Has The Medical System Betrayed Women? How To Take Back Control of Your Health

25:41It's not painful. So those would be kind of three things that stuck away from me. But what would you say is the number one takeaway for you that you share that you want everyone to be reminded of? It's just that this is an inevitable process, but suffering through it is not. And it can be, and hopefully for you, it's an entryway or your partner or your mother, whoever's listening, whoever that you love in your life is going through this, that she is going to be okay. She might need some extra love and support and things are changing for her and it's not her fault. And, you know, be there for her and, you know, get her an appointment and help her find a menopause informed provider and, you know, help her get on the path to being okay.

26:24That's great. That's beautiful.

26:29As someone who's been studying this for two decades plus. What has been the biggest shock for you in the last few years around how to live longer and anti-aging that you thought 20 years ago, this is the way, but actually you're starting to wake up and see new research or studies or personal strategies that you're like, oh, that's not the way, this is actually the way. Well, the answer to that, my real answer to that is kind of like more hardcore science. And I don't know if you want that or not, but it actually has to do with like, 20 years ago, I thought aging was caused by an accumulation of damage that we're just getting over time.

27:12So damage just in general to our DNA, to our proteins, for our mitochondria, you know, and you have these hallmarks of aging and you have to go and fix each hallmark, like a surgeon. And it's like, you have to fix your genomic instability and you have to fix your mitochondria and you have to fix everything, right? Now, I think aging is a program. Fast forward 20 years. I think aging is a program. And it's something that is in our DNA at the level of our epigenome. So our epigenetics, these are things that are sort of kind of on top of our DNA that turn our genes on and activate them or turn them off and deactivate them.

27:53And it comes down to this concept of Dr. Steve Horvath's biological aging clocks. You've heard of these? The biological aging clocks. Like chronological aging versus biological aging. How do you test that? There's a variety of tests for it. Blood work? Is that what it is? There's a blood work test. And they test... They're called methyl groups. Essentially, they're just carbon with three hydrogens. And there's a pattern of them on our DNA. There's a pattern of them. And this pattern, I think, is the aging program. I'm following the leading scientists. But now this is now my belief 20 years later that there is a program of aging and it's these patterns of these methyl groups on our DNA that change with time that makes us age.

28:36And the reason I think that is because if you think about reproduction, so if you think about like a sperm and an egg, I mean, these aren't young cells. And in the best case scenario, I mean, you got like a 20 year old, but like, you know, a lot of people are reproducing at 30 and 40, right? So these are older cells. I mean, they're still older even at 20. They're older. They come together. They recombine. Their epigenome completely resets, and they make a young organism with no sign of aging. Isn't that interesting? No sign of aging. How's that possible? The epigenome resets, completely resets, and there's no sign of aging.

29:14It's kind of fascinating, isn't it? It's very fascinating. So how do we reset it within ourselves? That's the question. And so now there have been over the last, I would say, oh gosh, five to seven years, there's been... So, okay, let me take it even a step further back. Okay. Back in 2006, Shinya Yamanaka, a Japanese scientist, won the Nobel Prize for discovering four different genes that are very specific type of genes. They're called transcription factors because they can regulate a lot of different genes in our body. he discovered that if he could took four of these transcription factors and took any cell from the body, any old cell from an 80-year-old woman, skin cell, and he put these four transcription factor genes on them, on that old 80-year-old cell, he could revert it into an embryonic stem cell with no sign of aging, right?

30:05It's an embryonic stem cell that now can form any cell in the body. It's called induced pluripotent stem cell. So it resets the epigenome completely. The cell loses its identity. It doesn't know it's a skin cell anymore. It's an embryonic stem cell, but it can now form any type of cell, right? And so that is also evidence that resetting the epigenome, at least to the very extreme case, right, all the way to the embryonic stem cell state is a way of reprogramming the cell into a very youthful state. And there's some more lines of evidence. Cloning is another one. So you take a nucleus from like an old cell, put it in a young cytoplasm of an egg, and the epigenome is reset and you have a young organism, right?

30:48So there's other lines of evidence of this. But in the last five-ish years, there's been some research that have been done by a variety of scientists where they've taken those Yamanaka factors, they're called the four transcription factors. And they've given them to mice, older mice. And they don't want to make all the mice cells become stem cells, right? Like they don't want the cell to lose its identity. It'll just be like a blob, right? Right. Almost like a big tumor cell or something. Right. What they want is to reset that epigenome in a way to make it, to return it to a more youthful state.

31:24And so they've been able to sort of pulse it on. You just kind of like, you got to find the right timing, the right timing. And so they're making progress with this. And there's been some studies that have shown, you know, you kind of, it's called partial cellular reprogramming. So they're not doing the full on reprogram, but they're partially doing it. And it does rejuvenate a lot of aspects of aging in these rodents. There's a lot of hurdles to overcome. And I know that this was the answer you were looking for, but I'm super excited about it. But it's very interesting. I think that we are very likely going to...I think there's this process of epigenetic reprogramming.

32:05And Altos Labs, they're doing phenomenal research. They have a lot of the top scientists, Dr. Steve Horvath, Dr. Morgan Levine. I've had both of them on my podcast. They're both really good. I mean, Dr. Steve Horvath is the one who...he's the pioneer of the Horvath clocks, the epigenetic clocks that can identify this biological age, this molecular age that really identifies like how old you are versus your chronological age. But I do think that if they can figure out some of these hurdles, that we might have a tune-up where we go and get rejuvenated. Like what, reverse the clock 10 years overnight or something?

32:44Right. Exactly. Or more. Really? Yeah. Come on. How far away are we from this? I don't, you know, I don't, I could say a couple decades I could see for sure. Like, cause things are really growing. Things are growing. And, and then gene engineering, you know, there's, there's a lot of exponential growth in some of this synthetic biology world where they're, they're, you know, doing all this gene engineering. And it's like, they're just really kind of like, it's kind of phenomenal. Are you testing any of this stuff on yourself? Are you doing any stem cell injections or like going to these labs and trying these things?

33:16or are you just researching and noticing? I am very cautious when it comes to some of that stuff. So, but it's not that I don't think some of it works. Also, I just, you know, I'm a little bit of a scaredy cat, but I stick with the exercise. I'm just researching. Food, exercise, sleep. Yeah, and so those are the big things. And, you know, to kind of maybe go back to your question, I would say that, you know, I used to think that limiting protein was probably like, oh, you're better off being more plant-based. Now, I think exercise is the king. I think exercise is the longevity drug that if you could pill it up, we'd all be taking it.

33:58We all should be taking it. And I think that the protein is important for fueling our muscles, for improving muscle mass, and for repair as well. And so that would be a bigger thing. And also like, you know, intermittent fasting as well. I still try and I still think that it's important to do a type of it, time-restricted eating. Because even on your speech that you had with Dr. Valtolongo, he was saying people thought it was 16 hours. Now it's actually more 12-hour time-restricted. Is that right? I don't know if that's the new research. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know exactly what endpoints that he was talking about.

34:37But I think the way I sort of think about it is you want to have a fasting period while you're sleeping. Because if the repair processes that we were talking about to kind of go back to the start of this podcast is that we were talking about, you know, your DNA is repaired when you're sleeping. You're cleaning out stuff inside of your cells, pieces of DNA that from, you know, cells dividing that have just kind of fragmented off or gunk, you know, cell, just pieces of cell. Like there's all this gunk in our cells and that process is cleared out when you sleep, when you sleep. Yeah. However, if you had just ate a meal before you hit the pillow, your digestion, all that stuff that, that goes on for like five hours.

35:23There's a lot of stuff happening that shunts energy away from that. The energy ships from repair. It's still in digestive mode. Oh man. So repair mode needs to be fasted. so when should you stop eating before you go to sleep like how much time should you have before you go to sleep i think typically it's like three hours or what a lot of the experts like dr satch and panda have sort of come to the the conclusion because if you think about if you if you had if you finished eating three hours before you go to sleep then for the first two hours you're going to be finishing up the digestion process right and then the rest of the time it's repair mode right it's repair mode so you want to give your body repair mode and that's where i um is that no no like treats not even a little snack a couple of nuts i mean that's not going to be as big as a meal right like let's be real so i'm some people really take it seriously like they don't want to take a vitamin or anything like like don't worry about that you drink water or whatever i take my vitamins like close to bed you know so but but yeah you don't want a full-on meal yeah i mean You know, of course, there's times when I've been so obsessive about it where then I go to bed hungry and I'm cold because my metabolism is down.

36:38You don't sleep well. And then I don't sleep well. Exactly. I wake up cold all night. And I'm like, well, maybe I should have had a little something to eat because that - But isn't it good to sleep cold? Isn't that like dark room, cold? It's a different kind of cold. When - Get your bones cold. It's your bones cold. Yeah. It's not like you can put the blanket on and feel - It's eternal cold. It's like, yeah, it's like that cold that you can't, you just can't fix. Another blanket won't help me. Yeah. So that's, so yeah, I will say that I've decided I'm not, I'm not going to be so obsessive about it.

37:12But like with the fasting thing too, what's interesting is I do think that a lot, you know, there's the problem that people could come across is where they, they're skipping so many meals that they're not getting enough protein. Right. And then are they working out to make sure they're at least getting that aspect of increasing, you know, getting that muscle protein synthesis? Because so if you are going to be doing some intermittent fasting and there's an argument to be made to kind of like do a little once in a while sort of just clean out, right? Where you kind of stress your body a little bit and do that.

37:45But I feel like, I mean, that's what exercise does. And in fact, exercise activates, vigorous exercise activates a lot of those same repair processes like autophagy. That's one of the things that's happening when you're not eating. Right. It also happens when you're sleeping and not eating. Right. So, again, it comes back to exercise forgives a lot of sins. Not all of them. A lot of them. It really does. I mean, you know, food plays a big part of it. What would you say would be a few foods that you would recommend to help with optimal sleep? With optimal sleep? Like what three to five foods should we be eating to support us in sleeping better?

38:23And what should we remove to help us sleep better? So there's a lot, there's been some studies and this isn't, you know, I don't remember the details like in great detail basically. There have been studies that have looked at like if you eat a high carbohydrate meal for dinner versus a high fat meal versus high protein. and I don't remember all the details. All I remember is that one would improve deep sleep, but the other would improve REM. And so it was with this kind of mixed bag where it's like, okay, well, if I am going to do the higher carbohydrate meal, then at least I'm going to get one of those other ones.

39:01I don't know. I forgot which one it is. It's been a few years since I read those studies. But if you're looking at the macronutrient level, I would say that it seems as though different types of foods are affecting different stages of sleep. It is interesting. And it also is, sorry to all the people out there that want to say it's the one or the other. I'm just going to tell you what the data says, is that it's like, I don't remember which one improved the deep sleep and which one. Because honestly, I don't know that, you know, yeah, eating your meal right before bed also kind of disrupts your sleep.

39:35And I think that might be even more important than like what you're eating, as well as getting that physical activity earlier in the day makes a difference. And then the other thing that I think is even more important than the food is heat stress. It's like doing a hot tub or a sauna. If you do that pretty close to bedtime, like not necessarily right before bed, but like maybe a couple of hours before bed, it really seems to improve sleep. Really? Yeah. And there's a lot of potential reasons for that. But, you know, like growth hormone being one, you know, and also like it increases what are called somnogenic cytokines.

40:14So when you get in a hot tub or sauna, you're actually increasing some inflammatory markers that are also called somnogenic cytokines because they induce sleep. And so there's a reason. Now, you want to be able to cool off. You're talking about being cool. You don't want to like get in the sauna, then get right into bed. You're sweating in bed and you can't go to sleep. But usually if you take like a shower, a cooler shower after that, you know, or some people like to get in their cold plunge, but you don't have a cold plunge and just do a shower. Cold shower. Yeah. And then it really does. In fact, my husband is religious about it every night.

40:49He has to do. He does the hot tub. And then cold? And then cold. Cold plunge. And then. He sleeps like a baby? Sleeps like a baby. Like, because I don't have as much trouble falling asleep. Like, I get, he's more of a night person. Like, I can go to bed at 9, 9. I'll be asleep at 9.30. no problem um so so the cold doesn't keep him awake no it doesn't no i know a lot of people use the cold to kind of get that like norepinephrine burst where you wake up in the morning and you get that hit and you feel good and you're short um no i'm sure while he's in it but it's like it maybe the combination with the heat does something sure but he doesn't just do the cold yeah it's hot and cold it's hot and all right i'm tired but he does the hot for a while and then gets into the cold.

41:33Probably he doesn't want to like be sweating. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, if you could create an optimal day protocol, let's just say you have all things perfect in life and you can wake up, go to sleep at a certain time, eat what you want, train the way you want, do hot, do cold, like you have a perfect day all the time in the world. How would you set up your perfect day protocol with sleep, food, and workouts? perfect for um for like being healthy for for yeah optimal human yes protocol for longevity for optimal strength currently like what would that perfect day look like for you what would you eat when would you wake up yeah how would you train would you do any like heat cold you know any of that stuff would you do a oxygen chamber all the time all the time anything you could do Okay.

42:28So what I would do is wake up when I would naturally wake up. I typically naturally wake up around 7 a.m. No alarm though, just wake up naturally. No alarm. I don't, yeah. I mean, the only time I use an alarm is if I have to wake up before seven, like I'm doing a sunrise hike or something, or I'm in another time zone or something and I have to use it. But I would wake up naturally, which is usually around 7 a.m. I personally like to have coffee. So I, you know, I have my coffee and then sometimes I'll do like a little bit of like maybe a protein shake or I'll have some like egg or something like very light that's protein and then I'll go outside because I want that early morning light exposure to reset my circadian rhythm so that I again fall asleep at the right time and it's really that light exposure early in the morning is very important for that resetting of the circadian rhythm.

43:27I would go outside and I work out. I work out outside. Actually, almost all the time. I work out outside. I do my lifting outside. So I would go out and I would do my sort of CrossFit training protocol, which I'd love. And so this was, it's like an hour long workout and I do some resistance training depending on the day. Maybe I'll do some squats and deadlifts, mix it in with a workout, maybe some rowing in there, um burpees a little push-ups you know i'm getting getting getting the best of best of both the worlds i'm getting the hit and the the resistance training i do that for an hour and then um i would probably have the sauna already on and it would be about 175 i don't like to go too high these days like about 175 especially after a workout and i go in the sauna and i would either listen to some music or maybe a podcast that I'm interested in listening to, or maybe read a book or read a science study.

44:29And so I'd be in there for about 20 to 30 minutes, depending on how I'm feeling. And sometimes I'll put some water on the rocks to get steam. I like the steam as well. So I do that. Then I'll get out and then I'll have my bigger protein meal. So I'll have... So a little bit of food before the workout, then more after. I like a little bit because especially if you're going a little bit harder and you're doing some high intensity, I find that it helps me not get so dizzy. Yeah. Gets you more energy, too. Yeah. So I mentioned I'll have a protein shake. Sometimes I'll also have a half an apple. I'll cut half an apple from my...

45:09Something, yeah. Something. I like a little bit of something. And then after that, I'll have my meal. I'll have a frittata, egg frittata that has broccoli in it. I don't have a big serving of it. And then I'll have some, I like my Yerba Mate tea. So I don't drink too much coffee. I certainly don't, I usually only have one cup in the morning. Sometimes I'll have two, but most of the time I go to the Yerba Mate hot tea, loose leaf tea. And I'll make that after I have my meal. And then I like to sit down and do some science, read some science like what's the latest um i get into all that you know cognitive stimulation is very important right it's very important to keep the mind sharp and um cognitive stimulation is also very important for brain drive neurotrophic factor we're talking about exercise increasing it will cognitive stimulation does as well novelty learning something new all those things are important so having a podcast like the school of greatness where you're constantly you know learning new things it's very good for the brain so i so i like to do that while i'm drinking my your vermont tea and then the afternoon um i will get hungry again and i will i will have two homemade turkey burgers so another i'm really getting big on the protein but then i also have some kale and blueberries in a shake together and that also really kind of gives me a brain boost i don't know what it is i think it's the polyphenols and the blueberries but i'm not alone in that like other people sure talk about it where it's like instead of having the caffeine that mid-afternoon, I get the blueberries.

46:43And there's studies showing that it improves cognition and memory across the lifespan. Young children, adolescents, older age. Boom. So I do that. What's the next best thing besides blueberries that would give you that? Cocovia has been shown that. So it's a type of cacao powder that has very similar polyphenols. Cocovia? Yeah. That's the brand name I use. And because their powder has been shown in clinical studies to improve blood flow to the brain, to improve cognition and memory in older adults. And also blood pressure. It's been shown to improve blood pressure. In fact, I've gotten my mom and people in my family to use it and have improvements in their blood pressure as well.

47:27Really? Yeah. So it's like a cocoa powder. It's a cocoa powder that's unflavored. You can put it... I don't usually put it in my smoothie. You could. But I usually put it in, I usually drink like a, especially in the wintertime, I do like a cocoa. So I'll put cocovia with some water and then I'll mix in a little bit of like monk fruit or stevia and I'll just drink that. There you go. Just water, blend it in and mix it in. Right. Okay. Yeah. You don't want to put milk or dairy in there because it blunts the polyphenol. It binds up the polyphenols and then you're not going to get the same effect.

47:58So if you're going to, if you like - Almond milk or no? Almond milk's fine. If you like creaminess, almond milk would work, but you don't want like dairy. Interesting. Okay. But so that, so that, so you're telling me that I'm telling you like my perfect day that I, you know, can do. Right. Um, so turkey burgers. And then, um, you know, then I would say on the ideal day, then I like to go out and do just a couple mile run in the, in like, in like, this is about, I would say three o 'clock in the afternoon. Um, usually I do it when my son's at soccer. It's like, what else am I going to do? But I'll jog around the trail.

48:31And this is like, I love it. I feel when I get that second exercise thing in, and it's not like a long, you know, it's 20 minutes or whatever. I'm doing like, okay. It's not like a long, and I'm not going hard. Jog, fast jog. Yeah. It's like a zone two type of, I can like, you know, have a breathy conversation. I'll do some intervals. I'll mix. I'll run a little faster. So I will kind of do a little bit of intervals in there sometimes. But I like to get that, like, those are the best days when I get that second hit of exercise in. That's cool. About three o 'clock. And then it's time to... Let's see.

49:06Did I do any supplements in the morning? No. I usually do my supplements. Sometimes I'll take an omega-3 in the morning as well. These days, I've been only doing it at night. So then I get to dinner time. And dinner, I like to have some nice protein. And then I like to have either roasted vegetables or a salad. so I'd like to get some more vegetables in there and salad. Also sometimes I'll have you know an orange or an apple or something for dessert and I know people are considerate fruit. I think fruit's great. I just don't eat non-stop fruit so I'll have that as well and then I'll get my this is when I get my supplements so I do a lot of I do a lot of vitamins.

49:49So I do about two grams of omega-3. Usually it's about two to one ratio EPA, DHA. And then I do, let's see, so the omega-3, then I do vitamin D. So I take around, I total around 4 ,000 IUs of vitamin D a day. So I get like 2 ,000 in a vitamin D supplement plus 2 ,000 in my multivitamin. So I take a multivitamin as well. And then I take magnesium glycinate, and then I take another product called magnesium, which is like a powder I put in my water that I take all my vitamins with. And it's got like a mixture of some other magnesium, organic magnesium salts as well. And then I take alpha lipoic acid.

50:35Are you wanting all the perfect stuff? Alpha lipoic acid, which has been shown to blunt the advanced glycation end products. So it's been trying to lower those in clinical studies. In fact, people with type 2 diabetes, it's been shown to improve their ages. So I take that. And then I take Benfotamine, another vitamin that's been shown to help with advanced glycogen and products. That's an important aspect that I'm focused on. And that's just a fat-soluble vitamin B1. Take that. And then I take lutein, zeaxanthin for my eyes. I take CoQ10. And then I take, I'm probably going to miss something. I take sulforaphane.

51:13Sulforaphane helps detoxify a lot of terrible things that we're exposed to, like plastic chemicals like BPA, but also air pollution factors as well. It activates a very powerful detoxification system in our body. So I take that. And then... Where do you think you'd be without taking supplements? Do you think you'd still be as healthy and optimal as you are? Or is it just more of a psychological boost for you? No, no. I mean, so look, I'll tell you the omega-3 one's critical. So there are studies that have now shown that having a low omega-3 index is like smoking. Dr. Come on. Really? Wow. Dr. It's like smoking.

51:51So omega-3 levels as measured by the omega-3 index. So this is like measuring it in your red blood cells. It's a long-term marker of omega-3. It's a beautiful study that was done by Dr. Bill Harris. It was a Framingham cohort published a few years ago. and he looked at people's omega-3 levels, so high or low. High would be 8%, low would be 4%. He's the pioneer of the omega-3 index. And basically people that were non-smokers but had a low omega-3 index had the same life expectancy as smokers with a high omega-3 index. Wow. I mean, if you look at their life expectancy curve, they're overlaid. I mean, it's like, I wish I could pull up the figure.

52:34It's mind-blowing. And the only way you can get omega-3, is that from fish? So no, yes. Seafood is the major, that's what's going to drive your omega-3 index. It needs to be EPA, DHA, that's from the marine sources. ALA, the plant source of omega-3, can be converted into those two other omega-3 fatty acids, but very, very inefficiently. And so really you need to get the marine source. For people that are vegetarians or vegans, microalgae is the source of microalgae oil. You have to take a lot of it. But studies have found that people with 4 % omega-3 index, that's low. Actually, people in the US, the average omega-3 index is like 5%.

53:17If you take two grams of omega-3, so supplemental omega-3 per day for, was it like three months or so, or three or four months, then you can go from a 4 % low omega-3 index to a 8 % high omega-3 index. And people that have an 8 % omega-3 index have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to the people with low. Come on, really? If you think about Japan, Japan, they have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to the US on average. There are a lot of fish in their diet. Their omega-3 index is 10%. Ours is 5%. So their average omega-3 index is 10%. Our average here in the US is 5%.

53:56And that's just connected to fish. It's connected to fish intake, right. Wow. But you can't eat too much fish because of mercury, right? Yeah. I mean, it depends on the type of fish you're eating too, right? So the best types of fish to eat would be salmon, mackerel, sardines. These are high omega-3 but low mercury fish. Wow. And there's actually even studies showing that the omega-3 fatty acids protect against the mercury to some degree. You don't want to eat swordfish already. Swordfish is very high. Okay. That's a very real thing. If you can get like really high mercury levels, it can be bad.

54:26But if you're eating...like I eat salmon like three times a week, maybe four sometimes. I eat salmon a lot. But I also take my omega-3 supplements. So it came back to that question is, do you think you could get away from all the supplements? I mean, I do think that there's a few that are really important. Omega-3 and vitamin D, you can make it from the sun. it is a it gets converted into a steroid hormone very very important very important it's a steroid hormone regulating you know five percent of the human genome so without it lots of stuff's going wrong but you know there's a lot of things that regulate whether or not you can make vitamin d right where you live um your how how much melanin you have in your skin that's a natural sunscreen if you wear sunscreen or if you have a lot of protective clothing as you get older you're four times less efficient at making it.

55:18So lots of things, right? So that's where the supplement does help. So I don't, you know, I would say, no, I would, I would want, I would want those couple of supplements. Do you have a list on your site anywhere of all the supplements you take? I don't have a list on my site. I do have, I do talk about it on my, on my membership. I have a lot of Q and A's I do once a month. Gotcha. I, I I'm thinking about something like, you know, Having some kind of maybe list because other people have lists of the supplements. Everyone's got the list, right? And you're not necessarily right. Really? I want your list then.

55:50That's what I want. Yeah. But my list changes a lot. That's the thing. It's like what you took two years ago is different than this year. It is. It changes a lot. Sometimes I - You need a rolling list. You need an updatable list. What do I - Is this really - I used to take NAD precursors. If you could only take three supplements a day, and you're only allowed three, right now, what would you take consistently? I would take omega-3, vitamin D, and sulforaphane. Okay. To simplify it for people. If they're like, I can't take these 30 supplements and I don't know what, you know, which brands are good, which ones are not good.

56:26But I would definitely make sure I'm getting my magnesium for my food because I left that one out. So magnesium. I left that one. Well, if I only had three. Right, right. But then you'd be focusing on the magnesium-based foods. I would be getting my leafy greens and my nuts, like almonds are very high in magnesium, right? Because I want to make sure I'm getting, you know, meeting the RCA. Okay, top five supplements. What if you could only get five supplements a day? What would those top five be? Okay, omega-3, vitamin D, sulforaphane, magnesium, and the multivitamin. Okay, that seems more reasonable.

56:59That's the top five.

57:04People are living longer because of the advances in medicine and technology. None of us question that. But something happened in 96 that did start questioning that. By the mid 2000s, it was an established researched fact that we don't live longer anymore, that the trend of people living longer has actually reversed and that we have a pandemic of deaths of despair, where people are dying from preventable lifestyle diseases and the age group most being affected are between 24 and 65. So people at the beginning of their career and the prime of their career and through that that age group are dropping down dead like flies.

57:40And it's considered death of despair by preventable lifestyle diseases. So we have to look at the bone. Lifestyle disease means that there's something in our body that's weaker. Why? Lifestyle, which is mind-driven. How am I eating, drinking, sleeping? But more than that is what's my mind behind all of that? How am I actually managing the day-to-day moments? How am I managing the patterns, the traumas, the established toxic habits? What am I doing about that stuff? And that's when we ignore all of that because this current trend of science is saying, oh, those don't matter. What matters is the symptoms.

58:15Let's just look for the symptoms. Checklist, diagnose, label. When you label someone, you chop up to 10 years more of their life. You know, it's like it's adding on. They've shown studies of people with a mental health diagnosis have chopped up to 20 years of their lifespan. people on psychotropic drugs because of all the complications and the changes in the brain and the body chopping up to 25 years of their life i mean this is serious so here we have this already existing then the pandemic hits now another years they say that there's an additional year being chopped off people's lives but there's such a contradiction because they're saying hey there's this adverse circumstance grief of loss of people uncertainty medical and you know not knowing if you're going to live or die and how long is this isolation going to go on and economic impact and whatever, the whole lot.

59:01That's trauma. And they say that when they say, but this is the way to treat it. Let's label it. Let's diagnose this. Let's medicate it. So here we've come into COVID with a problem, with that stupid philosophy that's created such a lot of problems. And scientifically, this has all been researched and shown. And now we've got the pandemic and now they want to carry on that system that didn't work to this, which is going to make it even worse. So we've got to shift our narrative completely and we've got to stop saying that mental illness is on the rise and that there's one in four people on antidepressants who are depressed.

59:34100 % of people are depressed and anxious and concerned about this COVID pandemic. 100 % of people in the world at some point in their life have and will be anxious and depressed and in grief and sadness and terror and despair and one of the others. A large percentage of the population, and I'm not sure the exact percentage because no one's really done this kind of research, but estimates, it's probably 30, 40 % of people will have extreme trauma from abuse, war trauma, that kind of stuff where they'll go down the continuum to sort of the minus 9, 10, 8, 9, 10. If you look at a continuum of 0 to 10, 0 to minus 10, and have things like psychotic breaks and hearing voices and extreme states of distress, mental distress, which are still not diseases.

1:00:20They are simply in that traumatic situation you're having a traumatic response. Think of someone who's a war vet. I just interviewed a Navy SEAL the other day who was trained snipers. And, I mean, the things that he had to do and that his teams had to do, you know, they come back and try. We all know the problem of trying to reconcile back into civilian life after you've gone through. Very challenging. I mean, you know, this is what they're experiencing all day long, stuff that's completely against survival, completely against our human nature. And now instead of them being allowed to process this trauma, they're coming back and being told that they're diseased.

1:00:52And he would tell me that what they do with a lot of – we don't hear this sort of thing, but he told me this. They will inject things like risperidol, which is an antipsychotic, into the spines of war vets because they're a bit psychotic. And they're psychotic for a reason. It's their coping. How do you deal with this? Of course you're going to be angry. You're going to be frustrated. You're not going to be able to love like you did. You have to be able to embrace process and be conceptualized. Giving them a drug is not going to make it – not going to help it. In fact, it constrains the brain.

1:01:19It restricts the brain. You can't – there's no chemical cure for that. That's just going to add fuel to the fire because your mind's got to work through the brain. So now you put chemicals in and now that's not going to facilitate change. We have to do something. So it's like a narrative. Do you feel like there – I mean is there such a thing as a chemical imbalance in some people? you know when they say oh I have a depression it's a disease or bipolar or I have this mental health disease or I have a chemical imbalance I was treated with this don't try to say I don't because this is who I am is that do some people have that or is that that's a result of go ahead the narrative of I have a chemical imbalance and my depression is from chemical imbalance is a narrative that is the only explanation that people are being given they're not given an alternative reaction, I mean, an alternative narrative.

1:02:13So the most important thing is that anyone listening to this podcast, I want to validate your depression, your anxiety, your grief, your despair, your PTSD, whatever label you've been given. I want you to, I want to validate that that doesn't need to be validated with a disease label. You're not diseased. You're not a broken brain. You aren't, your brain isn't defective. You are going through something. So So you aren't something. You aren't that. You are going through something. You're experiencing something. You're experiencing something. And you're experiencing and you've coped in the only way that you could cope in that moment.

1:02:44So it created this adverse response because it was an adverse situation and you were just trying to cope. So what we have to do is go through a process of embracing and processing and reconceptualizing. So the important thing here is to recognize that chemical imbalance isn't the cause of your despair. The cause of your despair is what you've gone through and what you're going through. and not knowing how to manage it and how to deal with those thoughts that are driving you crazy and those flashbacks and the trauma of the flashbacks and going back into those situations of the rape or the abuse or the war trauma.

1:03:18It will drive a person crazy. And that's not crazy in the sense of illness. It's crazy in the sense of your mind is like this erratic tidal wave around you and it's going through your brain and you've got these and your immune system and everything screaming out to you and saying, hey, let's fix this. So a disease label invalidates it. And for a moment, it might be nice to know, okay, well, there's a label to how I feel because it kind of feels like we've got a bit of control. So initially, that gives you comfort. But don't see yourself as that. It's better to say, I'm experiencing post-traumatic stress issues because of what I've been through versus I am PTSD or I have the sickness of PTSD.

1:03:59It's better to say I'm experiencing symptoms of bipolar, these intense swings because of my whole story, than saying I have bipolar, I have a chemical imbalance. I mean, just researchers coming out the other day showed that we've got to stop saying this. The top psychiatrists that lead this field will tell you we've got to stop saying this, that there's no ways that serotonin imbalance, you can't even measure that. There's no genes or serotonin imbalance causing it. It's what you've experienced that's the cause. And then that moves through your brain and your body. So obviously your brain and your body respond.

1:04:34So we will see changes in the brain and the body. We will see neurochemical chaos, not necessarily serotonin imbalance. That's just one. Sometimes it's dopamine. And if dopamine is down, serotonin is off and then anandamide is off. And then, I mean, I can give you a list of big chemical terms, and that's going to change every function in the structure of your brain and your DNA and your telomeres. And 1 ,400 neurophysiological responses are off. So, you know, that's the response, though. And that doesn't mean that you have this thing hidden inside of you, this scary thing that's controlling you.

1:05:06And that invalidates. If someone comes back from war or someone's had a sexual trauma, to tell them that the depression or anxiety they're feeling is an illness is an insult to what they've gone through. But if I say to you, gosh, that's terrible. Tell me about it. I want to hear your story. I want to support you. Your depression and anxiety that you're feeling is a signal that there's stuff going on. There's an origin story. There's a source. So can I listen? Can I help? Can I support you in trying to recognize the signals and go through the process to find the origin story and then to reconceptualize it?

1:05:44And that takes time. It's not a 15-minute appointment where I can give you a label. That takes time. that's not also it's also not the conditioning kind of treatments that are in place that some of them work if they use in the right place but to try and to try and put a veteran who's gone through something back into the situation to try and condition them you can't condition you have to reconstruct so it's kind of like an algebraic equation x is is the situation y is how you should want you want to function for mental peace so you've got x plus y and so here we are in our x situation where we are the sort of human experiencing life.

1:06:21We're supposed to be at Y and you put the two together. And what the current treatment says is that, okay, now we're going to create Z. We're just going to ignore X and Y. We're going to create a new thing. And that new thing is you diseased. But that doesn't work. It's actually X plus Y equals XY. X is what you're going through. Y is where you want to find mental peace. And you want to put the two together to live together so that you can change how the past plays out into your future. Oh, man, this is powerful. Gosh. I want to go back to what you said when you were experiencing this traumatic event in the family you had recently where you were wearing a glucose monitor.

1:06:59And you mentioned that there was a process. You realized, like, the monitor went through the roof, heart palpitations, stress. You could feel your physical body changing into this stress response, this protection, tightness, whatever it was. Yeah. Fear, anxiety, all these things you were experiencing in the moment. What was the process that you broke down to bring it back to more normal levels for yourself of feeling more peace, groundedness, calm? Okay. So it's the process of the neurocycle. Excellent question. It's the process of the neurocycle, which is in the second half of the book. So the neurocycle is five – This is the five steps, right?

1:07:38Yeah. This is the five steps. This is what I initially developed for people with traumatic brain injury. It was my first time that I developed it and developed my theory. and then from there I refined it to all the different types of situations I worked with and then it's been refined over the years. This is the most updated research. So a good scientist should keep learning and changing and improving, which is what I've tried to do. So in this book is the updated version of the neurocycle. The neurocycle is how you get your mind, which is always working, under control. If in a state of acute trauma like I was in in that moment, acute trauma creates a red brain.

1:08:11I showed you that picture of a red brain. That red brain means that I have a tidal wave in my brain going on or that there is the left and the right brain will be out of harmony. I'll have a drop of blood and oxygen to the front of my brain. I'm going to have things like the delta. We've heard of things like delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma. All those waves are supposed to flow like waves in the sea. And if you think of the sea, you've got the big swells, which is delta, slightly smaller swells, which is theta. Then they build, which is beta, the crest, which is high beta, and the gamma, which is the ripple on the beach.

1:08:40And so we want that through the brain in this nice kind of even way. That's kind of the Y state, X plus Y. X is what happens to us. Y is that state. So X happens and then that Y state gets thrown off. So in that moment, that's what happened to me. So what we want to do is because mind works through brain and body and mind is experiencing this trauma, which is a mess, our brain and body just do what the mind's doing. So then there's a mess in our brain and our body. But if I have that kind of chaos, I can't think straight. I'm not going to have any wisdom. I'm going to fall apart. And in this situation, I would have.

1:09:15And I have in the past, but now I've learned how to deal with this. And I talk about that this neuro cycle can improve how you manage anxiety and depression by 81%. That's a massive claim. And I've shown it scientifically. Okay, so what I did was to try and get myself back under control. Now, in that state, you don't know what to do in a tremendously acute traumatic state. But I knew from my science and from my knowledge, so I'm proactive. so I could go into two zones. So I went into two modes. The one mode was the mental mess that I was in, which is the pilot because I'm driving. I'm in this time.

1:09:48Imagine yourself being in a helicopter that's like a time capsule and you're flying over this forest and the forest is your mind with all these trees. And this acute trauma has just grown because it's instant. So here's this terrible. And your helicopter's drawn to this because you are in shock and terror and fear and deep panic and anxiety. That is all the smoke signals. So my pilot's going like this. The co-pilot is also me, but it's my wisdom because inside of each of us is our survival. And that's our instinct. You know when you give someone great advice and you just think, oh, wow, where did that come from?

1:10:23You get that. That depth is like we know what we know. We know how much we can handle. We will say, I know this, that kind of thing. That's the co-pilot, this wisdom. So what we want to do in those states is to get ourselves into the co-pilot. Remember the co-pilot and the pilot and you use the you language. So here you're flying this plane all over and the co-pilot saying, okay, let's calm down. Let's land it at that tree. So you land the plane. You land this time capsule, whatever. And you get out, but you're with the co-pilot, so you're safe. So you've created a distance. I'm explaining in detail.

1:10:53And obviously you train, and it's all in the book. And I've got an app that explains it too. But this is the mindset that I have trained myself to come into. So I can go into an acute trauma in that mind. I'm still crying. I'm still freaking out. But I'm freaking out in this zone where I now know because I know that I need wisdom. I need to be able to tap into that. And I cannot get through this chaos, this chaotic brain and body and mind unless I've calmed it down. So I have to get through this because I'm stuck in that black tree and I'm stuck in this chaotic brain. Would that be considered like fight or flight whether it's someone cutting you off in front of you on the street in the car or someone yelling at you or someone, whatever.

1:11:33whatever, an event happening, which is causing you to react in fight or flight, whether it's a massive T trauma or little T trauma, right? Exactly. Exactly. Or an acute trauma, which is the blind signing stuff, the stuff you don't expect that just hits us out the blue. Yes, absolutely. So you're going into a level of fight or flight. So everything physiologically, 1400 neurophysiological responses are activated to help you focus, but they can't work for you unless you do what I'm telling you to do, which is to shift your perception. So this is the how too because as soon as you shift your perception in an instant because i told you within seconds i brought the glucose monitor down and i mean i didn't even expect it to work that fast i was amazed and as it cycled through the 12 hours of the of the trauma i was able to manage it more and more so i mean it really and this is not the first time i mean i've done this my whole life but it was just so interesting seeing it in real time sure um and seeing the reaction okay so so step one is to get the co-pilot state of mind to to land the plane that's the preparation you haven't even got to step one.

1:12:30So there's preparation. Okay. So land the plane first. Yeah. So that's it. So recognize that you remember there's a co-pilot, which is your wise mind, you the crazy pilot going all over the place, land the plane. Let the co-pilot tell you, okay, land the plane. And you land the plane where you need to, which is at the issue. And what drew you into land the plane to find the issue was your emotional. So this is step one. You're going to gather awareness and gather means you controlling it. You're not sitting under the apple tree and all the apples are hitting you on the head, you are standing back and you're picking the apple.

1:13:01So there's control. There's a sense of autonomy, a sense of agency. So in the midst of chaos, you can create agency mentally because your mind's driving it. So you stand back and you say, okay, I picked that apple. So that's my emotional warning signals, terror, despair, utterly traumatized, like whatever they are. You pick those apples, you put them in your baskets, you're gathering. Then you gather awareness. So this is gathering kind of your, this is how I'm feeling. This is what's happened this is what's like this is the event yes this is gathering it's almost yes it is but you're gathering in very four little distinct packages because the more organized you are the more the less chaos we're being very systematic so what are those four what are those four things so you gather awareness of your emotional warning signals so the despair anxiety whatever panic attack then you gather awareness of your physical bodily response so here's your co-pilot saying okay How are you feeling?

1:13:54Gather that apple. Gather that apple. What is your physical? Fluttering in the heart, panic attack, tension, gut-wrenching, adrenaline, whatever flights and fright, freeze mode you're in. Then your behaviors. What are you saying? What are you doing? How are you responding? Yeah, action. Yeah, what are you saying? What are you doing? What is actually happening? And I'm grabbing this. I'm grabbing that. Get this. Get that. So what is that? And is it working? Just doing this changes how you do things. It's amazing. You immediately go into this different mode. Fourth one is perspective. What's your perspective?

1:14:27This is doomed. This is terrible. This sucks. This is end. Or, okay, this is bad, but. You know, what's your, so gather, you gather. Then as soon as you've got those, you then go into reflect. So it's very systematic. And then as you've gathered and done all this preparation thing, you've got the two sides of the brain. We've got coherence again. You've got blood flow back to the brain. You've got oxygen back to the front of the brain. when you've got low oxygen and low blood flow at the front of the brain which happens in a in a trauma in an acute situation in those sudden things it drops then you are impulsive you're going to make bad decisions you're going to react incorrectly you're going to create incoherence your alpha wave in the brain drops and becomes more active on the right side and that's on the right side which is not great because that means that we now are not going to have insight so by doing what I've just said, you change all of that.

1:15:17You bring back coherence, you increase alpha. And it may not be excellent yet, but you've started the process. Then as you move forward through the five steps, and I put all this brain stuff in the book and what happens. So I'm just giving you the overview. So then you start now reflecting. Okay, what have I got in my basket? So number two, reflect. Reflect is an incredibly beautiful word, as is gather awareness. Gathering awareness, I just want to point out in the earlier on, I said that we mustn't be frightened of despair and anxiety and trauma and, I mean, and the anxiety, depression, those scary, don't be scared of them because they are messengers.

1:15:50They're helpful messengers that are telling you something. And if you respond to them in that way, you then control them. But if you respond to them in fear, they control you. Ooh, yeah. Yeah, and then you're not going to move forward. You're going to get very stuck and then stuck in rumination and the patterns will just get worse. So get the control. Even though you can be crying, screaming, swearing, I don't care what you're doing, but just get the control. You're at the tree, you're doing the stuff. So gather, reflect is, when you think of light going through a prism, it reflects all the colors of the rainbow.

1:16:19So there's depth. There's that one thing means a lot. And so reflect is this process of being a detective. Okay, well, why am I having that reaction? Why am I having, now when it's something in the moment, we pretty much know why. I mean, I knew why I was, so I didn't have to do too much reflection, but I had to, the reflection in terms of why, because I knew the cause. But the difference was I needed to reflect to say, okay, if I react like this, this is going to happen. So it was questioning, what are you doing with that emotion? What are you doing with that behavior? Is that behavior helping?

1:16:50So the reflect in that situation would be different to a reflect for someone who is having a complete and utter imposter syndrome attack. And it's a pattern and they keep doing it. So they're now working sequentially through the process. So they're going to have to start finding why. What does it track back to? What level? What sort of self-esteem issues are? What is the origin story of it? So the reflect in that case would be ask, answer, discuss, why do I feel this? Why, why, why? So it's a different – but reflect is to just get meaning, but in a very comprehensive way because there's all these patterns of meaning.

1:17:26In that acute trauma, it's quick. I'm doing the five steps quick. If I'm working on a pattern over time, I'm going to spend longer. Third step is you write. And the writing step is obviously I was in the midst of a trauma. I couldn't write, so I visualized. So the quick stuff you can just visualize. Or if you can write, write. Writing, I recommend if you write, write, write in the form of a metacog. I teach you how in the book. And I have a video of a neurocycle app that goes with this. What's a metacog? A metacog is a pattern form of writing that stimulates. It looks like a tree. You start in the middle and you work on branches and you put words and you don't write whole sentences.

1:17:59You basically just pour information and you literally let it just come out in this pattern format. But one of the key things is to group. As a thought, as something comes up, you put it on one area. and as something else comes up, you put it wherever. So you have these clusters of information and every word's on a line and every line goes out of the previous line. And that format is unbelievable. It just drags the two sides of the brain together, digs deep, and you start getting insight into what you didn't even know was there. And then the fourth step is to then go and sort out that chaos that you've just written down.

1:18:31So the fourth step is to, okay, I've gathered awareness, I've reflected, I'm writing, what does this mean? What's the mental autopsy? What's the pattern, the activators, the antidotes? How can I reconceptualize this beautiful word, reconceptualize? And then you end off the cycle with a little action. And that action, if it's in the moment, like in that five seconds or whatever, it's, okay, I'm going to actually take a deep breath and I'm going to act like this or I'm going to say that or I'm going to do this. So it's a little action that anchors you back in a state where you can function in the next moment, in that acute trauma or in that imposter moment and imposter syndrome moment.

1:19:05And you've now got to go into a business meeting and you're feeling like you can't because you're in the imposter syndrome fraud sort of setup. So doing it in the quick moment by moment, you're going to have a simple quick action. In the big stuff where you're working out the pattern, each day you do your work for a limited amount of time. And I say do the work because it's not a quick fix. If you're looking for a quick fix, nothing related to greatness is a quick fix or mind.

1:19:33I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. and if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you wanna make it easier, you wanna make it flow, you wanna feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is gonna help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to the next episode on the School of Greatness.

1:20:14I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward.

1:20:51And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.