Ep.108 The Biohacking Expert: "This is The Secret To A Long & Healthy Life"

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1:17Caleb Arntz-Lentz is on a mission to live for as long as possible, as healthy as possible, and she has dedicated her entire life to this. Now, she personally has a very specific schedule to do exactly that. She even has a clinic that specializes in longevity medicine. now I spend a lot of time consuming wellness media consuming longevity media actually especially over the past year or so I've been incredibly interested in the space and kind of what we can do to optimize ourselves and our health and the like how good we feel when we wake up every morning I have to say though I do think I don't know maybe if it's the British in me but I do think part of this I was quite skeptical about especially the lengths that people do go to to make sure that they could live as long and as healthily as possible.

2:03But what I really wanted to do is I wanted to create an episode that was both an introduction to biohacking and longevity science and media in terms of, you know, what people are talking about, how people are putting actionable things into their daily lives to make sure that they are as healthy as possible and that they are operating to the kind of best of their ability and the best of their health. And actually in this episode what I will say is I think some of the most valuable stuff was the most simple and I just wanted to create an episode that was both an introduction to the topic but also something that allowed people who were of different interests and different levels interested in something like biohacking and longevity to be able to actually take things away from this without necessarily feeling like you need to be glued to an IV drip for three hours a day or whatever it might be that we've kind of seen and feels very inaccessible and often also has like a significant layer of privilege over it as well.

2:59I actually found this incredibly interesting and the information I learned from this that was truly truly actionable was a lot more than I expected. I'm really grateful to Kayla for having such an open conversation with me about this especially as someone who is coming into the space with that little bit of skepticism and I found this a really great conversation to be able to intro to the topic. Obviously the point of this podcast is to work out what success looks like to so many different types of people and within the biohacking in longevity space success really looks like just being as healthy as possible and when I looked throughout the space and I looked throughout the kind of types of media that I've been consuming over the past few months I realized that literally every single voice that I've heard and seen at the top of this space is male like the space is entirely male dominated and when we are talking about the way our bodies work and the way we optimize our own health it is obviously of utmost importance to make sure that we have the female side of that as well.

3:57So what I really wanted to do was to make sure knowing the majority of our listeners are women for this podcast was to make sure that this wasn't just longevity as a whole but was also longevity with the female body in mind. Before we get into the podcast if you could just go and rate this on whichever podcast app you are listening to this on it makes a huge difference to the podcast and the types of incredible conversations we're able to have the types of guests we're able to get on so no it's probably something you don't think about but if you could just go rate it now or follow it it makes a huge difference thank you so much thank you so much for joining me thank you so much for having me I'm very excited about this conversation I feel like we could not leave LA without having an episode on biohacking and as someone who is like I'm going to be asking some very embarrassing questions.

4:48I feel like I just don't know enough. And I'm very interested to find out more, especially from you, who's obviously someone who's very renowned in the space. So firstly, I ask everyone who comes on this podcast, whether you feel like you are currently more working hard or hardly working. I love that question. Because one of my big goals this year was to work smarter, not harder. Right. So and I've definitely moved towards that direction, you know, building out a team, I think, you know, but I own a longevity medicine clinic. So, So, you know, putting people in the right spots so that I can really focus on what I'm most passionate about and the biggest essentially goals that I have, but in a much smarter way.

5:28Which I think is a great goal as a whole. I feel like I've especially when I lean into things more and I have some really big goals, I often end up spinning the wheels. Like I often just end up like throwing too much at the wall and trying to make it stick when really focus and consideration and being very careful about what your next step is. Like you can still go in with a lot of like vigor, but it's more about like, you know, being able to not just throw everything at the wall all at once, which is something I need to get better at. No, I love that. And I'm also I'm also in a very different place in my life.

6:02You know, I have essentially worked a ton over the course of the last like 15 years. I recently got married and you know we want to start thank you we want to start a family soon so it's really about just you know prioritization and being the most productive I can be during the times that I allocate towards you know deep work. No absolutely and I'm a huge believer in that and before we go into full-on biohacking the who's the what's the when's the where's the how's I would love to get a little bit of a sense of your career to date and if you could give us a kind of whistle-stop tour of your trajectory, how you got to where you are now, the different key inflection points?

6:43Yeah, absolutely. So I did not grow up as a healthy kid. I think a lot of people have a perception that I just was maybe raised in a super healthy home and continued that. And that was just simply not the case. You know, I grew up on a very standard American diet. And so when I went to college, I started studying nutrition. And I just made some simple upgrades, as I call them. so changed the way I was eating, swapped, of course, like any processed foods for whole foods. And it was then that I had an epiphany, like, okay, if I can feel so much better just by changing my diet, what else can I do to make myself feel better?

7:20So really went down the nutrition route, studied from some amazing, was reading all the Mark Hyman books at the time, and just compounding on what I knew about nutrition. Later, I got very interested in the brain. So I found an incredible doctor. His name is Dr. Daniel Amen. And he really revolutionized psychiatry by actually looking at the brain. So psychiatry is one of the only areas of medicine that you don't actually image the organ that you're diagnosing, right? So if you have an issue with your heart, you'll get imaging. But in psychiatry, usually it's a standardized test. And then there's a diagnosis made or a plan of care based on that.

7:58So he started doing spec scans, which actually measures the activity and the blood flow in the brain to really be more specific in understanding what's going wrong here. So that changed my perspective on everything because at the end of the day, I knew if I wanted to be the most optimal version of myself in every way, I had to upgrade my brain. And that, I think of the brain as both hardware and software. So we have the hardware, and those are the habits that we'll talk about soon, like how do you sleep and eat and move and improve blood flow to the brain? And then we have the software and that's how we think, right?

8:30And for many years, we had an idea that we couldn't actually build new neurons, create new neurons, or change the way that our brain functions. And now we know that we certainly can with neuroplasticity. So we got super interested in brain health. I started my own concierge brain health, basically a virtual clinic. So I would help people upgrade their cognition, focus, clarity, and the hardware of their brain with nutrition. Moving on from that, I started a longevity medicine clinic. So we do a lot of precision medicine there. We're really looking for the root cause, right? In Western medicine, certainly here, you're looking for a Band-Aid approach.

9:08And we know that everything that we're experiencing, whether it's brain fogs or headaches or, you know, GI issues, that's a symptom of an underlying cause. So the clinic has been absolutely amazing because it really combines two things I love the most, both education and learning in the longevity space and getting to truly improve people's lives. So at the clinic, we have everything from, of course, you know, doctors and nurse practitioners in functional medicine and integrative medicine. We also have a hyperbaric chamber. We have an ozone sauna. We do, you know, Eboo, which is really high dose ozone.

9:44That's certainly biohack that we can talk about. We do medical grade IVs and tons and tons of testing because labs are so important to know where you're at. So essentially my entire life, I have been an entrepreneur and one of the driving forces has been how can I, well, what started as how can I be more productive? How can I get more hours into work? Because I always had big ambitions for my life and I just wanted to make sure that I was optimizing myself in every way so I could give more to my work, to people that I loved, and really improve the quality of my life. I would love to know, as someone who has dedicated their life to making sure that they are the healthiest and kind of most optimized version of themselves, what does your daily routine look like?

10:31I will say you don't have to do all of this, but I wake up naturally at around 6.30 a.m. And the first thing I have is a glass of filtered water with some electrolytes, really just to hydrate and start my day off on a good foot. As soon as the sun comes up, which is around 7 a.m. here in LA, I go out to get my morning sun. So I spend between 10 and 25 minutes just letting the sun into my eyes. It really helps to optimize my circadian rhythm and tell my brain that it's time to start the day. After that, I go on a walk. So I do my first 20 minute walk of the day, which is a slight warm up for my workout, which I'm doing about four days a week.

11:10So then I'll spend about 30 to 40 minutes in my strength training workout. I love it because I have everything kind of at my home now. So we're in LA, I work out, get some sun outdoors in nature. So I'm really doing multiple things at once. From there, I do a bit of cold therapy. I'm doing about 11 minutes per week of cold therapy. And so I'm currently just doing it in a cold shower. I have a cold tub coming soon, but I recently moved. So do my cold therapy. And then I finished my shower and I have a red light panel right outside of my shower. So I do about 10 minutes of red light in the morning.

11:44So red light is known to boost your mitochondrial health. It can even help with things like a skin health, so boosting collagen and elastin. So I do my red light therapy. And then I do my breath work, meditation, prayer practice. So I call that setting the day, setting my mindset before the day sets it for me. So I really go into the day with a very empowered mindset. And again, it can be meditation, it can be prayer, it can be breath work, It can be a combination of those. Then I block my days in about 90-minute cycles. So we know that performance is at peak in about 90-minute sessions and usually between hours zero and eight to start the day.

12:22So I block all of my heavy work. I do my measurements. Actually, before that, I do my measurements. So I do my blood pressure every day, my lung health, and my body composition. Start my work. I have breakfast around about 9.30 a.m. So that's a very organic protein forward. So I usually do, I actually have been loving doing this new like protein, probiotic rich coconut mixture. So it has healthy fats, it has collagen protein, some coconut yogurt, some antioxidants in the form of blackberries, blueberries, raspberries. And then I'll have about two eggs with that. So really high quality sense of protein.

13:01I'm very fortunate to have some amazing tech at my home. So a sauna, a PEMF mat, and a balancer. So usually about three or four, I do a balancer pro session. So that's lymphatic drainage. And it takes about 60 to 70 minutes, depending on if I'm doing the top and bottom. But lymphatic drainage is amazing for detox. So we have balancer pro PEMF. I do that about 10 to 12 minutes per day. It's sending these healing ions. And it's essentially grounding, the concept of grounding on steroids. So I do PEMF and then I start my evening wind down routine. So I have my dinner at about 5.30. I used to have it earlier, but my husband, you know, I'm building around his schedule now as well.

13:42So we have it about 5.30. We have dinner and then I start my evening wind down routine. So a little bit more breath work. I take some of my wind down routine stacks of some L-theanine and some magnesium. I switch all the lights in the house to red light and just begin to wind down. So relaxing activity. At this point, it's usually like just spending time with my husband, connecting with him and relaxing. And then about an hour prior to bed, so we're at about 8.30 here, I have all red lights on, very relaxed state. I do another breathwork practice just to really prepare my body for deep sleep. I switch the air conditioning on or open the windows so it's about 65 degrees.

14:23And I am in bed every night by 9.30. And I'd be really interested to hear as part of this where your kind of phone hijink comes into this. Like, or do you as part of that evening wind down? Is your phone in a completely different room? Is it out of the way? What happens if something happens with your business kind of and throws off the routine as a whole? Yeah. So all of my walks are phone free. My first 45 minutes of the day is phone free. And my evening is also phone free. and all meals are phone free because we know that it's not really just what you're eating. It's how you're digesting and assimilating it.

14:59So you need to take, I usually take a few deep, slow breaths prior to eating to really improve digestion. But also you can't be having emails ping you while eating and expect to digest your food really well. So those are all phone free times. And yes, I do, you know, own and run a business. And for me, you know, it's really been just putting the right people in place. I have an incredible manager now that only will contact me if absolutely necessary. So I have my manager and a few other people on essentially like the prioritized contact. So if they call a few times, it will come through. But for the most part, everything can wait for about half an hour increments at least.

15:34Amazing. I'd love to know before we move into this kind of intro to biohacking, I'd love to know what the most common things that people come into the clinic with issues on. Like, is there something that comes up again and again? Well, across the spectrum in my clinic and in standard medicine, fatigue is always a huge one. People feel as if they have low energy levels and, of course, want more energy. So fatigue is a major one. Stress management is really at the root of many issues. So we see a lot of that as well, overtaxing the nervous system. And I would also say gut issues. So people experiencing different GI symptoms, that's very common as well.

16:17And would you say that there is a few things that have kind of come up over the past few years that didn't used to be such big issues? I'm thinking about the things that are related to ultra-processed foods. Also, even on the other side, you know, things like how much stress we encounter from social media and this constant like always on go, go, go culture. Yeah, well, we know that health outcomes right now are in a really scary place. I mean, a very large percentage of the population has a chronic disease. I've certainly seen a big increase in conditions like autoimmune. You know, Hashimoto's, various autoimmune conditions have really just skyrocketed.

16:57And we know that the rates of, you know, obesity are skyrocketing. We know that the rates of cancer are skyrocketing. So it's a time that I think people absolutely have to take control of their own health because currently the US at least has the highest input in terms of resources, the highest medical costs, and we're not getting the outcomes that we should be getting based on those costs. No, that's interesting. So for someone who's listening to this and is interested in things like longevity, essentially cracking their health, getting closer and closer to the best version of themselves in terms of how they feel every day but also how well they operate as a kind of human and how they feel could you give us a little bit of an intro to like like what is biohacking like what does it mean what does it encompass I think definitely for someone like myself who has been very into wellness as a whole and how I make sure that I'm always getting the most from my body and making sure that my body is where it needs to be and operating well.

18:04I wouldn't say that I know a lot at all about biohacking as a term, as a science, as whatever it might be. Could you just give us a little bit of that intro? Yeah. So biohacking is really upgrading your environment externally and internally to benefit your health. And that's it? I mean, that's a short definition. We'll definitely go into a lot more, but it's really, in my opinion, it's taking control of your health. And it's almost like, I don't want to use the word self-experimentation in the wrong way because we can base this off data. But this is a very unique, custom to you, bio-individual approach because what works for me might not be the best for you.

18:45So it's essentially taking your health into your own hands, upgrading your environment, both internally and externally to benefit your health because the goal is to not only improve longevity, but we want to really focus on health span and then we have lifespan. So health span is the number of healthy years that you have in your life. And currently there's a large discrepancy between how long you live and how long you're very healthy. And so lifespan is of course the number of years, health span is the number of healthy years. And we're really wanting to close that gap and of course improve longevity and lifespan, which is the number of years that we live.

19:22So if someone's starting to kind of go into this space and whether they call it biohacking, whether they call it longevity, whether they call it just wellness for them, what would you say are the first, the kind of starting points to getting into this space, getting the benefit from this space in terms of resource, in terms of things that you should be looking at? Yeah. I think when people think of the term biohacking, it's very tech forward, right? So it's like sensors, it's like monitors, which certainly can be a part of that. And it's super ingrained in what I do in my, I've actually released a protocol in all my labs publicly, which is really fun.

20:03But you really can just, and you should start with the basic. These are things that are pretty much free or very low cost. So things like focusing on your sleep. I mean, we live in a world that we are just constantly being stimulated, right, by at night TV shows or phones, emails, things of that nature, you have to prioritize sleep. That's so incredibly important. So implementing a wind down routine, for example, or a pre-bed routine. So there's a few things that I would always recommend, and that is not eating super late because we know that if you eat a large meal, your body is going to be focusing on digesting that food instead of getting into the deeper stages of sleep.

20:41So when we sleep, you could have an aura ring like I do or you could not. You can also just self-report. Do you feel good when you wake up in the morning? Do you have energy? But certainly not eating too close to bed is very important. So you want to stop eating about three to four hours prior to going to bed to allow your body to have time to digest. You also want to not be stimulated by blue light. So we know when we experience blue light and come into contact with blue light, it reduces melatonin, which helps us fall asleep. So we want to maybe switch on red lights. There's really simple if you google a red light phone trick that will turn your phone completely red but you want to minimize blue light that's another way to really help get to bed earlier and have deeper sleep and in general you want to start winding down around 8 or 9 p.m i mean some people stay up way into the night and unfortunately we want to get to bed before 10 to really get a ton of release of healing hormones so that's another tip is try to get into bed by 10 10 p.m also we want to keep the room cool.

21:42We know that when we sleep, our bodies actually drop by about one degree. And so I keep my room at about 65 degrees Fahrenheit. That also increases sleep. And we can go into sleep more, but that's certainly a foundation because when you sleep poorly, we know that your hunger hormone ghrelin is increased the next day. So it's going to make it more difficult to stick with your nutrition plan. We also know that creativity drops, focus drops, and overall ambition also drops. So we want to really prioritize sleep the night before because it's going to set us up for a really successful day the next day.

22:16So things like sleep, very basic, but really important in health optimization and biohacking. The next thing I would say is nutrition. And we can go into the components of a brain healthy diet, but nutrition is so polarizing at this point. You know, there's vegan, there's carnivore, and really it comes down to some basic pillars. do not eat processed food and ultra processed food, which unfortunately here in the US is a very large portion of the American diet. So we wanna eat whole foods. And the simplest way to think about it is when you go into the grocery store, you wanna shop in the perimeter of the store because that's where the fresh foods are gonna be that are single ingredients.

22:55So I don't eat anything. If there's a package and a large nutrition label, I don't eat anything with multiple ingredients. I just focus on single ingredients like an avocado or salmon. Those are just one ingredient. So not processed at all. We want to really focus on prioritizing non-processed foods, whole foods, organic if you can, only because currently the foods are often sprayed with pesticides that we know are carcinogenic. So I really try to reduce our toxic burden through organic and regenerative farming, super important. So we have sleep, nutrition, movement. I mean, without a doubt, moving your body is an amazing biohack.

23:33That can be as simple as walking. So we're currently in the Hollywood Hills. So I love that because I get some zone two cardio and steps. So you want to aim for about 10 ,000 steps per day. And a simple way to think of it is the average American gets about 3 ,500 steps. I'll have to look up the data in the UK. But about 3 ,500 steps per day. That is certainly not enough. Moving your body increases blood flow to the brain. It releases endorphins so you feel better. And you get that low level movement. So aim for 10 ,000. You can always just increase by about 1 ,000 per day. And you can get about 1 ,000 steps in in 10 minutes.

24:10So I love to have the math and like the science behind how do you develop your walking protocol. So you can essentially gauge where you're at now, where you need to be, and then break it down based on the fact that you can walk about 1 ,000 steps in 10 minutes. So movement and then exercise. You know, strength training is very important. we want to add more muscle because as we age, something called sarcopenia can happen, which is muscle wasting and muscle loss. So I always encourage you to put on muscle as early as you can because it's going to get more difficult as you age, right? So not only having your walking low-level movement routines, but also incorporating some strength training, some HIIT exercises for the cardiovascular system.

24:50And all of these things so far are essentially free. Same thing with sunlight. I mean, you know, light, our ancestors, we rose with the sun, we slept with the sunset, and we're just not getting that. Most of the time, we're spending our lives in a sedentary way, so we're not moving often. We're staying inside. We're exposed to artificial light, and getting sunlight in nature is known to be incredibly healing. So in the morning, when you rise, you can get sunlight into the eyes for, depending on the UV index and and essentially the amount of sun you can see, between 10 and 20 minutes. And that's going to tell your brain, it's going to signal to your brain that it's time to wake up.

25:29So therefore, you'll have more energy, and it will also anchor what is called the circadian rhythm. So our circadian rhythm is our sleep-wake cycle, and it will tell you, okay, it's morning, time to wake up, and then you'll get tired at the appropriate time later in the day because your circadian rhythm is synced. So those are a few simple ways to start. And maybe I made it a bit more complicated than need be. But we have sleep, we have nutrition, we have sunlight, and we have movement. And that's an amazing way to start optimizing your health. Wow I think that was an incredible overview I'm incredibly impressed with how not complicated and actually very concise you made that as a whole that's such a great introduction and I also it really strikes me that biohacking as a term I think and you might disagree with this but I think to some extent feels like it over complicates what is actually great pillars of health whilst being more accessible it is also it's still a lot of things to think about I'd love to know what you'd say to someone who hears all of those different things and says okay well I'm I'm really busy I'm a mom or I'm a business owner or I work you know I'm all of these things I work a lot I'm trying to make sure I'm seeing my friends as well I'm trying to be sociable I'm trying to live a good life what would you say to someone who feels like they are too busy to be ticking off all of these boxes to make sure that they are kind of you know doing right by their body I think first you have to change the perspective around this, right?

27:02So health fuels everything in your life. You know, there's a quote, it's one well man has a thousand wishes, a sick man only has one, right? So we have to think of health as the foundation of all of that. Because if you're healthier and if you feel better and if you're optimal, then you're going to be more productive at work. You can pour more into your family and your children. So instead of thinking about it as something you have to do. I love to think about it as something I get to do. I mean, realistically, you and I are so blessed that we can go push our bodies and move and eat well. I mean, it's amazing.

27:37And so I think changing the perspective is number one. And number two is really incorporate habits. So make it small at first. So you can always commit to one minute of meditation, right? Maybe you're not gonna commit to 30 minutes of meditation right off the bat, but you can definitely commit to one. You can definitely commit to three minutes of intentional walking. So we talked about the 3 ,500 steps. That's unintentional walking. That's just moving about. But you can definitely commit to, you know, three to 10 minutes of intentional walking. So it's really about making it manageable because all the studies also show oftentimes people will get really energized.

28:13Okay, I've learned about biohacking. I'm going to change everything. Well, unfortunately, based on the literature, that doesn't really work. Of course, it can work for some people. but really think about what you want to begin incorporating and then create an actionable but also doable plan for yourself. So it could be, you know, as much as, you know, 10 minutes of walking per day or, you know, one day of intentional exercise and then you stack habits on top of that and you continue building your routine and eventually it'll just become second nature. And the other thing is, is once you start really focusing on health, like, you know, you start exercising and changing your diet, it's so energizing because you feel so much better, right?

28:50So you want more of that. Exercise releases dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine is the motivation molecule. Serotonin is the happiness molecule. Releases endorphins, dulls pain, improves mood. So it becomes really enjoyable. But your perspective around the activity is also equally as important.

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30:15You'll get support from people who care about your success, like your enrollment specialist who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu. Right. So if someone's listening to this and converse to kind of what I've said as someone who hasn't known a lot about biohacking, but absolutely has partaken in all of these different things, what about someone who listens to this and they're like, oh, that's actually completely opposite to how I'm living my life.

30:59Where would you recommend that they start? Sleep. Because the night before will give you the energy. Everyone's had poor nights of sleep. Many people have frequent poor nights of sleep. So when you wake up super tired, you're not even going to have necessarily the ambition or the drive to get up and do your exercise routine, go outside and walk. So prioritizing sleep and having that energy, that deep, restful night sleep is going to really set you up for success the next day. So I always say start with sleep because it's going to give you an amazing foundation the next day to really prioritize your health.

31:33I've heard a lot recently about the fact that women need more sleep as well than men and how a lot of the data obviously originally was based on the male body and extrapolated downwards to the size and weight of a female body rather than the kind of hormone cycle. And we know that actually getting less sleep can hugely disrupt that for a woman. Do you have any thoughts on that and how much sleep that we should be getting as a woman? Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, women and men are very different. The data currently shows that women need about 20 more minutes of sleep per night than men. But if I'm giving what my opinion is, you know, I think it's more.

32:15Part of what I will be doing in the future is actually helping to fund female-specific human studies, which is so exciting because we'll have much better data. but um you know essentially minimum of 20 minutes and when we're on our the beginning of our menstrual cycle it can be uh upwards of 30 to 40 plus more minutes than men why do you think it's so important that there are more women talking about the female body within this space when you know if i were to search biohacking or longevity into any social media app any audio book any podcast app any whatever it might be, I'd be faced with, you know, a kind of sea of male voices.

32:58Absolutely. Well, one of the foundational points of biohacking is that it's bioindividual, right? And that it's going to work for you. So like I said, it's incredible that we have all of these male voices, but what's working for men doesn't necessarily work for women. So we know that men have very stable levels of hormones, you know, in particular testosterone throughout the month. So they don't have much of a variation or range in terms of hormones. But women, we're the opposite. We have large hormone fluctuations. And so it's not that things that apply to men don't apply to women. For example, sauna, cold therapy, working out, exercise, these all also apply to women, but in different doses and at different times.

33:41So in order to optimize myself and you to optimize yourself, we need our own set of protocols based on the female biology. No, I think that's, I mean, I think it's incredibly important. I think it's incredibly important across the entirety of medicine and something we absolutely need to deal with. From your perspective, being a woman within the space, what would you actually say your kind of ideal version of this routine that someone could create for themselves to integrate all of these different parts of biohacking and longevity into their day? I think that the biggest overarching theme is being a little more gentle than some of the male routines.

34:23And a lot of the studies also back that women can receive the same cardiovascular and reduced risk of all-cause mortality with almost with just about half of the exercise time. I'll send you a link to a study that you can post. But that's really exciting for us, right? Because we are getting a ton of benefit, but we don't necessarily have to do the 300 minutes per week of cardiovascular exercise if we can do it in about half of the time at a moderate activity. So just that one study based on with regards to exercise is incredibly helpful because that's helped shape my protocol. When I first got into the industry, I was essentially thinking more was always better.

35:01but later I learned that us as women don't necessarily have to do as much. So things like prioritizing sleep more than men, not necessarily prioritizing, but sleeping more, right? So we don't have to say, okay, six hours is enough for us as a woman because it's not. So the traditional recommendation would be, you know, around seven hours to eight hours of sleep. We're going to be definitely at seven hours, maybe up to eight or nine. So it's just making small tweaks within the standardized protocols, even some of the more advanced biohacking therapies like red light. There's some incredible research around things like improving fertility for women.

35:38So that will never be spoken about on a male-driven podcast because essentially they're not really worried about their ovaries and their fertility in that sense. So they're not looking into red light therapy protocols for fertility. Related to female health optimization, something that It's been on my mind for many years, but I'm so excited. I just created a female-only health optimization and longevity optimization community. So I made it super low cost because I do know that the health optimization industry can be extremely costly. So I obviously own my own clinic, but if I were to have paid just out of pocket for all of these different therapies and tests and items that I've done in health optimization, it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

36:21So this is a community that will accomplish a few things. A, so many people reach out to me and say, how do I make friends in the industry? And we know that social connection has a huge impact on longevity. So you get to connect with other women, support other women. It's been so exciting. It's only been open for a few days, but women are sharing their own protocols and what they're doing and they're receiving support. So that's super exciting. But also the community is a place that literally you will be most up to date on female specific longevity and health optimization studies. So I'm posting them daily, which is very exciting to me.

36:56And a portion of membership is also going to contribute to actually funding female human scientific studies. I just had a conversation with a doctor. He has a PhD in and it's all around NAD. So his main focus is NAD. NAD we know is a very popular longevity molecule. But we don't really have the data on women. Let's say, example for, is there a large difference between how much NAD optimization, how much NAD supplementation do you need to optimize female NAD levels versus male levels? Or there's some emerging research about NAD infertility. So we are literally going to start conducting these human trials with NAD being the first focus.

37:36But the community is just a place I'm super excited. It has coursework in there so you can learn A to Z basics of nutrition, longevity, longevity supplements, brain health optimization, mindset, the whole nine yards. So I'm super excited about that. Oh, congratulations. That sounds incredibly interesting and useful. I also really love that element on the extended research because I feel like until we have that research, we really, I mean, I just think it's absolutely appalling that we haven't even touched the surface on the kind of female body and what we, you know, what we know about it. And also the fact that that's not something that's widely known.

38:11Absolutely. I mean, and I honestly, I mean, it's such a driving push for me because I feel incredibly grateful to be in this position that I have the resources to get in touch with these researchers and the ability to start running these studies. No, I think that's, I mean, I think that's a very, very good point. I also want to, I want to really hone in on that point that you said in terms of the study that's just come out in terms of us needing half of the exercise time a week to be able to really get those same benefits. But I'd love to hear more about that study and kind of how we actually need to work out to unlock those benefits and how much less it is than the male body.

38:46Absolutely. So the study focused on moderate aerobic exercise. And essentially, the longevity health optimizations benefits plateaued at about 300 minutes per week. But in the study, women were actually able to achieve the same reduction in risk of all-cause mortality at about 140 minutes per week. So it's extremely exciting. Both groups had about an 18 to 20-ish percent reduction in risk of all-cause mortality, but women were able to achieve that in only 140 minutes. So without knowing that information, women might feel the pressure to have to hit that 300 minutes per week. But if we now know that we can do it in 140, that's a prime example of how female protocols differ from male protocols.

39:36No, that is incredibly interesting. And actually, when you break that down to the kind of 20 minutes per day, and just understanding that you need to obviously like, you know, some of that you might get you might get to do one hour one day or whatever it might be. But actually making sure that you're getting like, 20 minutes per day feels very achievable to me. And being able and knowing that you can unlock those further benefits is really, really interesting. And I think that a great conversation to have. I'd love to know what your, with that in mind, what your kind of ideal slash recommended workout schedule with all of this longevity, health span, lifespan in mind would be.

40:16Absolutely. So mine's changed quite a bit. I used to be in the gym, you know, six, seven days a week, but really focusing on hitting the 10 ,000 steps, you can obviously increase that. That is absolutely incredible for health. And then from there, I'm making sure I'm getting, So within those 10 ,000 steps, there's something called zone two. Zone two, you could measure it with a lactate meter, but it's essentially you can have a conversation, but it's difficult. So if you and I are on a walk, if we're walking at a very leisurely pace, it's going to be easy to conversate. No, this is picking up the speed so that you could conversate, but you're going to have difficulty.

40:52So that's zone two. You want to get about 180 minutes per week, minimum of zone two. So when I'm doing my steps per day, I'm ensuring that I'm getting at least 180 minutes of those in that zone two cardio. From there, I really focus on strength training. So strength training, I'm breaking it down to about four sessions per week. And those are only 30 to 40 minute sessions, depending on how quickly I'm moving through the exercise, which is very different than me feeling the pressure to need to work out, you know, six to seven days a week of strength training for an hour to an hour and a half in the gym.

41:26So I love the idea of making your routine fit your schedule too because the best workout is the one that you're going to do. But that's where I'm at in terms of my fitness. And I have actually all of my current protocols for fitness on the free protocol that I offer online. So it really breaks it down and I adjust it based on all of my labs. So a big part of biohacking also is understanding where you're at and where you want to go and understanding your health data. So there's a huge advent of the wearables, the Oura Ring, the glucose monitors, by getting labs and then checking where you're at to ensure that you're on pace.

42:03So let's talk about those metrics that you just touched on, because, you know, there's obviously lots of different devices that you can have. There's lots of different things that you can wear in order to be able to track, you know, all of these things that we've been talking about. what metrics would you say are the most important ones that we should be concentrating on to kind of measure the efficacy of what we're doing to improve our overall wellness so we have the at home versions things like the aura ring which is highly going to be focused on sleep which we not we've discussed at length is so incredibly important so when you look at aura ring data if you have one you want to aim for at least about an hour and a half of deep and run these are the two most restorative phases of sleep.

42:44So I think sleep is an amazing metric to track. Also, it depends on your body composition goals. But if you want to track food, I don't always encourage counting calories, but you do need to have an understanding of where you're at. And high quality calories are always prioritized to those whole foods. I use an app called Chronometer that it not only shows you your macros, which is like protein, fat, carbs, but your micronutrients are also so important for overall health optimization and specifically for women because we know nutrients like selenium, for example, that really supports thyroid health.

43:16And many women have issues with thyroid. So understanding from a nutrition standpoint where you're at, super, super helpful. There are also, you know, at-home blood glucose monitors. So we know that oftentimes if you're experiencing things like brain fog, it's due to massive glucose spikes and then drops. So we want to try to maintain stable blood sugar throughout the day. We can do that through, you know, always combining protein and healthy fats with carbs instead of just having carbs alone or processed carbs. There's also a ton of data saying that even as little as a two-minute walk post-meal is amazing for reducing blood sugar spikes.

43:53So I usually do about 10-minute walk post-meal. So even when I'm planning my walks, I usually also try to plan them around meals because I know that I'm going to get the glucose stabilization benefits. In terms of labs and biomarkers, I always recommend everyone just start out. You can start out with just a basic, you know, blood panel, metabolic panel, and understand if you have any insulin sensitivity, which is extremely common, metabolic syndrome here in the U.S., only about, you know, 6 % to 8 % of people are metabolically healthy. So reversing any insulin resistance is a huge, impactful way to improve your health.

44:32so I'm really interested from a personal point of view how we can reverse that insulin resistance I'm someone who's struggled with insulin resistant PCOS for a long long time didn't necessarily know it was that have always even when I was I used to get kind of suddenly really really low blood sugar to the point that my whole body would like convulse for the past like you know from about like 15 years ago. And only, I mean, only recently has it been tied to my PCOS. So I'd be really interested to hear about reversing insulin resistance. Yeah. I mean, so when we consume food, we release insulin and glucose.

45:12And if we're releasing too much all the time, essentially the cell won't allow it to enter any longer. And then we get what is called insulin resistance. So diet is huge here, right? So we want to really minimize, again, all the processed foods and eat a ton of whole foods. But we also want to think about how we're eating. So if we're eating, you know, refined carbs on their own, it's going to be a continual release of insulin and glucose, because that's the response the body has. So I always recommend people, of course, eat whole foods, but the order in which we eat them is also important. So eating proteins and healthy fats, like maybe, you know, if you're having a wild salmon with some avocado, and then you're going to have a carb, have that after because it's going to blunt that glucose and blood sugar response.

45:57So thinking about meals, how you're eating, when you're eating is super important in terms of helping to reduce those blood sugar spikes. Moving our body we know has an incredible impact on insulin. So that's really, really important. So the steps and the workouts are really going to help use that glucose as we need to fuel our muscles versus being sedentary and not using that glucose. So those are two really simple ways to start. And I would highly recommend everyone start with that and sleep because sleep is also a huge factor. Even one poor night of sleep can increase glucose in the body, glucose elevated levels for the whole day.

46:37So those three things are just very simple and easy ways. We talked a little bit about wearing potentially a blood sugar monitor. My friend owns the company Levels. So I've used those on many occasions because oftentimes we don't even think about or realize what's really spiking our blood sugar so high. And, you know, alcohol is another thing. I feel like the wellness industry has tried every way possible to make alcohol healthy or seemingly healthy. But at the end of the day, I am a firm believer. I mean, we know alcohol is a neurotoxin, but it's also mostly sugar. So think about having super sugary beverages mixed, you know, with alcohol in the evening.

47:16I mean, People often, I don't really drink, I'll have maybe half a glass of wine once or twice a year. But if you're doing that every weekend to excess or even every night, you're literally spiking your blood sugar right before bed and your body has to deal with that all night. So reducing alcohol, minimizing alcohol, or completely eliminating it, really starting to understand how your body works from a blood sugar perspective with maybe something like a glucose monitor. And it's definitely a financial investment. So you can wear it just for a month. you know, have your normal diet, see how your body reacts, and then start to make changes based on that.

47:51If you're seeing large blood sugar spikes with your breakfast, let's say you're having, you know, oatmeal with some dried cranberries, that's seen as being healthy, right? We see this on Instagram, and you're having maybe a juice with that and a juice with fruits. Well, that is actually all a very high sugar meal. And it's not the best way to start the day, because your morning breakfast is also going to essentially set your desires for the rest of the day in terms of food. So having instead a very high protein breakfast aiming for about 30 grams of protein with breakfast and some healthy fats is a far better way to start than, you know, with an oatmeal, oat milk latte that is going to just break down into sugar.

48:29Because I think many times foods and drinks and beverages are perceived as healthy. I call it fake healthy, but it's perceived as healthy, but it's really not going to give your actual biology the best outcome. And that's why wearing something like a blood sugar monitor can be really helpful when you're looking to improve insulin resistance because you understand what the food is doing to your body. So let's talk about alcohol. Yes. Should obviously there's going to be different views on this. I mean, I think the main view is probably that everyone knows that alcohol isn't the best for you and also decides that cutting out alcohol completely the majority of the time for a lot of people they decide not to I'd love to hear from your point of view how much if any we should be drinking alcohol the effect of it on our bodies kind of your thoughts as a whole absolutely well we've been really conditioned to associate alcohol with fun right when I've been living a very disciplined and strict life for quite some time.

49:34And I've oftentimes run across the comment, you must not be having any fun, right? Because I don't eat, there's only two restaurants in LA. Well, one of them is a grocery store. There's really only one restaurant I even go to in LA because of my health parameters, right? I know that they don't use any seed oils. It's all grass-fed and grass-finished. I've like even taken a look at their water filter. So alcohol, it's interesting because people often bring up the blue zones, right? Have you heard of the blue zones? So blue zones are areas that people live the longest. And they do have alcohol. They have a small amount of alcohol almost daily.

50:08But they do it amongst friends. So it's a very social experience. But the thing about the alcohol and the blue zones that I feel is you cannot, if you're not living the exact way the blue zones live, and so they walk and they're in nature almost all day long. They have a very strong sense of community because these are tight-knit, small communities where everyone knows each other, loves each other. and the foods for the most part are not nearly as processed as the standard American diet. So you can't really extrapolate the information about the alcohol, the fact that they do have a small amount of alcohol and say that's applicable to you.

50:42Because if your lifestyle is not completely on par with the blue zones, then it's not fair to say that you can have the same amount of alcohol as the blue zones and get the same outcome. So again, I feel like in the health and wellness industry, we've tried to find ways to make alcohol healthy. For example, the resveratrol or the antioxidants. Sure, but you'd have to drink about five gallons of wine to get the actual benefit that you could just have from taking a supplement of resveratrol. So in my opinion, little to no alcohol is best. If you do have an Oura Ring or wearable, alcohol significantly impacts your sleep in a negative way.

51:18So it can reduce your HRV, which is heart rate variability, and your readiness by about half. Have you ever measured this? Yeah, I have an Oura Ring and I wear it all the time. And what happens when you have alcohol? Yeah, significant differences. Huge difference. So a lot of people think alcohol makes them fall asleep and stay asleep or improves their sleep. So it can make you more drowsy. But then you're having essentially a blood sugar roller coaster throughout the night while you're processing the alcohol. And you realize that your deep and REM sleep, those two super important stages we talked about, are now essentially wrecked.

51:49So in general, I think changing your perception around alcohol is the first step. Because if you feel like you're going to be missing out on this incredibly fun experience or social experience by cutting out alcohol, then you're not going to be as likely to do it. So I think for me, I really just change what I deemed as fun. And optimizing my health is the most fun thing I could be doing because I wake up every morning feeling amazing. I don't have time for hangovers or interest in that. So, I mean, you know, the recommendation is like between one and I think a total of six drinks per week. That's the standard recommendation.

52:23But that's certainly not mine. I would say, you know, having one glass of wine per week could be acceptable. But it also depends on what your current health status is. So if you're dealing with chronic disease or really poor sleep in general, I would obviously recommend to just try a month without alcohol and see how you feel. I think that it's always interesting because obviously like the biggest part of health and wellness as a whole is making sure that you can stick to what you choose to do. because obviously, you know, the best optimization plan is the one that you can stick to. There's no point you going all in on something and not being able to kind of, you know, stick to that forever.

53:01I mean, we haven't even, we haven't even gone through to the extent of, let's say, super biohacking that I do. And it's things like red light therapy, measuring my grip strength, my blood pressure every day, my lung health. I literally have quantified the age of my ovaries and fertility status. I have tested thousands of biomarkers, full body MRIs to understand if they're basically it's prevention and early diagnostics. We can catch things before they actually happen. I have done like AI analysis of my arteries. So there is so much that you can go deep into. Right. We're not even touching the surface.

53:41Yes. We're not even anywhere there right now. But the answer is absolutely yes. Because the thing is, is whereas there are things that we know to, let's say, reverse our or reduce our biological age, such as plasmapheresis, which is like essentially taking your plasma out, cleaning it and putting the fresh plasma back in, the biggest, biggest contributors to overall health are the lifestyle changes that you and I have discussed. So they're easy. They are low cost. You know, it's simple, I guess, not easy, right? It's a simple concept. You do these things. It's not easy because it's not always easy to put into practice.

54:16But without a doubt, the biggest impact is going to be these things that are accessible. I would say it's certainly the middle ground. But you don't have to go into having a, you know, hour routine in the morning, hour routine in the evening, taking, you know, 30 to 50 supplements. All of that is not necessary. If you focus on the basics and really commit to them and have the discipline to see those basics through, your labs are going to improve, you're going to feel better, and you're going to have more energy to continue those habits. No, I think that's really valuable. And I'd love to know before we finish, if someone was to take one thing out of this episode to really improve their overall life, their health span, their lifespan, what would you want them to take away?

55:02I would actually love them to take away the idea that health is the foundation of greatness. So if you want a great life, if you want everything that your wildest dreams had in mind, you have to optimize your health first. So change your perspective and then take a lot of the tools and protocols that we've discussed today, put those into practice so that you can literally just feel your best and live the most optimal version of yourself. Well, I think that's very valuable. Thank you so much for joining me today. This has been incredibly insightful. And I feel like I will be getting all of my steps in tomorrow, doing everything I need to do.

55:40Thank you so much. Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

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