Gary Brecka on Brave New World (Preview)

0:03Hi, you're listening to The Standard Podcast, and today we're doing something a little different. We're sharing a preview from our sister podcast, Brave New World, which has just released a new episode in its latest series. For episode four, host Evgeny Lebedev is joined by human biologist, longevity science monolith and founder of The Ultimate Human, Gary Brecker. Together, they explore why so many people feel stuck at a six out of ten, what Gary believes to be the cause of fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep, soreness, low mood, and why poor exercise recovery is often driven by nutrient deficiencies.

0:41So here's your special preview. To hear the full episode, just search Brave New World Evening Standard on your podcast app. You know, I truly believe that about 60 % of the population, maybe 70 % of the population, is walking around at a six, six out of 10. And we've just accepted this. You know, I don't sleep very well. I wake up sore and achy in the morning. like I had a workout the night before when I haven't. You know, soles of my feet and ankles are sore and tender when I get out of bed. I have afternoon energy slumps. I retain water. I have a poor response to exercise. All of these things that we just learn to live with and cope with are the consequences of nutrient deficiencies.

1:27Welcome back to Brave New World, the standards podcast where we explore the cutting edge of science, medicine, and the future of humankind. I'm your host, Evgeny Lebedev, and in this series, we're venturing into the realms of neuroscience, longevity, consciousness, and the extraordinary breakthroughs reshaping the human experience. Today's guest is Gary Brecker, human biologist, biohacker, the founder of The Ultimate Human, A platform blending genetics, biomarkers, breathwork and lifestyle interventions to help people unlock peak performance, slow aging and live more vibrant lives. From high profile athletes and entrepreneurs to everyday people seeking better health, Gary has built a reputation as both Mythbuster and Provocateur in the longevity space.

2:19Mr. Gary Brecker, I'm super excited to have you on Brave New World. Welcome. I'm really excited to be here. And we actually got a break in the weather for London. I know, I know. London looks great. By the end of the podcast, it'll be rainy and cold and overcast. Probably. But let's enjoy it while we have it. We were just talking briefly before we started recording about how your movement is growing and how exciting it all is that people are really starting to understand what it is, the message you're trying to deliver. Will you just tell our listeners a bit about that? Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, by way of background, I'm a human biologist.

2:57My undergraduate degrees are in biology. My postgraduate degrees are in human biology. But for 22 years, I was a mortality expert for large life insurance, which meant that if we got 10 years of medical records on you and 10 years of demographic data, we could tell the insurance company how long you had to live to the month. And it's funny because I get a lot of flack for that, but it's some of the most accurate science in the world. When you have a database with 371 million lives and you know the day, the date, the time, the location, and the cause of death, you can triangulate that back into the record and you can look for the patterns and big data that were leading to extended mortality or to early mortality.

3:43And the fascinating thing is that the vast majority of people are not living longer, healthier, happier, more fulfilling lives because of what we called in the research community, we called it modifiable risk factors. And a modifiable risk factor are things like dietary and lifestyle changes that could add a dramatic extension to your life, not just your lifespan, but your health span. And so about 11 years ago, I abruptly resigned from that industry because I didn't want to spend the rest of my life predicting death. And decided I wanted to spend the rest of my life teaching people how to live healthier, happier, longer, more fulfilling lives.

4:25What was it that made you change? It's interesting. I rarely tell this story, but it was a very specific case. You know, we had access to, you know, if you were applying for a large life insurance policy, and I worked in a jumbo life area, which was$10 million usually and above. You know, we could see everything about your life. We could see your trust accounts. We could see your divorce decrees. We could see your bank accounts, brokerage accounts. We could see all of your medical records. But I was not allowed to have any contact with the patient or any contact with the treating physician. even if I saw life-threatening drug interactions, I couldn't pick up the phone and warn the patient.

5:02I couldn't pick up the phone and call the doctor. And I really felt like I was sitting behind a thick glass wall, just sort of watching blind people walk into traffic. That's the best summation that I could give. And I just sat at my desk one day and said, what am I doing? You know, why am I spending this time predicting death when I have so much information on how to extend life? And so I left with my wife, Sage, started a functional medicine clinic. And I'm not a doctor. I'm not a physician. I'm not licensed to practice medicine. So we found a physician, and we started a really small clinic.

5:42And it was a bankrupt vitamin shop. We located in this little strip mall, and, you know, the business just exploded. It became one of the largest functional medicine clinics in the world. We recently exited that, and I began a messaging platform, a media platform called The Ultimate Human, to just get the information out. You know, I felt like, and I still feel like, the information doesn't belong to me. You know, it really belongs to humanity. I'm just sort of blessed enough to have it flow through me. and we started a messaging platform and it's become one of the largest media platforms in the world for wellness and longevity.

6:21And you really can see it growing? Oh my gosh, I mean, in such a parabolic way, you know, two years ago we would get two or three million views a month across all of our platforms. I think this past month we got close to 209 million views. Amazing. So the content's just being consumed because people are just thirsty for information. They want to understand why they feel the way that they feel. So many people are walking around and they have brain fog or weight gain or water retention or poor focus and concentration or they have no libido or a very poor response to exercise. And they think that it's a consequence of aging and it's not.

7:01It's a consequence of missing raw material. It's fascinating how we believe this in plant physiology. We seem to not believe it in human physiology. If you had a leaf routing in any one of these trees out here, and you called a true arborist, like a true botanist, out to look at this tree, 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, and by raw material, I mean simple things, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, you get the expression of disease.

7:41And there's so many fallacies in modern medicine that we've just accepted from our authorities, like, you know, that chemicals and synthetics and pharmaceuticals are the answers to nutrient deficiencies in human beings. And, you know, nothing could be further from the truth. You know, if I was to actually blow up a chart of your cellular biology right now, you'd see this really complicated maze of massive amount of transactions going on inside of 300 billion cells in your body every day. And if you really investigated that chart, the vast majority of your listeners would recognize everything on that chart.

8:20They would be simple minerals, vitamins, amino acids. And as you start to pull those out of that chart, as you start to deplete the body of those nutrients, you start to get the expression of disease you know people's sleep patterns get interrupted they wake up more tired than they went to bed they'll lay down to go to sleep at night and as their environment quiets their mind will wake up so they'll lay in bed body tired but mind awake well i'd love to run through the different aspects that uh people can improve in their lives but um it's quite a journey you've had and i just say well when you were telling me this the story of your journey i was I'm curious, does that database or does that insurance company ever apply to science?

9:06That's a really, really good question. And the answer, sadly, is no. I used to say all the time, I still do, if that database could see the light of day, it would permanently change the face of humanity. It would upend modern medicine in a way that would be catastrophic. because we've developed so many fallacies in modern medicine that have just become mainstream thought. For example, that what goes into your body and my body and everybody listening to this podcast's body is treated exactly the same way and nothing could be further from the truth. We've developed these summaries of things like genetically inherited disease.

9:44So there's people listening to this podcast right now that have high blood pressure. They've been diagnosed with hypertension or type 2 diabetes or hypothyroid or any number of other conditions. And they've been told that we don't know the source or the origin of why you have this condition. But when we look at your family history, your mom's sister had it. Oh, and your father's brother had it. So you have familial hypertension or familial type 2 diabetes or you have genetically inherited hypothyroid. And none of that is true. If you actually were told that you have high blood pressure, for example, because your father or your uncle had it, and you just took that one step further and looked your doctor in the face and said, okay, well, what gene did I inherit from my ancestor that caused this condition to exist?

10:35Their face would go blank because that gene does not exist, which means that that disease does not exist. And it's a really hard thing for people to grasp, but they go, well, I do have high blood pressure. And the vast majority of these conditions, autoimmune, for example, Crohn's disease, Hashimoto's, chagrins, multiple sclerosis, they are idiopathic. They're of unknown origin. And yet, even though we don't know the origin, we still medicate perfectly healthy organs for crimes they're not committing. So many people are walking around on a blood pressure medication, for example, and they're taking blood pressure medication because they have high blood pressure, but they've been told they inherited this condition, which is patently false.

11:19You know, the human genome, with very few exceptions, is specifically designed to not pass on disease. I mean, most of us would not be here right now if the genome was really good at carrying and translating disease. It's not. It's actually very good at stopping the translation of disease. But there are some genes that... There are some genes. That's Baraka gene, for example, is a legitimate predisposition to breast cancer. Most of the genetically inherited diseases are extraordinarily rare. The vast majority of them are predispositions to conditions. And so the question is, what predisposes me?

11:55What does this gene do that predisposes me to a chronic illness? And the answer to that question in the vast majority of cases is it exposes you to a nutrient deficiency. I'll give you a perfect example. To hear the full episode, search for Brave New World Evening Standard in your podcast app. For all the latest news, visit standard.co.uk.