World #1 Biohacker: Diet Myths, Creatine & How To Actually Live Longer | Gary Brecka (E374)

0:00Here at first on the High Performance App. Available now, Keeley Hodgkinson, the record-breaking middle distance runner whose fearless drive is redefining British athletics. For people that have weight gain, water retention, inflammation, brain fog, poor focus and concentrations, just an absolute panacea, do a methylation test. If you have a gene broken in one cell, it is broken in all 32 trillion cells in your body. The fundamentals of longevity are whole foods, good sleep, connection, and mobility. That's it. That is the voice of Gary Brecker, one of the world's most in-demand human biologists, longevity experts, and health coaches.

0:45This is a guy who's worked with elite performers, top CEOs like Dana White from the UFC, and major athletes, helping them unlock new energy, increase performance, and enhance lifespan. And this is the second time Gary's been on High Performance. And I wanted to invite him back today to get the most pressing health questions from you and put them to Gary. And you got in touch with me to ask, why do you still feel tired when your blood work looks fine? What are the sleep myths that are wrecking your recovery? What is the real reason that connection and community are so important in your life? And you also wanted me to find out why deep health has got much less to do with supplements or trends and much more to do with sunlight, movement, hydration, and sleep.

1:27Honestly, this is a wide-ranging and deep conversation about health. Gary also shares how modern toxins, tech habits, and emotional isolation are slowly draining us, and what you can do today to get your health back on track. Now, a quick warning. This episode covers a lot. It's fast, it is deep, it is packed with insight. Gary talks at lightning-fast pace. So after the interview, I decided to sit down with our in-house physiologist, our wellbeing expert, Ollie Patrick, the host of the brilliant Energy Equation podcast, to break down exactly what advice from Gary you can take on board right now and make an instant difference to your life.

2:02And that's what I hope from this episode. I hope that by the end of it, you've picked up on one or two things that you can do that will instantly improve your wellbeing. As we welcome back to High Performance, Gary Brecker.

2:18Gary, welcome back to High Performance. Dude, I'm so excited to be here, man, back in the same studio. It's definitely upgraded since my last trip here. Absolutely. Yeah, amazing. Well, what we're hoping to do right now is have a conversation that helps everyone listening and watching to this upgrade. So what I really wanted to do with this, I wanted to have a conversation that will really genuinely help people in our community who are in a similar position to me. I'm 47 this year. Energy starts to dip. You get a foggy brain. You don't know which way to turn. You go on the internet and you see different information all the time.

2:49you buy into something that then gets myth busted the following week. So I want to have the conversation where people can watch this, understand what we're saying, and go and make some genuine changes. You know, the fundamentals of longevity are whole foods, good sleep, connection, and mobility. That's it. And if you master those things, you are 85 % of the way there. And then, in my opinion, we spend way too much time supplementing for the sake of supplementing. We don't supplement for deficiency. And we believe this in plant physiology, right? If you were to, let's say, you know, have a lot of palm trees.

3:29What kind of trees do you have around here? We have a lot of oak trees. Okay, oak trees. So if you had a leaf rotting in an oak tree on your property and you called a true arborist, like a true botanist, out to your house, they wouldn't even touch the leaf. right? They would core test the soil and they would say, you know what? There's no nitrogen in this soil. And they would add nitrogen to the soil and the leaf would heal. Human beings are no different. When you deprive the human body of certain raw material, nutrients, and I'm talking about basic vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. If you deprive the human body of those things, you get the expression of disease.

4:09So you called out a few things when you started your talk this morning, you said brain fog. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, our audience have got in touch. I'll tell you the things that are on their minds. Okay. Energy crashes. Okay. Muscle loss. Weight gain. Not knowing what to eat and when to eat. Aging of the skin and the body. Creatine. Sleep. Exercise. Testosterone. Ooh, let's go through all those. Shall we? Okay. Okay. Let's start with the first one. Energy crashes. Okay, so energy crashes. Should I read you out some questions that have come in from the audience? Yeah, 100%. So the first one is, I get eight hours sleep and I wake up tired.

4:46What is happening to me? So three things are happening. Number one, get a basic blood panel. And by basic blood panel, I mean, I want your physician to look at three things. Hormone balance. So if that's a female, full hormone profile. If it's a male, full hormone profile. Your glycemic control, how well you control your blood sugar, which is three markers, glucose, hemoglobin A1c, the three-month average of your blood sugar, and your insulin. And the final thing is nutrient deficiencies, specifically vitamin D3 and DHEA and B12. These are the most common deficiencies that are leading to energy crashes because when you say energy crash, what do you really mean?

5:28Because what do we perceive as energy in the human body? Everything that you perceive about energy is nothing more than oxygen in your blood. So if you told me, Gary, I had a lot of energy today, physiologically what you're saying is I had a lot of oxygen in my blood today. So if oxygen equals energy, which it does, then if I want to increase your energy level, I need to increase your oxygen in your blood. There's several ways to do that. Exercise is probably the best. Is that why you wake up tired? And this is again a question that came in. I wake up tired. I do a workout, I have more energy.

6:04That confuses people often. They sort of think if I'm tired, I need to sleep. But that's not always the answer. No, you increased your respiratory rate, you increased your circulation, you perfused the brain with oxygen, you perfused your muscles with oxygen. I got in at two o 'clock this morning because I just flew over from the States. And I'm off my time zone. So I got in at two o 'clock this morning. I woke up at seven, your time. So I got about five hours of sleep. And I was dragging ass this morning when I woke up. I knew the first thing that I needed to do was get out and move. I needed to get into natural sunlight, and I needed to move.

6:35Very hard to jog around here, by the way. Find the parks. There's some big parks, but until you get there. Somebody told me, yeah, to get to the park and do it, but I tried to do it winding through the city. And it's dangerous for me, too, because I'm always looking the wrong way for cars. And there's a bus coming from the left, and I'm looking to the right. So aside from those hazards, you know, I went out for a really light jog. I found a great gym in town, a personal training gym. They let me work out there today. and on the way home, I got back and I told my podcast manager, I'm like, I feel amazing.

7:04So I woke up. First thing I did in the morning was I take something called Perfect Amino and the reason why I take that is because it's all nine of the essential amino acids. So most of us are trying to get to our protein equivalent, right? One kilogram, I mean one gram of protein for every kilogram of body weight. That was a very popular question that came in. Ah, okay. Protein, because it gets talked about as a silver bullet for people. Okay, so let's shift to protein for a second. Regardless of the protein source or origin, it could be collagen, it could be an egg, it could be animal protein, it could be fish, it could be vegetarian protein, it could be whey protein, all protein that you ingest becomes exactly the same thing.

7:46It gets broken down into amino acids. And then amino acids go and build different structures in the body. It is a complete fallacy that you can target direct protein. meaning we eat collagen to grow collagen in our skin. That's a fallacy. We don't eat our nails to grow our nails. We don't eat our hair to grow our hair, but we think we can eat collagen to grow collagen. Collagen is actually an incomplete protein. You cannot build muscle from it. But aside from that, when you take collagen, it's going to break down into amino acids. Those amino acids may build collagen, elastin, fibrin in your skin.

8:22They may build other structures in the body. They might build a natural killer cell. They might build connective tissue. It cannot build muscle because it's deficient in an amino acid, but you need nine essential amino acids. The word essential means they are necessary for life. There are nine essential amino acids. There are two essential fatty acids. There is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate for the record. So just let that marinate for a second. There is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. Carbohydrates are not essential for life. So I'm not saying don't eat them. I'm just saying be judicious with your carbohydrates.

8:54We'll talk about that. We'll talk about that too. So if you want to reach your protein equivalent, especially if you're a female, to eat the amount of macros of protein to get to your protein equivalent is very difficult. The reason why the protein equivalent is so high is because you're trying to get to the amino acids. So I go direct to the amino acids. I take something called Perfect Amino. I think you can get it here in the UK on Health, H-E-A-L-F. It's not an expensive product. It has all nine of the essential amino acids. It is 99 % absorbable, and it doesn't break it fast, meaning that because you put all nine essential amino acids in, they pass right through the liver.

9:31The liver doesn't have to chop them up. What is an amino acid? So amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. Right. So if you took a muscle and you dissected it down to its molecular structure, you would find that it is a sequence of amino acids. There are certain amino acids that build muscle tissue. There are other amino acids that build connective tissue. There are other ones that make our natural killer cells, our immune cells. And there are yet other ones that make collagen, elastin, and fibrin that gives structure to our skin, which is what every man or woman that's putting collagen in their coffee is after.

10:07But if you took the nine essential amino acids, essential means that the body can't make them on its own. So the liver is not capable of making these. We have to get them from diet or supplementation. When you put all nine of the essential amino acids into the body in the right ratio, all of those amino acids get used to build structure in the body. As soon as you become deficient in any one of the nine essential amino acids, the balance of those amino acids is converted to fat or sugar. So if you want to be really efficient about your protein, you go to the amino acids and not the protein. So in other words, a scoop of all nine of the essential amino acids or tablets of all nine of the essential amino acids is equivalent to 29 grams of protein, but yet it's non-caloric.

10:52So if you work out in a fasted state, you have to be taking amino acids before your workout. Why? Because when you work out in a fasted state, if you look at the way that the body prioritizes energy, first is glucose always. So if you have sugar in your blood at a certain level, your body will burn that sugar for energy. As soon as your blood sugar gets to a certain level, your body will preserve that sugar and it will switch to its backup source of energy, which is called glycogen. Glycogen is a stored form of sugar. Now, we store it in the muscles and we also store it in the liver. What will happen is the liver will actually throw that glycogen back into the bloodstream in the form of glucose.

11:35So it's really odd if any of your listeners have ever worn a CGM, a constant glucose monitor, what really freaks people out is they'll put this constant glucose monitor on, they have this little app on their phone and they wake up in the morning. Now, look, you've been fasted all night, right? So maybe you had dinner eight o 'clock at night. You went to bed at 10 o 'clock at night. Now it's six in the morning and you haven't eaten for eight, nine, 10 hours. And all of a sudden your blood sugar starts to rise. You haven't even drank water, but your blood sugar is rising. How is that happening? That's because your liver is taking glycogen and throwing it into the bloodstream as glucose.

12:09It's called gluconeogenesis, new glucose. So your first source is glucose. That gets to a certain level. So in the morning, your glucose is low. So you're going to switch to glycogen very quickly. Once your glycolic reserve, your reserve of glycogen is done, now where's the body going to get energy? This is when you're working out. The body dumps this glucose in to react to the workout. It will do it when you wake up. If your blood sugar is low, your liver will start to raise your blood sugar by putting glucose into the bloodstream. People call me all the time. They're like, I don't get it, man.

12:41I mean, I woke up fasted. I didn't even have coffee. And I was watching my CGM and my blood sugar is rising. I go, that's a good thing, right? That's your liver trying to save your life. So what happens when you're out of glycogen, right, which is about depending on how you're working out, 20 minutes, maybe 40 minutes max. Well, now the body is either going to get amino acids from lean muscle or it's going to get energy from fat. Fat is a very inefficient resource. The majority of time we burn fat in low energy states or even during rest. High-intensity exercise will have a tendency to burn lean muscle.

13:19So like when I was a competitive triathlete, it's been a few years, but all of the guys that were really, really good at distance swimming, distance biking, distance running, we all were skinny fat. Do you know what I mean? Like we were lean, but we had no muscle tone and we were very squishy. Now, we could lay down a half marathon or what we call the century, you know, 100-mile bike ride, but we were skinny fat. And why is that? Because we spent more time burning our own lean muscle than we did burning other sources of energy. So if you want to preserve that lean muscle, take the nine essential amino acids first thing in the morning.

13:57I would also add to that a mineral salt. I use one called Baja Gold, B-A-J-A Gold, but you could use a Redmond's. you could use Celtic sea salt. Because our soil and our food sources are so mineral deficient. And there are 91 essential minerals the body needs. So if you woke up in the morning hydrated, mineralized, and I'm talking about a mineral salt, and a$10 or$15 bag of this salt will last you five years. This is a very inexpensive biohack. Please don't be afraid of salt. We've been lied to about sodium. So we had a nutritionist on the show not long after you last came on. And I said to her actually off camera, I said, look, this is Baja Gold, this is salt.

14:35and she said one of the leading causes of mortality is too much salt in your diet. So let's figure that one out. Too much sodium chloride in your diet. Not too much sodium.

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16:32So iodized table salt is terrible for you. But if you look at, there was a study recently published in the Wiley Journal of Headaches. And if you look this study up again, I'll give you the link for this for your show notes. If you look at the Wiley Journal of Headaches, which is a journal committed to headaches, and there are lots of neurologists that are published in there, they found a very interesting correlation between sodium and migraine headaches. And it was an inverse correlation. So the incidence of migraine headaches went up as sodium levels went down. The incidence of migraine headaches went down as sodium levels went up.

17:05That means that migraines were reduced by sodium intake. And why would that be? Because when you get a headache, most people think that headache is coming from their brain, but that's actually not possible. The brain does not have any pain receptors. The brain is not capable of generating a pain signal. So no matter what you think about where you feel that pain, it is not coming from your brain. Sometimes you get a headache behind your eye or on your temporal, or if you've got a hangover, it's all over, right? Your whole head. You don't know anything about that, right? Wouldn't. Not any idea. No idea at all.

17:38In years, but you've heard about this, right? Yeah, exactly. Other people have told me. Yeah, a lot of people have told me. So where's the headache coming from? It's coming from the dura, which is the covering of the brain. It's like a saran wrap that's over the brain. The dura, which protects the brain, hates two things. It hates being stretched and it hates being contracted. Well, what causes it to stretch or contract? The sodium gradient. It's called osmosis or the osmotic gradient. So when that is out of balance, when the sodium gradient is out of balance, it tightens and you have a headache.

18:11If the sodium gradient is too far out of balance, it will relax and it will signal pain. And is that too little or too much sodium that's causing that or both? That's too little sodium. Right. Not enough sodium. But is there not a knock-on effect to other parts of the body? It might solve your headache, but you may get a heart attack. No. I mean, let's talk about the heart. So let's say that right now, right this moment, your blood pressure was so high that you called, we call 911. What do you guys do? 999. 999. You called 999. When the paramedics show up at your house, if your blood pressure is sky high, you know what they're going to do?

18:45They're going to bag you with sodium. They're going to start an IV line, and they're going to take 9.9 % sodium chloride, so straight salt water, and they're going to bag that into your vein to lower your blood pressure. You are not hydrated when you have water in your blood. You're hydrated when you have water in your tissues. Now, where this gets lost is that sodium in nature, mineral salts, occur with a myriad of other minerals. So if you look at Baja Gold or a Redmond Salt or a Celtic Salt, it's not just sodium chloride. It's molybden, manganese, boron, silica, iron, magnesium. It's all of these trace minerals that are so important to your cellular biology.

19:27If I pulled a chart up here of your cellular biology, which is called your methylation pathways, and I pulled this chart up, it would look like the most confusing roadmap, just a myriad of spaghetti sort of, you know, squirting and twirling everywhere. But if I blew that chart up, you would recognize every single nutrient on there. These would be basic nutrients, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, sodium, magnesium, zinc, silica. We used to be able to get these in plentiful amounts from our soil, but our soil is so depleted that we are mineral deficient. And so when you add sodium that has minerals, like a mineral salt, you don't increase your blood pressure.

20:10You actually decrease the incidence of migraine headaches. You further hydrate the body. If you know anyone who is a distance athlete or competitive athlete, in any kind of distance competition, they are either taking sodium tablets or they are ingesting high sodium fluids. If not, there's zero chance they'll complete the event. So in the morning, if we hydrate, I hydrate, mineralize, I take all nine of the essential amino acids. And can you get those amino acids from food? You can get those amino acids from food, but you also get calories from food. So if you're exercising to... Most people, when they say, I want to lose weight, what they really mean is, I want to lose fat.

20:50A big thing that came in is people are struggling to lose fat and gain muscle. Yes. So three things. So number one, you get a basic hormone panel. Back to the energy question. So you get a basic hormone panel. What you're likely to find if you're low on energy is that you will be low on the hormone testosterone. And in about 80 % of the cases where you're low on the hormone testosterone, you don't need hormone therapy. You need the raw materials for the body to make hormones. So I'll be very specific. So most people think that the hormone testosterone is a male hormone, which it is, but women also have this.

21:31And they think that the primary role of testosterone is male characteristics, which is not true. It's not deep voice, facial hair, aggression, any of those things, strength. The primary role of testosterone in the human body is to put pressure on the bone marrow to make new red blood cells. That process is called urethropoiesis. As your testosterone drops, your production of red blood cells drops. As your production of red blood cells drops, the taxi that shuttles oxygen around your bloodstream is gone, or there are fewer of them. As you drop the amount of oxygen-carrying vessels, red blood cells, in your bloodstream, you exhibit being tired.

22:15You will also have brain fog. You'll have poor focus, poor concentration, poor short-term recall, lack of energy, lack of stamina. And if you were to raise that red blood cell count, you would have more carriers of oxygen. You would perceive that as more energy. So the question is, how do I raise my testosterone? If it's low, you could obviously take testosterone injections. I don't recommend that until much later in life. Keep going down into the soil. Remember the soil example. There's nitrogen missing in the soil. So what could be missing from the body that makes testosterone? The primary nutrient that's missing is one called DHEA.

22:51In almost every case, let's say 18 to 45 years old, men and women that are significantly deficient in testosterone, they're actually deficient in the raw material. DHEA, which makes testosterone. And when you take DHEA and you look at one other protein called SHBG, sex hormone binding globulin, this is a protein that all of us have in our blood. If it gets too high, it will bind to your testosterone and carry it right out of the bloodstream. So it will artificially lower your hormone level, even though there is nothing wrong with your hormonal system. So your body can produce adequate amounts, but this protein is binding to it, carrying it out.

23:36Very simple to lower in your bloodstream by taking something called boron, which is a mineral, B-O-R-O-N, boron. So when you get this blood test back, if you're low on the hormone testosterone, I would bet my entire career you are either high in SHBG, take boron, or low on DHEA. Take 25 milligrams of DHEA daily. and the difference is astounding. At the beginning, we spoke about the blue zones and walking and natural foods and olive oils. But then what we've talked about now for 20 minutes is supplementation and tablets. Is there any way that people can be doing this without the requirement to go to these sorts very specific things?

24:18Yeah, if you look at the reason why the blue zones didn't have to do this was because their soil was tilled. It wasn't full of glyphosate. It wasn't full of paraquat. It wasn't full of insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, and it wasn't nutrient depleted. When you begin to deplete the soil, you deplete the animals that feed on that soil. You deplete the vegetables that grow in that soil. And so even though your food may be clean and may be organic, it very often is nutrient deficient. And so the human body is so dependent on these key nutrients, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, that supplementing with them, in my case, I'm a big proponent of supplementing with the basics.

24:59I take a mineral salt, take all nine of the essential amino acids. I take what you're drinking right there, what's called the H2 tab, which is just hydrogen. I put hydrogen gas into my water. It's an elemental magnesium tablet you drop into water. It effervesces into hydrogen gas. I'd really encourage your audience to go to hydrogenstudies.com and look at any one of the 1 ,300 peer-reviewed published clinical studies. We'll add a link on here. We'll add a link on hydrogen. I believe that that will be as common as a multivitamin in five years. Would you just briefly explain what it does and why it does it?

25:36So hydrogen is, from a molecular standpoint and a biophysiologic standpoint, there is nothing that we have ever discovered that is, as a single molecule, which is the hydrogen ion, more impactful than that. And the reason for that is, well, first of all, 10 % of your body weight is hydrogen. Hydrogen is a selective antioxidant. So in the human body, we have oxidation, which is bad, too many oxidants that reactive oxygen species, superoxide, hydrogen peroxide, hydroxyl free radicals. We have all of these free radicals. And if we lower free radicals to the right level, then we don't have oxidative stress.

26:23If we lower them too much, we have what's called redox stress. So the body needs this balance. It's called homeostasis. It needs a balance between some inflammation and some oxidation and some of these what we call redox reactions, some reactive oxygen species. Hydrogen peroxide, very good until there's too much. Then it can destroy your cells. Superoxide, very good until there's too much. Then it can destroy your cells. So these hydroxyl free radical, we found no benefit in the human body. So when hydroxyl free radicals are present, they just cause massive, massive damage. When we take antioxidants, we used to think in the 50s, there were a lot of studies that said, wow, there's this oxidative theory of aging.

27:11We're kind of rusting from the inside out. And so we should take high doses of glutathione, high doses of vitamin C, high doses of antioxidants, get oxidation down as low as you can. What we realized, this has the opposite effect that we're after. Too little oxidation is bad. You know, like when you twist your ankle and it swells, that swelling is actually a good thing, right? That is blood flow, platelets coming to that site to repair injury. That's the cytokines being removed. That's the creatinine from potentially muscle damage being removed from that site. So there's this very delicate balance between oxidation and reductive stress.

27:51When you're in homeostasis, not too much oxidation, not too little oxidation, that's when the body is harmonized and it's functioning perfectly and you feel amazing. Hydrogen is the only molecule that is a selective antioxidant. So essentially what it does is it goes into the body and it goes right through the cell wall. It enters the DNA and it has an influence on the DNA's production of oxidation. So if you have superoxide, the DNA makes superoxide dismutase. It makes catalase. It makes glutathione, the most powerful antioxidant in the human body. And what it will do is it will release these antioxidants until the oxidative stress is neutral.

28:35It will not suppress it any further. It can actually work on the opposite side of that equation and take reactive oxygen species and increase them to the level of proper oxidative balance. So nothing that I have ever studied in my entire career has the ability to be a selective antioxidant like hydrogen. And if you don't believe me, please go read the studies because there's two types of people in this world. The people that say that that's complete voodoo and the people that have read the studies. And, you know, I sit on the board of the NFL Alumni Association back in the U.S. and I'm their health services director.

29:12So we see, most people think I take care of a bunch of old men, But the average retirement age in the NFL is about 25 years old. So younger probably than a lot of your audience. And the number one thing that they struggle with are repetitive use injuries. Knees, hips, shoulders, rotator cuff, low back, you know, all these nips and bibbles from basically running into a wall every day as a career. And I put all of them on the same cocktail. Mineral salt, hydration, amino acids, hydrogen gas. Absolute game changer. You feel the lights come on because of the reduction, immediate reduction in inflammation.

29:51Hydrogen is the smallest, lightest element in the universe. I mean, I'm fascinated by it. I've been so deep down the rabbit hole since our last podcast for almost a year. I've incessantly studied this molecule. There seems to be no negative side effects to it. It restores balance in the body. It delays. Does it do it instantly? Do you need to do it over a period of time? It's instant. It instantly goes to work. The majority of people will tell you that, even some cardiologists, shockingly, will tell you that the heart circulates all the blood in the body. It doesn't. The heart circulates about 30 % of our blood.

30:28We have 63 ,000 miles of blood vessel in our body. And 70 % of that circulation is not done by the heart. It's done by an activity called vasomotor. Think of a snake swallowing a mouse. right when when the snake swallows the mouse there's no hose in the snake's mouth pushing the mouse along it's a muscular contraction right like a peristaltic activity and it's moving that mouse down the snake's body this that is exactly how a bolus of blood moves through 70 of our circulatory system 70 of our circulation is not done by the heart It's done by vasomotor. These are venules and capillaries. They're micro capillaries.

31:11So we never talk about that 70 % of the circulation. This is the vast majority of your brain. It's the vast majority of the circulation to your lung. It is the vast majority of the circulation inside your muscles. Removing lactic acid, bringing oxygen to the site, bringing carbon dioxide out. This system that's shuttling all these necessary nutrients in the human body is microvascular. So what can we do to cater to that? Well, cold plunging, saunas, exercise, and hydrogen gas cater specifically to that 70 % of your circulation. So interesting. I mean, like if, you know, the reason why most people begin to wear glasses, readers, for example, in their 40s and 50s, I'll be 55 this month, and I don't wear readers.

31:56And it's because I cater to that 70 % of my circulation. Some of the smallest microvasculature in the body supplies the back of the eyes. and so we start to get older we think something's wrong with our rods or cones or macula retina there's none nothing wrong with any of those structures what's happening is the vasomotor activity is compromised when you feel brain fog um and you can't focus and you can't concentrate and you can't your short-term memory feels a little off you can't find your keys or your wallet um you meet somebody at a dinner party and they tell you their name they walk away and 10 minutes later they come back and you're like, shit, I forgot this guy's name.

32:35It's more common than you think. You get a great idea in the bedroom, you walk to the kitchen, you wonder what the hell you're doing in the kitchen. This is microvasculature. This is compromising in the microvasculature. So my suggestion is if you really want to start your health journey, get a basic blood panel, hormones, blood sugar control, and nutrient deficiencies. If you start there, I would also highly suggest that you get once in your lifetime, and we talked about this on your last podcast, and since then I've been working on bringing my tests and my supplements to the UK. I will be launching those in October.

33:15Amazing. Yeah, I was telling you before the podcast, your health authority is brutal. Yeah, but I think that's important for you because... Brutal. You know, when you talk about the things you talk about, when you work in the world that you're in, there will be criticism, there'll be naysayers, people with a difference of opinion. I think if the work that you're doing and the products that you're creating have been accepted by the authorities in the UK with some very high hurdles to jump over, that's almost good news for you, right? The fact they've made it hard for you and you've managed to get these through, right?

33:45Yes. Yeah, I mean, I consider that a feather in our cap for sure. And look, I mean, to their credit, they test every nutrient. You have to provide science-backed evidence. You have to prove stability, sterility. potency. You can't have undisclosed binders, fillers. So the supplements that make it here and that are available for sale here are probably amongst the cleanest in the world. And this isn't my test. You don't have to use my test or my supplements, but what I would recommend is once in your lifetime, you do a methylation test. And this test is critical because - And that will be available in the UK?

34:21It'll be available in the UK in October. I'll have a genetic methylation test. You'll just go to a website, you order the test, it'll come to your front door, you stick a Q-tip in your mouth, you swab your cheek, you put it back in an envelope, it goes to a lab here in the UK, they run your genetic profile. When it comes back to you, it tells you exactly what your body is deficient in. And the reason why this test is so critical, in my opinion, is that if you have a gene broken in one cell, it is broken in all 32 trillion cells in your body. If you are able to supplement for that gene's deficiency, you fix it in all 32 trillion cells in the body.

35:00So when you're starting your supplement journey, which is one of the most difficult things for people because, God forbid, you get on Google and start Googling around. It's like CoQ10, resveratrol, St. John's Wort, ashwagandha. And I can make an argument for any of those. But the question is, what is your body deficient in? So this gives you the specifics. It gives you the specifics. And then you supplement for that deficiency for the rest of your life, you will feel, you want to talk about a shift in human physiology, weight gain, water retention, hormone balance, focus and concentration, energy, your sleep, not the length of your sleep, but the depth of your sleep, your REM sleep and your deep sleep, which are absolutely critical to human performance, right?

35:41Because we all know that sleep is critical, but most people don't know why, right? Because there are two main phases of sleep that are absolutely critical to performance. One is deep sleep because during deep sleep, this is the only time that your glymphatic system, we have the lymphatic system in the body, right? The static system that eliminates waste. But we actually have a waste elimination system in the brain called the glymphatic system. During deep sleep, this glymphatic system starts to circulate and it starts to pull waste out of the brain. So the brain literally detoxifies, regenerates, and eliminates waste at night during deep sleep.

36:18Because I've always been confused by people that say, if you're a bit overweight, you may be not getting enough sleep. And I've never managed to equate those two things. I don't understand how more sleep helps you lose weight. It's so true. And sleep, especially for young entrepreneurs, is the stepchild of your schedule. We bully sleep more than we bully anything else. And I decided years ago that I would schedule all of my meetings. The reason why this podcast is late in the morning is I knew that I was getting in late and I need to get some sleep, I schedule all my meetings and travel around sleep and exercise.

36:50So sleep and exercise is my priority, then meetings and travel. Most people flip those, right? So we bully sleep because of our meetings, because of our travel, because of other commitments. And so being a little selfless with putting your self first, for lack of better words, and really focusing on sleep. And the second phase of sleep that's important is REM sleep. But during REM sleep, this is when we assemble memory, right? So all the things that you learn during the day, all of the problems that you're facing during the day, those are usually solved and assembled at night, right? When your prefrontal cortex and your hippocampus, your memory center and your conscience are beginning to talk to each other.

37:29That's when you absorb knowledge. That's when you assimilate memory. And so if you're getting good REM and you're getting good deep sleep, it's not about the length, it's about the quality. When you're getting good REM and good deep sleep, you're not only eliminating waste, detoxifying, repairing, and regenerating the brain, but you're also assembling memories. So you're sharp and you're focused. And is that just more time in bed? No, it's more quality time in bed. And the way to get more quality time in bed, I'll give you a few just, say, free tricks that you could do. So there are some absolutely data-proven strategies for getting deep sleep.

38:03One of them is to sleep in a room that's very cold. The colder, the better. 69 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't know what that is in Celsius. if somebody could figure that out. Make the room as dark as you can possibly make it. If you can't make it that dark, just buy a$10 cotton eye mask on Amazon. One of those full face eye masks, snaps in the back, make sure it's cotton, not polyester and put a full face cotton eye mask on for 10 bucks. This is such a game changer for sleep. I mean, once you start sleeping with an eye mask, you'll never sleep without one. If you can, try not to eat any solid food.

38:37Fluids are fine, but no solid food. two hours before bedtime, but absolutely not within an hour of bedtime. Digestion really interrupts our sleep patterns. And then if you're one of those people that ruminates, I call it, you know, your environment quiets and then your mind wakes up, which is a lot of people listening to this podcast. They'll lay down to go to sleep at night and their mind will wake up. And if you actually ask them, what kind of things are you thinking about? They'll tell you it's like the most innocuous nonsense, right? It's like, did I get everything on my grocery list? It feels big.

39:11You know, did my belt match my shoes today? Did I return my Instagram post? So to stop rumination, just add magnesium at night. Three and eight is probably the best one for sleep. Magnesium, three and eight. And then the final thing is having a break between your day and your sleep. So, you know, when you get off of your phone, when you, you know, the time that you're going to get to bed. I actually set an alarm to go to bed, which sounds odd. Most people set alarms to wake up. I actually set an alarm to go to bed. If you're really one of those people that has a difficult time falling asleep, try a contrast shower.

39:48Just get in the shower, warm, turn the water as hot as you can stand it, let it run on your back for a few minutes, then step out of that stream of water, turn it as cold as it will go. I know it sounds crazy. Step back into that stream of water for 30 seconds and just deal with it. Then get out of the shower. dry off and get in bed, you will see that that contrast shower broke the cycle of something called catecholamines. These are fight or flight neurotransmitters that are up in your brain, keeping your brain alert, but your body tired. You break that cycle, throw on a nice cotton eye mask, go into a cold room, get underneath the covers, let your body slowly start to warm.

40:28When I'm in bed, I do just some slow rhythmic breathing, long, slow inhales through my nose, long slow exhales through a straw or perceived straw and i'll bet if you did 10 of those deep inhalations and breathed out through a straw 10 inhalations breathed out through a straw you wouldn't even make it to the 10th breath very helpful yeah lots of people messaged us about the thing that happens when they wake up how soon should they eat what is the truth about fasting a lot of people need energy so they rely on coffee and then they tend to have lunch they don't have a big dinner, but they're still overweight.

41:04They're not sure what's happening. So if you can, and there's an enormous body of evidence behind this, delay your coffee intake 60 to 90 minutes from when you wake. And I'll give you the science behind that if you'd like, but by delaying your coffee intake, you actually allow in the morning, you have a hormone called cortisol, which is actually rising. Melatonin is falling. Cortisol is a great hormone when there's too much or too little of it could be a problem, but people think all cortisol is bad. It's not. You want cortisol to rise in the morning. So if within 30 minutes of waking, you just did a couple simple things, hydrate, amino acid, mineralize the body within 30 minutes of waking.

41:45If you can get outside or expose your skin or at least expose your eyes to natural sunlight. And I always, always, always do a short round of breath work. It can be as simple as three rounds of five breaths, but do it militantly and never miss because we are such circadian creatures. We are such creatures of biorhythms. And when we get up at six one morning and nine the next and five 30 the next morning and seven 15 the day after, our physiology gets off, our biological clock. There's a big body evidence now, isn't there? To get to sleep better at night, stick to a specific wake-up time, regardless of the day of the week.

42:26As much as you can. The time you go to bed is almost less important than the time you wake up. Yeah, bedtime and wake up time. So when you wake up, do the same thing every day. One of the important reasons for this is if you change time zones, if you travel, and your body is clued into, when I wake up, I hydrate mineralized amino acids. I take hydrogen tablets. You do this routine of hydrating and mineralizing. And then you expose your skin or at least your eyes to sunlight. You do a short round of breath work and you're consistent with just that part of your routine, which is ultra portable. It's very inexpensive.

42:59And so your body gets locked into knowing this is what we do when we wake up. It's morning because it's time to wake up because we're doing X. And by having that consistent routine that you never miss, that you take with you everywhere. And then fasting is not a one size fits all. I will tell you that some of the worst endocrine disasters I have ever had to manage, and we've had 200 plus thousand patients come through our functional medicine clinic. And I'm not a physician for the record. I'm a human biologist. So I don't directly manage these patients. I manage them with a licensed physician.

43:34But in the 200 ,000 patients that we've had plus come through our clinic system, some of the worst endocrine disasters I've seen are young menstruating females. They still have a menstrual cycle. And they eat in a very narrow feeding window. For men, it's almost universally can benefit from intermittent fasting. For women, it's entirely different, right? I mean, nothing is more frustrating than a woman and her spouse, both intermittent fasting, guys losing weight, getting jacked, feels great. And she's barely eating, you know, eating in a four-hour, six-hour, eight-hour window. And she's blowing up like a tick, right?

44:14She's retaining water. She feels foggy. She's not getting the energy that her husband's getting. And this is because if you don't know your blood sugar profile, fasting can be very detrimental. And here's specifically what I mean. There is a marker in your blood sugar profile called hemoglobin A1c. It's a 90-day average of your blood sugar. It's the three-month average of your blood sugar. If this is below 5.3, meaning you on average have very low blood sugar, intermittent fasting is not for you. And the reason for that is you will spend more of your time in a hypoglycemic state too low a blood sugar.

44:56And intermittent fasting is phenomenal for people that have difficulty controlling their blood sugar. Can you get this information from wearing a blood glucose monitor? You could wear a glucose monitor. You could go to any clinic in the UK. They can test your blood sugar. That's super easy. So you want to look at glucose, hemoglobin A1c, the three-month average of your blood sugar, and insulin. Now, if you are insulin resistant, you have high average blood sugar and very high insulin, intermittent fasting can be absolutely the most... It can only save and extend your life. It could just be the panacea that changes everything.

45:33if you are low average blood sugar and you intermittent fast, you're going to spend a lot of time hypoglycemic, which low, low blood sugar also makes you foggy, makes you tired, makes you unable to focus, and it makes it very, very hard to have any stamina in a workout. So, you know, I can't tell you how many women have come through my clinic and said, Gary, I don't get it. I wake up every morning. I'm fasted. I have a cup of black coffee. We have this exercise thing called Orange Theory. Do you have Orange Theory here? Okay, so it's like a little boot camp that people go to. It's very popular in the United States.

46:09So women will go to this class for 55 minutes. They go hammer down five days a week for three months, and they don't lose a single pound. And they're like, Gary, I don't get it. I'm not even eating. And I go, well, you're not eating, but your body is. It's just eating you. So because when your blood sugar gets too low, you'll metabolize your own lean muscle tissue. Your thyroid will begin to throttle back your metabolism. Right. So what we're saying is don't just assume eating less is going to make you thinner and get some information about your body before you decide that. Before you start, yeah.

46:44Especially if you're a young menstruating female, get information on your blood sugar before you start intermittent fasting. And what about a longer water fast as a reset? I mean, I've got a photo here of you and Dana. I mean, the one that I love actually is, Let's just show this. If you're watching on YouTube, this will make sense to you. I mean, that I think is the perfect photograph to show before and after. Of the work you did with him. Yeah. Did you put him on a long water fast? So I put Dana first on a 10-week keto reset. Yeah. So I put him on a very, very strict clean keto diet for 10 weeks.

47:16And when I mean very strict, like I wrote a diet for him right down to the grocery list. And I said, Dana, if it is not on this list, you cannot eat it. Keto being low or no carbohydrates. virtually no carbohydrates, less than 50 grams, and in his case, even less than that. Could you briefly explain why that was important? So in Dana's case, he had very, very high, on his blood work, he had very, very high triglyceride, which is a measure of the amount of fat in your blood. And people think that your triglycerides rise from eating too much fat, and that's actually not true. Your triglycerides rise from eating too much sugar because the primary role of insulin is not to lower blood sugar.

47:54The primary role of insulin is to block any other form of energy use in the body. So when insulin rises, it doesn't allow your body to mobilize and metabolize fat. It slows down protein metabolism and it forces you to focus on sugar. And then, of course, it also does transport sugar into the cell. I don't want people to attack me online. It does actually help your body metabolize glucose and move glucose into the cell. But it does so by stopping you from using other energy sources. And so if you do your blood work and your triglycerides are through the roof, you actually need to lower your carbohydrates, not lower your fat intake.

48:33So I'm not a fan of prolonged keto diets, but 10-week keto resets could be life-saving. The keto diet is the lowest inflammatory diet that we know of. When the body switches to a fuel source called beta-hydroxybutyrate, which is a ketone body, this is a very clean fuel. It gives people a lot of energy. It was originally formulated for epilepsy because it's so low inflammatory. The body also produces a – the mitochondria produce a type of water called deuterium depleted water. If you really want to have some fun, just Google deuterium depleted water. It's phenomenal what happens when you're on a keto diet and your cells begin to produce this very special type of light water.

49:13And so I was trying to lower his life-threatening level of triglyceride. So I put him on a strict keto reset. that he probably lost 25 or 28 pounds in that 10 weeks. I mean, it just stripped off of his body. He felt amazing. To his credit, he followed it like the gospel. And then we started to introduce slow burn carbohydrates like sweet potatoes and things like that. And then he went back to a whole food diet. So that was a way to intervene. But just back to the intermittent fasting for a minute. If you look at Dr. Walter Longo's research, the longevity scientist at USC in California. He wrote a book called The Longevity Diet.

49:55He also did a lot of the blue zone research. He also does a lot of research on intermittent fasting and fast mimicking diets. I would say a very, very, very safe place just in general to start. It's 12 hours on, 12 hours off. Eat from eight in the morning till eight at night. Nothing in your mouth before 8 a.m. nothing in your mouth after 8 p.m., you're feeding for 12 hours and you're fasting for 12 hours. That's a very safe place for all men, all women to start, and you don't risk the hypoglycemic episodes, right, eating. What's astounding is if you ask most people, they'll tell you that's kind of my feeding window.

50:33But the truth is they start to graze when they get out of bed, and they start to graze right until they get into bed at night. And should you train while fasted? Is that more beneficial? Well, it depends on what your goal is. So if your goal is to maintain muscle and to lose fat, then you should exercise in a fasted state. But I'm not a big fan of very intense exercise in a fasted state. If you are exercising fasted, you have to take the nine essential amino acids before you exercise. It will not break a fast, but it will provide your body the capacity to have those amino acids available. So it does not look to lean muscle, to strip lean muscle.

51:14And I'm a much bigger fan of weight training than I am of cardiovascular training. If you only have a certain amount of time to exercise, I'm training very specifically for a 10K now. I'm running a 10K with hundreds of thousands of people in Dubai in November. So I can't let myself look like a slowpoke. So I'm the thinnest I've been in a long time. But if you are exercising in a fasted state, take a mineral salt and take the amino acids, stay hydrated, you'll preserve your lean muscle. There are ways to dramatically improve the body's capacity to build lean muscle. One of them is peptides. I am an enormous fan of peptides.

51:57Peptides are very safe. You can get them here in the UK. There's a couple of peptides that are very, very specific to helping you build lean muscle for both men and women. They are the growth hormone peptides. They're not growth hormone. They are growth hormone peptides. Peptides are amino acid sequences. When you put them into the body, they cause the body to produce either certain hormones or they enhance function in the body. There are two categories, GHRPs and GHRHs, growth hormone-releasing hormones and growth hormone-releasing peptides. Neither of these is growth hormone. I'm not a fan of taking growth hormone from outside the body and putting it in.

52:37You can develop dependency. You can reduce your pituitary production of growth hormone. But peptides like CJC-1295 and ipamorlin or sermorlin and ipamorlin. These are, excuse me, very safe. Five days on, two days off. You can take them in a sublingual. You can take them in an injectable form. There is a company called PepTool that makes them in a patch. And what this will do is it will rewind your pituitary to a more youthful level of growth hormone secretion. When you do that, every cell in the body responds. I mean, if you want to layer on lean muscle at an alarming rate, take a growth hormone peptide.

53:22Because when we go to the gym and we tear muscle, right, which is the whole purpose of going to the gym, and that muscle grows back larger, that's called muscle hypertrophy. If you went to the gym and tore that muscle and it grew back larger, and then new tissue formed around that tear, that's called muscle hyperplasia. So new tissue growth. So you get muscle hypertrophy, the growth of the muscle you have, plus you get the addition of new muscle. So if you're really trying to layer on lean muscle, I'm not aware of anything that would do that faster or safer than a peptide. This episode of High Performance is brought to you in partnership with HIMSS.

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56:37We've got about five minutes. Okay, let's fire it up. We'll go fast. I've got some stuff here that people were really keen for answers on. So if we can go through these, that would be amazing. One person says, all I hear now is people saying that creatine is some kind of magic bullet for health. It absolutely is. Should I be taking it? And what would it do for me other than build my muscle? Yes. So creatine, and I would prefer the form of creatine called HCL, creatine hydrochloride. So there's two forms of creatine, creatine monohydrate, which people have a tendency to bloat on, and creatine HCL, hydrochloride.

57:09The studies now on creatine are absolutely crystal clear. If you are a female over 40, you need to be taking 5 to 7 milligrams of creatine daily, full stop. Why? Up to 20 milligrams of creatine because creatine is not only for bodybuilders. It does hold water in the muscle. It does enhance muscle hypertrophy. So creatine is excellent if you're working out intensely. You should be on creatine if you're regularly exercising, five milligrams minimum. Up to 20 milligrams in men and women will actually cross the blood-brain barrier, and it will saturate the brain. And we're finding now that creatine's impact on cognitive function, on memory, on hormone balance is absolutely phenomenal.

57:55And there are very, very, very few downsides to taking creatine. I'm an enormous, enormous fan of creatine. I tell every one of my female clients that's over 40 that you have to be on 5 to 7 milligrams of creatine. If you're having brain fog or focus and concentration issues, up to 20 milligrams of creatine. It's cleared very easily through the liver and the kidneys. It does not put a lot of stress on the body. It's been thought of for probably the last 15 or 20 years as a bodybuilding supplement. It's not just to bulk up. It also helps with joint soreness, with ligament and tendon repair. These are the most underserved tissues in the body.

58:35Big, big fan of creatine, HCL. Perfect. A message here saying, I love to sauna, but I'm not sure how long I should be doing it for. I believe there's a certain amount of time where things can really be impacted positively, but too much is negative. That's correct. So sauna is one of the best hormetic stresses we know of in the human body. It's also arguably the greatest way to detox. So when we were talking earlier about immunofatigue, when you look at the data on sauna extending life and it's clear, why does sauna reduce all-cause mortality? Well, it's not because it's heating you up. It's because it's eliminating waste.

59:11So sauna should be done between 160 and 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Again, we can convert that to Celsius. 15 to 20 minutes maximum. I prefer that you do a liter of fluid when you're either in or immediately finish the sauna. And if you are detoxing from anything, mold, mycotoxins, parasites, viruses, if you're doing a detox, when you get in the sauna and you finish your sauna session and your liter of fluid, take an activated charcoal. You can take these in tablets. You can take them in powders. You can take them in liquid form. It's very easy to get here in the UK. Take an activated charcoal and then don't eat for another hour, at least after you get out of the sauna.

59:51And the reason for this is that these binders, charcoal is a binder, it will bind these inflammatory compounds, cytokines, histamines, mold spores, mycotoxins, even parasites and viruses. And it will help carry them out in your stool. So sauna can be amazing for you. I would say three to five days a week, 15 minutes to 20 minutes maximum. Well, I do 20 minutes, then a cold plunge and then back in the sauna. Oh, that's great. Yes. And the other thing you want to do is you want to take a dry towel in the sauna with you and wipe your sweat off while you're in the sauna. Because if you did a sauna scrape in a dry sauna, you'd find not only water and sodium.

1:00:29You'd find heavy metals. You'd find glyphosate. You'd find insecticides, pesticides, herbicides. You'd find all of these things, butylenes. You'd find PFAs, these polyfluoroalkyls, coming out in your skin. So you don't want while you're warm and your pores are open for that to just resort. So if you're in the sauna and you want to get the maximum amount out, just wipe yourself down while you're in the sauna, sweat again and wipe yourself down. Can we also just give 30 seconds to these bros that think you need to be in a cold plunge, which is covered in ice and you have to stay as long as possible, as cold as possible.

1:01:00The science, let's be really clear, isn't backing it up longer and colder is better? No, there is no evidence that longer is better or colder is better. 48 to 52 degrees, again, Fahrenheit, three minutes minimum, six minutes maximum. You're trying to get four things from a cold plunge. Peripheral vasoconstriction, driving blood to the core, up to the brain, the liver, lungs, pancreas, and the kidneys, which will happen right away. You're trying to get a release of something called cold shock proteins, which are fascinating proteins that are preserved proteins held in your liver. You're trying to activate something called brown fat, which is the thermostat in the human body that exchanges a calorie for a measure of heat.

1:01:35And you're trying to get a release of dopamine and norepinephrine, which are what wake the bind up. And that all happens three to six minutes. Someone said that senolytics are being spoken about a lot these days. They feel very new. What do you think of them? You know, I think senolytics are, you know, one of those promising categories, but not well-defined categories. If you actually look at most of the research in animal studies, you know, we got to carry these over to human beings. Sometimes we make too large of a jump. And again, you know, when you take synthetics to augment function in the human body, One of the reasons why I'm a big fan of peptides is those are amino acid sequences.

1:02:15But when you take synthetics to augment function in the human body, I have a hard time making that connection that human physiology, to be optimized, needs something like a chemical or synthetic or pharmaceutical. Okay. And if there's one thing that you'd love people to research after this conversation, again, we can add the show notes on, to really understand the future of longevity, the thing that maybe you're most excited about at the moment that we could all learn from, what would you like people to do straight after this conversation? Two things. One, really go down the rabbit hole of hydrogen.

1:02:45I mean, it's going to sound like I'm just trying to push hydrogen tablets, but it is. The more you understand about what this gas can do in the human body, how inexpensive it is, it's about a dollar a day for hydrogen tablets. It can be a complete game changer for people that have hormone imbalance, weight gain, water retention, inflammation, injuries that won't heal, brain fog, poor focus and concentrations, It's just an absolute panacea. I'm an enormous fan. The second is, if you have unexplained symptoms with so many people listening to this do, they're like, Gary, I've already gotten my blood work done.

1:03:17My blood work's great, but I still wake up feeling like a lead balloon. I can't focus. I can't concentrate. I've got ADD. I've got ADHD. I've got anxiety. I can't put a finger on it. I want you to test for these big four. Because what does not show up in your blood work and what very often is wrecking our physiology are mold and mycotoxins, and London is fraught with mold. Mold mycotoxins, parasites, viruses, and heavy metals. If you test for those four, and there is a test called a vibrant wellness test, it's a urine test, and you see these off the charts, and that's when you need to start a detox.

1:03:56You can actually go to my, I have a VIP program. I'm going to give all of your listeners 50 % off of it. So if they just go to the ultimatehuman.com VIP, and enter HPP, High Performance Podcast, they'll get 50 % off my membership. But once you get in there, you can download the mold detox guide, the heavy metal detox guide, the guide to testing for these things, very, very simple things like binders that we can use. And very often this unlocks that last 20 yards that people cannot figure out. You know, it just closes that final gap for them because their blood work looks great, but they don't feel well.

1:04:30And if you fall into that category, please go there, download those guides. I wrote them for a reason. could be life-changing.

1:04:40Well, I hope you found that conversation with Gary Brecker fascinating. And I think this next segment of the show is going to be equally interesting because I'm here with the host of the Energy Equation podcast, my great friend, expert physiologist, Olly Patrick. Olly, nice to see you. So good to be with you. Oh, and you. Look, people will be thinking, hold on, you've just spoken to Gary Brecker for the best part of an hour. And now suddenly you're having a chat with Olly. And the reason why I wanted to do this, and thank you for agreeing to this, is that you've spent a long time studying Gary's work.

1:05:08You've been at various events that he's been at. And you know the amount of information that that guy can deliver about wellness and health in an hour is extraordinary. Enormous. So I just think there might be some people listening to this now going, well, that was fascinating. I've taken a lot away from it, but I don't really know what I should do right now. And so I wondered really whether you would just come and join me and just have 10 minutes talking about the things that people have heard Gary talk about. that they can just incorporate into their daily life instantaneously. Is that all right?

1:05:38It's a dream. And there's so much technical information. And I think what was so interesting about that discussion with Gary is so much of the value is in those early exchanges where he says, look, 85 % of the things that matter are in these four key buckets. You know, it's in our quality of mobility, which is our ability to retain movement quality. It's in our whole food diet. We'll come back to that in a minute. It's in our relationship with sleep, not volume, but quality. and it's in our sense of connection with others and that could extend to connection with the planet and connection with self.

1:06:08And I think that we don't want to lose sight of that because Gary will love to go into the sort of deep mechanisms of the science. He loves the science. He loves the molecular biology. You know, he's a human biologist. But sometimes we have to end up with, what do I do tomorrow? And I think in those areas, he's starting that conversation by saying, look, the modern world has completely challenged these four systems. It's changed everything about the way we would naturally move. everything you and I will do today will be easier than it would have been 10 years ago and it'll be easier in 10 years time because everyone wants our life to be easy but mobility and human physiology does not like easy so he's rallying against that he's rallying against this environment that's totally counterintuitive to quality sleep going to bed with light in the back of our eyes going to bed with noise, with heat going to bed busy with all the terrors and horrors of the world and that's really removing our true ability to recover which is something he's absolutely passionate about He knows that, and he draws, I think, in the conversation, correlations to blue zones, these areas where we say, well, what's the commonality?

1:07:09And the next two areas pull a lot from that, that they eat whole food diets. And we're seeing this increasing volume of ultra-processed foods, so these foods that aren't easily made in our kitchen, five or more ingredients that could be 70 % of calories in the UK. And he's saying, look, these places where people live to be beyond 100 consistently, they don't have any of those foods, or very small. They're eating whole grains, legumes. they're eating a plant-rich diverse diet with good quality proteins in most cases but with no consistent theme they're just eating whole foods and they're tribal which means they're connected there's community there's there's all these social aspects and the great danger is we sort of look past the early exchange where he says 85 percent of the value is in there and of course then there's other areas but where i philosophically agree with gary as many would is the modern world has changed far quicker than our physiology has adapted.

1:07:57And we shouldn't look past those things before we start seeking one of these single point interventions that might not be as evidenced as the things we started talking about. And there will be people that have heard this conversation with Gary, and they've noted everything down. They're already really clued up on physiology, and they know exactly how they're going to attack the next 6, 12, 18 months, right? There will also be people who at the end of the conversation are thinking, what do I do? So for those people, what's the first lesson that you would love them to take away from that conversation?

1:08:27The first thing you'd really like them to think about right now? Yeah, I think I'd like them to think about those four areas. Their quality of movement, their quality of a whole food diet. Right. What is quality of movement and what does that look like? Really good point. So he often talks about longevity and when he's talking about longevity, he's really talking about health span. So how many years can I remain well rather than can I live an extra 20 years? And when we're talking about mobility, there's three key things. Have I retained my ability to deliver oxygen to my tissues, which we call cardiorespiratory fitness, but would be endurance.

1:08:55So walking, running, rowing, cycling, that sort of thing, things that get you puffed for 20 minutes or more. He wants you to retain your capability you have in your midlife through to end of life. And that's, there's no shortcut for that. That is exercise, right? He also wants you to retain the muscle mass that's hanging off your bones because you're losing three to 5 % of that per decade. And he wants you strength training. So twice a week, he wants your strength training so you don't lose that muscle mass and the strength that comes with it right and he also wants you moving naturally which would be not just sitting in a chair and then pushing weights in a gym but moving naturally in nature sort of different directions which we might call mobility so that first thing i think is interesting which is there's no shortcuts to this if people have listened to that conversation i'm going great i'll get uh some certain tablets and some certain drinks and then suddenly i'm on i'm on the path to wellness yeah if you don't lift weights if you don't get out of breath for what did you say 20 minutes yeah well ideally 150 minutes over the course of a week 150 minutes over the course of the week yeah out of breath out of breath lifting weights how often is recommended for that we would love twice a week so that's that's two separate sessions of giving your body strain from a from a strength point of view yeah i'd love that and then twice a week doing something that involves balance or coordination that's the dream okay so if we can get those three things locked in oh we're already a lot what percent of the population in the uk and the u.s do you think would do those three things a week oh my goodness, less than one.

1:10:16I mean truly. Less than one. And there'll be data that we've got. But we're talking about here about real diversity of training. So that's probably, you know, it's a tiny proportion. We've got in the UK, 15 and a half, 16 % of the UK as a member of a gym. Now you can do all this outside of a gym. Strength training is slightly harder. But you know, how many of those meet those guidelines or how many people are good at running run? And how many people are good at lifting weights, lift weights? How many people love Pilates and yoga do? So the danger from a well-being and longevity point of view is people lean into things they're good at.

1:10:44And where Gary's right, we have to lean into things that we're not so good at and make those our target area. Brilliant. So if you do that, you're already in the 1%. You're already beating 99 % of people in the UK and the US, maybe even more. And if you could sell that, Jay, I mean, the crazy thing is... Yeah, but no one sells that because you don't make money from telling people to do exercise, right? That's been my great downfall. Right, so the next thing that you'd like people to pick up on... We talk a lot about nourishment. So Gary is absolutely spot on that lots of people are undernourished, right?

1:11:15And whether that's a particular nutrient or vitamin or mineral or just broad scale. And I think that there's lots of pursuit. If I get asked a question about testing, because you know I love to test human physiology and work out, the question I ask is, how do I test for vitamins and minerals and what I need in my diet? And I say, well, the first thing we'd like to do before we do the test is work out what you don't consume. So before I look to run a complicated analytic test of nutritional quality, I go, well, let's just track diet for a couple of weeks and see which nutrients that you just don't eat.

1:11:44So I never eat any green veggies, so I might not get some of the vitamins and minerals in those, or I never eat any citrus fruits, so I never get some of the nutrients and elements in that. So I think there's great validity to say most people are slightly undernourished, and working out what that means is a podcast in itself. But before we sort of pick on a single nutrient that I might be slightly deficient in from my legacy of my parents or from a particular blood panel, it's great to see what I don't actually consume and then if I'm thinking about supplementing my diet, then could I supplement in the area in which I'm naturally deficient?

1:12:17So keep a food diary. A food diary. And again, if some people that triggers them and we've got to be cautious and all these things. But the reality is the best thing to do is track your food for two weeks or with a food diary. There's lots of electronic versions that are free at the point of access and fundamentally then work backwards from there. But our single focus here is can we get more whole foods, diverse in fibers, rich in protein. He's a big proponent of protein. Is anyone involved in nutritional science? would be. And those sort of figures of can we get above the government guideline of one gram of protein per kilogram body weight, but probably somewhere closer to 1.6 grams.

1:12:49If I were 100 kilograms, am I getting, you know, 160 grams of protein a day? And these things, again, are the focus points rather than necessarily working backwards to a single nutrient that may or may not be my sort of single point salvation. Really good. And the next thing? Next thing I think is sleep consistency. He's a guy who brought that up really well, which is we've got to stop pursuing length of sleep, but consistency of sleep. And the data is pretty good around that, which is I would love you to wake up at pretty much the same time each morning and go to bed at pretty much the same time.

1:13:19Why? Because the hormones that get set and regulated by our sleep and wake cycle are critical to being well. So your body is going to try and manufacture a hormone called cortisol a couple of hours before you wake up, but it will only know that if you're waking up at pretty much the same time. So if your wake up time is 7, and I want your adrenal gland making cortisol about 4, 4.30. What does cortisol do for us? It's good for us. It's called the stress hormone, so everyone gets... Hang on a minute, I don't want too much of that, Ollie. But it's really good for us. So it basically is an invigorating hormone that increases our...

1:13:49or aligns with increasing temperature. It gets us ready for the day. So cortisol is part of our waking up process, but it should also rise after waking. But it's not so useful for sleep. So we have this cortisol rise in the morning, and then it drops down as the light depreciates. depreciate so blue light drifts towards red light hues dusk if you like and then the body and the brain in particular identifies a drop in temperature a drop in light and we start to prepare for sleep by manufacturing melatonin which is the hormone that helps regulate our sleep cycle now those two hormones don't like being messed around much and if you've had a jet lag what you've done is you've traveled somewhere but you didn't tell the hormones so they're running on a time zone that doesn't correlate with what you need to do locally so we avoid what we call social jet lag with consistent anchors on wake and sleep time within the confines of children and work and all the real life challenges.

1:14:36And critically, and Gary alludes to it, we get light in the morning and we get darkness and cool in the evening. And that is societally a challenge. But, you know, before you start doing anything else around sleep, building as much consistency as possible would be the bedrock. So he promotes that and I couldn't agree with it more. Great. Anything else? He's a big proponent of human connection, you know, connection with the planet, biophilia, but also connection with humans we manufacture oxytocin something that's often called the love hormone and humans are designed to be together and so pushing back against isolated work patterns isolated social structures again gary's spot on with that and if you focus on those things you've got the big blocks in the right space and that is crucial and most people haven't maximized those jake so before they go to the next thing these are the big evidence-based levers pull these first and then explore some of those more nuanced elements that will have individuality to them but couldn't necessarily be a template for the nation so working backwards let's try and connect with people as much as possible i think we obsess about optimizing with far vm alarm calls and ice baths and all these other things and actually sometimes better than that it's just hugging your kids seeing your friends talking to your family right outstanding um sleep i think is really interesting for years it was how are you getting eight hours a night but what we're actually saying is if you can go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time every day, then you're giving your body the best chance to be in a good state for you to optimize.

1:16:03Without a doubt. We're still like seven to nine hours at standard, but you'll get a better bang for your buck within that seven hours, for example. When it comes to food, trying to have a varied diet as possible. If it's safe for you, use a food diary and you're comfortable with that so that you know what you're missing and maybe you can add the stuff that you're missing or then you can think about additional supplements. Perfect. And the final thing, let's lift weights a couple of times a week let's get 150 minutes of being out of breath and let's make sure that we just do some general exercise take the stairs, not the escalator and all those other good things and if we can do all of those despite that amazing and varied conversation from Gary and the great advice you've just given us just those few things and we're then in the heady 1 % so we're already winning, right?

1:16:47I'm out of a job if we all do those things and I'll be happy with that because we'll be healthier, we'll be happier but again, getting there is challenging find the one that you're least good at at the moment and then see if you can make one change in that area this week that's a win Awesome Oli, thank you so much Pleasure If you found something valuable in this episode please just hit follow on Apple or Spotify and share it with someone who you think would benefit from hearing it and don't forget you can get early access to every episode and exclusive content on the High Performance app Thanks for joining us We'll see you next time

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