Gary Brecka: Biohacking Secrets That Will Add Years to Your Life | Health and Wellness | YAPClassic

20:43Hala Taha:Yeah, fam, you just realized your business needs to hire somebody yesterday. How do you find great candidates fast, easy? Use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. Indeed Sponsored Jobs help you stand out and hire fast. With Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for relevant candidates so you reach the people you actually want faster. And it works. According to Indeed data, Sponsored Jobs posted directly on Indeed get 45 % more applications than non-sponsored jobs. What I love about Indeed is knowing that my job post is getting the visibility that it requires.

21:21Hala Taha:Plus, with Indeed-sponsored jobs, there's no monthly subscriptions, no long-term contracts, and you only pay for results. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash profiting. Just go to Indeed.com slash profiting right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash profiting. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Hey, App Fam, question for you. When somebody Googles you right now, are you proud of what they see?

21:59Hala Taha:Or would you say, ignore that, it's under construction? For two years, I've been there. At one point, our site didn't reflect the level we were operating at at all. It felt so outdated, and every small update required way too much back and forth. That's why I love Framer. Framer lets you design and publish a premium professional website without writing a single line of code. It's fast and you can launch pages in minutes. You're in control, no waiting on developers, and the designs look modern, clean, and polished on any device. Serious founders know your website is your first impression. So let's upgrade it together.

22:34Hala Taha:Learn how you can get more out of your.com from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com slash profiting for 30 % off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com slash profiting for 30 % off. Framer.com slash profiting. Rules and restrictions apply.

22:55Hala Taha:Young and Profiters, let me ask you something. Have you ever missed an opportunity from a potential client and felt that drop in your stomach? I know I have far too many times. When my business first started scaling, calls were going to one person, texts were going to another, and opportunities kept slipping through the cracks. That's why we switched to Quo, spelled Q-U-O. Quo gives your team one shared business number, like a shared inbox. Every call and text is in one place. Everyone sees the history. No more pointing fingers than I thought you handled it going on. Plus, the AI logs calls, summarizes them, and flags next steps so nothing ever gets missed.

23:32Hala Taha:Growing teams everywhere are upgrading to systems like this because once you scale, your old setup just doesn't work anymore. If you're serious about building a real company, this is a foundational move. Make this a year where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try Quo, Q-U-O, for free, plus get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash profiting. Again, that's Quo.com slash profiting. Quo. No missed calls, no missed customers. This is so crazy. Like, hearing this information to me is almost shocking. It's overwhelming because you think about everything's working against us.

24:10Hala Taha:It's like your health insurance is working against you. The pharmaceutical companies are working against you. The life insurance companies are working against you. The doctors, I think, have good intentions. Yes. But they don't know enough. You know, they don't understand the full picture. And they're getting taught something. And then for, I've got a family full of doctors. They become very cocky, right? So they feel like, I went to school. Don't tell me what I, like, don't tell me about, you know, natural ways to heal yourself or whatever. Because medicine is good, right? They believe medicine is good because they have to, because otherwise it makes what they do, you know, evil, right?

24:48Hala Taha:And doctors are interested in having good intentions.

24:51Gary Brecka:Don't get me wrong. If I hit a windshield at 25 miles an hour, I mean, I want a surgeon. I want painkillers. I'm going to the ER. You know, I'm going to anti-modern medicine. But when you realize, you know, there was a 2016 Harvard University study. It was repeated again by Johns Hopkins in 2019. we know now that modern medicine, medical error, is the third leading cause of death. So modern medicine kills more people than morbid obesity and diabetes combined. And when you start to think that only cardiovascular disease and cancer kill more people than modern medicine, it's astounding. But when you really process the fact that the industry designed to prevent death is the third leading cause of death, that is just mind-blowing.

25:33Gary Brecka:If we translated that to any other industry, it would be laughable, right? I mean, if you sold home security systems and you were the third leading cause of home invasion, you'd probably be out of business, right? Or if you were a roofer and you were the third leading cause of roof collapse, probably wouldn't sell a lot of roofs. But we accept this in modern medicine, but we are excellent at crisis management, but we are terrible at bio-optimization. And, you know, there are 32 ,000 named diseases, you know, in the PDR, in the physician's death reference, 32 ,000. Nearly every single one of these can be traced back to nutrient deficiencies in the human body.

26:12Gary Brecka:Yeah. You know, sometimes when I speak on stage, I will make a bold statement and say, I will take any disease, any ailment that you or a loved one is suffering from, ADD, ADHD, OCD, manic depression, drug and alcohol addiction, poor sleep. And I will tell you exactly what raw material is missing from that person's body so that you can replace it and have that condition eviscerate.

26:41Hala Taha:Yeah, it's so incredible. And so you always use this analogy. Our bodies are beautiful machines. We need the right raw materials. You mentioned that D3 is a big one. What are some other raw materials that are commonly missing from people that cause disease?

26:56Gary Brecka:This is the most important concept. If anybody takes anything away from this podcast, this is the takeaway. The most important concept to understanding really good human optimization is understanding that there's not a single compound known to mankind, not one. There's no vitamin, there's no mineral, there's no amino acid, there's no protein, carbohydrate, no nutrient of any kind that enters the human body and is used in the format that we put it in. Without exception, everything that we put into our bodies gets converted by the body into the usable form. This process is called methylation. So it's like we pull crude oil out of the ground, right?

27:38Gary Brecka:But you cannot put crude oil into your gas tank because the car doesn't understand that fuel source. Once crude oil is refined into gasoline, now the car can run because it understands that fuel source. Human beings are no different. So we put all kinds of compounds into our body. Let's take the number one nutrient in the human diet, folic acid, for example. So folic acid, for the record, is an entirely man-made chemical, right? It is a synthetic chemical. We make it in a laboratory. It does not occur anywhere naturally on the surface of the earth. You cannot find folic acid anywhere in nature.

28:15Gary Brecka:But we've been thought to believe that folic acid is a necessary nutrient. It's the most prevalent nutrient in the human diet, by the way. It's in all white flour, all white rice, all white bread, all white pasta. It's in all grains of any kind. And we don't call these foods sprayed with folic acid. We call them fortified or enriched. Let's take just folic acid for a moment. Well, we know that when folic acid enters the body, it's useless until the body converts it into something called methylfolate. Now the body can use it. Well, what if, like 44 % of the population, you have a gene mutation called MTHFR?

28:59Gary Brecka:I don't want to cuss on your podcast, but it's affectionately called the motherfucker gene. It actually stands for methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase, but everybody calls it the motherfucker gene because it's MTHFR. And 44 % of the population, including 44 % of your listeners, have this gene mutation. Well, if you have this gene mutation, you cannot convert the most prevalent nutrient in the human diet into the form your body can use. So what does this mean? This means that the level of folic acid skyrockets and the level of necessary methylfolate declines. Now you have a deficiency. What are some of the expressions of that deficiency?

29:36Gary Brecka:Well, depending on how severe this gene mutation is, nearly everyone that has this gene mutation reports some form of anxiety. So if you either suffer from anxiety or you know somebody that's suffering from anxiety, if you ask them these three questions, you can prove very quickly that it is not coming from a cluster of symptoms in their outside environment. It is coming from their physiology. And the first question is, you know, have you had this on and off throughout your lifetime? Most people will say yes. The second question is, can you point to the specific trigger that causes it? Most people that suffer from chronic anxiety will tell you, no, I cannot point to the specific trigger that causes it.

30:17Gary Brecka:I can be driving home from work on an otherwise innocuous day. I can be overwhelmed with anxiety. I can be at dinner with my friends and start having just these feelings of anxiety. There's your second clue that it's coming from your physiology and not your outside environment. And the third question is, if you've tried anti-anxiety medications, did they work? And they'll say no. They made me feel like a zombie. So now, how could this deficiency in methylfolate cause this anxiety condition? By the way, it's the same with depression. It is the same with ADD and ADHD, which are not attention deficits at all.

30:51Gary Brecka:They're attention overload disorders. They're not attention deficit disorders. And so when you break down the physiology of what is anxiety, well, it's an excess rise of something called catecholamines. These are fight or flight neurotransmitters. And we think that we need to have the presence of a fear in order to feel fear. That's absolutely not true, right? If you drove home tonight and you got out of your car and somebody was standing in front of you with a knife, that's an obvious, very real fear. And you would have a fight or flight response. Your pupils would dilate. Your heart rate would increase.

31:29Gary Brecka:Your extremities would flood with blood. But I'm here in my log cabin, if you can't tell. I'm in Pitkin, Colorado. I'm at 10 ,500 feet. I could be laying in that bunk bed right there, and I could start thinking about getting eaten by a shark. Now, the chances of a shark making it 10 ,500 feet up into the mountains and biting me in that bed are zero, but I could have the exact same response. So how is it that I can have fight or flight response to the presence of a fear and a fight-or-flight response without the presence of a fear. In fact, without even the chance that that fear would come true.

32:08Gary Brecka:This is because of a rise in something called catecholamines. Deficiency in methylfolate does not allow us to metabolize these fight-or-flight neurotransmitters. And so they rise and fall seemingly without a trigger. And they can go all the way to the point where they trigger a panic attack. If you actually look up this gene mutation, MTHFR, and anxiety, you will read hordes of peer-reviewed published clinical literature that link this simple folate, methylfolate deficiency to these conditions. And it is the same link to attention deficit disorder, right? We've sort of labeled ADD as an attention deficit or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

32:51Gary Brecka:It's not a deficit of attention at all. It's an attention overload disorder. It's too many windows open at the same time. And why does that happen? Because in our, in the human brain, we don't just create thought. We also dismantle thought. And if you don't break thought down at the rate that you create thought, the mind gets very clouded. Now you're paying attention to too many things. It's not that you can't pay attention. It's that you can't pay attention to so many things. I mean, a lot of peace can come to these people by using the right balance of B vitamins, the right balance of specific forms of B12 and using methylfolate.

33:32Gary Brecka:That's why I think everybody once in their lifetime should do a gene test and look for five actionable genes. It's only a test you do once. You'll never repeat it. Once you know exactly what your body can convert and what it can't, now you supplement for that deficiency and just watch the magic happen.

33:52Hala Taha:Yeah. So this is pretty interesting. So you're saying in order to understand what raw materials you need or what you need to change with your body, you've got to do some sort of genetic testing and not because you want to figure out what diseases you've inherited. You actually want to figure out what genes are not working. What deficiencies you have.

34:11Gary Brecka:So you can stop supplementing for the sake of supplementing And you can start supplementing for deficiency. You know, the question we should ask when we're about to supplement is not, what's the quality of the supplement? Where was it manufactured? You know, what's the reputation of the manufacturer or the person that's pushing this? The first question we should say is, does my body need it? Then go down the road of the quality of the supplement. Because there are a lot of phenomenal supplements on the market. You know, Pure Encapsulations, Thorne, Symbiotica. I mean, these are amazing supplement companies.

34:45Gary Brecka:Um, and the products that they manufacture, including my own at 10X Health, um, are products lots of people need, but not everyone needs the same thing.

34:54Hala Taha:Yeah.

34:54Gary Brecka:And so once you unlock that deficiency in your body, you're on your way to a state of optimization that you never thought possible. I mean, patients, uh, or clients of mine, I'm not a doctor, um, clients of mine, you know, tell me all the time, they're like, Oh my God, Gary, I feel amazing. and I just remind them, you actually don't feel amazing. Not to burst your bubble. That's what normal is supposed to feel like. You just forgot how normal is supposed to feel. You just forgot how good normal feels.

35:29Hala Taha:It's so incredible. So I recently interviewed the CEO and founder of 23andMe, and I see this whole movement of medicine just going D to C, right? Everybody's just going direct to consumer. um have you ever met and uh would just ski i'd love to introduce you guys because i think you guys i think that she would be amazing for you to meet because you guys have so many similarities and in terms of the outcome and the goals that you guys have yeah but you came from totally different like angles in terms of how you got there so i think you guys would have an awesome

36:02Gary Brecka:conversation i'm definitely going to introduce you yeah yeah you do also get a lot of what i call non-actionable information, right? So if I see that you have olive skin or detached ear lobes or your, you know, Irish ancestry, there's not a lot you can do with that information. You want to make sure that you look at actionable genes, right? Meaning genes when they're broken that you can supplement for their deficiency. That's when really magic happens in the human body. A lot of the rest of that information is just data. It's good data. But the fact that you You have brown eyes and olive skin and detached earlobes.

36:38Gary Brecka:There's nothing you can do with that information. But you can find it in your genome, right?

36:42Hala Taha:Yeah.

36:43Gary Brecka:We want to know, hey, what can my body metabolize and what can it not metabolize? And then how do I give it that nutrient? Because when you give it that nutrient, this is when real magic happens. And if you look at, you know, some of the cases that I'm very popular for, like, you know, Dana White and some of these other, you know, fighters and boxers and athletes. It's amazing how little supplementation made such a massive impact on their performance.

37:12Hala Taha:Yeah. It's so fascinating. So I want to talk about oxygen because I know that oxygen is a really important topic. Like you mentioned earlier, the definition of death is hypoxia, which is the lack of oxygen to the brain. And you also mentioned that if you could boil your entire career down into one sentence, it would be that the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease. So talk to us about why oxygen is so important.

37:41Gary Brecka:Well, I mean, obviously, we all know about breathing, right? We can't go very long without breathing. But it's more important than that. You know, we know that aging, aside from being the aggressive pursuit of comfort, is a mitochondrial disease. So inside of every cell in your body, you have thousands of these little motors called mitochondria. Human beings are not powered by the air we breathe, the water we drink, or the supplements we take, or the food we eat. We're powered by one energy source. It's called ATP. And this adenosine triphosphate is made in a battery inside the cell called the mitochondria.

38:17And inside the mitochondria, there is a motor, right? It is spinning around, and it's creating this energy.

38:24Gary Brecka:Well, every time this motor makes one revolution, it has two choices. It can either create two units of energy, two ATP, or it can create 36 units of energy. Same term. It's either 16 times more powerful or 16 times less powerful. It's a really hard concept to grasp. I mean, it's like walking onto a car lot and the salesman says, hey, there's two choices here. It's the same car. It comes in a 1600 horsepower version. or a 100 horsepower version. 100 horsepower is like a lawnmower and 1 ,600 horsepower is like a professional NASCAR, right? And so this is what's going on inside the cell of our body.

39:08Gary Brecka:10 % of your body weight, by the way, is mitochondria. You have 110 trillion of these in your body. Anything that downregulates the mitochondria or harms the function of the mitochondria accelerates aging and makes fertile ground for all forms of pathology and disease. So now we're kind of inside the cell, inside the mitochondria, talking about this little motor called the Greb cycle. Probably boring half of your readers to death, listeners to death, but -

39:36Hala Taha:No, I don't think so. I do not think so.

39:38Gary Brecka:Because if we're gonna talk about aging and performance, we have to talk about mitochondrial function, right? We know that the dysregulation of mitochondria is linked to every form of disease and pathology in the human body, including Alzheimer's and dementia. There's so many myths about these diseases. For example, we know that Alzheimer's now is not Alzheimer's disease at all. It's type 3 diabetes. The big lie, the big myth about Alzheimer's is that patients are losing their memory. That's actually not true. They're losing access to their memory. And the access to this memory is disabled in large part because of down regulation in the mitochondria.

40:16Gary Brecka:So we know that this mitochondria can produce 16 times more energy or 16 times less energy. So what determines whether or not it's 1600 horsepower or 100 horsepower? The presence of oxygen. If oxygen enters that cycle, it creates 16 times more energy. If oxygen doesn't enter that cycle, it creates 16 times less energy. And so here is where the importance of oxygen comes into play. And when you start talking about, well, how can I better manage oxygen, well, I'll give you some free ways to do it right now. And all this is doing is getting back to the basics, right? So if you've ever heard of earthing or grounding, right, which is where you take bare feet and touch bare soil.

41:02Gary Brecka:And think about that. If you're, you know, listening to this podcast, think about the last time that you had bare feet touching bare soil. I mean, like dirt, grass, sand. Okay, that was the last time that you actually discharged into the earth. Human beings, we build up a charge in our body. You know, we all know about the acid alkaline scale. Well, pH stands for potential hydrogen. It is a charge. If you want to change the pH of the body, you don't drink alkaline water. That is the most – that was the biggest marketing myth ever sold to the public. You cannot make the body alkaline by drinking alkaline water.

41:38Gary Brecka:If you want to make the body alkaline, you change the charge. How do you change the charge? you run a low Gauss current through the body. There's two ways to do this. There's a way that you can pay for it. And there's a way that it's free. If you want to pay for it and you buy a PEMF mat, pulse electromagnetic field, right? And you lay on that mat 16 to 30 minutes a day. You just put it in your bed. And every morning that you wake up, you will wake up alkaline. It will alkalize all 32 trillion cells in your body. If you don't want to spend five grand on a PEMF mat, then take your shoes off six minutes a day and come in contact with the surface of the earth, right?

42:14Gary Brecka:Magnetism in the earth will change the polarity in your body. It will change the polarity of the surface of every cell in the body. And what will happen is instead of cells sticking together because they have opposite charges, they will repel because they have the same charge. Why is that important? Because if I can increase the surface area of the cell, now the cell can exchange with its environment, eliminate waste, repair, detoxify, regenerate. And this also increases the surface area to absorb oxygen from the bloodstream. So magnetism is one way to improve the oxidative state of the body. The second is oxygen itself, right?

42:55Gary Brecka:This is why sedentary lifestyle is the leading cause of all-cause mortality because we are getting less oxygen and therefore less circulation. The majority of these pathologies and diseases too have a circulation component. So I tell people that to learn to do an eight-minute breathwork technique. I borrowed it from Wim Hof. I'm not the purveyor of this technique. You know, he's the father of modern breathwork. You go to my Instagram. I do tutorials on Instagram all the time about breathwork. But you can wake up in the morning. You can do eight minutes of breathwork, three rounds of 30 breaths with a breath hold in between.

43:33Gary Brecka:and this does two things. Number one, the number one vasodilator in the human body is not nitric oxide. Nitric oxide, by the way, is toxic. So if you're listening to this podcast and you're taking a nitric oxide supplement because you're an exercise enthusiast or you're a bodybuilder, you want to be more vascular, please stop. That is toxic to the mitochondria. It actually for oxygen in the mitochondria, something called cytochrome C oxidase. It pulls oxygen out and forces itself to dock. The major vasodilator in the human body is carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide causes our veins to dilate. So by doing breath work and flooding the blood with oxygen and then holding our breath for a prolonged period of time and dilating our blood vessels, we actually, when we breathe in again, we get more oxygen to the tissues.

44:23Gary Brecka:We can actually change the oxygen tension in our tissues. Now, I use something called a hypermax oxygen system, multi-step oxygen system. Again, it's about five grand, but it's an oxygen mask. You put it on, you breathe 93 to 95 % O2 for 10 minutes while you're mildly exercising, but you do not have to spend money on that system. You can learn to do breathwork. And then the third thing is to expose your skin to natural sunlight. And the truth is most of us are not getting enough sun. It's not that we're getting too much sun. And the safest time to expose your skin to sunlight is the first 45 minutes of the day during first light because there's a very special type of light during that 45 minutes.

45:04Gary Brecka:There's no UVA, there's no UVB rays, so nothing that can damage your skin, nothing that can burn your skin. And, you know, I sit out on my porch with my shirt off in a pair of shorts, even when it's cold outside, and I do three rounds of 30 breaths. I expose my skin to sunlight. Sunlight, certain wavelengths of sunlight, when they pass through the skin, they will go into the mitochondria. They will go into the motor of the Krebs cycle. They will kick out nitric oxide and force oxygen to dock just by exposing yourself to sunlight. Now, I also have a red light therapy bed. And red light therapy, as you may or may not know, is the rage in sports recovery and anti-aging and healthy skin now.

45:51Gary Brecka:But if you don't want to go out and spend money on a red light therapy bed, you can expose your skin to sunlight. So those are three things your listeners could do for free starting tomorrow, grounding, sunlight, breathwork, to absolutely change the trajectory of their life. The reason why most people will not do it is because it's too easy. It's because they're like, It can't be that simple, but it is. And I really try to impress upon people how these tiny little habits could completely change the trajectory of their life.

46:27Hala Taha:Yap gang, it's confession time. I thought I had my money handled. I thought I had a good handle on everything going on, but I recently checked my bank statements and there was subscriptions everywhere. Streaming, apps, random charges. A few of them were billing me for a long time. I didn't even know what they were. And it was a painful uncovering. So I downloaded the Experian app. And now it's like I have a financial assistant in my pocket. The Experian app helps you track spending and find subscriptions that you forgot about and you no longer want. With your subscription cancellation feature available with an Experian premium membership, you securely link your accounts.

47:06Hala Taha:They scan for recurring charges and you pick what goes and what you want canceled. And then they cancel it. It's as simple as that. They have over 200 eligible subscription types, and it's usually done in three to seven business days. If getting your money tight is part of your growth plan this year, and you don't wanna manually have to do it, this is your move, young and profiters. Get started with the Experian app today. Results will vary. Not all bills or subscriptions are eligible. Savings not guaranteed. Paid membership with connected account required. See experian.com for details.

47:41Hala Taha:Yap gang, here's a hard truth. I had to learn the hard way. If you're running a business and you don't have a clear picture of your cashflow, you're flying blind. There was a time when I was approving expenses and making decisions without fully knowing what was going out of my account or when. That's a dangerous place to operate from as a business owner. So as we started to scale Yap Media, I needed a change. And all of it improved when I started using Intuit QuickBooks Bill Pay. It's a bill management tool inside of QuickBooks that brings all of your bills, vendors, and payment details into one organized dashboard so you can track and pay everything in one place.

48:17Hala Taha:With QuickBooks BillPay, you can see what's due, control approvals, and understand how each payment impacts your cashflow. Now, I make faster and smarter financial decisions because I actually know my numbers. Start paying bills the smart way, not the hard way. Learn more at quickbooks.com slash billpay. Again, that's quickbooks.com slash billpay. Terms apply. Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments Incorporated, licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services.

48:49Hala Taha:Hey, App Fam. If you're planning on starting a business, do not just launch it, build it the right way. When I first started my company, I thought registering the name was enough. I had no idea how many moving parts were involved just to operate legally and professionally. So I ended up using one company for paperwork, one company for a website, another for email. It was messy and expensive. That's why Northwest Registered Agent is the company I wish I had back then. Northwest is an all-in-one business formation and identity platform that gives you everything you need to launch and run a legitimate business in one place.

49:22Hala Taha:When you form with them, you get a registered agent service, a business address to get your home private, a domain website, a professional email, business phone number, and built-in privacy all bundled together. Now, YapM, I want to take a detour right now and talk to you about the importance of a registered agent. I had no idea what it was when I first started Yap. I signed up with one and then I never checked the platform because it was only for my registered agent. I didn't even know what it did. Apparently, I learned this the hard way, that a registered agent is what notifies you if anybody ever sues you.

49:54Hala Taha:So I actually got in trouble this year because I didn't even know that an old client that we barely worked with put out a lawsuit and they didn't notify me and I ended up missing a court date and it cost me a lot of money. So you really need a registered agent that you trust, that does a great job. And I've recently switched to Northwest Registered Agent, so this never happens again. Don't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get for free on Northwest Registered Agent. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com slash yap free. That's Y-A-P free and start using free resources to build something amazing.

50:28Hala Taha:Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com slash YAP free. This has been such valuable information. And so I interviewed Wim Hof on this podcast. He's incredible.

50:40Gary Brecka:I'm Wim Hof certified. Yeah, I'm going to the period of films with him this year.

50:43Hala Taha:Really? He's awesome. Yeah, I loved him. He was an inspiration. And so something that is new news for my listeners is I am going to get my deviated septum fixed. Because after Wim Hof came on the show, I never was able to really enjoy these breathing exercises because I literally can't breathe through one side of my nose. And I feel like this is impacting my health. I'm getting sick too often. All these things because I feel like I'm not getting enough oxygen. So I never thought I was going to go under and get a nose job or whatever. But now I'm just like, you know what? I'm getting it fixed because I feel like one thing that could help me for the rest of my life is being able to breathe properly and do these breathing exercises.

51:24Gary Brecka:Yeah. I would actually encourage you. I have a friend named Dr. John Laurence. He's in Sarasota. He's a chiropractor in Sarasota. He does something called a balloon nasoplasty where you have a small balloon in and you reshape the sinus cavities. It's outpatient. It's a 10, 15-minute procedure. And no downtime. He also wrote a cranial sacral book. I forget the name of the book. I actually read the whole book and now I can't think of the title. But the ability to open up these nasal passages and actually get more air over those olfactory bulbs close to the base of the brain and into your lungs. It is a massive difference in your mood, your emotional state, and the oxidative state of the body.

52:12Hala Taha:Yeah. I have to look into it. So let's talk about hormone balance because hormone balance is a topic that I think is starting to bubble up more in society and culture. I'm seeing a lot more like Instagram reels about hormone balance, especially for women. Why is hormone balance something that we need to understand more? And what are some key tips that you have to improve our hormone balance?

52:35Gary Brecka:So let's talk about basic human physiology for a moment and where hormones fit into physiology, right? So I would say the greatest single reason why people walk through the door of one of my clinics at Tenex Health is because the biggest complaint is I just don't have the same energy I used to have. I just lack energy. You know, my waking energy, I feel like my short-term recall is not what it used to be. And I just basically lack energy. So when you say you lack energy, if we convert that to physiology, basically what you're saying is I'm not low on energy, I'm low on oxygen. because everything that you perceive about energy is nothing more than oxygen in your blood.

53:15Gary Brecka:So I want you to imagine a tree for a moment. Now let's start in the leaves and I'm gonna walk you all the way down into the roots below the soil. So up in the leaves, you're saying, I lack energy. So when you say you lack energy to me, I know that you're low on oxygen. So what transports oxygen around the blood? A red blood cell and the fluid inside the red blood cell called hemoglobin. So that means I want to raise the number of red blood cells and I want to raise the amount of hemoglobin they have. So let's move down the tree. Where do I go to get more red blood cells and more hemoglobin? Well, I go to the factory that makes red blood cells and hemoglobin, and that's the bone marrow.

53:53Gary Brecka:So now I get to the factory and I want to increase its production. How do I increase its production? Well, the boss of the bone marrow is the hormone testosterone. testosterone. In men and women, the primary role of testosterone is not male characteristics. It's not deep voice, aggression, facial hair, muscles. It's none of those things. In men and women, the primary role of testosterone is to put pressure on the bone marrow to increase red blood cells. It's called erythropoiesis. So if I'm deficient in testosterone, I'm very likely deficient in red blood cells and hemoglobin. So how do I raise testosterone?

54:32Gary Brecka:I don't just start taking testosterone. I go further down the tree and I find out what is testosterone made from. It's made from something called DHEA. And you can get your DHEA tested. If you are clinically deficient in DHEA, you will be deficient in testosterone. If you are deficient in testosterone, your bone marrow will produce less red blood cells and hemoglobin. If you produce less red blood cells and hemoglobin, you will be low on oxygen. If you are low on oxygen, you'll be low on energy. So now let's just go right through the soil into the root. What is DHEA mud from? Vitamin D3. So the first thing we want to do before we start talking about taking hormones is we want to make sure that our D3 is in the optimal range and our DHEA is in the optimal range because 70 % of the clients that we see that are deficient in hormones do not need hormones.

55:30Gary Brecka:They need the raw material for the body to make hormones. D3 and DHEA will raise testosterone, raise the pressure on the bone marrow, improve red blood cell and hemoglobin levels, and improve your oxidative state.

55:44Hala Taha:Amazing. So let's switch gears and talk about sugar for a minute. is sugar or kryptonite? Yeah, it's our kryptonite when becoming superhuman.

55:56Gary Brecka:So the truth about sugar is that, you know, first of all, we have to understand that the brain, as sophisticated as we'd like to think it is, it's actually not. The brain is very primal. And you know what the brain cares about? The brain cares about survival. And the brain is kind of nasty, right? It's like the little Kim Jong-un of dictators. It sits up there. It takes everything for itself, right? If the brain wants calcium, it will leach it from the bones. If it needs amino acids, it'll strip it from lean muscle. And if it wants sugar, it will activate a receptor on the back of the tongue called the RF1A2 receptor.

56:31Gary Brecka:This is a very special receptor because things have to be swallowed to trigger this receptor. And when it passes by this receptor, this receptor doesn't register sweet. It releases dopamine. And this is why most people don't just like sugar, they are addicted to sugar. In fact, the entire synthetic sugar industry, aspartame, sucralose, all of these synthetic sugars or sugar substitutes, the majority of their chemical component is not designed to taste sweet. It is designed to ding the dopamine receptor. It is designed to cause your brain to release dopamine, which gives you a pleasure response, which is why people are addicted to sodas, you know, artificial sweeteners and sodas, which is why people are addicted to all kinds of sugar because they don't just like the taste of sugar.

57:26Gary Brecka:They are addicted to the dopamine ding. and in the mortality space we used to say the absence of dopamine is the presence of addiction the reason why most addiction has a tendency to shift if you've ever been an addict or ever known a true addict drug addicts become alcoholics alcoholics become workoutaholics workoutaholics become workaholics why does addiction have a tendency to shift because we never address the dopamine deficiency if i was able to magically go into your body right now and deplete dopamine you would begin to engage in dopamine-seeking behaviors, right? Dopamine is the primary driver of behavior.

58:05Gary Brecka:Serotonin is the primary driver of mood. So when we talk about sugars, we really have to talk about this dopamine cycle. And that's why sugar addiction is right up there with drug and alcohol addiction, right? We have increased the intake of sugar 400-fold in this country since 1964. The worst thing that ever happened to humanity was the war on fat in the 90s and where they started to replace everything with high sugars. We know now, for example, that Alzheimer's is type three diabetes. It's insulin resistance in the brain. So sugar is really the root of all evil.

58:43Hala Taha:So when it comes to sugar then, are you suggesting that we should like completely remove sugar? Is it something that we don't need as a raw material?

58:52Gary Brecka:No, I'm just saying that we should eat, when we eat whole foods and we eat less processed sugar, this is where we get into trouble, right? So processed foods and high glycemic sugars, especially your white sugars, these are really dangerous for you. You know, the majority of my sugar intake comes from three sources, natural honeys, natural maple syrups, and fruits that end in berry. The problem with the majority of sugars is that they not only do they ding the dopamine receptor and then fall off, which makes you crave the next sugar ding, but what sugar does is it raises our insulin level. And most people think that the primary role of insulin is to lower blood sugar, and that's actually not true.

59:44Gary Brecka:The primary role of insulin is to block any other form of energy use in the body. So if insulin is high, the body cannot burn fat. So what happens when insulin is high? We store fat at an accelerated rate. The first place that fat builds up is in the blood. So people that eat the most sugar have the highest blood fat. So the heaviest people eat the most sugar because high sugar causes high insulin. High insulin forces fat storage. your body does not have the choice to use fat as an energy source and so one of the healthiest things you can do for a lot of my patients that are um you know sugar addicted or they have high triglycerides high fat in the blood i do what's called a keto reset i put them on a prescription ketogenic diet for 10 weeks it's a very easy diet to get used to and at the end of that you start to reintroduce sugars and you give their pancreas a break you make them insulin sensitive again um you know high levels of insulin is one of the signs of something called metabolic syndrome and high insulin leads to another symptom of metabolic syndrome called high triglyceride um and it's so high insulin high blood sugar high blood fat um mild abdominal obesity um this is what we call metabolic syndrome it's the leading cause of cardiovascular disease which is the leading cause of death worldwide.

1:01:13Gary Brecka:And all of this can be traced back to sugar. And so when people say, well, what diet should I be on? I should be on a whole food diet. It doesn't matter keto, keto, paleo, carnivore, raw food, vegan, vegetarian, you need to be eating clean, whole foods. Wild-caught salmon, pasture-raised chickens, free-range eggs, you know, organic grass-fed meats. These are excellent sources of nutrition for you. And organic fruits and vegetables. More processed foods, especially processed sugars we have, the higher the incidence of all disease pathways.

1:01:54Hala Taha:So I know we were talking about Wim Hof previously, and one of his big core concepts is this need to make sure that we're uncomfortable, right? That we're always so used to like air conditioning and all these things that just make us comfortable, comfortable and kind of complacent. You also agree that aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort. The more we aggressively seek comfort, the faster that we age is something that you say. So talk to us about the need to be uncomfortable sometimes.

1:02:22Gary Brecka:Well, there is a process in the human body called hormesis. Hormesis is a stress strengthening response. So for example, we know that if you don't load a bone, it won't strengthen. If you don't actually tear a muscle, it won't grow. If you don't challenge the immune system, it will weaken. And so we've got to stop telling grandma not to go outside. It's too hot, not to go outside. It's too cold, just to lay down, just to relax, to eat at the very first pang of hunger. This is collapsing all of our defense mechanisms, not to get like political or alienate half your audience or anything. But one of the worst things that to happen to us during the pandemic was social distancing, residential quarantining, and masking.

1:03:05Gary Brecka:Those were so antithetical to human survival and our basic human physiology that we are seeing now the outcome of a global collapse of the immune system. So when you take human beings out of contact with other human beings, when you force them into the residences, when you mask them up, when you social distance them, when you don't expose them to daily pathogens, you know, and viruses and bacteria, what happens is the immune system starts to weaken. And now you start to hear things like, you know, monkeypox. Well, what the hell is monkeypox? I mean, I never heard of that. We're on our eighth variant of Omicron.

1:03:45Gary Brecka:Oh, God. So why is our immune system so weak? Why are we so susceptible? Because we actually stopped challenging the immune system. This is why things like cold water exposure are so good for you, right? And I know Wim Hof is a major fan of that. Remember, we're not trying to become cold adapted. We're trying to cold shock the body. So what happens, for example, when we expose the body to cold water? Well, we get a peripheral vasoconstriction. We actually get an increase in the release of endorphins like dopamine that actually give us a pleasure response. We force all the oxygen into the core, to our liver, lungs, pancreas, our kidneys, up to our brain.

1:04:22Gary Brecka:We activate brown fat, which is our thermostat in the body. We improve our metabolic rate. And you can do this by getting in cold water three minutes a day or taking a three-minute cold shower. Now, why won't most people do that? Because it's uncomfortable. We don't like to go outside because it's too hot. We don't like to go outside because it's too cold. We like to just lay down and relax because that's comfortable. We stress the body. It has a hormetic response, and it strengthens. And so the reason why I say aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort is that most people just, they don't, you know, they avoid exercise or high temperatures or low temperatures or cold exposure or all of these things because they just don't want to be uncomfortable.

1:05:07Hala Taha:so as we close out this interview Gary first of all I feel like I need to have you back on the podcast and I have this like I keep thinking about having this panel of you Wim Hof and Ann Wojcicki like somewhere live one day because it would be like some incredible conversation that's all I keep thinking about as you talk um I would love to close out with a few of your favorite stories of how you've basically transformed, you know, people's lives. I know that you have a lot of celebrity clients like the UFC president Dana White, but whatever examples you want to give of how you've actually transformed people's lives through all that you work with human biology.

1:05:47Gary Brecka:Well, you know, my favorite stories are where you take a myriad of seemingly unrelated symptoms, right? So think about all these symptoms people have is like spokes on a wheel, weight gain, water retention, poor sleep, hormone imbalance, lack of focus, lack of concentration, low waking energy, poor libido. And it seems like the whole world's going to hell in a handbasket. And what I always try to do is I look for the hub. Where do all of these things meet? So for example, you know, Dana White just disclosed on my podcast very publicly my work with his mother-in-law. And she's a 79-year-old woman, beautiful woman, was diagnosed with three very significant conditions, early onset dementia, peripheral neuropathy, and congestive heart failure.

1:06:41Gary Brecka:When you ask yourself, where do all of these meet? So the clinical team and I sit around, remember, I'm not licensed to practice medicine. So eventually there is a physician involved that is licensed to practice medicine. And where do all these things meet? They all meet at circulation. If I reduce circulation to periphery, I get the symptoms of peripheral neuropathy. If I reduce circulation to the brain, I get the symptoms of early onset memory loss or early onset dementia. If I reduce circulation to the heart, I get the expression of congestive heart failure. And so these are not independent of one another.

1:07:14Gary Brecka:They all meet at this core of circulation. so we use things like oxygen baths hydrogen water um filtration systems for her to drink hydrogen water resveratrol um to increase blood flow um and simple raw materials and nutrients to improve the blood flow and circulation 65 days later um after she was diagnosed with these conditions she no longer qualified for those diagnoses there's so many people that are listening to this program right now that have some kind of condition going on in their body and they've been told they have hypothyroid or they've been told they have hypertension, and they've just accepted that diagnosis and now they subscribe to a lifetime medication, I would really encourage them to get that one-time genetic test done.

1:08:00Gary Brecka:You do it once in your lifetime. You never guess again on what you need to supplement with, and it could permanently change the trajectory of your life.

1:08:08Hala Taha:So most of the listeners that are tuning into the show, they're probably in their 30s, right? So where can we go to learn from you? What books do you have? What websites do you have? What services, products? Like, how can we further work with you to learn from you on how to optimize our bodies?

1:08:28Gary Brecka:Yeah. So I just started a podcast on human optimization called The Ultimate Human. Dana White was a guest on there. You'll see Stephen A. Smith, Steve Harvey, Steve Aoki, lots of steves um uh you know and you'll see lots of average patients but i also interview the leading phds and um mds and researchers in the world on bio-optimization longevity optimal health um on my instagram i don't do anything but teach um so if you just go to at gary brecca just my first and last name um you'll see tons of videos on breath work morning routine um cold plunging oxygen, light, magnetism. You'll see all of the different topics that I lecture on.

1:09:09Gary Brecka:I put all of my stage talks onto my Instagram. And then finally, you can go to 10X, the number 10, the letter X, healthtest.com and order that gene test. You can see the supplements that I've manufactured myself. And I have tons of information on that site on bio-optimization.

1:09:30Hala Taha:Awesome. And are you in business with Brent Cardone? He also came on this podcast, 10X Health. Is he an investor or something?

1:09:37Gary Brecka:Yes, it was. Streamline Medical Group was my company eight years ago. Grant acquired it. And now he and I and my wife and Brandon Dawson are partners in 10X Health.

1:09:48Hala Taha:Oh, awesome. He's been looking amazing. Oh, yeah.

1:09:51Gary Brecka:He was one of my early success stories, right? One of my earliest clients. And, you know, Grant does not look, act, or perform like a 65-year-old man.

1:09:59Hala Taha:No. Right?

1:10:00Gary Brecka:It runs circles around most 25-year-olds.

1:10:03Hala Taha:So the last two questions I ask, all my guests are the same. And then we do something fun at the end of the year. So the first one is, what is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do to become more profitable tomorrow?

1:10:16Gary Brecka:Find something that you would otherwise do for free and monetize it.

1:10:21Hala Taha:And what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond business, financial, but what is your secret to profiting in life?

1:10:28Gary Brecka:You know, my secret to profiting in life is really kind of aligning my purpose with my passion. You know, I'm passionate about the human body and human physiology, and my purpose is to change the face of humanity. And because those two are so aligned, I really, I know this sounds so altruistic and cheesy, but it's true. I don't feel like I work a day in my life. This podcast did not feel like work. I really enjoyed this podcast. And when I get off the phone, I've got a dozen calls lined up with clients and patients and my clinical team. And none of that feels like I'm excited to get off of this podcast and get on those calls.

1:11:06Hala Taha:Yeah.

1:11:06Gary Brecka:And, you know, so I feel like most people have a passion. Some people have a purpose. If they don't align their passion and their purpose, what really lights your fire and wakes you up in the morning? What would you otherwise do for free? And then when you have a purpose like, you know, which is, by the way, linked to longevity, all of the blue zones in the world isolated the fact that the elderly people still felt like they had a purpose. So when you have a purpose, meaning, you know, mine is to change the face of humanity. This information that I have does not belong to me. It belongs to your listeners.

1:11:39Gary Brecka:It belongs to mankind. I'm just blessed enough to have it flow through me. and since I'm so almost psychotically passionate about the human body and I read voraciously and I study voraciously and my purpose is to touch the face of humanity, those two aligned and I'm telling you, it's like, I feel like I won the lottery every day.

1:11:59Hala Taha:Yeah, I can feel the passion through you and I'm totally aligned. I totally agree with everything you're saying and Gary, you've been a wealth of information. I can't wait to have you back on the podcast. Thank you so much for your time. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? What are your main channels?

1:12:15Gary Brecka:At my Instagram at Gary Brecka on Instagram.

1:12:19Hala Taha:Amazing. Thank you so much, Gary.

1:12:21Gary Brecka:You're so welcome. Thank you for having me on.