203. Barbara O’Neill: On Longevity, Gut Microbiome, Immune System, and Anti-Aging Basics

24:27Gary Brecka:What is it? Very good question. It needs us to be well hydrated. And that's water. and it needs us to go to bed ideally a couple of hours before midnight because that's when our batteries our body our immune system our cells revive and recharge healing accelerates twice the rate in those two hours and about one or two after midnight and that's where that's where many people are missing out and nourishment it's like asking my sons a lot of them are tradesmen builders to do an extension on my house, but I've just got the cheapest building materials. Even though they're good tradesmen, how can they build without proper building material?

25:10Same with our body. We need to give nourishment, ideally in organic foods, high fibers, great proteins, great fats, hopefully fat phobia is out of most people's minds today. Oh, I thought high fat caused cardiovascular disease. Oh, no, that's been proven wrong. But probably one of my favorite, and I do it wherever I can, is that cold dunk every morning. Really? Oh, yes. Is she really a cold plunger? Really?

25:40Gary Brecka:Your staff's behind the camera going, yeah, she really does it. She does it. In fact, Jacqueline. I call it my drug of choice. I love that hormetic stress. Jacqueline's excuse is she's holding my clothes and is taking the photos. Yeah, my staff comes up with excuses too, Malia, in the background there. But I call it my drug of choice. I actually have three cold plunges at my house. I have one on the balcony so I can do it at sunrise. I have two right off of my master bedroom. But what that does is that gives a shock to the body. and that shock goes right into the bone marrow to boost the immune system.

26:23That's what quick cold does. You see, we're warm-blooded creatures, so of course we don't like the cold. One lady said, Barbara, you say we should end every hot shower with cold and you also tell us that we're to listen to our bodies. My body says don't do it.

26:40Gary Brecka:no that's your brain that says don't do it yeah that's your feelings but your reason intellect and judgment says no this is good but i say yeah but how do you feel after it and i remember jack and i were in maryland we found a lake and it had a little jetty so i could dive in and this morning it was white with frost on the ground so i dived in swum around came out yes got my nice warm woolen clothes on so I've got instant warm and as I'm walking away I feel like I've had an injection of power now I'm sure you can identify with that because the body's reaction is whoa yeah it's like because we're warm-blooded creatures when we do that cold plunge the body says move yeah it's cold yeah so we access that cold shot right whereas remember the sad story of the titanic Most of them died because in that freezing cold water, their body just stopped.

27:43It just stopped. They put their head down and slept. It just stopped. And so the body knows that cold is potentially a killer. And so when we get that quick cold, there's this reaction. And so that's what the hydrotherapist uses is that reaction.

28:02Gary Brecka:Yeah. You know, like I say, I call it my drug of choice. I have a little saying that aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort. Because the more aggressively we pursue comfort, we're creatures of comfort. We regulate our air temperature. We regulate our lighting, temperatures in our car. So you walk into my room in the Pullman. I've actually found a way that I open this window and open that window, and it's cool. I've got fresh air coming in. I'd rather have fresh air and put my woolly jumper on. than to be in this stuffy, stifling, warm environment. So back to the immune system, because if you look at the category of autoimmune disease, where we essentially assume that somebody woke up one morning and the immune system just went haywire for no reason.

28:56And the body just started eating itself. It does make no sense to me.

28:59Gary Brecka:It makes no sense to me either. I'm glad you say that, because I don't believe we just woke up one morning and it's attacking the colon. you have Crohn's and it's attacking the lacrimal gland, you have Chagrin's and it's attacking the thyroid and now you have Hashimoto's. Now, my husband doesn't like it when I say this. He's my biggest critique and it's good if I pass him, I'll pass anyone. Yeah. I don't believe in autoimmune diseases. He said that's a very challenging statement and maybe I want it to be. I agree and I acknowledge that people have the symptoms, but we have seen people heal from all the autoimmune diseases that you might mention to me.

29:35Yeah. So how can it be an autoimmune disease?

29:38Gary Brecka:Mm-hmm. And also, this entire category of diseases is idiopathic, right? It's of unknown origin. So if we don't know the origin, how are we certain of the disease? Here's a good one. Fibromyalgia. Mm-hmm. Google that fibromyalgia. No known cause, no known cure. Mm. Yeah. What is it? Chronic fatigue syndrome. no known cause you know known cure um and i think that the same is true with the vast majority of autoimmune disease and and lately i've been fascinated with this because we know that the immune system is hyper vigilant and um it's it's actually the best it's the special forces right it is it's the uh yeah it's the it's the elite team yeah yeah it was if it was in the u.s it'd be sealed team six right so so you know what first of all the immune system has to be called to a location doesn't just show up for no reason that's right lymphocytes are the calling guys and so something called it and usually it's there because it's after something well maybe it's a heavy metal maybe it's a mold spore maybe it's a mycotoxin maybe it is a bacteria or virus some other kind of pathogen that's in an area where it shouldn't be and so the immune system properly calls it there i always use the analogy that if somebody robbed the bank down the street and ran into our vrbo or airbnb here barricaded themselves in here the police would bust down the door to get to the perpetrator and the immune system will bust down doors to go after pathogens right It goes after perpetrators.

31:16Gary Brecka:And so how do people go about strengthening the immune system? Because I think it's this sort of nebulous, we all know we have one, we don't know how to cater to it. It is. In fact, when I give my class on the immune system, I say to people, if someone asked you what your immune system was, what would you say? And I think a lot of people, they don't really know. So when I speak on it, I start with the skin. It's the front line of defense and then the gut and then into the blood where I think what most people recognize as the immune system is the white blood cells. And I agree that there's a reason.

31:58And Newton's third law of motion, we must remember, Sir Isaac Newton, that to every action there's always an equal and an opposite reaction. We must discover why. and it could be mentally, it could be emotional, it could be spiritual, it could be physical, there could be a whole lot of things and I like to see myself as a private investigator. I like investigating why these things are so. So how do I find out? I talk to the person, I get their history and if they say I had a fall, what was that fall? What was hurt? What did you do? what was that you know i want to know because there's always a reason and so if they're on

32:43Gary Brecka:this journey where they feel they have a weakened immune system i get colds all the time i get flus very often um i have a lot of congestion you know runny nose i have blocked sinuses i have the signs and symptoms that you know my immune system is doing its job but it's not doing it well right um where did they start what are what are great things for the immune system what i'd like to suggest is that the immune system's doing its job but why is it doing all that so when i look at respiratory stuffy nose tinnitus sinus uh post-nasal drip they call it coughing up mucus Why? Why? So that excess mucus has been produced for a reason and maybe it's irritated with mycotoxins, maybe it's irritated with chemicals, maybe an allergy to certain foods.

33:41And the most common allergens are dairy and the milk in the supermarket is very different to the milk coming out of Lulabelle the cow on an organic farm.

33:52Gary Brecka:Lulabelle. and lullabelle sounds like a cow's name and and people say what milk do you drink i say i'm wind i eat food okay next one is wheat and um palmada in his book he talks about the uh the hybridization of the the wheat and how it's changed the starch structure the the um the gluten and the protein structure so the body in some compromised uh individuals it reacts to that and it can react with this excess mucus uh dr william davis in his book wheat belly he gives a very good background to what they did to the wheat and this is genetically modified heavily sprayed yeah the glyphosates come in as well and also oats and then and then of course now i'm in the uk uh isn't that touching something very holy?

34:45Gary Brecka:Yeah, yeah. The oats. Well, oats are very high in lectins. And when lectins get into the blood, they increase inflammation. Now, if the gut flora is healthy, it will disarm the lectins, but there's so many unhealthy gut floras because of antibiotics, because of many medications slaughter that gut flora. And peanuts are commonly contaminated with mould. And the fifth one is refined sugar. It's like kerosene to a fire. Yeah. So if someone has excess mucus all the time, I say stop the five allergens. There's lots of alternatives today to those five common allergens. Go through the five again. So we've got dairy, wheat, oats, peanuts, refined sugar.

35:28Now it can take at least two months before you see a result because you can have a slice of bread, it'll be out of your body in 24 hours, but the effect can remain sometimes for even more than two months. So I say write a note on the calendar, fill your cupboard, don't do it until your cupboard's well stocked.

35:46Gary Brecka:Right. And you know the alternatives that you can do. But we've seen many people able to clear up all of these congestion things by just stopping that because there's a reason why there's excess mucus, there's a reason why there's excess clogging up in the sinus, there's a whole lot of reasons. So it's investigating. I think that's a great point. And when we talk about the immune system, we have to talk about the microbiome, right? Because the vast majority of our immune system is right here in our gut. Well, it is estimated that 70 % of our immune system is established by our gut flora. But what I find interesting is I think most people are familiar with probiotic foods, sauerkraut, kefir, miso, kombucha, kumchoy.

36:38Gary Brecka:Yeah, I eat a lot of kimchi. I got it in the fridge in there. So they're great at boosting your gut flora. But what I find interesting as well is what feeds the gut flora is fiber. The prebiotics. They're the prebiotics. So you can have 10 different apples and each apple will feed a different microorganism. So I suggest people have at least seven different fibers in their meal. Wow. And, of course, the fiber is coming from your plant foods. And I was in Andalusia at a homeschool camp, and I was teaching them about prebiotics and probiotics. Where's Andalusia? Northern part of southern Spain. Okay.

37:22And in the morning I said, okay, kids, how many did you have this morning?

37:27Gary Brecka:Yeah. And one little boy said, 20. And I looked at his father and his father went. Yeah. So he must have had a raspberry and a blackberry and a blueberry. Right. He must have. Good for him. And a sunflower seed and a sesame seed and a flax seed. But just to show them if they can have more variety in their fiber, they will have more variety in their microbiome. Now, as a plant-based lady, I push for legumes for protein. And then the complaint comes back, bloating. Right. So I say, are they well-soaked? Are they well-rinsed? Are they well-coaked? Yes. So I give the story of my husband. When we married 28 years ago, he said, I can have red lentils, not brown lentils.

38:15So immediately I go, aha, brown lentils. So what I did was I gave him a teaspoon. A week later, two teaspoons. A week later, three teaspoons, and now he can eat brown lentils. So what I did was I was feeding the microbiome for brown lentils, little by little by little.

38:37Gary Brecka:And allowing that flora to expand. That's right, because a lot of people I find are so absolute, can't eat this, can't eat that. Well, let's look at the way you're preparing it. Well, bring it back. One lady said even a teaspoon, I said, well, try three lentils. Right. And a week later, try four. Right. A week later, try five. And slowly rebuild that gut microbiome. So the gut microbiome is directly linked to the strength of our immune system. So any discussion about strengthening the immune system has to start in the gut. So if people are listening to this podcast and they want to go on this journey and they believe food is medicine, which I think we all do, um then adding more prebiotic fibers things like kimchi sauerkraut fermented veggies i my gut feels the best when i do that yes um i do eat grass-fed meats um and i usually eat them with fermented um vegetables i notice that when i don't eat the grass-fed or wild-caught versions of fish and I don't eat the fermented vegetables, even my gut starts to go awry.

39:52But if I stay in that zone, then it helps tremendously. Now, what you're doing, Gary, is you're listening. And that's what I find very hard to teach people to do. Listen. So I can advise that your body will tell you what you can and can't do. and a lot of people are challenged by that i say no your body can tell you what no man can tell you yeah your body can tell you what no test can tell you just listen so when we're listening to our

40:27Gary Brecka:bodies um do you recommend that that everyone migrate to a plant-based diet or do you find that there's any role for wild caught fish uh grass-fed beets pasture well the healthiest couple that attended our health retreat in Australia were organic dairy farmers, organic meat farmers. They ate all organic... How did they get your tag of the healthiest couple? My wife and I would like to apply for that. Well, they're in their late 60s and they have nothing wrong with them. And if you've ever tried water fasting, you know it can be powerful, boosting energy, lowering inflammation, and even supporting detox.

41:11Gary Brecka:But most people jump in unprepared, and within hours, they're hungry, tired, and frustrated, thinking fasting just isn't for them. That's why I created this free 3-Day Water Fasting Challenge. From October 15th through the 17th, I'll guide you through every step of the way, answer all your questions, and give you the tools, mindset, and motivation to succeed so you can finally experience the benefits of fasting without the struggle. Sign up now using the link below and join me on this transformative journey. Let's make this your easiest and most successful fast yet. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

41:47Gary Brecka:They're supposed to be on five pharmaceuticals, Barbara. They're incredible. No SSRI, no thyroid. Shame on them. There was nothing wrong with them. In fact, other guests looked at them and said, what are you doing here? And they said, yeah, you should be on the stage. They said, where else can we get such good food and such great accommodation, no chemicals in this retreat, beautiful linen sheets with feather quills, steam bath by the creek every afternoon doing cold plunges. I love it. They said, where else can we? This is the best holiday. But that said, I ate plants. I ate plants because that does very well with me.

42:29But I give you that story to acknowledge that some people, if they choose to do that and it works well, go for it. But at our retreat, we just do plants.

42:40Gary Brecka:No, I do well on plants too. I prefer meats. I'm pretty judicious about the meats that I eat. But I do notice that when I eat, I don't eat nitrites. I don't eat any pork. But I notice that when I marginally gravitate from that, my body does signal. Yes, it does. It does speak. Do you know also when your body's working well? And why would it be working well? purely because we give our body the right conditions. It's designed to heal. It will heal. It will function and be maintained when we give it the right conditions. That's what I'll be talking on tomorrow afternoon, keeping it very simple. And when your body is working well, it tells you quickly.

43:24In fact, I can tell when it's in my mouth.

43:27Gary Brecka:Yeah, the coating on your tongue kind of. Oh, it just says to me. I had a Brazil nut the other day and immediately I thought this is not good. So I just very politely remove it. Yeah. That's really good to tune. I mean, I think the one big takeaway so far is just tune in to your body. Tune into your body, start listening. And when I was in Peru last year, another woman spoke at this convention I was at. She was a young woman. She would have been 40. She said, I grew up in Peru but I went to New York, I got my degree, I was a high flyer, CEO of a big company and I got sicker and sicker and sicker because she's just eating junk.

44:09So she went back to Peru and her mother took her to a healer and the healer said, how do you feel when you eat that food? She said, I don't know. And she said that she almost felt embarrassed that she had said that she didn't know how she felt. And I think, Gary, that would be the same with many people today. How do you feel after that meal? I don't know. Listen.

44:37Gary Brecka:That's a good point. Listen, do you feel fantastic? Do you feel like you're ready to climb a mountain now or do you feel, oh? Now, you know, I want to just go back and touch on the vaccines for a moment. It's such a controversial topic, and I don't know why it's so controversial. You know, one of the things that I really like that Bobby Kennedy is trying to do in the U.S. is not to ban vaccines, but to say, shouldn't we be curious about the same level of rigorous research that we apply to other compounds? Why would we just not apply them to vaccines? forget all of the other political nonsense that goes on you know uh vaccine indemnities and no responsibility for harm and that these companies don't have fiduciaries to the patient they have fiduciaries to investors which i think is part of the reason why the whole system is lopsided pretty bad yeah um but you really think in today's day and age that an infant born today can survive and live a long, healthy, happy life without any vaccinations?

45:47They will live a long, healthy, happy life because they don't have them. And if a parent says to me, should I vaccinate? I say to them, I'm not going to tell you what to do, but I'll tell you what I would do. I would go to the pharmacist and I would get a printout of what's in the vaccines or Google Dr. Sherry Tenpenny.

46:10Gary Brecka:Sherry Tenpenny? Tenpenny. And she's an American doctor who's really stood up and blown the whistle on how dangerous the vaccines are. And she goes into great detail in what is every single vaccine and, you know, aborted cow, fetuses. Anyway, it's pretty nasty. that's beside the neurotoxins. She doesn't call it the childhood vaccination program. She calls it the childhood poisoning program. So if you really want to know what's in them, you can search her out and have a look. She's just saying what it is. And she's a medical doctor and she was confronted when she started to see children being damaged by the vaccines.

46:59But if the person's still unsure, I say, well, take a piece of paper to the person who will administer the vaccine and ask them to sign it that they will be accountable if the child has any side effect. No parent would vaccinate if they did those two things because the vaccines are not safe. They're far from safe. And when you realise that historically it was Florence Nightingale increasing hygiene, sanitation and nutrition that stopped these childhood infectious diseases. Yeah.

47:36Gary Brecka:And, you know, I have a hard time believing that we need 79 vaccines before you're 18 years old in order to just exist in the world. That's a total denial that our body can heal itself because it can. It was created to heal. It's been doing it for a long, long time, and I have faith in this body and its ability to heal. That's why when I got COVID, a double-vaxxed man brought it to our retreat. Yeah, a double-vaxxed man brought it to our retreat. I thought you were not supposed to get COVID or spread COVID. Michael got it first, and we live way out in the bush. We're an hour from the town on 450 acres.

48:27so when I got it I the first 24 hours I had a terrible migraine so I just went to bed and the next 48 hours I had a high fever I never take my temperature I know I've got fever yeah and people say what did you do I said nothing because I live in a body that can heal I laid my body on nature's operating table it's called bed I slept a lot yeah and when I got a little bit too hot, I would douse myself with water. Water puts the fire out. And I drank a lot of water and I had not a hot shower, not a cold, a teapid shower. If I was near the creek, I would have just dived in, but it was a five minute walk.

49:09And when you got a fever, you don't want to walk.

49:10Gary Brecka:You were crampy, so you didn't do that. You don't want to walk. And on the fourth day, I opened my eyes. I felt great. I had no fever. See, I love fevers because what they do is they give an incredible boost to your immune system and they also kill off harmful pathogens. See, God put fevers in the body for a purpose. Yes, I agree. That's what I say to mothers. My child's got a fever. I say, that's wonderful. Yeah, his immune system's working. And it'll be working even better after that fever because that fever reaches right into the bone marrow where our immune system is made. But just keep that baby well hydrated.

49:54Gary Brecka:And as long as they're taking in fluids, then just let them ride it out. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, I think that if we, I said this before the podcast, but if we would get back to what God gave us, less of what man makes us, just as a general rule of thumb, you know, whole food diet, mobility, you know exercise purpose connection nature you know i i have this home in miami which um uh we live in this condo in miami and it's got every biohacking device you can imagine so i don't have a watch problem or a car problem i have a biohacking problem um and it's a real problem like if there was a biohacking rehab i would probably check myself in um you know so hyperbaric chambers and red light and pmf but we also have a we have a one-bedroom log cabin in colorado off the grid um and a solar fed electricity glacier fed spring water well in septic i drink the water right out of the well um and i'll wake up there and i put on this 20 pound rucksack and i have this three and a half mile loop in the woods when i get back from that loop i feel like i took a limitless bill like i won the lottery and i say it all the time and um and i hope you dive into the coal creek after that i do i bought i since i since i don't have a cold plunge i bought a 165 cattle trough from tractor supply it's an aluminum it's an aluminum cattle trough and the water comes out of the glacier about 43 44 degrees and so i fill it with the glacier water and then i just jump right in there and i look out at the meadow but don't you think it's the most wonderful feeling when you are so hot and sweaty to dive into that cold punch.

51:45It's just incredible.

51:46Gary Brecka:And then I go, my wife hates this part, but then I go back in the house and I'm like, Captain Chatty, because I think it's all the dopamine and norepinephrine and I want to just talk to somebody. She's the only one available. So I just eat her face. You know what I say to people? I say, forget the coffee. Yeah. Oh no, you don't need any coffee. I call it my drug of choice because nothing makes me feel better for longer. I totally agree. I totally agree. And you get addicted to it because you feel so good. Yeah. Yeah. And we never, we never want to leave there. And it's, it always just reminds me that, you know, it's just back.

52:15So nice you've got that place. Yeah. Yeah.

52:17Gary Brecka:It's our, it's definitely our happy place. We spent almost three months there this summer. And sometimes when I go back to Miami, it almost seems a little surreal, you know, concrete jungle. I remember actually one time I was, I took my family on a 10 day extreme vacation to Costa Rica. So we went to Costa Rica and every day we did something else. We canyoneered, we did whitewater rafting, we did zip lining, we did all this stuff. And I literally woke up in the jungle, this place called the PCORI Lodge. Beautiful, by the way, if you ever go to Costa Rica. And, and, but I had an, an event that evening in Miami.

52:52Gary Brecka:So I took like a 4.30 a.m. shuttle to the airport. I flew to Miami. I got off. It was at a nightclub called Live Nightclub in Miami. So I woke up in the jungle and then afternoon I walked into this nightclub that was set up for this lecture. And I go, this is all bullshit. It felt so surreal. Like I wanted to go back to the jungle. And you're on another planet. Yeah. Yeah. And it just, I mean, the cars going by and the beeping and the honking and the lights and the concrete jungle. It felt so surreal. Like that felt odd. not the and it only took me 10 days um not the the jungle i'd come out of but so many people are on this healing journey if you will in this search for uh i call it the search for normalcy yeah um i think that's where most addiction begins is the search for normalcy not the search for high and so in the search for normalcy in the search for being optimally healthy we talk about the cup microbiome and the immune system what are just some practical tips that you could give to working mothers who have to wake up in the morning get a kid to school take care of their husband maybe even have a career during the day they're coming home yeah can't go out and forest bathe um you know four or five things would you say turn your bathtub into a cold plunge would you say well Well, that's where I was.

54:25So I was pregnant or breastfeeding nonstop 14 years.

54:29Gary Brecka:Clearly because of the number of grandchildren you have. Yes, yes. And I'm in a rainforest. Good factory. And I'm homeschooling my children and I've got no electricity. So how I did it was I planned my day. I planned my day. So mothers, please go to bed early. I used to breastfeed my babies to sleep and I usually stay to sleep with them. Yeah. And that allowed me to get up early. When you can access, in fact, I read in one book they're called The Hours of Goal, that early morning when it's quiet. Because just picture, I had to light the fire to cook my breakfast. Wow. But early morning, I could go to bed early because I went to bed early.

55:12A lot of mothers, when the kids go to sleep, then they do their work. No, no, no, no. You access those hours before midnight. That's great advice. The thing is an hour before midnight is worth two after.

55:23Gary Brecka:I've heard that. Yeah, yeah. And the science shows that to be correct. Okay. So you go to bed early, then you can get up early. And often you've got an hour or two there. What you do then compared to what you would do before midnight, you get twice as much done. So those early nights also keep hydrated. Go to bed with a glass of water next to your bed. I see you've got the Baja salt there with all of its minerals. A little bit of salt and a glass of water. So they're too absolutely vital. And exercise. And mothers say, but I'm busy all day. Yeah, but get outside. Get on that trampoline with the kids.

56:03Get a bike and ride the bike. Put the baby in the backpack. But movement and food is very important. So what's great for working mothers is a slow cooker.

56:15Gary Brecka:A slow cooker. You can put the millet or you can put the rice so you can put the lentils in the slow cooker overnight. And that's how the Scottish always got away with eating oats is they'd soak them all day and put them on the fuel stove overnight and that actually disarms the lectins. Ah, it does, the cooking actually. Yep. One lady told me, she said, I use a slow cooker overnight for the millet and as soon as I've washed it, I put the lentils in there for lunch. She said, my slow cooker is always going. really that's a great idea so slow cooker the bed getting to bed early i mean i've often heard sleep as being called our superpower it is the human superpower what's so important about sleep like what's going on during sleep that's well i give people god's perfect mathematical formula eight hours to work eight hours to play eight hours to sleep work play and sleep all very important Most people overdo the work bit.

57:20Not enough play. I see that you play in your whitewater raftery.

57:23Gary Brecka:Yeah. And that's very important. And the sleep. So especially the hours before midnight. There's a book called Why We Sleep by Dr. Matthew Walker. Is that the blonde one that I – yeah, yeah, I've seen him on Joe Rogan. Yeah, he's really good. He goes right into all the processes that happen in the night. There's a cleaning process. that's cleaning up any little calcified plaques on our front part of our brain and you'll find that people that have regular late nights, that's a contributing factor to Alzheimer's. I don't know anyone that wants to get that. That's enough to get us to bed early. In fact, if Margaret Thatcher had known that, I think she would have gone to bed early.

58:04Yeah. But also what's happening in the night is a processing system happens or a filing system of all the day's events. And if we don't go to bed in those early hours, then our short-range memory unit isn't totally emptied, ready for the next day's memories. So that's another process. But also our invention, our creativity, that's happening especially in the early hours of the morning. So the cleanup is happening more before midnight. are the filing before midnight and after midnight. Then it's more the processing, it's more the inventions, the dreaming and he shows and consolidation of what we've learned.

58:59And he's got incredible figures in there because I think he works in Oxford, he had the opportunity to test out on quite a few of his students. Some slept for eight hours, some slept for six, and the difference in what the eight-hour sleepers retained compared to the six-hour sleeper.

59:21Gary Brecka:Wow. And I know one podcast he gives where he gets everyone's attention is men are more virile if they have more sleep. As soon as you start talking about that, yeah, you get everyone's attention. so it's so funny because you know when you look at virality and you know sperm counts at least in the united states are going down by a percent every year and infertility is rising by the divergence of these it's very scary in fact my um a good friend of my wife's just before i walked into this podcast did a post about her finally getting pregnant and her journey was mind-numbing the IVF, the blood filters, the, you know, she flew all over the world, 200 doctors visits.

1:00:10And eventually what she found was, nah, catering to her mitochondria. She did a mitochondrial program and I actually want to delve into it.

1:00:23Gary Brecka:And this mitochondrial repair, which a lot of that was related to sleep, um this mitochondrial repair um and thanks she got pregnant i think the body knows uh when you're in this constant sympathetic state of stress oh yeah right um and we know too now that you know people say well how is stress related to disease or pathology or autoimmune well it's directly related to our immune system are you ready are you ready for the explanation this is why i'm excited for this explanation. It's absolutely so. And I'm so glad that you talked about the sympathetic compared to the parasympathetic. And one thing that really affects that is breath.

1:01:06So I love the verse in the Bible. It's Genesis 2 verse 7. It says, God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils.

1:01:15Gary Brecka:Got that? Not mouth to mouth. Breathe into his nostrils the breath of life. He became a living soul. Nose is for breathing. Mouth is for eating, drinking, speaking, singing, kissing, but nose. And nose alone is for breathing. Now, when you breathe through your nose with your abdominal muscles, you stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system and your parasympathetic nervous system is your peaceful, calming nervous system. But when you're breathing mouth, high chest that stimulates the sympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system is your fight and your flight so that that has a direct effect but also before midnight healing accelerates so lack of sleep has a direct effect not only in the functioning of our brain but also the functioning of our body the healing of our body our immune system it's all connected so in medicine today the heads usually cut off yes so you've got psychiatrist and they never talk about the body then you've got body but they never talk about the mind and another thing's cut off is the teeth oh yeah and well that that well we could spend a few hours on that one yeah you know i i have to say that um i it's not that i wasn't a believer i just was unaware of the impact of the oral microbiome and uh things like um root canals i i actually uh have a very good friend i'm actually you know doing dr dom today who's one of the great biologic dentists of our time he trained a physician named uh dr gandhi jigar gandhi jigger gandhi and uh i bit down on something one day and i cracked one of my teeth and i was like the dentist and i hate the dentist and so I text my friend, Dr.

1:03:10Gary Brecka:Gandhi, and he said, take a picture of it. So I took a picture and I sent it to him. And he said, just from this picture of my cracked tooth, he could tell I had a root canal. And he said, let me ask you something. Does your left, do you have any issues with your left anterior shoulder? That's really weird because I thought I had like a minor bicep tear and it always bothers me in the gym right there and and um and then he said do you ever get left lower lobe lung pain i go well now you're starting to freak me out because whenever i do hits cardio i get a catch right here and i always thought that it was just by diaphragm you know just like a runner's cramp and then i kid you not he said does your left toe ever go numb i go i'm getting goosebumps actually telling you this because i go okay now you have substantially freaked me out i've never told anyone my wife's always teased me because i would tap my foot on the ground or sometimes i would actually take my shoe off and itch my left toe and he said yeah that's your 19th tooth meridian it's uh you had a root canal there and you've got a cavitation probably an infection there i go how do you know all that from the picture of my tooth so i went up and saw him and you know sure enough he he did the cone beam x-ray i had a big cavitation right in there and he went in fixed it red light packed it with plate rich fibrin capped it 48 hours later to this day i have had that pain so i became an evangelist for uh the oral microbiome i went way down the rabbit hole i went and sought out dr dom met with him and um so many of these root canals you know dentistry i know i know you think you can leave dead tissue in the body you that's right that's right and no area of medicine we have i have had so many stories of people and root canals yeah so what is your advice or your thesis on the oral microbiome and dental you said we could spend a whole podcast on it but let's just spend a few minutes on it and just highlight the importance of it and what people can do to care for it well one very simple thing that you can do every day is oil pulling that's putting the coconut oil in the mouth and swishing and when it hits you got to do it 20 minutes barbara that's so long no forget it forget it i can't do it for 20 minutes Okay, good.

1:05:41I'm glad to hear that because I'm like, okay. Ten minutes is enough.

1:05:44Gary Brecka:Okay. Yeah, you're like me, but we haven't got time for something. I don't have time for this nonsense. No, so you know what I do? When I get back from running up and down hills and plunging in the creek, I'll have some water, then I'll put it in while I prepare breakfast. And you're just sort of swishing it around. I can't just sit there and swish. But what that does is it pulls waste out of the tongue. It pulls waste out of the glands under the tongue. It pulls waste out of the blood vessels under the tongue. But it also nourishes the gums, you know, and they often get forgotten. And it gives a better microbiome in the mouth.

1:06:19And then you release it out. And when you release it out, you're releasing the waste that it's all pulled out. So the oil pulling is really good. But also when you clean your teeth, use a toothpaste that doesn't have sugar, that doesn't have fluoride, and you can get some great ones now.

1:06:39Gary Brecka:Yeah, hydroxyapatite. Often xylitol because that's also a little bit anti-pathogenic. Microbial, yeah. So it's just keeping that great microbiome in your mouth. That's very important. And, of course, our teeth, they're bathed by fluid from the outside and fluid from the inside. And it's what we eat and what we drink and how we live that influences those fluids that are bathing and strengthening the teeth. You know, I've sensed that encounter with Dr. Gandhi every day. I don't do the oil pulling as often as I should. When I'm home, I do it. But I floss every night. I tongue scrape every morning.

1:07:22Gary Brecka:I've dropped the fluoride toothpaste, so I use a hydroxyapatite toothpaste. And I can see night and day difference. My teeth don't hurt. My gums aren't sensitive when I brush them anymore. So I think it all begins here, right? It does. I went, I've got a friend you might know him, Dr. Gorin. He's in Harley Street. And he saw my teeth last year and he said, oh, there's one on the side. There's just a little bit of, I don't know whether I'd call it decay, you know, in the side of the tooth. He just looked at me again. He said, oh, it hasn't changed. You know, that's an indication that my nutritional status is good.

1:08:00Gary Brecka:Yeah, because you're blocking that pathology from continuing. I'm not taking anything in that's chemical. I don't let any harmful things go into my body. But it's also exercise. It's also early nights. It's also keeping well hydrated. You're not afraid of the sun probably. No, I'm not. Yeah. I mean, we've been taught to fear the sun. I saw an interesting graph of the parabolic rise in skin cancer, superimposable with the parabolic use of sunscreen. Absolutely. Ian Wishart, he's an author that talks about that. Yeah. In fact, that was it. He even claims that sunscreens are causing basal cell carcinomas.

1:08:40Gary Brecka:Yeah, because of the inflammatory process in the surface of the skin. And because of the vitamin D deficiency. Yeah. I mean, that's arguably, I would say maybe vitamin D and maybe zinc, but probably from what I've read, the two greatest nutrient deficiencies in the human body. And when you think about when God made us, he made us with the ability to make one vitamin. And we only make vitamin D3. We don't make any other vitamins, I mean, without eating and drinking and ingesting. You know, we make it from sunlight and cholesterol. That's right. And we've also vilified cholesterol. And if only we had another few hours, we could go to cholesterol, but we haven't got time to go there.

1:09:21Gary Brecka:Well, let's touch on it really quick before we wind the podcast down. How can we do that? I use WHOOP every single day. You guys see me post my sleep scores all the time. What gets measured and tracked is what you can improve. You'll start to notice what happens when you eat too close to bedtime, if you have alcohol, what makes your sleep deeper, what prolongs your sleep, how you improve your REM sleep. You can even start to track metrics like heart rate variability, respiratory rate, and your actual pulse rate. These are all indications of how well you're recovering during sleep. I always say that people don't really have a sleep hygiene or a good sleep routine, and WHOOP will help you develop one and prove that it's working.

1:10:02Gary Brecka:Ready to unlock the best version of yourself? Try WHOOP for one month on us and start the journey towards a healthier you. Head to joinwhoop.com forward slash ultimate. That's joinwhoop.com forward slash ultimate to get started. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I think the first thing we could do is maybe dispel the myth that ldl cholesterol on its own is the marker for cardiovascular disease we found i can tell you what the big data says that there was no correlation between elevated levels of ldl cholesterol on its own and cardiovascular disease now it became a marker when you had elevated triglycerides and you had presence of lipo little a and lipo b and some some of these other things but cholesterol is a construction material oh it absolutely is and i love what dr malcolm kendrick said in his book the great cholesterol con he said for the first time normal levels of a normal vital body substance is being caused a disease so then the question is what causes heart disease you know it's exactly the same as when i cut my hand the blood clots and you damage the arterial wall, the blood clots, and it starts to clot.

1:11:19And if it keeps getting damaged, the clots keep coming. And so what's damaging it? All environmental poisons we're exposed to, the cheap seed oils. I say to people, walk straight past them, don't touch them. They get into the blood, they damage the tissues. Mycotoxins damage the tissues. Mercury damages those little endothelium cells. Now lining the endothelium is a little hairy layer called the glycocalyx, and that protects the endothelium. And when people are on high sugar, high carbohydrate diet, it actually kills or knocks off the glycocalyx. So you see there's all of that. That's what's causing heart disease.

1:12:03Gary Brecka:Yeah. And, you know, cholesterol is one of those things that gets called to the site of inflammation or damage. It doesn't just... Well, the other thing is when they have tested those plaques, they find fat in there, cholesterol-type fat. But when you realise that the membrane around every red blood cell is 50 % fat and what's the clot made out of? Platelets and dead red blood cells. So they test it and they see the fat, but it's actually the structure of the membrane around the red blood cell. i'm reading a book called the clot thickens by dr malcolm kendrick really yes the clot thickens i'm gonna read that and he oh he's so these are so red blood cells which do have a phospholipid bilayer right this makes sense to me um have a phospholipid bilayer get called to the site of injury to create a clot let's just call it that for a moment and then after the hemoglobin is extracted you have the phospholipid bilayer fat that is now creating this sticky and they're pointing to cholesterol and that brings us to nitric oxide which only is released when we nose breathe and nitric oxide is a vasodilator but nitric oxide also stimulates new endothelium cells.

1:13:25And the glycocallus, the glycocalyx, that little furry lining on the endothelium, it releases nitric oxide. So when the high sugar diet has knocked off all the glycolexus, you've actually lost your nitric oxide from there. Nitric oxide is also released in nose breathing. So everyone's all clogged up because they're on the high wheat, high sugar diet. So they're breathing with their mouth. So they're not getting nitric oxide there.

1:13:56Gary Brecka:That's one of the reasons why I'll mouth tape sometimes at night. That's a great idea. And I actually do notice my sleep scores improve. And I've noticed that you didn't die. That's a great observation, which is the key feature of a healer. So it's observation. So you notice that I was alive. Well, that's what people think. They think they're going to die if they tape their mouth up. They do. Well, you will if your nose is all congested. It's an excellent book, Breath, James Nestor. It's a fantastic read, and I love the way he quotes many other scientists, researchers, doctors who've come to the same conclusion.

1:14:38He presents his case, which I really like, and he shows that the more we nose breathe, the more the little canals open up. so the more we mouth breathe the more they close i mean that's kind of true with every physiologic

1:14:53Gary Brecka:process in the body the body has a way of ignoring things that we don't use if you put a cast on your ankle it's atrophies you don't use it you'll lose it yeah with the brain yeah very true so final thing i want to touch on um is the brain and you know there's i i think some of the greatest fear especially in the older population is Alzheimer's, dementia, neuro neurodegenerative decline, neurocognitive decline, whatever you want to call that. Um, obviously living a lifestyle of whole foods, movement, sunlight, grounding, breathwork, those things are, they really are medicine. Um, but if somebody particularly wants to care for their brain, they're noticing that family history of cognitive decline or neurodegenerative disorders um they're noticing the brain fog sort of start to creep in it's getting increasingly more disruptive to their daily life what if anything can they do specifically for the brain well i always want to know the cause and i'm a bible student there's no mention of alzheimer in the bible the bible spans thousands of years.

1:16:06In fact, you look at 150 years ago, it was quite rare. So we've got to look at what's happening, what has happened. And a lot of the time it is damage, damage to the cells. What causes the damage? Mercury is a big one. We're going to get it out of the teeth, out of the fish and also out of the flu vaccine. I heard that Robert Kennedy Jr. recently took it out of the flu vaccine. That was good news. You know, it's just little by little by little. And I mentioned earlier lack of sleep um margaret thatcher boasted she only needed five hours sleep a night ronald reagan boasted he only needed five hours sleep a night and i'm sure it wasn't 5 p.m to 10 p.m 1 a.m to 6 a.m probably yes and they they both ended last 20 years of their life with severe dementia i'm not saying it is just lack of sleep that's one of the factors and in every case it

1:16:58Gary Brecka:can be different factors so we've got to get to bed early hydration we saw one lady come with dementia she wouldn't even look at you she's just looking through you yeah we found out she hadn't wasn't drinking water hadn't been open to bowels for six days oh my god we got the bowels moving we got her hydrated within 48 hours there was no sign of dementia so can you see there's different There's water. There's good salts, which is the best way to hydrate. You actually turned me on today. I saw a lecture you did where you put Celtic salt right on the tongue. I think that's my most famous lecture.

1:17:34Gary Brecka:Is it? Yeah, yeah. That was a good one. And you know what? And I went deep down the rabbit hole in salt, and you're right. We've been lied to about salt too. And you know what? Everyone loved about that, by the way. It's easy to do. Right. Anyone can do that. No, that bag of salt will cost you, I don't know,$10, and it'll probably last you a year. It'll last you a long time. I've got a store that I travel with. I'll give you that one before you leave. It's great salt. There's also, so can you see in every case, it can be slightly different. But there are some fundamentals. There is, and I love the saying I read in an old book, many might be well if only they thought so.

1:18:14Gary Brecka:That's a great one. It's so true. So if someone thinks they're going to get dementia, they probably will. The Bible says that too. So a man thinketh he shall become. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. And a lady said to me one day, I can't sleep, I can't sleep, I can't sleep. I said, don't say that anymore. She said, why not? I said, because every cell in your body is listening. And it says, looks like we can't sleep. Yeah. And so when you lay down to sleep, you go, this is something I don't do well. Yeah. Yeah. And they all say, oh, yeah, we're listening. So what I say is, just say, I'm going to try.

1:18:49I'm going to get there. Like my daughter Emma, she said, Mom, I'm going to grow up in a minute. She was five.

1:18:54Gary Brecka:Yeah. It took her another 10 years. It's actually your words have an effect on your mind. You know, it reminds me of a funny story just popped in my mind. Years ago, I had a friend named Mark Goodman. He had this home on an island, Yuseppa Island, and all the kids and I used to go out there and we were participating in this fishing tournament. one day so all the kids had those little you know onesie you the line you unwrap and we had chicken down and we're catching fish uh on the pier it's all lined with families and kids and this little girl she was probably 10 years old she falls into the water and she starts thrashing around and she starts screaming and uh all the parents from the other uh you know pier all jump and they're all making their way over to her.

1:19:43Gary Brecka:And my partner is right next to her. And I know he's not doing anything. And he just yells at her. He goes, stand up. And she stood up. And it was like less than waste deep water because I was coming down the pier. And he was just so calm. He let her thrash for a second. And he said, stand up. And then she just stood up. And it was like literally below her waist. So by the time all the parents who are now soaking wet in all their clothes, you know, and all the moms, the hats flying off, had made their way over to her she was just standing up so sometimes the solution's right in front of us you know it often very much is so really we we're gonna tick the boxes yeah we're gonna tick the boxes now keep keep that body moving keep that colon yeah working have the and if you're well hydrated and you're eating lots of plants it it will and relax laugh more Yeah, I agree.

1:20:38Do you know children laugh 125 times a day? Probably adults, maybe 10. You know, my daughter-in-law told me this, that her little grandson, Sonny, the guy that stood on the rusty nail, he called her in one night and said, Mom, she's put him to bed. He said, What is it? He said, I found a new laugh. She said, What is it? And he went, Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. that's so good you know we we should laugh more i agree remember the bruise lose home social

1:21:09Gary Brecka:yeah sense of community and purpose barbara you're amazing um where can my audience find you if they want to know more about you i'm about to make an official statement official barbara o 'neill dot barbara official barbara this is official do you have a book I have a couple of books. I was going to say, you really need a book and I'm going to read them all. I've got a book on mycotoxins. You do? I'm so happy to hear you talk about mycotoxins. Oh, mold and mycotoxins. Because that's an area many people don't know about. Because of the ignorance, I've written a book on it and it's called Self-Yield by Design.

1:21:45Gary Brecka:Do you talk about detoxing from mold and mycotoxins? The true role of microorganisms in disease. And that was my first book. I think I wrote that in about 2016. now my most recent book that was published last year is called sustain me and sustain me is an acronym for the basic laws of health sustain me is a handbook on natural therapies i have a chapter on hydrotherapy a chapter on pulses however i started the head i look at ears are they eyes eyes ears uh respiratory i go into the stomach bones so it's like a handbook on natural remedies and my husband has written a book called the assassination of barbara o 'neill wow that will be a good one now as you can see i have not been assassinated yes i would say we should change the title maybe to the unsuccessful assassination i said to michael that's a bit strong he said no it's good yeah no it'll get it'll get attention and it's basically a book of uh why i was banned and what the Australian government did to me.

1:22:49Gary Brecka:Fantastic. Well, we're going to go in for just a few minutes into my VIP group. I have a VIP community. These are the real community that I serve. I spend a lot of time with them. We do one-on-ones and live coaching, and I'm trying to build an army of like-minded people so folks can become a VIP by just going to my website, ultimatehuman.com forward slash VIP, because they're the only ones that I let know who's coming on the podcast and then they they get to ask some questions so they got a couple of questions for you but i wind down all of my podcasts by asking my guests the same question um there's no right or wrong answer to this question what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human what it means to me to be an ultimate human is i i want to be able to help others get the most out of their life and I'm a very shy quiet lady I was living in a rainforest with all my children never dreaming what God had planned for me but I am married to a man who said to me I hate health lectures but yours makes sense and he really has been the one that has pushed me forward and pushed me forward and the most wonderful thing for me is I'm walking along the street and some like last night waiting for the uber and a young man he looked like he was 25 he said are you this lady here he had me on the i said i am he said you saved my life ah he said oh i can't believe that i'm a he said thank you thank you that's why i do it that's why i do it and i believe that we are here for each other i agree absolutely for each other And if I can make a difference in only one person's life.

1:24:41Gary Brecka:Well, you've made a difference in a lot. And that happens to me too. And it is chicken soup for the soul when it does. It is. Some people say, you must be sick of this. I said, never. Well, guys, it's VIP time. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Look forward to seeing you guys all in the VIP community. Until next time, that's just it. you