Human Biologist Predicts How Long You’ll Live | Gary Brecka

Hey everyone, welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. I am your host, Dr. Axe, and each and every week on this podcast, we dive deep into the science and principles and how to grow in body, mind, spirit, and take your health and your life to the next level. On today's episode, I'll be interviewing longevity expert Gary Brecka. Gary is a human biologist. He also is a health expert when it comes to, as I mentioned, longevity and anti-aging. He's also the host of a phenomenal podcast called The Ultimate Human Podcast. And we're going to dive into today a lot of topics, everything related to how to extend your lifespan, the truth about methylated vitamins. We'll also be talking about how to truly get to the root of your issue to reverse disease, all on today's episode. Gary, welcome to the show.

I'm psyched to be here, man.

Man, I, I, I'm so excited to have you. You know, I, I, uh, have been so impressed with what you've been doing recently. What an amazing— what an amazing educator you are. And you've been explaining things in way that I've really never heard anyone explain when it comes to how to get to the root of an issue, start to reverse disease. And my first question for you is, what makes you so unique in terms of— you call yourself a human biologist— in terms of what you're actually doing? I really understand that term and what that means now after hearing you communicate with others, but walk me through why your perspective is so unique.

Um, well, I call myself a human biologist because my postgraduate degree is in human biology.

Okay, there we go. Yeah, yeah, makes sense.

Conferred the degree of human biologist on there. So, um, uh, so I just figured I'd call myself a human biologist. Um, my, you know, my undergraduate degree was in biology, um, you know, just the study of living things. And then my postgraduate degree was in human biology, which is just the study of human beings. So a lot of cadaver anatomy, um, a lot of human biological science. And I, I, you know, I don't know that I'm that unique, but I, I may have had a unique career path because I spent the better part of 20 years in the mortality space and mortality research. And, and by that I mean, um, you know, a niche market of life insurance, and that, um, is trying to predict mortality to the month. And, and people— I get a lot of flack for that because people go, well, if you could predict mortality to the month— and it wasn't me, it was the whole model and the whole team— but, um, if you could predict mortality to the month, you, you know, you would be Jesus, you, you would have won a Nobel Prize. But, but the truth is it's some of the most accurate science in the world. Um, if you look at the number, um, of financial services instruments that are based on death, you, you'd probably be astounded. I mean, tens of billions of dollars a year. Obviously life insurance, right? I mean, so when, when you file— and I'm talking about large life insurance policies— you could pick up the phone and call an insurance company and get a term life policy without a physical exam or blood work, probably out without even medical records. But if you want a $5 million or $10 million or $25 million policy on your life, what we call universal life or whole life policy, um, somebody like myself is going to be sitting in a back room somewhere, not an actuary, but, but actually looking at a company like Fasano and Associates or American Viatical Services, or a company is going to be looking at your data and predicting your mortality to the month, and they're going to give that monthly number to the insurance company, and that's going to have a large impact on how your financial services instrument is priced. So, um, annuities, for example, reverse mortgages, life insurance— these are all based on when you're going to die. You know, there are, there are annuities called SPIAs, single premium immediate annuities. And, and what these are, they're, they're retirement or investment vehicles where you cut the insurance company a check. Let's say you give them $1 million and they guarantee you an income stream for life. Hey, so they'll say, Josh, if you cut us a check for $1 million, we're going to pay you X dollars a month for the rest of your life, no matter how long you live. But what, what do you think matters in how they determine that income stream?

Longevity.

Yeah, longevity. Um, and they would actually prefer that you don't live too long, right? Because it extends the payments. So, um, so, you know, annuities and life insurance kind of have the, the, the, the polar opposite risk factors. You can actually marry these in financial services too to offset risk. Like, in life insurance, um, there's a risk of you dying too early. Right, because the death claim would pay out before they've collected a lot of premium. In annuities, there's a, there's a risk of you living too long because then they've extended a payment stream to you, um, far beyond what they, um, predicted. So they took the million dollars from you, they expected to pay premiums for, let's say, 10 years, but they ended up paying premiums for 20 years. Um, and if you look at the financial solvency of these institutions, there's some of the most financially solvent institutions in the world. And the reason for that is that they are very good at doing what they do. I mean, they're very good at predicting death. And, you know, in the 2008-2009 financial services crisis, we had, uh, 364 or 365 banks fail. You didn't have a single life insurance company fail, not one. Um, and, you know, the, the— in fact, it was like the whole AIG debacle. It was, it was the life insurance division that bailed out the credit derivatives department. So sometimes poor financial decisions made on one side of these companies are propped up by, by the insurance side. And so in the, in the science of mortality, I, I want to be careful about saying this, um, but it's true. We didn't really care about randomized clinical trials. Um, we didn't care about data on statins, data on NSAIDs, data on SSRIs. What we cared about was their impact on mortality, and we used big data to determine that impact. So instead of looking at a single variable like, oh, this person had a risk of cardiovascular disease, then they took a statin— well, we then, we would look at, well, what are the, what are the other risk factors that come with, with statin therapy? You know, what happens when you reduce cell walls, cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D3? What are the downstream consequences? And when you have data from mortality which is the day, the date, the time, the location, and the cause of death, which is on somebody's death certificate, which is required, by the way, to, to get the death claim. Um, when you have that kind of data and you know what causes death and you triangulate that back into the record, you get a very good picture of what is accelerating mortality, what is extending mortality. Um, if, if there is a randomized clinical trial that, that says something different than the big data, you always go with big data. And because big data is the study of human beings in their natural environment, um, across large populations, and you know that certain risk factors have demonstrative outcomes in people's lifespan— like, you know, um, uh, sitting is the new smoking, right? I mean, we know that sedentary lifestyle is the leading cause of all-cause mortality. Um, so are there other risk factors of mortality? Sure. Morbid obesity, type diabetes, smoking. But sedentary lifestyle is the leading cause of all-cause mortality. So we would have factors for, um, sedentary lifestyle, what we called your ambulatory profile. And when you look at data this way on human beings, you start to see pictures emerge. Like when you study Blue Zones, right? I mean, this is big data, um, and you say, well, there wasn't really a common link between a specific diet— it wasn't carnivore, keto, raw food, vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian— that specifically typically led to longevity. It was, um, the common factors were things you might not think of— mobility, right? Like in Sardinia, it was life expectancy was directly related to the, to the slope, the, the, the grade of the slope that people were walking up and down. Um, you know, if you're 92 years old and you're walking up a 37-degree incline 10 blocks every day to get to church or to the market and back to your house, I mean, those are really good things, right? Yeah. You're going to build muscle. Muscles are metabolic currency. Your risk of falls is less. You're, you're going to absorb more glucose from the bloodstream, you're going to release out more endorphins. There are, there are pleasure and longevity hormones that are released by muscle. And so, um, it might not be as obvious as saying— but then you look at it and go, well, they ate a really high carbohydrate diet. They ate lots of pasta and lots of wheat. I mean, on lots of bread. Um, and that flies in the face of some conventional wisdom. Um, and then other areas, you know, Singapore, one of the highest meat consumption in the world, one of the longest life expectancies in the world. But you can't just say that, well, everybody should eat meat. And the Mediterranean Mediterranean diets that are high in, in polyunsaturated fatty acids and, and, you know, fish and, um, oils, um, and they have extended life expectancy. So you look at the, at the data trends and you see, well, what really— what was some of the common themes? You know, things like sense of purpose, um, um, mobility into later in life, um, community, family.

Yeah.

Um, and you start to realize which has, you know, a lot to do with the kinds of things that you talk about and teach are some of these more nebulous, less obvious factors that have real impact on, um, longevity and lifespan. Um, you know, happy people live longer lives. Yeah, purpose-filled, purpose-filled people live longer lives. Um, you know, there's something called broken heart syndrome, you know, when one spouse passes and very shortly after the, the second spouse passes. And, you know, in these marriages that have lasted 50, 60, 70 years, um, because an entire part of their life is gone. And you can't point to a change in their diet, you can't point to a specific, um, symptom that they had, or specific medication, or specific nutrient, but it's this broken heart syndrome which actually changed their purpose, changed their, um, uh, changed their, their passion, to change their, um—

there's a study on retirement which is really, which is really good on this too, where if somebody retires and they don't find something else to do that's meaningful after work, that it, you know, can reduce their lifespan.

I totally believe that. I absolutely believe that. I mean, isolation was one of the fastest— I mean, if you were isolated, that was probably the one of the— aside from a very specific predictable condition like, you know, terminal illness, once you became isolated, um, we would cut your mortality in half. So if your life expectancy was um, 11 years, it would become 5 and a half years. Wow. Um, and this is true with human beings. It's also true with cells. You know, if you want to, um, you want to cut a human being's life expectancy in half at just about any age, put them in isolation, right? Um, and this is why a lot of research, in my opinion, that we do when we take cells out of the body and we study them in isolation is not as valid as when we study them in communities, right? When we study large populations of people sleeping in their homes versus, um, a sleep study with 8 people at a university campus, you know, sleeping in a sterile cold room with electrodes all over their head. So a lot of times, um, you know, it's, it's not to say that modern science is not valid, but that's not what I mean by any means. It's very often what we do is we take a single clinical study, randomized clinical trial, and we say, you see this data point, that means that, um, everybody should, uh, eat nothing but red meat, everybody should eat nothing but vegetables, everybody should, uh, you know, only have this type of oil, um, everybody should do this form of exercise. And And, and the truth is, that's not how human beings behave. Um, and one of the most exciting times for, for me, I, I truly believe, is going to be the next 5 years in medicine. Because for the first time, you have computing power through artificial intelligence combining with early detection, um, and big data, um, to create actionable steps for people. So we're, we're going to see what the big data says. Not what a single randomized clinical trial says, but what happens when you apply this to a population of millions of people and you start to get real tangible data that can really influence the longevity of people's lives.

So it's exciting.

Yeah, super exciting.

It's going to be amazing. You know what, what— I know you've had the chance to work with some really well-known people. I know some are confidential, but some have been open. You've had them on your podcast. They've had you on theirs. Who are some of the most well-known people that you've been able and had the honor of working with?

Um, that I could talk about, probably Dana White for sure. Um, Dana White, Grant Cardone, Stephen A. Smith, um, Steve Harvey, um, Anita, one of the top Latin artists in the world. And, you know, in each of those cases, I, I helped solve something unique, a unique challenge that they had. Um, and, you know, I'm not licensed to practice medicine. I'm a human biologist. So I have a clinical team behind me that is licensed to practice medicine. Sometimes I don't give them enough credit because they're some of the best MDs and, and nurse practitioners and PAs and NPs in, in the world of functional medicine. And so a lot of the credit goes to, to those teams. But some of what I try to, um, teach when we approach, um, looking at human beings is just, just a different philosophical way of approaching a patient's, you know, condition. I don't have patients, they do. But when we approach the blood work, the genetic testing, the supplementation, the diet, the lifestyle changes I, I think that if we took the approach that, um, first of all, that God didn't make a mistake— meaning if this person has an autoimmune disease, Crohn's disease, Hashimoto's— um, before we assume that the immune system woke up one day and began to manufacture antibodies to the thyroid, or you woke up one day and started manufacturing antibodies to the gut, maybe we should ask ourselves, um, the question, okay, well, the the immune system behaving properly, what is it after? Why is it in there, right? Is it after the thyroid because there's heavy metals embedded in the thyroid? Is it after the thyroid because there's a viral pathogen in there, a mycotoxin? Is it after the gut because maybe the luminal wall of the gut has become compromised and now you've got bacteria and other pathogens in, in areas of the body where they shouldn't be? And the immune system's in the right place doing the right thing, and we're assuming that it's made a mistake. Um, and I think by, by starting with that, you know, God didn't make a mistake, meaning the human body didn't make an error here. We have to figure out why is it behaving this way. And then secondly, and this was a big one that came out of the, you know, mortality data, and I think you're going to see more and more and more of this, um, as big data begins to be published and, and, um, you know, pushed out into the public domain, you're going to see that, um, you have to ask yourself the question, what nutrient deficiency could be leading to this condition? It is astounding the number of pathologies and diseases that we think are happening to us that are actually happening within us. I mean, when you start to go down the myriad of list of conditions that people can have, virtually none of them are conditions you catch. They're not conditions that happen to us. You don't catch heart disease, you don't catch cancer, you don't catch autoimmune disease. And, you know, if you have Crohn's disease, you're not going to pass it to me. Yeah. Um, and And so when we stop thinking about disease as something that's happened to us and as something that's happened within us, then we start to say, well, what caused the expression of this condition? What caused the expression of this disease? And we should be able to trace that out down into the root and say, very often this nutrient deficiency leads to the expression of this condition. You know, I mean, and if you take big swathing areas of, you know, pathology like, uh, you know, hypothyroid, and you say Why so many people have hypothyroid? Well, the majority of hypothyroid diagnoses are done because they have low levels of thyroid hormone T3. Um, well, a majority of that hormone is not even made in the thyroid. It's deionized in the liver and the gut and the periphery. Um, the majority of it in the liver and then the rest in the gut and the periphery. But, um, this deionization process, um, requires certain nutrients, you know, thiamine, selenium. And so when you start depriving the body of certain nutrients, and you interrupt that process of deiodinization of these, these two rings, you know, the outer ring and the inner ring, um, you not only interrupt the conversion of thyroid hormone T4 into thyroid hormone T3, you also interrupt the signaling system, um, when the liver creates this, this hormone back to the, to the master puppeteer, to the boss, the pituitary, to tell it to slow down again. And so this entire system can look like it's dysfunctional or diseased or pathological when really it's nutrient deficient. And I mean, I could go through 100 different, you know, of these types of scenarios. And I think if the second thing we asked ourselves was what nutrient could be missing from this biome that could be causing this condition to exist, and then finally to take all of the symptoms that a patient has— I mean, and we were talking about a few before the podcast— and say Well, what is the common link between all of the things that this person is experiencing, right? Do they have, um, early onset dementia, congestive heart failure, and peripheral neuropathy? Meaning, do they have a mental condition, a cardiac condition, and a neuropathic condition? Or do they have a circulation issue? Because if I reduce circulation, I could actually cause all of these things. So instead of looking at spokes on a wheel, we, you know, trying to find the hub of, of where they meet. That was the exciting thing about being in the mortality space, because we knew that certain things led to this myriad of conditions, right? You clinically deficient in D3 and you have all of these exacerbations, right? And, and then you would see modern medicine just approach them very singular variable, like osteopenia progressing to osteoporosis, like, great, um, uh, you know, porous bones progressing to really brittle bones, right? And, and they think calcium— calcium's in bones, so let's just add calcium. And, um, you know, nursing homes are full of osteopenic and osteoporotic patients that have been taking calcium for 20 years.

Yeah, right.

They all got osteoporosis. Yeah. So, so, um, so it's not this because calcium is in bone, but calcium needs to combine with phosphorus to make hydroxyapatite, and that builds strong bones. And you need 12 other minerals, you know, you need what do you need? You need iron, you need, um, boron, you need calcium, manganese, magnesium, selenium, phosphorus.

Yeah, there's phosphorus. You actually need collagen too. You need a lot.

Yeah, yeah. And you need collagen, which is made from amino acids. So you need, you need amino acids. Again, to just kind of narrow this down, you, you, you see the expression of all of these conditions in people and we start treating that disease or that pathology as if it's something that happened to them. If we said if it's something that happened within them, then we can hunt within the biome for them, for, for the deficiency. Yeah, that could be causing it. And I'm not saying that all disease and all pathology or all mental illness by any means is caused by, you know, a missing B12. What I am saying is that, um, when you— the further that we get from the basics, the sicker we become. You know, all human beings need 91 minerals. We need 2 essential fatty acids. We 8 essential amino acids. They're called essential because they're essential for life, right? I mean, and for the record, there's no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. I have this debate all the time, right? Carbohydrates are not essential for life. I'm not saying you can't eat them, but they're not essential for life. That's where we should be the most judicious with our food choices. And so when, when you, when you, you know, anybody that's, that's been in construction will tell you the most important thing about any structure is the foundation. Right? I mean, if you get the foundation wrong, the rest kind of doesn't matter. So if you get the basic nutrients— minerals, amino acids, fatty acids— wrong, then you start to get the expression of all kinds of conditions. And, um, so very often these are, like I say, they're, they're just linked back to the same thing. You know, you deplete oxygen in the blood. One of the things we used to use in the mortality space quite often was something we call the hypoxic curve, and it was basically the, um, how well or how poorly somebody was managing oxygen in their body, right? Because, um, oxygen is the main— one of the main foods for the, uh, for the mitochondria, for the, for the Krebs cycle. And it determines, you know, how much energy is produced. Um, if it's 36 ATP or 2 ATP, um, can be the difference between oxygen entering, entering the cycle and not entering the cycle. And, you know, when you start to deplete oxygen in the biome people start to get tired, people start to have brain fog, people start to have poor sleep patterns. Um, and yet this kind of condition can hide in plain sight when you pull their blood work and you look at their— what's called their CBC, their complete blood count— and you see, you look at the, the area where you're looking at the structure of the blood, the red blood cells, the hemoglobin, the corpuscular volumes, you see that as you start to deplete these within normal ranges, right, as they start to get down towards the lower end of these ranges. People have all of these symptoms, but their labs are normal, right? Because you're robbing the body of one of the primary, um, nutrients that it needs— oxygen— to perform all of its functions. And then instead of chasing oxygen and saying, how do we raise a red blood cell count? How do we raise hemoglobin? How do we get more circulation? We start treating the byproduct of that. They have a sleep disorder, now we're tranquilizing them to bed. They're drinking caffeine or taking amphetamines because their energy level is, is so low. They stop exercising and their mobility goes down, which is the opposite of what they need to do. And so these conditions have a tendency to exacerbate. And when we were in the mortality research space, this was great for us because it made it easier to predict death. Um, you know, the trajectory of pharmaceuticals and chemicals and synthetics also made it easier to to predict death because they all have a certain defined impact on mortality.

Yeah, wow. I mean, it's an amazing perspective to be able to look at it. Basically what you're doing, you're looking at patterns. And this is a form of wisdom, I really believe this. And I think that, you know, if for instance, if I want to go and find what is the best way to use my money, the best way to invest, I'm going to go and look at, Warren Buffett, Ray Dalio. I mean, I'm gonna, you know, the top 5 people and say, what do all 5 of them have in common? Where is that— not what are the spokes, but where is the hub where all of those things meet? And there are certain principles such as, well, you know, spend less than you make, uh, when the market's high, sell when it's low, and everybody's running away. Actually, like Warren Buffett has a saying, when there's blood in the water, that's when you want to enter in and start investing. And all of those things. And so it's a very similar thing where you are looking at different patterns and you're able to remove the bias of, in a way, a lot of studies, which oftentimes there's false positives or, or false studies, and being able to go, okay, here's where all of these things line up together and it, it makes sense. What— walk me through, um, I'd love to hear What is— so I know there are several things you do, but in terms of blood work, but what are your top 3 to 5 favorite panels to look at when it comes to helping, you know, figure out what's going on with somebody?

So, you know, the basic place to start, I always think, say, that people need to get data, right? Because if not, you're not only relying on your own opinion or your spouse's opinion or your friend's opinion or the opinion of people on, on Instagram or even my opinion. Which you shouldn't rely on those. Um, you should rely on the data from your body, you know. So for example, now we have, um, um, since we've mapped the genome in the human body, we, we're getting closer and closer and closer to being able to hyper-target supplementation based on— we can do this to a certain degree now, um, and, you know, is hyper-target supplementation based on your genetic methylation pathways, which is— simplest way to explain that is how do I take a raw material that enters my body, folic acid for example, and convert it into the usable form, methylfolate. Um, and do I do this well or do I do this poorly? And if I do this very poorly, I should supplement with that nutrient. Um, do I need, um, supplemental B vitamins, uh, supplemental B12, which is, which is a metal, um, in, in one of the really bioavailable forms. Um, do I need methylfolate? You know, what nutrients is my body deficient in? It's pretty, it's pretty interesting because a genetic test, um, is something you do once in your life, right? Because your genes, your genes don't change. You, you, you can't go in and fix the gene, but you can very often supplement for its deficiency. And there are genetic predispositions for all kinds of things, and there are genetic anomalies that don't allow us to metabolize certain types of fatty acids. Some people are better taking omega-3s from plant sources than they are from fish sources. Wouldn't that be nice to know?

So you—

if you're going to supplement with it, you supplement with the form your body can use. Um, if you're going to take a multivitamin, instead of just taking a random, you know, men's over 50 or women's menstruating multi or just a general prenatal, um, why don't I take something that gives my body what I'm deficient in? So, so the first thing is data. I'm a huge believer in genetic testing. Because genetic testing is like getting, you know, all 32 trillion of your cells together in a conference room and having them write a book about you. And in that book, what they tell you is what they need to do their job, right? And like, what do they need to eliminate waste, repair, detoxify, and regenerate? And if your cells gave you that information, number one, would you read it? And number two, would you respond to it? Most people would say, yeah, I would love to have a book written by myself with nobody else's opinion. You know, I used to say about— I used to have a saying about the blood work that the one thing I, I like about blood work is what's not in the blood work. And what's not in anybody's blood work is somebody else's opinion. And, and so you get this data and it says, hey, you, you can't convert, um, homocysteine into methionine. Well, now we need supplement for that deficiency. You can't convert folic acid into methylfolate. You can supplement for that deficiency. And these are kind of absolutes, right? Because that's never going to fix itself. Now, you can eat to, to provide those nutrients too, which is why diet's super important, but you can also supplement for these deficiencies. But when you look in the blood, I think there's 3 pillars, at least from a mortality standpoint, that, that I would look at. Um, one is what I would call your glycemic profile. How well are you regulating your blood sugar and how sensitive are you to insulin, right? So that's glucose, hemoglobin A1c, and insulin. Um, glucose being the amount of sugar in your blood right now, hemoglobin A1c being a 3-month average of your blood sugar, and then your insulin, um, being how much insulin does it take to maintain this level of blood sugar. Insulin resistance is one of the signs of metabolic syndrome. It's one of the early mortality factors, um, that we would use to reduce your life expectancy. More insulin resistant you were, the higher your— your worse your glycemic profile, the faster we would accelerate you towards the grave. And, and the interesting thing about this is very often it's asymptomatic, right? I mean, people live with a pre-diabetic condition for decades, a long time, right? Um, we would see it go untreated in sort of, you know, the hemoglobin A1C goes— the thing about this metric too is as you become more insulin resistant, less insulin sensitive, there is a parabolic part of this curve. So you slowly inch from having normopathic blood sugar into being slightly pre-diabetic, and then you sort of walk your way down the diabetic corridor through pre-diabetes, and then you start jogging, and then you start sprinting. Right? And as that— as insulin collapses, or the insulin sensitivity, uh, decreases, or insulin resistance rises, um, and that curve is, is parabolic. So you can, you can slip from being pre-diabetic into, in diabetic to insulin-dependent like that. Um, the, the crawl is from normal blood sugar into the pre-diabetic state, and people hang out here for years, and then bang, it just raises its ugly head. And so glycemic profile, hormone balance is another big one. Um, in women, it's super important to look at the ratios of hormones. You know, on most blood tests, you'll see that you can look at the cycle regulators like luteinizing hormone and follicle stim— stimulating hormone, and then you can look at the cycle outcomes like estrogen, progesterone,. And you can, you can see whether or not they are, uh, monophasic, entering the phase together, right? Like all the girls are going into and out of the phase together. Um, or you can see if they're aphasic. Sometimes one is in one phase, one is in another based on its level. And in women especially, I think, in our, our, uh, clinic director is an OB-GYN, so, um, I don't profess to be an OB-GYN, but just watching her practice all this time has been fascinating. She's a functional medicine doctor. You know, ratios are more important than levels. Um, and, um, so when you look at the ratio of certain hormones, you start to find some of the pathologies and conditions hiding in plain sight, right? Like, if you look at women's normal menstrual cycle, for example, it's— depending on where she is in her cycle, it's perfectly normal for estrogen to be in the 400s. It's also perfectly normal for it to be in the teens. So if you take a snapshot of estrogen, who's to say that 179 or 210 or 315 is high or low? We don't know. First of all, you have to look at what cycle they're in. You have to look at the ratio of— to other hormones and try to restore that homeostasis. In men, um, it's a little less complicated. You know, testosterone, free testosterone, estrogen, um, in, in certain ranges. But the majority of the time, at least in our clinical practice, when we see hormone-deficient males, they're not deficient because their testicles can't produce testosterone anymore. They're usually deficient because, um, their body lacks raw material, nutrients. The key ones being vitamin D3, you know, sunshine vitamin, cholecalciferol, and DHEA. Um, and again, just don't guess at this, get data. Um, and then there are other proteins like, um, sex hormone binding globulin, which is a protein that binds the sex hormones. Um, you know, that protein can rise and artificially suppress your free testosterone levels. And then there are also signaling issues where, um, the signal from the pituitary to the testicle is, is suppressed. You know, remember, in the human body, most, most organs or hormone-producing organs— testicles, for example— don't determine how much hormone they produce. They have a boss. And very often it's the, it's the signal from the boss that is low, not the organ. You know, like, you know, speakers don't determine how loud they play, the tuner does. Yeah. So if you walk into a room and you can't hear the music, you don't go mess with the speakers. You find the tuner, you turn the signal up. So very often, you know, when you look at human beings in totality and hormone bones together. You have to look at the signaling, you know, they're getting a good signal, and then you have to look at the nutrients.

I mean, the thyroid's a good example of that.

It's a great one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, walk us through a little bit about thyroid. I love to hear your thoughts on— one of my biggest surprises when I opened my clinic back in 2007, so this is, you know, almost 15 years ago now, um, I know, sorry, 17, gosh, um, was this— I saw was the amount of women coming in with hypothyroid. I mean, it just absolutely blew my mind. It's something that they didn't tell you in school. Hey, every woman coming in almost is going to have an issue with thyroid, low energy, all those sort of issues. So when you have someone come and see you with hypothyroid, what do you see to be some of those primary causes?

So, um, let me just finish the last question. So, so I would say glycemic control, um, hormone balance, and nutrient deficiency. So when you say what would you look at in the blood, that would be those three. I just wanted to add that last one.

And so are you doing a micronutrient test, organic acids?

What would you— you can go down road afterwards. But I'm saying when you first throw the casting net out to see what's under the surface, right, which is, um, you know, because you could get paralysis of analysis with, with labs. I forget how many thousands of, of Lab Choices, LabCorp, and Quest Diagnostics, right? And so you could get crazy with autoimmune panels and mycotoxin panels and viral panels and, and, and all sorts of, you know, broadened cholesterol panels. And, and eventually you'll end up getting paralysis of analysis. But if you started with hormone balance Nutrient deficiencies, the main ones, um, D3, DHEA, vitamin B12, and then of course the, uh, the nutrients that are the electrolytes that are in, um, uh, your comprehensive metabolic panel— potassium, um, and the others, sodium. And so nutrient deficiencies, glycemic control, and hormone balance, that's the place to start. And the reason why I believe that that's the place to start, and we would do this in the mortality space, is because Once you see that deficiency, that's what tells you where else to go, you know, where else to hunt. And again, we need data. We should have a good clinical rationale for the supplements that we take. We should have a good clinical rationale for the type of diet that we're on. Um, like, I wouldn't put everybody in the world on a keto diet, but I've had clients that I've met, like Dana White, for example, triglycerides were 800 fasted. I put him on very strict keto diet. Um, and it's a hard concept. It was really hard concept for him to say, wait a minute, my blood fat is really high and you're going to put me on a high-fat diet?

Yes, that's so hard for people.

Yeah, super counterintuitive. Um, that you want me to eat 75% of my calories from fat when I'm dying from fat in my blood. Um, but, you know, putting the body into a state of ketosis so it sees fat as a resource. Um, you know, it's one of the best ways to, to clean up the blood because it will eat the fat there first. And so to your second question about, um, thyroid, I think we approach the thyroid like we approach every other condition. And first you ask yourself, um, what nutrients could be missing from this biome that could be causing this condition to exist? Selenium, thiamine are huge, and then the complex of B vitamins because they're involved in the methylation pathway, even though the The, uh, hormone is deiodinized in the liver and the gut and the periphery. It's heavily dependent on B, uh, the complex of B vitamins. And if you're deficient in B vitamins or selenium or thiamine, then you, you're interrupting the capacity for the body to do its job, which is to convert one of the main thyroid hormones that we use to determine whether you are normopathic or hypothyroid. The other is to decide what side of the thyroid the issue is on. Right? In other words, um, you know, basic thyroid metabolism— and this is very basic, and we're going to get ripped apart by my haters online for this being too basic— but you have the pituitary sending a signal down to the thyroid called thyroid stimulating hormone. Very often this signal is, is deficient. So, so the volume is on 2, and the thyroid's producing hormones at a 2. That seems to be normal. So you're on one side of the thyroid with a signaling issue. Then the other issue is looking at the other thyroid hormones, um, T4, which the thyroid produces the majority of, and T3, which it produces only 20% of. And as you start to look at, am I on the signaling side and I need to work on the signal, or am I on the production side and I need to work on the production? And then the second question is, where's the production coming from? The production is not coming from the thyroid, then let's not medicate the thyroid for crime that it's not producing. Right? I mean, you want to talk about a pandemic in this country, we have a pandemic of medicating organs for crimes they're not committing. That's right, right? So we see, we see a low level of thyroid hormone T3, for example, and we go, okay, they're hypothyroid, um, so let's medicate the thyroid. Let's, let's just hold it responsible for a crime it's not committing. Which is why in the majority of, if not all, of long-term thyroid treatments, you know, the only guarantee is that your, your dosage is going to go right, because you have desensitization and tachyphylaxis, and, and you're still not fixing the issue, which is very often a conversion issue. And then the second would be when you look at thyroid pathology, right? You have, um, you know, pathologies, um, that nodules on the thyroid that can be symptomatic or asymptomatic, and they can be pathological or benign. And then when you look at things like Hashimoto's, where the thyroid is— supposedly the immune system is manufacturing antibodies to the thyroid to attack the thyroid— take a step back and say, immune system's acting properly. It is attacking this gland for a reason. Let's at least, um, hunt for why it could be attacking this gland. So some are— what are some of the pathogens, um, um, and foreign invaders that can embed themselves to the thyroid that would even call the immune system to that location, because very often it's the human body calling the immune system to that site.

There's so much wisdom to this, and this is not the way that most people think, but the reality is, I think, I think your medical philosophy, everyone's medical philosophy, there is a foundation to it. And so one of the foundations you have is God did not mess up when he made you. I mean, I mean, your body is actually doing the right thing at the right time to help save you, to extend your life, to protect you. And so I just want to point out that, that when a physician like you has that mindset, or a health expert— when a health expert like you has that mindset, that is just critically important. Everything else kind of stems from there. And yeah, as I just wanted to say, I just— this is not the mentality that most people have today. And it's, it's critical. So walking through that with Hashimoto's, I mean, do you often see— is it infection? Is there something like that that's often contributing?

We see, uh, in our clinical practice, we see a lot of viral pathogens, um, low-grade chronic viral, um, which will sometimes hide out at the bottom of a CBC too. You know, when you look at a complete blood count, you look at the order of white blood cells, um, and you look at neutrophils, basophils, eosinophils, um, and, and, and then you get towards the bottom and you look at the immature granulocytes, um, and the bottom of the, of the CBC, they'll have either no established range or the established ranges are very low. And very often we overlook asymptomatic conditions, right? So your white blood cell counts in the normal range, your white blood cells are all normal, but the whole bottom end of the CBC with all of these immature granulocytes, basophils, are, are are elevated. And so you have, um, what I call the rear flank of the immune system, right? Not the, um, immune response that's causing massive amounts of inflammation and, and driving congestion and itchy, watery eyes and fevers. That's when people go seek help. What— where people don't seek help and they just live with a chronic condition for prolonged period of time— low-grade Lyme, West Nile, which comes from Zika, which we had a big outbreak here in Miami, um, a few years ago. Um, recurrent cytomegalovirus, recurrent Epstein-Barr virus. Yeah, it's hard for people to conceptualize that a lot of these viruses are not viruses that you caught. They're viruses you've always had. It's just that when your immune system is weak, they raise their ugly head, right? So if you had mono as a child, it comes back as Epstein-Barr as an adult. If you had chickenpox as a child, it comes back as shingles as an adult. You didn't catch shingles, you always had it. You didn't catch Epstein-Barr virus per se, you, you've always had it. And so this is what I mean, that this is not happening to us, it's happening within us. And so now is when you take the next stage and you start doing diagnostic testing like heavy metal testing, um, viral panels, and mold and mycotoxin. You know, I'm in, I'm in Miami, I I found out from one of my buddies, Dr. Minkoff, David Minkoff, that we're, we're in the mold capital of the world. Yeah, like, I don't know how we won the mold lottery.

It's so bad.

And you know, when it's 98 degrees and 90% humidity out and it's 70 degrees inside and low humidity, you're going to have that moisture barrier. But, um, in, in mold and mycotoxins and, and heavy metals and, and low-grade viral infections are some of the things that they hide in plain sight on a lot of lab work, and they don't have the kind of symptoms that force people to take action. They just learn to live with it, right? And the gut's always kind of a mess, they're always kind of tired, um, they've got brain fog, um, they got virtually no response to exercise, they don't sleep well, they've got some weight gain around the middle, they've got water retention, um, their, their short-term recall is terrible, you know, their short-term memory is bad, but they just start to look to their outside environment and then just link it to something that it's not linked to, like their age or their environment or their kids or their job or their stress. And usually it's not a consequence of any of those things. It's a consequence of missing raw material in the human body, right? I mean, a lot of us, for example, are not sleeping because we lay down to go to sleep at night and our mind is awake. And so, um, we tranquilize ourselves to sleep instead of asking the question, why does my mind wake up when my environment quiets? And the reason why your mind wakes up when your environment quiets is generally because of a gene mutation that doesn't allow you to quiet the mind. There's a specific gene mutation called COMT. C-O-M-T stands for catechol-O-methyltransferase. It's a gene mutation that downregulates, either quickly or slowly, a class of neurotransmitters called catecholamines. These 4 neurotransmitters are the same ones that are involved in a fight or flight symptom, right? So if somebody ran into this room with a knife, you and I would both go into a fight-or-flight scenario. Catecholamines would dump into our brain, our heart rate would increase, our pupils would dilate, our extremities would flood with blood. We would start having a fight-or-flight, and that's a great protective mechanism, right? If you're sleeping in a cave and you wake up and there's a tiger in your face, you want many catecholamines going in your body again because you want to be alert and and fast. But if these neurotransmitters are rising, were elevated, not to the point where you're in a fight or flight, but to the point where you're in an awakened state, um, because your body doesn't have the raw materials— B vitamins, methylfolates, um, B12, uh, methionine— to downregulate them, then what happens is when your environment quiets, your mind wakes and you lay there in bed just thinking about the most innocuous little thoughts, and, and you even catch yourself and you go, why am I thinking about my grocery list? It's 2 o'clock in the morning, um, I should be sleeping. And you start getting frustrated that you can't sleep. And then eventually you do what you shouldn't do, and you go to your doctor and say, I can't sleep, and they, they put you on a tranquilitic like azulapidem nitrate or diazepam or Xanax or Klonopin or something. And, and what this is doing is I mean, in many cases they're tranquilizing you, but, um, it's not downregulating the catecholamines. It could be as simple as the deficiency in methionine, right? So if you got data and you said, wow, could a nutrient deficiency be causing my mood disorder? Could it be causing my sleep disorder? Could it be causing my poor mental condition, meaning my poor short-term recall? Could it be, um, affecting my waking energy? Yes. And very often you don't have all of these different pathologies, you have a nutrient deficiency. And what's astounding is, um, you know, I, I don't, I don't want to say this the wrong way, but I get credit for all these miracle cures. They're like, oh my God, you know, like you saved Dana White's life, or, you know, some of what I've heard you do is, is a miracle. It's really not. It's, it's, it's, it's more basic human physiology.

Can I say this?

It's not as complicated.

So Jordan Rubin, you You know, Jordan, he's a great guy. He, he always says this, to, to your credit, um, it's not a miracle, it's just missing. You've been missing this thing. And so people will take vitamin D, or if you have something that's not methylating properly and you have them start doing some of these methylated vitamins that you— yeah, it's— people, people feel like it's literally a miracle.

Yeah, I mean, you want to talk about a miracle, the human body is a miracle. If you, you want to see miracles happen in the human body Give it the raw material it needs to do its job. Yeah, that's when you see miracles happen in the human body. When people call me and say, oh my God, Gary, I'm 4 weeks into this, I feel amazing, I go, you don't feel amazing, you feel normal. That's what normal is supposed to feel like. You've just accepted such a baseline, such an erosion of your baseline sense of normalcy that now normal feels amazing to you, right? It's just like when you get stomach flu and you get up off the floor after 6 hours in the toilet, you know, and you wake up the next morning, you're like, I feel great. You don't actually feel great. You felt just as good as you did a week ago. You just have perspective now.

Yeah, it's like most of the time, if you're sick, it's, it's too much or too little. You have too much of something or too little something. And I think we make health this incredibly complex thing when it doesn't necessarily have to be complex. One of the things that I mentioned, and this is why I love the way that you treat people It's why, you know, I would have— feel comfortable referring my family to you. Or the reason I say is you are helping the body heal itself. You're not trying to treat the disease. Our entire conventional medical system today, it is a— there is trying to play God. It's we are going to treat the disease. Hey, you've got an infection. We are going to give you things to kill the infection versus the way Chinese medicine looks, the way Ayurveda, the way that you practice today, it's very much No, we're going to support the body and the body will heal itself. If you strengthen your body enough, it will kill the Lyme, it will kill the infection. You know, my— yes, I had my siblings, my parents take a test for Lyme disease many years ago. All of them had it. None of them have symptoms right now, right? There are millions of people right now walking around with Lyme and have Lyme, but many of them have symptoms and many of them don't, right? Why does one have symptoms and why, why does one not?

Well, first of all, you, you gotta process the, the fact that roughly 40% of our, um, DNA sequence inside of every cell in our body is viral. Wow. Only 60% of our DNA is human. When I say that, everybody's on Google right now, you're going to find out that's true. Um, and, you know, so you take the helical ladder of DNA, right? And, and you look at that helical ladder of DNA, um, inside of every cell in your body, about 40% of of it DNA is viral. Um, 60% of it's human DNA, so almost 40% of our DNA is not even human DNA. So, um, these are— every time that DNA unzips and re-zips, right, every time it replicates, we silence those viruses. And this seems astounding, which, which is where you really begin to appreciate the, the intricacies that God put together to create the human body. So one of the interesting things about becoming a scientist is actually made me believe more in God than a random theory that, you know, two bacteria banged in a mud puddle and we became a lizard. Next thing you know, we have— exactly. But you know, when you, when, when you, when you think about the fact that roughly 300 billion times every day, 300 billion cells that you woke up with this morning will not be with you tomorrow— there were 300 billion chances for that virus to come back, and it happens virtually 0% of the time. So it is— so If we can strengthen that system of silencing viruses, healthy DNA transcription, healthy DNA replication, then you can live— you can have mono in 8th grade and die at 95 years old and never have Epstein-Barr, right? Or you can have mono in 8th grade and have Epstein-Barr 15 times between your 40th and your 60th birthday, right? Because your immune system's weakened. Same, same human. Same human beings, same pathogen, same virus. One expresses it 15 times, one expresses it zero. Um, and I could give you a myriad of things like that. So the, the, it is the expression of disease. So what I say is, um, disease is the expression very often of a deficiency, not the presence of, of a disease. So it didn't happen to me, happened within me. And if I take that vantage point that this happened within me, then what was it within me that caused condition to exist.

You know, if people think about it like this, if, if you, if, if you enable your child to the point where you do everything for them and they never do anything themselves, you're not helping them, you're making them weak. And today it's happening with medications. Hey, we're just going to give you this hormone, we're going to give you this drug, we're going to give you this, and then your body in, in a sense becomes weakened versus I'm going to give you vitamins, minerals, building blocks, peptides, all these things your body needs. I'm just going to give you the tools I need to help strengthen you and you're going to fight the fight yourself, but now you're going to continue to get stronger better for it.

Yeah, I mean, what's amazing about the body is that, um, you know, we— I think we need to stop thinking about all stress as being negative, right? I think aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort. Um, you know, the more aggressively we pursue comfort, the faster we age. You know, we, we tell 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 our natural defense mechanisms. You know, we, um, you know, there's a, there's a process in the, in the human body called hormesis, um, or hormetic stress, and these are generally good, right? You, you stress the body and it strengthens in response, right? If you don't, if you don't actually load your bones, they don't strengthen. If you don't plunge, if you don't, you know, tear, for lack of better words, your muscles, strain your muscles, they don't grow. Um, if you don't, um, if you don't, uh, challenge the immune system It weakens. I mean, one of the things you're seeing coming out of the back of the pandemic is the global weakening of the immune system, right? The worst thing we ever did, um, and this usually cuts the audience right in half— we won't cut your audience in half— but, um, the worst thing we ever did was residential quarantining, masking, and social distancing. Because what we did was we took human beings out of contact with one another, and we actually took the natural, um, contact with foreign invaders and pathogens, um, out of the equation for a while. So, you know what the immune system did? Because the human body is so efficient, is it weakened. And then we come out of the pandemic and we're like, monkeypox? Well, where was— where did monkeypox come from? I've never heard of monkeypox. Well, it's because everybody's immune system is so weak, you have these new, relatively, you know, new things that were always there, but now they're prevalent.

I've seen— I, I, I, I truly— a lot more people the past couple years have sicker with viruses and those sort of issues because of masking. Yeah. And, and not to mention lack of human touch, less oxytocin. I mean, there are, there are so many factors, right? And you're absolutely right. To talk a little bit, I want you to talk about, finish your thought, but also talk about hormesis because this is a really important principle. I know, uh, I have an, you know, I'm, I'm excited to be at your house here and cold plunge and other things.

Oh yeah, we're doing the cold plunge.

You got such a great setup here. Thank you. Talk to us about that in relation to some of the therapies that you recommend to— for, for people.

Well, you know what's interesting about the therapies that I recommend is all they're doing is mimicking nature, right? So we have something called the Superhuman Protocol. We didn't develop it, um, it's a combination of magnetism, oxygen, and light, right? Magnetism coming from a PEMF mat, pulse electromagnetic field, um, um, oxygen coming from this, uh, uh, which you saw back there, this bladder of oxygen that we call EWOT, exercise with oxygen therapy, which is an oxygen concentrator filling a bladder of oxygen with about 93 to 95% O2, and you breathe that for about 10 minutes under mild exercise, and then red light. Um, and it's a, you know, it's a very expensive setup, and— but you could get that entire setup for free because all it's doing is mimicking what we get from Mother Nature. We get magnetism from the Earth, We get oxygen from the air, we get light from the sun. The further we get away from those core, um, basics, the sicker we become. So if you want the convenience, you buy all that equipment, bring it in your house. But every one of us has access to the outdoors. And so the truth is, I believe most of us are not getting enough sunlight. It's not that we're getting too much. Yeah. And if you're worried about damaging your skin, then just, you know, um, expose your skin to sunlight in the first 45 minutes of the day when, when there's no UVA or UVB rays during first light. You know, healthy blue light from the sun, you still create vitamin D3. So if you were to say, how could I harness those modalities that I recommend? Yes, I recommend PMF, um, what's called Hypermax Oxygen, and red light therapy. But you could get all of those for free by taking your shoes off and touching the surface of the earth. Earthing and grounding is a very real thing. Um, there's a— I did some videos on my Instagram where I held— uh, it was a Trifield meter, and I put the post in one hand, and then I plugged the other post into the the dirt, and I stood on top of my shoes. And as soon as I stepped off my shoes and contacted the earth and completed that circuit, you see it just bang, um, you know, the, the post bangs all the way to the other side. There's a low-gauss current that the earth creates, um, and what this does is repolarize the surface of our cells. If you were to prick, um, your finger right now, most of us, and you were to put it under a microscope, you would see that the polarity, meaning the charge on the surface of your cells. When, when they're the same charge, they repel, right? They can't touch, like two north poles of a magnet. As soon as they get opposite charges, they attract. And everywhere that they touch, cellular structures touch, you've lost surface area, right? It's like if you look at the surface area of a $10 roll of quarters, or you take that $10 roll of quarters and you throw it on the ground and the quarters scatter, and you look at how much more surface area there is It's like 80 times the surface area in a roll of quarters on the ground versus in that roll. So when they clump together— and I'm not talking about coagulating, creating blood clots, I'm talking about our red blood cells and things just sticking together— now you've lost that surface area. Now what's happening to the cells? It's reducing its ability to eliminate waste, um, to repair, to detoxify, to regenerate, um, to exchange with its outside environment. As soon as you start to ground you see that condition in the blood change. So it's measurable. You can do this. We do it with darkfield all the time. Freaks people out because, um, I'll have a client over, and, uh, I was doing this with Ben Greenfield and some folks last year, and I, I do it here all the time. You take a, uh, you prick their finger, you put a drop of blood on a slide, and you put under a microscope, and you see that all, you know, the cells are kind of stuck together and clumped up. Then you go lay on a PMF mat or go outside and walk on the surface of the Earth for about 20 minutes. Come back inside, wait about 10 minutes, and do the same thing. You see all the cells are free-floating, and you can tell when they're going by each other, they're not touching. They slither by each other. They look like eggs, like hard-boiled eggs covered in olive oil, kind of slithering around a plate, which is a great thing to see on a, um, under your blood under a microscope. So you get magnetism from the Earth, you get oxygen from the air, and most of us are really not breathing well anymore. And one of the, the fastest accelerants in mortality— sedentary lifestyle. Why is sedentary lifestyle such a risk for mortality? Well, one has to do with muscle, but the second reason is because of a respiratory volume, right? When you think, as your breathing gets progressively more shallow and your auxiliary muscles of respiration weaken, the intercostals, even your diaphragm and, um, you stop pulling air into the lobes of your lungs, and you're only breathing with the apex of your lungs, which is the top third, which is the smallest volume of the lungs. And if you, if you, if you look, when you, when you exhale, you know, from the tip of your nose in the front of your mouth all the way to the back of your nasopharynx, down your esophagus, out your bronchioles to your lungs, that's all expired air. So, right, until you breathe to here, you're not even getting fresh oxygen, right? And so what happens as we age is our respiratory volume starts to decrease. We go from having a healthy respiratory volume, which is one of the reasons why VO2 max is one of the predictor of longevity. Yeah. Um, and that's the volume of your oxygen. Um, so when our respiratory volume starts to decrease and our, and our auxiliary muscles of respiration atrophy and our diaphragm becomes weak and our posture starts collapse in on itself. We're just slowly suffocating to death. And since it doesn't happen quickly, we don't, we don't give it the attention that it deserves. But as you start to drop the oxygen level in the blood, um, you get tired, your short-term memory goes, your sleep is out the window because your brain will wake you up when you get to a hypoxic level. You start taking sleep medication, you're exhausted, you don't recover from exercise, you stop exercising, and you know, your waking energy is gone, your mood starts to become depleted because most elevated emotional states require oxygen. Passion, elation, joy, arousal, libido— these all require us to be in a high oxidative state, right? The reason why no, no human being has ever woken up laughing is because you don't have the oxidative state to experience laughter out of deep sleep. But you can wake up angry because anger doesn't require oxygen, right? If I pinched you when you were in a deep sleep tonight, you would wake up angry instantly. As soon as you open your eyes, you'd be pissed off. But if I want you to laugh, I have to wake you up, I have to orient you, I have to elevate your oxidative state. Then you can experience laughter or passion or elation or joy. And so if we understood the link that oxygen has to vitality, to mitochondrial function, to energy, to short-term recall, we would start to realize that breathing is so important. Yeah. So I am taking a very long time to answer your question, but, but the second part—

let me say, I mean, what you shared was, I mean, these therapies recommending, you're harnessing the power of nature. It's light, it's earth, it's breath, breath. And yeah, it makes total sense. And I think it's the same thing we try and do with supplementation. We're trying to take what's in food and get your body that in, in a very, very similar way. I want to, I want to do something right now. I want to go through some kind of a quick fire with you, about 60 seconds for some of these answers, and you can go a little bit longer, but Um, what's the best type of water and why?

Um, hydrogen water by far is the best at reducing inflammation and improving the absorption of supplements. I mean, one place that everybody should go is hydrogenstudies.com. Go to hydrogenstudies.com, select out for the animal studies, and just look at the number of, of clinical trials published on the use of hydrogen water. If you're going to drink any type of water, you should be drinking hydrogen water. I drink an Echo water bottle, but you can, you can— some people use hydrogen tablets. There are other people that make water bottles, but hydrogen, um, there are bacteria in our gut that produce hydrogen. Most of us are hydrogen gas deficient in our gut. Um, you know, hydrogen is one of the most prevalent gases in the human body. Um, I actually bathe in it too. You can use it transdermally, um, to reduce inflammation, eczema, psoriasis, um, uh, scleroderma, all kinds of conditions of the skin. Um, you know, my, my youngest daughter had cystic acne for a while, and we would just put her in a hydrogen bath with a snorkel face down in the water for 20 minutes, and you'd see those— you'd see the skin clear right up. Um, drinking hydrogen water is a game changer. Well, absolute game changer.

What, what are the top 5 supplements you recommend based on— you said data, you've looked at so much data of so many people— what are the top 5 supplements in ranking order you think would help people the most, generally speaking?

Um, so I would say a good omega-3 fatty acid. Okay, those are essential, um, and most of us are not getting, um, good omega-3 fatty acids. Um, a methylated multivitamin. By methylated, I mean the, um, they are non-synthetic nutrients that have already been converted to the usable form. So for example, folic acid is a synthetic form of folate. Right. It's in tons of vitamins, but folic acid is an entirely man-made chemical. You can't find folic acid anywhere on the surface of the Earth. Folic acid does not occur naturally in nature. We make it in a laboratory and we put it in our supplements and we call it, um, you know, vitamin B9. Um, it's not— it's the synthetic form of that vitamin. So, um, methylated multivitamins— so if you're pregnant, take a methylated prenatal. If you are a man or a woman, take a methylated multivitamin. And those will be your entire complex of B vitamins, your main metals, um, which are magnesium, zinc, you know, B12. B12 is actually a metal, a lot of people don't know that. Um, it's the cobalt metal. And, um, there are synthetic forms like cyanocobalamin, and there are natural forms like methylcobalamin, hydroxycobalamin, that are much more bioavailable. And so I would say a methylated multivitamin and a vitamin D3 and, um, I think a mineral salt. I use one called Baja Gold Salt, but you could use Celtic salt, um, because most of us are mineral deficient. We are deficient in one of three things: minerals, amino acids, or omega-3 fatty acids. Essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, essential minerals. And if you're missing those basics, right, which you could get in the morning, um, and then I would say outside of that, making sure that you get the right balance of amino acids, right? There's 8 essential amino acids There's one that's conditionally essential. Um, and the thing about amino acids that a lot of people don't realize is it doesn't matter what protein you eat, it all becomes the same thing. It's becoming an amino acid, right? And then the amino acids enter the body and they go to assemble everything, not just muscles, right? Our immune system is made out of amino acids. Our red blood cells are made from amino acids. Um, collagen, elastin, fibrin— we need amino acids in the body in order to build the proteins, to build structure. And when we're we're— when I say we get deficient in amino acids, what I mean is there is a ratio of these essential amino acids, and when you get as, as little as a single one of these amino acids missing, then the body can't assemble, um, certain proteins. When it can't assemble proteins, it turns those into sugars or into fat. So if you want to be less wasteful and very efficient You can take an am— a full, uh, um, spectrum amino acid supplement. So those would be my vitamin D3, a mineral salt, um, methylated multivitamin, omega-3. Yeah, that's where you start.

That's so good. For sure. Last question for you. There are a million things we could do to become an ultimate human. Yeah. What's the number one thing people need to do to become an ultimate human?

Um, I would say if you're going to hack anything if you only hacked one thing, because this will take care of the rest, hack your sleep. Most of us have a great workout routine, we have a great routine for our kids, we have a great routine for our business. We have poor sleep hygiene and we do not even have a sleep routine. If you ask most people what they do to work out, they'll tell you the day and date and where they go in the gym and what they do. This is a leg day, this is a chest and tris, this is back and bis, I do HIIT cardio on this especially people that are relatively woke to exercise, if you say, what's your sleep routine? I just go to bed. Um, what time do you go to bed? Well, it depends, um, on when my day ends or what I have to do. Um, well, how long do you sleep? I don't know, till, till my alarm clock goes off. You know, so the point is that we get data on everything else and we have routines for everything else and we don't have a routine for sleep. And sleep is like the quicksand that will erode the foundation and it is the greatest superpower that we have, is the power that's locked in good sleep. The glymphatic system in the brain detoxifying like the lymphatic system in the body. Um, the difference between deep and REM sleep, allowing the body to regenerate and allowing the brain to regenerate. And so, um, you know, I, I would say if, if you're only going to do one biohack, you know, red therapy, you know, all grounding, sunlight, cold plunging, the very first thing to do is to hack your sleep because all the other things will do is try to make up for the deficiencies that are being created from a lack of sleep. That's so good. And I'll give you one other tip just because we— I just did a big sleep challenge, um, a week ago. And, uh, and it was— I'm a huge fan of big data and it was sponsored by Whoop. So I had, uh, um, Will Ahmed, who's the CEO and founder of Whoop on, and we had a really fascinating discussion because they We have big data on sleep, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people. And what is amazing is, um, when you realize the things that truly are ruining your sleep and truly are helping your sleep. So, so like 4 or 5 things that you could do right now, um, without spending any money to really hack your sleep tonight. If you, if you have a sleep tracker, um, we did this with about 8,000 people and I said um, and everybody opted into this group. And we said, okay, so tonight what we're going to do is, um, we are going to be, um, we're gonna pick the time that we're gonna go to bed and we're gonna stick to it. So we went to bed at 10:30 on the East Coast. Um, we're going to surgically remove every ounce of light from the room. So I'm like, I'm talking like tape over the fire alarm, um, you know, unplug the, uh, you know, electronics within 6 feet of the bed, block all the light out of your room as best as you can. We're going to sleep colder than we normally sleep. We can try to get the room down to 68, 69 degrees. We're going to use a sleep mask if we have one. We're going to do breathwork. We're going to stop screen time an hour before bed. And then people that have a hard time getting to sleep, we're going to do contrast therapy, which is just a, um, a hot shower followed by a 30-second to 45-second really cold shower. And only 30 to 45 seconds. We're not trying to like mimic the cold plunge. We're actually trying to shift our body into a parasympathetic state and, and, and break, you know, shift our state so we actually break from the day and move into bed. We had a 28% increase in the average sleep score. Phenomenal. Simple tactics like that— consistent bedtime, no alcohol, don't eat within 2 hours of bed, darken the room, cool the room off, maybe add a sleep mask, and do something to shift your state like breathwork or contrast shower. Those won't cost anyone listening to this podcast anything. Try that for a week and see what happens to your energy levels.

That's awesome, Gary. This has been so great. I can't wait to have you on again.

Yeah, can't wait to be on here again.

So, so good. Yeah. Um, hey, let us— let everybody know where they can find out more about you and your great work.

Um, so, uh, you can follow me on Instagram, just my first and last name, Gary Brecka. Um, I also have a podcast called The Ultimate Human Podcast, which you were just on. Yeah. Um, and, uh, so they can go to theultimatehuman.com to see, um, some of my favorite supplements and tips and tricks. And, or you can follow me on Instagram, um, and that's where I just give advice without the expectation of receipt.

So good. So good. Well, everybody, thanks so much for listening to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. It's been amazing having Gary Brecka on. He is a human biologist and an incredible longevity expert. I wanted to say thanks so much for watching and supporting this channel. Um, remember, every week we're diving deep into the science and principles and how to help you grow in body, mind, and spirit. And hey, do me a favor. Share, subscribe, like this episode. If there's someone you know who needs to know this information, send them a text message, post on social, but let people know about how to heal using food as medicine, mindset medicine, lifestyle medicine, and how to become, as we talked about today, an ultimate human. All right, everybody, thanks so much for listening. Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you on the next episode.