in the human body are GMO Foods Russia have banned these Foods the EO is looking to potentially ban these Foods in Russia it is a felony to grow genetically modified crops um here it&#39;s the fastest growing area of Agriculture and we genetically modified seeds to make them resistant to glyphosphate which is a um insecticide a poison and um I mean an herbicide a poison and so the seed is resistant to glyphosphate but when you genetically modify it there&#39;s words of evidence now that that genetically modified plant is not only non-digestible but it also can potentially alter the epigenome in a human being unnatural Foods um it also just outlawed lab-grown meat that was the first country in the world to do that um you know the United States is one of the few civilized nations in the world that uses something called single dose toxicity to determine whether or not something&#39;s poisonous for you so I&#39;m actually legally allowed to poison you in small doses um as long as the dose is not enough to cause a physiologic effect this is why a lot of our energy drinks and our supplements have something called cyanocobalamin you want to throw those things in the trash that is a cyanide based B12 we make that B12 from hydrogen cyanide a chemical weapon and the cobalt metal in small doses it&#39;s harmless in cumulative doses it can be toxic just like Mercury nobody got mercury poisoning from eating one piece of tuna fish right it&#39;s the cumulative dose toxicity not the single dose toxicity that matters and so when we have an entire industrial complex like the FDA that&#39;s based on single dose toxicity and it says this is safe for you Nick because this dose will not harm you but those dosages are cumulative so that over time you create toxicity um you know that&#39;s why I built this whole Retreat out here is to get away get away from that yeah that&#39;s that&#39;s profound I never heard of that phrase a single dose toxicity before and that makes so much sense as to why we have so many different things off um when you were talking about energy drinks I think the the ingredient that you&#39;re gonna say to make sure to avoid I we got cut off really quickly when you were saying that what what are the and if you&#39;re looking at energy drinks and stuff like that what is it what thing you want to make sure you&#39;re not having it&#39;s called cyanocobalamin um okay I&#39;m gonna show you something uh because nobody believes me when I say this so I&#39;m actually just going to take you to the National Library of Medicine at the National Health can I share my screen for a second yeah let me see if I uh so for those that are listening I&#39;ll talk my way through it but for those of you that are watching you you know you can just um see this firsthand um but let&#39;s go to can you see my screen yep okay so I&#39;m going to put in cyanocobalamin which is the most common form of B12 in the world we make it a laboratory it does not occur anywhere naturally in nature three other forms of B12 occur naturally in nature the most beneficial of which is called methylcobalamin um and what I&#39;m going to do is I&#39;m going to go to the National Library of Medicine you see this at the National Institute of Health and I&#39;m just going to look up this form of B12 so I&#39;m going to say if I wanted to Source this form of B12 let&#39;s say and put it in a multivitamin here&#39;s where I go and I scroll down here to section 5.3 and it will tell me its component compounds see this right here where it says component compounds yep okay well it&#39;s made from the cobalt metal which all B12 is and it&#39;s also made from something called a cyano radical well what&#39;s that well that&#39;s hydrogen cyanide that is a flammable acute toxic health hazard environmental hazard um I wonder what else they um use this sin oh here you go it is a these are not my words hydrogen cyanide is a highly toxic conjugate acid of cyanide that is used as a chemical weapon agent we use it exactly to make a cyanide-based form of B12 synthetically in a lab and we sell it cheaply to the public and we are allowed to do it because we use the basis of single dose toxicity to slowly poison um now you could take an energy drink that had methylcobalamin or a supplement that had methylcobalamin or what&#39;s called hydroxycobalamin and be fine um but the truth is this single dose toxicity is terrible the same thing&#39;s happening with fluoride you know I I just did a huge expose on fluoride and um you know one of the national toxicity foundations um actually sued the federal government and got the data on fluoride it was just released in March of this year they found zero safe levels in drinking water in fact if you want to make a real material change on the trajectory of your health make today the day that you never drink tap water again and I&#39;m not saying you have to buy expensive bottled water or super expensive water filter go online and find a water filter they might be as cheap as 16 or 20 bucks make sure that at a minimum that it filters fluoride and chlorine out of the water in 3600 municipalities across the United States without a single exception they found an inverse relationship between a higher amount of fluoride and a decrease in IQ as far I goes up IQ goes down and shame on the dentist that promulgated this because they extrapolated a study from the from the mid or from the early 1990s that showed that fluoride could create a micro nanoparticulate layer over the enamel of the tooth and if you laid sugar on top of it it would not um erode the enamel well I mean so would candle wax but and then we extrapolated that really shoddy study into fluoride toothpaste and fluoride in your drinking water and fluoride in uh you know treatments for dental hygiene and there&#39;s zero implications for fluoride and the prevention of dental decay and it has serious systemic neurotoxic effects in the human body wow man that&#39;s so good you&#39;re giving us so many good things here do you have about 10 more minutes with me uh yeah sure okay cool um I would be we have a lot of Fitness enthusiasts on this podcast and so I would be remiss if I didn&#39;t ask you something about Fitness talk to me about I know you&#39;re big into fitness you showed me outside with your your bike and the different things some some of the different things that you do talk to me about from a more of like a longevity standpoint and a health span perspective of being able to live in a manner that we&#39;re independent and we and we don&#39;t rely on other people to do different things and from a longevity and health span perspective with regards to our cardiovascular health what are some of the different things from a fitness perspective that we really get a lot of bang for our buck from when it comes to our fitness routines well there&#39;s no no question that the most significant is weight training um you know weight training beats cardiovascular training hands down in every published peer-reviewed human clinical trial study that I&#39;ve ever read um if you don&#39;t think you can get a good cardiovascular workout when you&#39;re weight training you&#39;re not you know weight training properly anybody that is um you&#39;re remotely familiar with you know the pace of uh you know keeping up a certain Pace when you&#39;re weight training knows that you can keep your heart rate really elevated and you can also get cardiovascular benefits um I also sit on the board of the you know NFL alumni sister we have 22 000 members in our um in our uh organization and so you know post um um professional years in in in the league is where we really take over and help them maintain that level of Fitness for the balance of their lifetime we know now that muscle is our metabolic currency muscle in my opinion is the largest organ in the body I don&#39;t believe that it&#39;s the skin because muscle is our repository it&#39;s the sponge for glucose we absorb sugar into our muscles in the form of something called glycogen it also stabilizes our skeleton it secretes endorphins it raises our metabolic rate it decreases the incidence of um all-cause cardiovascular disease we know now that age-related muscle wasting which is called sarcopenia leads to Frailty and Frailty is one of the highest risks of early mortality and so and and you know if you&#39;re in your 20s or your 30s or your 40s right now and you think that that&#39;s far off it actually begins now and so um if you want to live a long time lift heavyweight and I&#39;m not saying they go in and back Squad and go to CrossFit and do complicated compound Olympic moves but um grip strength is related to longevity I mean for most men they should actually be able to do a dead hang for two minutes um you should be able to single step your um you should be able to put your leg at 90 degrees on a box jump and slowly single step your your self up and slowly single step your foot down a lot of people can&#39;t do that balance is another one where you close your eyes and extend your foot um closer to 10 seconds the worst that um uh core balances the closer to 30 seconds the better it is and remember remember in weight training and muscle training um if you boil all the research down to kind of one concept it&#39;s it&#39;s that um you know the last rep really matters right it&#39;s how much muscle have we torn and to tear a muscle through its full physiologic range seems to be the best way to create muscle hyper hypertri and muscle hyperplasia meaning at some point um a drop set to failure for each of your body parts if you&#39;re doing bench it&#39;s fine to bench heavy and do a chest routine at the end of that chest routine start with a heavy weight you can do six times to failure and try to increase to 10 and 12 times to failure dropping the weight tear the muscle through its full physiologic range and um you know I&#39;m oversimplifying a lot a lot of science there but um and then cardiovascular training is excellent too um I just read Dr atia&#39;s book you know he&#39;s a huge fan of rucking which I&#39;m also a huge fan of um I think that&#39;s a great book by the way if you&#39;re in your 20s 30s and 40s um in your and you&#39;re looking to live a long happy healthy lifetime he talks about preparing for something he calls the uh uh the centenarian decathlon which is by 10 things you want to be able to do when you&#39;re 100 years old and how much weight do you need to be able to lift on your 35th birthday if you want to be able to um do those things on your 100th birthday um you know interestingly the the the centenarian that broke the world cycling record on his 100th birthday just came back and broke it three years later on his 103rd birthday so you can actually improve your cardiovascular and your physical conditioning Foods never too late to improve those throughout your lifetime yeah that if you really want to get serious about biohacking I mean breath work grounding um cold showers uh Whole Foods getting fluorides out of your um water all these things will cost you nothing um you know getting a inexpensive water filter to get fluoride out avoiding GMO Foods you know these are things that you can do by just being conscious you really want to go next level you have to get data on your body right I mean nothing that we don&#39;t measure is is changeable and you know most young entrepreneurs know more about their business than they do about their bodies it&#39;s astounding to me you know my partner&#39;s Grant Cardone he&#39;s a real estate billionaire um you know he hosts seminars all over the countries he&#39;s an absolute Beast um he actually does not look act or perform like a 65 year old man um yeah it looks like a 40 year old man he thinks and acts like a 25 year old man he&#39;s got the energy of a teenager and um and this isn&#39;t by accident you know we&#39;ve designed it but but when I talk to most entrepreneurs they know more about their income statement their balance sheet their their p l than they know about their own biome like this is your temple if you get data on this then you can optimize it most of us are walking around right now at about 60 percent of our true state of Journal you&#39;re listening to this and you think that you&#39;re optimal you very well may be 60 of the way there you have no idea how good normal could feel and when you you know my suggestion is that you there&#39;s two tests that I believe that people should do one is an absolute must and you have to do it once in your lifetime and it&#39;s a genetic test it&#39;s called a methylation test you do not have to do the test through me you Google it there&#39;s tons of companies that do it um um you know we also have Duo genetic tests but you do a cheek swab you send it to a lab and it tells you exactly what raw materials vitamins minerals amino acids nutrients your body cannot convert into the usable form and it is this deficiency that is holding you back from being optimal it&#39;s interrupting your it&#39;s creating brain fog it&#39;s interrupting your focus your concentration your Delta wave of sleep your response to exercise your waking energy your short-term recall all these little things that are nipping at you anxiousness anxiety um ADD ADHD and so to become more mentally fit we need data and once you do this test once in your lifetime you&#39;ll never guess on what you need to supplement with most people are just supplementing for the sake of supplementing instead of supplementing for deficiency you want to see magic happen in the human body start supplementing for what your body&#39;s deficient in and get out of its way it is astounding what can happen that&#39;s great what uh so you said genetic testing was there another test that you were going to mention I got you the second is a blood test and you want to ask your doctor to look at three things okay what&#39;s called glycemic control how well are you controlling your blood sugar glucose hemoglobin A1c insulin a hormone panel full hormone panel on males and females and nutrient deficiencies specifically vitamin D3 which is called um vitamin D 25 hydroxy on a blood test um and B12 and this is the basics of where you start this is the casting net that you throw out to decide where is my Baseline and you can get your blood work done once a year maybe twice a year look at your hormone balance because most people that qualify for hormone therapy actually don&#39;t need hormones they need raw materials that their body uses to make hormones so for example if you&#39;re clinically deficient in vitamin D3 and clinically deficient in DHEA you will be low on testosterone and you don&#39;t need testosterone injections you need to give your body back the raw material it needs to make testosterone because the primary role of testosterone contrary to popular belief is not male characteristics it&#39;s not deep voice facial hair regression muscles um it&#39;s none of those things the primary role of testosterone is called erythropoliesis to put pressure on the bone marrow to create new red blood cells and when you have healthy red blood cells in the bloodstream in the right amount your energy level is through the roof people that are low on testosterone are generally low on red blood cell and hemoglobin and this is why they&#39;re tired and this is why they have brain fog and this is why they don&#39;t sleep and you might not need hormone therapy you might simply need D3 and DHEA to give your body the raw material to make that hormone and that&#39;s the fascinating thing about the human body magic things happen when we just give it the raw material it needs to do its job um man that&#39;s so good that&#39;s so good uh so many different great things here you guys you guys if you if you don&#39;t follow Gary on Instagram yet get to following Gary on Instagram at Gary brecka we&#39;ll have all this stuff linked up in the show notes uh if you want to go get that genetic testing they do genetic testing with 10x you can go to 10x your health.com and learn more about that if you&#39;re interested on taking it to the next level uh any other good place that people should go learn more about you and what you&#39;re up to besides those places it&#39;s it&#39;s 10x healthtest um.com but um um all I do is teach on Instagram so you know if you&#39;re interested in taking a deeper dive into these you know all I do is is teach on Instagram all my podcasts including this one will eventually be available there on my um link tree you know I&#39;m I&#39;m embarking on a project that I call the ultimate human um which is a combination of a podcast that will eventually lead into a place where people can go to find all things ultimate human they won&#39;t be my products but my team will clinically and critically evaluate them so if you wanted to know what are the best cleaning products for my house that um what are the best lotions for my skin what are the best you know hair care products what kind of water should I be drinking you know I want to really give a platform to companies that are doing things right that are creating you know metal free chocolates and seed oil free um um foods and and just give them a platform so people can easily find them beautiful that&#39;s awesome well I&#39;m I&#39;m super excited for that to come out y&#39;all there were so many good things here today that Gary talked to that we can start to change in our daily and our weekly Habits Like magnetism getting out and do grounding work just six to 15 minutes a day breath work sunlight cold showers getting those different genetic testings done and ensure that we&#39;re staying close to the source with our food staying as minimally processed as absolutely possible um Gary so many different great things today you provided a lot of value for everybody and I know that people are going to start to take action on a lot of this stuff on a daily and weekly basis because they can do simple things and they can do things that are a little bit uncomfortable I know you guys can uh Gary that&#39;s all we got today I appreciate you I appreciate you too man thank you so much for having me on [Music]

Transcript for:Daily Habits to Boost Energy & Longevity - Gary Brecka

Transcript for:
Daily Habits to Boost Energy & Longevity - Gary Brecka