199. Debunking Health Myths with Sage Workinger-Brecka & Gary Brecka

Relationship goals meet biohacking in this revealing conversation about how Sage Workinger-Brecka and Gary Brecka synchronize their health protocols while respecting their genetic differences. In this episode, they also answer your most-burning questions on children’s nutrition, hormonal imbalance, ADHD symptoms, and mitochondrial health. Bonus: they share the exact mineral cocktail they drink daily, including their morning routines, which has been a game-changer for sustained energy without the afternoon crash. Join the Ultimate Human VIP community for Gary Brecka's proven wellness protocols!: https://bit.ly/4ai0Xwg Connect with Sage Workinger-Brecka Website: http://bit.ly/3HGwUos Instagram: http://bit.ly/45PCvSz Facebook: http://bit.ly/4lZ4SlS Thank you to our partners H2TABS: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4hMNdgg BODYHEALTH: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV BAJA GOLD: "ULTIMATE10" FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa EIGHT SLEEP: SAVE $350 ON THE POD 4 ULTRA WITH CODE “GARY”: https://bit.ly/3WkLd6E COLD LIFE: THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: https://bit.ly/4eULUKp WHOOP: JOIN AND GET 1 FREE MONTH!: https://bit.ly/3VQ0nzW MASA CHIPS: 20% OFF FIRST ORDER: https://bit.ly/40LVY4y VANDY: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: https://bit.ly/49Qr7WE AION: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4h6KHAD A-GAME: “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: http://bit.ly/4kek1ij CARAWAY: “ULTIMATE” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3Q1VmkC HEALF: 10% OFF YOUR ORDER: https://bit.ly/41HJg6S BIOPTIMIZERS: “ULTIMATE” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/4inFfd7 RHO NUTRITION: “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/44fFza0 GOPUFF: GET YOUR FAVORITE SNACK!: https://bit.ly/4obIFDC GENETIC TEST: ⁠https://bit.ly/3Yg1Uk9 Watch the “Ultimate Human Podcast” every Tuesday & Thursday at 9AM EST: YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3RQftU0 Connect with Gary Brecka Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo X: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4hH7Ri2 Website: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU Merch: https://bit.ly/4aBpOM1 Newsletter: https://bit.ly/47ejrws Ask Gary: https://bit.ly/3PEAJuG Timestamps 00:00 Intro of Show 02:43 Most Overlooked Thing by Couples 07:15 How to Improve Health and Relationship 09:09 What Does Your Fatigue Mean? 14:08 Habits that Influence Your Energy, Focus, and Mood 24:51 Top 3 Biomarkers to Track 26:37 Debunking Health Myths 34:39 Starting a Health Journey 37:41 How to Increase Mitochondrial Function Naturally 40:36 Best Supplements for Children 47:13 Biohacking during Pregnancy 50:00 Influencing Children to Take More Nutrient-Dense Foods 53:11 Supporting Children with ADHD 58:09 Coffee Alternatives to Boost Productivity 1:05:00 Overcoming Itchy Skin 1:08:45 Fasting and Weight Training 1:13:36 Biomarkers for Hormone Panel Test 1:18:30 Join The Ultimate Human VIP Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not provide medical advice. It is not intended for diagnosing or treating any health condition. Always consult a licensed healthcare professional before making health or wellness decisions. Gary Brecka is the owner of Ultimate Human, LLC which operates The Ultimate Human podcast and promotes certain third-party products used by Gary Brecka in his personal health and wellness protocols and daily life and for which Ultimate Human LLC and / or Gary Brecka directly or indirectly holds an economic interest or receives compensation. Accordingly, statements made by Gary Brecka and others (including on The Ultimate Human podcast) may be considered promotional in nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Gary Brecka?

  We took all of the most frequently asked questions and we've consolidated those into a Q and A with the love of my life, my partner, my wife, Sage Brecka.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Thank you. That was very sweet.

• 0:12Gary Brecka?

  So the first question, if starting from scratch on a health journey, what's the number one thing you would do first?

• 0:19Speaker 01

  There's a lot of packaged food out there that actually is decent and has five or less ingredients, but if it's got a long list and it's so small, you can barely read it.

• 0:29Gary Brecka?

  How do you know if your normal fatigue is actually a sign of something deeper, like hormone imbalance or mitochondrial burnout?

• 0:36Speaker 01

  This is a super interesting question because I think the same thing because sometimes the symptoms for things.

• 0:41Gary Brecka?

  What are the three worst daily habits that quietly destroy your energy, focus, and mood?

• 0:47Speaker 01

  One of the things that I've really admit is.

• 0:50Gary Brecka?

  What is the most overlooked thing that couples can do together to improve their health and relationship at the same time?

• 0:56Speaker 01

  What we do is really try to.

• 1:00Gary Brecka?

  How do we best support young boys with ADHD symptoms without medications?

• 1:05Speaker 01

  For ADHD, I think what has really, really helped is.

• 1:21Gary Brecka?

  Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I am your host, human biologist Gary Brecka, and today's episode is really, really unique and special. It's been a long time in the making. We took all of the most frequently asked questions that have been submitted through all of our social channels that have come to me, or come to my wife, or come to our team, and we've consolidated those into a Q and A with the love of my life, my partner, my soulmate, my wife, Sage Brecka.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Thank you. That was very sweet.

• 1:53Gary Brecka?

  Notice I admitted your maiden name.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Yes. I'm working on it.

• 1:58Gary Brecka?

  She hyphenates it, working her brek, but we just drop the working her and make things simple. So here we go. I know a lot of you have questions on relationships, building the business, hormones, couples working together, all kinds of things. So we're just going to be as authentic, transparent as we possibly can. And the staff is laughing and loving putting this together. So I'm a little afraid of what we might find on this page.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  What are we about to admit here?

• 2:26Gary Brecka?

  I know. What are we about to admit here? This might be a heavily edited podcast. So the first question is, what is the most overlooked thing that couples can do together to improve their health and relationship at the same time?

• 2:40Speaker 01

  I think that's a good one. Most overlooked thing. I mean, I don't know what's overlooked, but what we do is really try to, it sounds so silly, but when you have a schedule like yours, where you're just ping ponging around all day from call to call, from appointment to appointment. And because our work happens in our home, it's not like you go to an office from nine to five and then come home and, you know, just be with me and the family. So we have to schedule our time together. And as unromantic as that sounds, it works. We pull, I am an old school calendar person.

• 3:20Gary Brecka?

  She does it months in advance.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Yes. Not that anything ever stays the same, but we try. And I am also very visual, so I like to take a highlighter and schedule things out. So if we're in Miami, that might be purple. And if we're in, you know, Nashville, that might be pink. But the goal is to, especially in the summer months, get as much green on the calendar as possible, because that means our time in Colorado together. And that's where we, I feel like you and I spend the most time together, one on one at least.

• 3:53Gary Brecka?

  I agree.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  When we're in Colorado, and that's our happy place. And it's a place where we can go hiking together and our phones don't work. So I recommend that if your phone does work, then just leave it at home or turn it off. But we have a lot of good conversations, walking around, hiking, exploring new places, jumping on the razor, the ATV, and just cruising around the dirt roads.

• 4:17Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I like that we've also kind of switched our vacation style from going to places that entertain us to just allowing ourselves to be the entertainment. And, you know, it used to be that when we went out, even when we were drinking, you know, we would do things that revolved around drinking, or we'd go to a show, or we'd go to Vegas, or we'd go to a concert, or we'd go to a game, and it was always going somewhere to be entertained, but it wasn't really about true connection. And the more I really began to explore the necessity for connection, that connection is medicine, that even the Blue Zones tell us that the people that live the longest have a sense of community and a sense of purpose. And, and that connection is something that we are intentional about now.

• 5:02Gary Brecka?

  And so whereas vacations used to be going places that would entertain us, now we actually try to have the absence of distractions so that we entertain each other. And, and it's actually worked out really well. I found out what a great sense of humor Sage has.

• 5:20Gary Brecka?

  With, with one caveat, Sage thinks that she is a lot funnier than she is. She will start a story and she will be in such a fit of giggles that she can't even get the story out so that like I'm, I'm begging for the punchline and she's like, you'll never believe what happened today and my girlfriend called me and then she can't get it out. And nine minutes later, we get to the end of this very anticlimactic story, but she has had such a laugh that now I'm laughing at her.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Laughing at myself.

• 5:52Gary Brecka?

  So much fun laughing, thinking about how funny she is.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. My, one of my best friends, Aaron, from back in the day, he used to always be like, I guess you had to be there, because apparently I have a history of that. So I think I'm hilarious, but that's okay.

• 6:07Gary Brecka?

  So the second part of this question was things we can do to improve our health and our relationship.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Well, we laugh a lot, so I've got, I feel like I have good abs from laughing a lot. But yeah, we hike, we go in the sauna. As soon as my dad says sauna is hot, then we run right down there because it's a wood fired sauna. So you got a short period of time where you got to fire it up again.

• 6:29Gary Brecka?

  We both like a lot of the same things. We both like to be active. We love hiking. We love being outdoors. We love shooting guns. We love driving these razors raging all over the mountain. They're not really expensive trips. They're not expensive things, but there's an absence of entertainment and just the presence of each other. And I think that's really the point. And, and health wise, we're very much on the same page. We don't need exactly the same foods. We don't do exactly the same protocol, but we're very intentional about our routines. Morning sunlight, grounding, breath work, whole food dieting. I think in general, it's just like raising kids. You know, you have a framework that

• 7:12Gary Brecka?

  you agree on. And for us, one of the big things that I think we intentionally did about two and a half years ago was we began to schedule meetings and travel around sleep and exercise. So we don't let our travel schedule dictate when we sleep and exercise. We let our sleep and exercise dictate when we travel and take meetings. So I get offers sometimes for state talks or podcasts or lectures. I don't take them early in the morning. I only do them later in the mornings now.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Especially because I like to sleep in. I'm not a morning person.

• 7:47Gary Brecka?

  If you've seen the Good Morning Babe series.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  I'm just not so good early in the morning.

• 7:52Gary Brecka?

  No, I'm not good with time.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Nope. But it gives you a chance to, to, gives me a chance to sleep in because I do prioritize my sleep. But it gives you a chance to work out in the morning. So you get all your wiggles out before the day starts. So you're just.

• 8:07Gary Brecka?

  She calls it the wiggles.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the zoomies.

• 8:10Gary Brecka?

  The zoomies.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, whatever it is, but you wake up.

• 8:12Gary Brecka?

  I have a plethora of energy in the morning.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  I want to talk to everybody and I have so much to say and I'm, I want to talk to nobody, nobody until I've had my coffee and it's like, at least give me an hour to get going.

• 8:24Gary Brecka?

  I have noticed on some of our travel recently, you have booked us in first class in different seats. Do you want to explain? Oh my God, she's so, did you guys see this? Like the guilt, that's why she says it happened by accident, or she blames it on my assistant.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Or it's totally Mariah's fault.

• 8:43Gary Brecka?

  No, you enjoy peaceful flying.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Okay, I do because I get so much more done when you're not talking to me every two seconds. But I do love you and sometimes people will switch seats with us. So that's nice, but a lot of times we book our flights last minute and so there's not a whole lot of seat options.

• 9:01Gary Brecka?

  But you can always ask the person next to you to switch.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Usually somebody knows who you are and so you get to sit down and tell your whole life story and you love it. And I am totally okay reading my book in the corner.

• 9:14Gary Brecka?

  So number two, it says, how do you know if your normal fatigue is actually a sign of something deeper like hormone imbalance or mitochondrial burnout?

• 9:23Speaker 01

  This is a super interesting question because I think the same thing because sometimes the symptoms for things could be hormonal, they could be like I had mold poisoning. So there's all of this long list of issues with mold poisoning. There's, you know, I feel like there's just so much, people have autoimmune issues, all sorts of things. Or was it you just didn't get enough sleep? Or was it something you ate? I just, how do you figure out what's what?

• 9:53Gary Brecka?

  So I think the, the starting point needs to be a basic blood panel. I think everybody needs to start with a basic genetic test and start supplementing for deficiency, but assuming you've done that, if you're feeling overly fatigued or, and it's something that's recently onset, I would always start with a basic blood panel, complete blood count, comprehensive metabolic panel, hormone panel and nutrient deficiencies. And this is a basic panel that you can get from LabCorp, not very expensive. A lot of it's covered by health insurance because you want to look for the glaringly obvious things first and those will jump out on a hormone panel.

• 10:32Gary Brecka?

  Lots of reasons why people are fatigued is because their hormones have begun to decline. They may not necessarily need hormone therapy. They may need the nutrients that support hormone therapy like DHEA, vitamin D3, looking at something called sex hormone binding globulin, a protein that actually binds to your sex hormones and carries them out of the bloodstream like testosterone. Because as your hormones decline. Very often, the number of red blood cells that carry oxygen also declines. And this can hide in plain sight. So you're essentially having anemia like symptoms without having anemia. A good physician can look at that and say, hey, we need to do something about your hormones.

• 11:17Gary Brecka?

  And once your hormones are balanced, we need to do something about your deficiency in D3, DHEA. You have high SHBG. And we can address these things rather simply without a lot of pharmaceutical intervention. And you feel amazing. I think a lot of times people just don't get data. And the worst thing to do is start talking to the people around you about what to do. Because they're going to say, Ashwagandha, St. John's Wort, Coke U10, Resveratrol. They're going to just throw ideas that maybe work for them, but no data. And the best place to get the data is inside your own body. And the majority of people, if you are younger and not menopausal age or, you know, over 50,

• 11:59Gary Brecka?

  the majority of people just have simple nutrient deficiencies that can be addressed in their blood work. And this is leading to fatigue. Once you've done that, I would say before you progress to really worrying that something terrible is going on and thinking that something really sinister is happening, I would do the big four. Test for the big four. Mold, mycotoxin, heavy metal, parasite, virus. Lots of tests that you can do for this. A lot of you can get them covered by your primary care doctor. One that I do is called a Vibrant Wellness Test. I have no affiliation with them at all. I like this test because as we get older, we are slowly kind of micro poisoning ourselves to death.

• 12:40Gary Brecka?

  And not to death, but we're micro poisoning ourself into a place where we start accepting consequence of aging, consequences of aging that are not consequences of aging, consequences of mold, mycotoxins, other things that can be in our blood. And they can start to detox those. We both actually got mold poisoning.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Terrible.

• 12:59Gary Brecka?

  You got it from our, we had two houses flooded in hurricane. And Sage.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Hurricane Ian.

• 13:06Gary Brecka?

  Hurricane Ian.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Washed two houses in one afternoon. Gone.

• 13:10Gary Brecka?

  We had a primary residence we lived on that was on a canal. And then we had a rental home two blocks away. They were both wiped out, six foot.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Five, between five and nine feet of water in each one.

• 13:20Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, between five and nine feet of water in each of these. So Sage went in and for weeks and was helping to intentionally clean the house. Then she was meeting with contractors and they were cutting out the drywall.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  And you don't realize how fast it happens.

• 13:32Gary Brecka?

  And I think we were both shocked at how fast something called aflatoxins, ocar toxins, all these fungicides, these fungi showed up in her bloodstream and it literally just sucked the life out of her.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  It really did. But it took, I would say the worst of it hit about a year later.

• 13:51Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  When I had the, just the worst case of brain fog I think I've ever had. Now, of course, this is part of the question that I had. Like, how do I know that that brain fog was mold versus, you know, I'm in perimenopause.

• 14:03Gary Brecka?

  We tested for it, yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  The hormones, so I'm kind of messed up on both sides. Extra brain fog.

• 14:10Gary Brecka?

  Your words, not mine, not my words.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  I know, we're figuring it out.

• 14:13Gary Brecka?

  So I would say that's how, I would start a basic blood panel and then I would move to more specific testing. Okay, what are the three, what are the three worst daily habits that quietly destroy your energy, focus and mood?

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm going to take the first go at this. So one of the things that I've really made, you know, I've really tried this last year, year and a half to focus on is stop focusing on the negative. Because I admit that I was kind of a Debbie Downer sometimes and would find the, you know, I've got anxiety. So I'd find the worst case scenario and everything. And I, I don't know, I just, I had to learn to stop focusing on the negative and start focusing on the positive. And holy cow, the affirmations that I started doing, positive affirmations and just looking at things and shifting my mindset to the positive has made a world of difference.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  And it sounded like hocus pocus to me in the beginning. And I was like. I'll give anything a shot, you know, to feel better and feel happier. And that has made a huge difference. I also found, I think I've talked about this on the podcast before, but a four minute video, positive affirmations video that I do when I'm doing my cold plunge.

• 15:29Gary Brecka?

  Yes.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  That I don't love to do my cold plunge, but that four minutes in there, it changes my whole day.

• 15:35Gary Brecka?

  Maybe we'll link that in the show notes.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Okay, so that was a good one. So I do four minute positive affirmation and I, I think that poor sleep habits, which I am trying to get better at, I got an Oura ring. So I'm trying to track my sleep there and learn, you know, what I'm doing right, what I'm doing wrong. It does make me laugh that sometimes it just tells me, um, yeah, you probably feel like crap today. I'm like, yeah, I sure do. Thanks for letting me know.

• 16:04Gary Brecka?

  I think the three worst daily habits are.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  We have one more.

• 16:06Gary Brecka?

  Oh, sorry, go ahead.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  And phone habits. I think that that is something I still need to probably work on is.

• 16:11Gary Brecka?

  You've been a lot better.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  I feel like I've been better, but yeah, putting the phone down.

• 16:16Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, you're off the phone earlier. Sleep has improved dramatically. In fact, looking at your sleep scores now, it's not at all uncommon that you have an entire week and then high eighties to mid nineties sleep scores on a consistent basis. You've actually become a very good sleeper. But you know, I think the worst three daily habits, the primary worst habit is to not have daily habits. That's the first one is if you don't have a morning routine, which we do, and I'll tell you exactly what it is, very simple. If you don't have a morning routine, your routine will be chaotic. And you know, we are such circadian beings. We have a, a bio rhythm and we have a circadian rhythm.

• 16:59Gary Brecka?

  And the more out of sync we are with that, the more disconnected we feel from ourselves. And by that, I mean. If you do the same thing with the first 30 minutes of your day, every day, I get up before Sage, so my duty is, first of all, I'm going to write a manual on how to wake up Sage, and it's like 32 pages long, it'll have a table of contents, but it's very specific because she likes the noise machine on when she goes to sleep, but the second she wakes up, the noise machine has to go off.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  I can't stand it when it's on.

• 17:32Gary Brecka?

  It's been on for eight hours. So at first, it used to freak me out so bad because she would wake up, she'd be like, can you turn the noise machine off? I'm like, I can't hear it anymore because it's been running for eight hours.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  I think that's my methylation, for sure.

• 17:45Gary Brecka?

  So now I know that as soon as we wake up, I turn the noise machine off. Stage one.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 17:51Gary Brecka?

  Secondly, we sleep with the room very cold, but she doesn't like to wake up in a cold room.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 17:54Gary Brecka?

  So I actually turn the temperature up when I get up in the morning. And then she likes coffee right out of bed, so no words, just coffee.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Just coffee.

• 18:02Gary Brecka?

  And then there's a little

• 18:04Speaker 01

  And some kisses.

• 18:04Gary Brecka?

  And some kisses, and I say nice things to her. And so my role is to do that, and a little knee, calf, and foot rub works wonders.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  I like back rubs.

• 18:14Gary Brecka?

  Just learn to do it. But One of my favorite bio hacks outside of breath work by far is mineral salts, Baja Gold Sea Salt. It's got all of the trace minerals that the body needs. You know, most of us are not just protein deficient, meaning amino acid deficient, or fatty acid deficient, we are mineral deficient. So a quarter teaspoon of this in water, first thing in the morning, will make sure that you get all of the essential minerals that you need. It tastes amazing. In fact, I made a steak today. I actually made a grass-fed steak with grass-fed butter, and I put just mushrooms and a little bit of rosemary, and I sprinkled Baja Gold Sea Salt all over the top. Try it, it'll be your new favorite for cooking, too. It's the cheapest and one of my favorite bio hacks. I don't know, a $15 or $20 bag of this will probably last you five years. It's literally the world's best biohacking secret.

• 18:59Gary Brecka?

  Now, let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. Not having a morning routine is the worst thing you can do to disrupt your day. And so morning routine can be very, very simple.

• 19:10Gary Brecka?

  You know, you wake up, I think, within first 30 minutes of waking, try to get some natural light into your eyes. Very simple, inexpensive. I know a lot of you live in overcast climates and you think, well, it's overcast. I'm not getting good light in my eyes. You're absolutely still getting the light coming through the clouds. We do breath work within 30 minutes of waking every single day, like clockwork. I've never missed it. You missed a few.

• 19:34Gary Brecka?

  But just a simple round of breath work, natural light in your eyes, just to say, I'm awake. And you know, you're elevating your cortisol, you're decreasing your melatonin, your body locks into that cycle, delaying your coffee for 60 minutes, maybe even to 90 minutes, and easing your way into the day. Just, but having the same routine where you do sunlight, breath work if you can, grounding, where you drink the same thing in the mornings. We, we both make the exact same cocktail. I am not trying to push supplements on you guys. I'll tell you exactly what it is. It's eight to 10 ounces of water. We put a scoop of perfect aminos in there. We put a squirt of Baja Gold sea salt, hydrating, mineralizing, putting the amino acids, and

• 20:19Gary Brecka?

  then we'll put two, sometimes three of those H2 tabs, which makes hydrogen water. You can use a hydrogen bottle if you have one.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  He's kind of lying though. I actually like all my things separated out.

• 20:29Gary Brecka?

  She does. Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  I still drink it all.

• 20:32Gary Brecka?

  Thirty-one of the manual.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Yes, there's a lot.

• 20:34Gary Brecka?

  She does all of it, but in sequence.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:36Gary Brecka?

  I just do it all at one time.

• 20:39Gary Brecka?

  And we whack that back. Hydrogen water actually drops the inflammation, turns the lights on. Amino acids are the non-essential amino acids. They don't break a fast. And then minerals, if you don't do anything else, a good mineral salt first thing in the morning is an excellent way to hydrate and mineralize the body. It's probably the cheapest biohack that you'll have. Those, those bags of salts are 15, 20 bucks in the last few months and months. So that's what we do every single morning. And that's in Pekin, that's in Dubai, that's in Saudi Arabia, that's in Florida, wherever we are, we actually wake up, sunlight, breath work, and we have that cocktail versus separated ones altogether. This is the COMT, like, so she has a gene mutation called COMT, C O M T.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Oh, it's fun.

• 21:25Gary Brecka?

  And this is like where you're just bordering on anxiety and anxiousness kind of all the time.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  And OCD and yeah.

• 21:32Gary Brecka?

  So like when we go into the woods.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Perfectionist.

• 21:34Gary Brecka?

  I'm going down the hill and I'm like halfway down the hill and I look up and she's just doing these baby, like very intentional steps. She knows where every foot is landing. She is very intentional.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  I don't want to eat it.

• 21:45Gary Brecka?

  I call it the COMT walk because.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Cause I'm so scared of falling.

• 21:48Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I do.

• 21:50Gary Brecka?

  Like, we were, we were in the shale pit the other day and I think I looked at you and I go, does it seem like I'm always trying to figure out how we can have fun and you're always trying to figure out how we actually don't get hurt?

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:05Gary Brecka?

  And we both started laughing, but.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Gary has no fear and I have all the fear. So there, we try to balance it somewhere in the middle that makes sense because it doesn't work either way, but yeah.

• 22:16Gary Brecka?

  Walking in the woods was a just really interesting. She doesn't break a branch. She steps very intentionally.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  Get it done.

• 22:23Gary Brecka?

  Okay, so, um, so morning habits that destroy your energy focus and mood. Coffee too soon, not having a morning habit and scheduling things too early in the morning. I really think that we could all learn something from the blue zone studies and that is that we have to be intentional about self-care. Women are especially bad at this because they wake up and put the needs of everybody else first. So family, spouse, coworkers, what have you.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Getting the kids out to school, making all the lunches. Yeah.

• 22:55Gary Brecka?

  But we've been very intentional about our mornings. For me, the first 60 to 90 minutes of every day belongs solely to me. Same with her. And then after that, you can give the rest of your day away. And I find it's just an excellent way to just be present for your partners and for your audience. I give the rest of my day away to you guys and to, to our platform and Sage does the same, so.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  I think another important part too is. So that mornings aren't so stressful. If you're a parent, you have kids and you're trying to get everybody out the door at the same time is pre-plan things the night before. So I was always a big like make every all the lunch before or the night before. And then have the outfits laid out, have like, I'm trying to think of the back in the day. I don't have to do that anymore. Thank goodness. But, but have everything just laid out. So you don't wake up when everybody's cross eyed and everybody's whining about having to be awake and whining up going to school, whining about going to work and it's just ready to go. You've already, you know exactly what you're putting on and you really just need to like grab

• 24:02Speaker 01

  the bag, eat some, eat some breakfast and go. So I think pre-planning helps the mornings go smoother as well. And I think it's a good habit to get into. So.

• 24:10Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. Um, this is actually a really interesting one. If you could only track three biomarkers for the rest of your life, which ones would you choose? And why? Wow. I would say if you could only track three biomarkers, number one would probably be sleep. Um, I think sleep is our human superpower. It's easy to track, you know, eight sleep, an Oura ring, a Fitbit, a Whoop. There's lots of ways to track your sleep. You'd be shocked what is affecting your sleep and what's not. Alcohol, 100% of the time, sleep disruptive. Eating too close to bedtime, 90% of the time, it will chew into your sleep time. Screen time in bed really does destroy your sleep. Um, so actually getting those metrics and really having the data so that

• 24:55Gary Brecka?

  you know what's disturbing your sleep. If you're not sleeping, you're just not thriving. I mean, that's the, that's the bottom line. I really do think that sleep is our human superpower. I mean, number two for me would, would definitely be hormones. Um, wow. Number three, there's so many that are coming to mind. If I could only track three, be sleep, hormones.

• 25:19Gary Brecka?

  And probably key nutrient deficiencies. Vitamin D3, DHEA being the primary two.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  I agree with the hormones and the sleep. And the sleep thing is new for me, so, but I appreciate understanding it better. Even though my Oura ring has definitely just told me, yes, you're a night owl, not a morning person and my circadian rhythm is, you know, not normal. But at least I know who I am and I just make adjustments for it. But steps, I feel like when I track my steps, it makes me, when it shows me that I'm low on my steps, it makes me go, okay, I need to, you know, scoot my butt around a little bit more and figure something out. Even if it's housework, like sometimes I have certain days where I'm just so busy and all it is, is just walking around cleaning things up. So.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  But I think, I think it encourages you, it gamifies the exercise to, to track your steps.

• 26:20Gary Brecka?

  What's one health myth you wish every woman and every man would stop believing today? Wow.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  My answer to this is thinking you constantly have to be on a diet. I, I feel like it messes when people, especially when girls, young girls, think that they have to be following some sort of special diet. It gets in their head and I think it's what creates a lot of disorders, eating disorders. And they think they need to be a certain size and they're, you know, looking at these magazines and these beautiful women and blah, blah, blah. But I think if we just, everybody understood that you just eat whole foods, stay away from the processed stuff, stay away from fast food. Just eat a good, healthy meal and in moderation, everything in moderation.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Understand food better, I think is a big thing that that people don't understand. I remember a girlfriend of mine loved sweet tea, loved it. And she was heavy and she couldn't understand I'm I'm eating everything right. I'm on, you know, I'm eating salads every day and grilled chicken and, you know, veggies and all the things that were correct. But I'm trying to walk through like, okay, that all sounds good. You're on the right supplements, like where, where is this? Why can't this weight fall off? And then I'm like, wait a second, what are you drinking? And it was sweet tea. And I swear to God, she grew up in the South, so sweet tea is just what they drink on a normal basis, like water. And she didn't realize that sweet tea has just as much sugar as a soda, if not more.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  And so she had to, I was like, okay, that's where you're probably going wrong. So you need to take down the sugar content. So I was like, literally take it down by a fourth until you wean yourself off to unsweet tea. And so each, you know, week she would put a little less sweet tea and she either water it down with regular like unsweet tea. Anyway, she, then she was half and half. And then it was, you know, going in the right direction and then now she's just unsweet.

• 28:21Gary Brecka?

  Substitute it with monk fruit or allulose.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, something a little bit healthier than just straight sugar.

• 28:27Gary Brecka?

  Mine would be the same way. I, I think that, you know, our ancestors didn't count macros. Our ancestors probably did not know the difference between a carbohydrate, protein, saturated fat and unsaturated fat. Mono unsaturated fat.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  I don't even know all that stuff.

• 28:41Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 28:43Gary Brecka?

  And, uh, you know, they ate till they were satiated. And if you're on a whole food diet, um, meaning you're eating mainly whole foods, not dogmatic dieting. You're actually tapping into your body's own natural ability to gauge the nutrient content of what you're eating and make you feel satiated. And so we really focus on whole food dieting, um, eating whole foods.

• 29:05Gary Brecka?

  But in terms of a myth, I would say that, uh, you know, there's a few myths out there. One, that women shouldn't weight train.

• 29:14Gary Brecka?

  I think that's a massive myth. I mean Sage's body completely transformed. Thank you, Alexia Clark.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 29:21Gary Brecka?

  You know, when she started weight training and actually putting muscle on, most women actually look better when they are have more muscle.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  And it wasn't crazy. Literally work out twice a week with Alexia, two 30 minute sessions. But it was just adding weight in the right way and not heavyweight. It wasn't crazy.

• 29:39Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  It was nothing. It was just staying consistent and and then just the way that she taught me these exercises that I just hadn't been doing before. So I think, you know, following a pro a program or hiring a trainer if you can, but even just following a program like Alexia's is so great to she transformed my body. I'm getting back to it this week.

• 30:01Gary Brecka?

  She really did. Like shockingly transformed her body. I mean, I was chasing her around like a high schooler.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Oh, Lord.

• 30:07Gary Brecka?

  Still do. Said, okay, should we cut that out?

• 30:10Speaker 01

  I need to cut that one out. Mom's listening.

• 30:12Gary Brecka?

  But it is crazy. Like I'm more attracted to you almost today than the day we met. But the the other one is intermittent fasting, especially women. I will tell you from having been in the functional medicine space for 10 years and with a clinic and treating thousands of young menstruating women. Some of the worst endocrine disasters I have seen are women that eat in a very narrow feeding window like their husbands. So their husband is on an intermittent fasting program, worked great for him because he has higher hemoglobin A1C or more insulin resistant or higher blood sugar, or he's just consuming a lot more food. So intermittent fasting works great for the majority of men. It is hit or miss for women. If you have poor blood sugar control, intermittent fasting can be amazing.

• 30:57Gary Brecka?

  You're one of those women that is a little hypoglycemic, you know, you actually have your insulin sensitive, not insulin resistant. And you have good blood sugar control and your numbers, your glycemic profile, meaning your insulin is is low, below 10, preferably below seven, your hemoglobin A1C, which is three month average of your blood sugar is at or below about 5.3. Very often, women come in with very low blood sugar, like hemoglobin A1C of 4.8, which is, means half the time you're hypoglycemic. And their intermittent fasting, they're eating in the same narrow window, four hour, six hour window, like their husbands, even an eight hour window can be too narrow.

• 31:42Gary Brecka?

  And what this does for women because of their cycle, the follicular, the ovulation, the luteal, they're literally three different people at three different times of the month. And so this can actually really throw your hormones into a tailspin and you can actually start retaining water. Nothing is more frustrating for a young menstruating female than to actually start to retain water and think that you're getting fat when you're not eating and you're exercising and you're doing all the right things. You're cold plunging, you're doing the sauna, you're going to Orange Theory, you go and Hammer Down, and you're really making an effort, but you actually can't lose any weight. And you're watching your husband eat like a dinosaur and in a narrow feeding window, and he's gaining muscle and, and he's fine.

• 32:26Gary Brecka?

  And you're having mood shifts and water retention. So if you are going to do intermittent fasting, which I'm a fan of, just get your blood sugar profile done. And if your average blood sugar is very low, hemoglobin A1C is very low, you are not a candidate for intermittent fasting. Women do very well eating in a 12, 12 window, 12 hours of eating, 12 hours off, writing their meals out. And that way, cycles do not impact your mood and your water retention so much as they will when you are eating in a narrow feeding window. So I would say that's one of the myths that, and I often see, you know, couples trying to do things together. We try to do things together, but you know, intermittent fasting, like I say, it works for the majority of men. It's hit or miss for women. It's not a one size fits all.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  One thing that I've done, because I'm, I'm not, again, back to the, I'm not a morning person. It also means I don't love to eat a big meal in the morning, so. Gary will make me eggs and bacon avocado or something and I'll eat it. But sometimes I just don't really want a huge meal, so I make a protein smoothie. And that's been my new gig lately because I just put everything I can into a protein smoothie. And so I'm also struggling to get enough protein.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  And that is, we could do a whole podcast.

• 33:44Gary Brecka?

  Let me say we will put your protein smoothie recipe in the last question for that. So we'll put that in the show notes too.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Throws much stuff in one drink as you can.

• 33:52Gary Brecka?

  If you're in California and you can go to Arowan, you can get the Gary Brecka smoothie.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Oh, there you go. It's very delicious.

• 33:57Gary Brecka?

  Which was really funny because we went, we were in LA yesterday or day before yesterday. And we were in Arowan getting the Gary Brecka Perfect Beano Smoothie. And I went to the counter and we ordered two Gary Brecka smoothies. And the guy was like.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  He legit said, oh, my God, that's my favorite smoothie.

• 34:11Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, that's my favorite smoothie. And he goes, I need your name for the smoothie order. And I go Gary Brecka. And he goes, oh, I'm sorry, sir. I need your name for the smoothie order. And I said, Gary Brecka. And then he got really pissed off. And he goes, sir, I need your name for the smoothie order. I go, my name is Gary Brecka. And he goes, oh, you're Gary Brecka. It's just kind of funny.

• 34:37Gary Brecka?

  So if, starting from scratch on a health journey, what's the number one thing you would do first? Okay, so I would, the very first thing I would do is I would develop a disciplined morning routine. Does not need to be expensive, does not need to involve a fancy gym. I would start doing the same thing every single day with the first 30 to 60 minutes of my day. I can't tell you how important that is. And the reason why developing a healthy morning routine? If you like journaling, if you like practicing gratitude, if you're someone that is a person of faith and you want to pray. But doing it at the same time, within the same distance of waking every day is critical. I have a morning routine where I do breath work. When I can, I ground.

• 35:21Gary Brecka?

  We live in a condo, so I don't get to ground that often. But we do breath work every morning within 30 minutes of waking. 100% of the time I'm trying to get natural light into my eyes and I drink the exact same cocktail within 30 minutes of waking. I take the perfect aminos, I take the Baja Gold Sea Salt, then I take hydrogen water tablets. You don't need to follow that exact routine, but the more systematic you are within 30 minutes of waking, the more your body will tie into the circadian rhythm. I also think if your morning is hard, your day will be easy. And so by moving your workouts to the morning and making it non-negotiable, even if it's as simple as a 30 minute walk, 30 minute walk with a weighted vest, 30 minute walk on

• 36:02Gary Brecka?

  an incline on a treadmill, or even better outside, having a consistent morning routine, I cannot tell you how good that is towards you succeeding and having habits that lead to a healthy lifestyle. And then the second thing I would say is really focus on eating a whole food diet. And I get a lot of questions about what a whole food diet is. You know, a simple way is when you, when you look at the back of a label, you don't need to become an expert at reading labels. When you look at the back of a label, if you see ingredients on there that you don't know where to find in the grocery store.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  If you can't pronounce it, if it has a color, if it has a number, if you've never heard of it before.

• 36:40Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, just read the, can I find, where's the polysorbate 80?

• 36:44Speaker 01

  No idea what that is.

• 36:45Gary Brecka?

  No idea. Where are the natural fruit flavors? Can I find those on the shelf? If you know that you cannot locate that item in the grocery store, it's a highly processed food. Shop the perimeter of the grocery store, can't tell you what, how far that will go. You know, frozen dinners, horrible. You know, avoiding seed oils, but, but, but the main thing is just switching to a whole food diet and.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Teach your kids that way too. I think if more parents taught their kids how to spin the box around and read it and, because there's a lot of packaged food out there that actually is decent and has five or less ingredients. But if it's got a long list and it's so small, you can barely read it, stay away. And if you can't pronounce it, it has a color or a number. Those are the things I always recommend to parents for kids.

• 37:34Gary Brecka?

  So how do you increase, how do you increase mitochondrial function naturally? So the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. It's what makes ATP. That's what powers human beings. We're not actually powered by the water we eat or the air we breathe or the, I mean, the water we drink, the air we breathe or the food that we eat. We're actually powered by a singular energy source called ATP. So eventually, all of that distills down, gets into our cells and becomes one form of energy. The fact that you even know what a mitochondria is, is a great sign. So there are lots of things you can do that are good for mitochondria. One of the best things you can do is high intensity cardio training. Doesn't need to be often, but it's cardio.

• 38:19Gary Brecka?

  High intensity cardio, two or three days a week is excellent for your mitochondria. Red light therapy is excellent for your mitochondria. And you don't have to invest in a very expensive red light bed. You can get red light panels. You can go to a clinic that allows you to, to use red light on a subscription basis. Those are excellent for your mitochondria. Also, things that really impair mitochondrial function are the big four that I talk about all the time. Mold, mycotoxin, heavy metals, viruses, parasites. I have a free cleanse on my website. You can download the mold cleanse, the metal cleanse. There are ways for you to detoxify yourself from heavy metals, mold and mycotoxins. You'd be shocked how many people actually have these and they're just learning to deal with them.

• 39:04Gary Brecka?

  They think that the symptoms are consequences of aging and they're not consequences of aging at all. It's actually a consequence of mycotoxin in your system. And you want to talk about liberating. When you find out that you've been running around with an energy level at 60% of normal and you just go back to feeling normal because you began to detoxify. That is the best thing that you can do for your mitochondria. Lots of these things interrupt the cycle called the Krebs cycle that the mitochondria uses to make energy. And you'll find yourself chasing all kinds of supplements. You'll take NMN, NAD, nicotinamide riboside, nicotinic acid. All those things I think are amazing.

• 39:48Gary Brecka?

  You'll take resveratrol and go Q10 and you're taking ashwagandha. But the truth is you very well may have one of these. Microtoxins in your, in your body. Do a simple urine test, find out you have it. Start on a detox protocol, sweating, regular bowel movements, urinating more frequently by hydrating, putting minerals into the body, you know, and, and doing things that service your mitochondria, which mainly is taking the toxins out. High intensity cardiovascular exercise, red light therapy are excellent ways to boost your mitochondrial function.

• 40:23Gary Brecka?

  Okay. What are the best supplements for children? Wow, I get a lot of questions about this. You want to take a crack at that?

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Yep. Methylated, always, always, always look for methylated multivitamins. The important thing for kids, and we learned this with our nieces. So let's say you get a really good gummy children's, you know, multivitamin. My niece who is 75 pounds takes a very different dose than my niece that was, well, at the time when we started this whole thing, she was like 30 or 40 pounds. So you can't give both kids the same amount, the same dosage. It very much, it varies by height, weight and their behavior. Because they may or may not do well with it depending on their methylation. Now, if you can

• 41:13Speaker 01

  afford to get a genetic test done, I highly recommend getting the gene test done, the test for the five, the MTHFR, MTR, MTR, HCY and COMT. Cause I think it is crucial to really get data on your body, like you were talking about earlier, but for your children, it's a cheek swab. And, and then you can get them on the right methylated B12 is going to be methylcobalamin or hydroxycobalamin. And the methylated vitamin B9 is going to be folate or five methylfolate.

• 41:44Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, definitely not folic acid.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  You want to avoid, suspend the labels around and look for the word cyanocobalamin. I preach this all the time, but cyanocobalamin starts with a C, C Y A N O. And you want to avoid folic acid, which can also be found in all your carbs. So look for pasta, rice, bread, all that stuff.

• 42:03Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I would say two things. If you have young children, they will cost you next to nothing. One is get the fortified or enriched foods out of their diet. Fortified or enriched foods are foods that are sprayed with chemical folic acid. And remember, folic acid is not a natural compound. You cannot find it anywhere on the surface of the earth. It does not occur naturally in nature. You find it mainly in flour, cereals, breads, pastas, and grains of any kind. If you are going to feed your children those, which is okay, get the non fortified, non enriched versions of those. Switch to the organic versions of those. Listen, there's what I share on this podcast, and then there's what I share with my inner circle. If you've been following me for a while, you know how I hold nothing back here.

• 42:48Gary Brecka?

  But my VIP community, that's where the real magic happens. Picture this, you're struggling with energy crashes, brain fog, or just feeling like you're not operating at your peak, and you don't know where to get real answers. But here's what really sets this apart. You're not just getting my insights. When I have incredible guests on the podcast, VIP members get to submit questions for our private podcast segment. So that world renowned expert we just interviewed, you get exclusive access to their knowledge tailored to your specific situation. This section is under the private podcast section in the Ultimate Human Community. And speaking of exclusive, you're getting my personal protocols, the exact tools I use for water fasting, gut optimization, and morning routines that have taken me decades to perfect. This isn't theory. This is what works in the real world.

• 43:33Gary Brecka?

  The community launches challenges throughout the year where you get direct access to me and my network of experts. It's like having a personal health advisory board for less than a hundred dollars a month. Your health is your wealth, and this investment pays dividends for life. Join the VIP community at theultimatehuman.com/vip and step into your ultimate potential. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Be careful with organic too, though, because now they're starting to mess with it.

• 43:58Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, switch to the specifically look for the word fortified or enriched to be hyper-specific. The majority of organics do not have that.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 44:09Gary Brecka?

  Occasionally, it's in there, but getting the fortified or enriched foods out of their diet will go light years to improving their behavior. Just assume that your children have the most common gene mutation in the world, because if you make that assumption and they don't, you're still going to find a better behaving child in the house. Secondly, if you're choosing a children's multivitamin, look for the word methylated. I know we both said that, but that is very key. Most companies that have actually gone to the extent to methylate their vitamins and put the methylated version of nutrients in the vitamin have already gone to the extent of getting sugars and fillers and dyes. They're generally your better brands. They're the thorns, the pure encapsulations, the symbioticas. They're

• 44:54Gary Brecka?

  the better brands that you can trust and rely on body health. And those vitamins, because they're methylated, they've already thought about the other things like added sugars and artificial flavors. And you can really change the trajectory of your kids' attention span, their focus, their concentration.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  How nice they are to people. We've noticed that with kids. They'll say, oh, my brother was so mean this week. And then she realized he had not been taking his vitamins. And that he was like, holy cow, you're right. And he started taking his vitamins. But another thing to be aware of is, let's say, if serving, it says on the back, serving doses, like four gummies. For one kid, the kid that's at a heavier weight, that might be.

• 45:37Gary Brecka?

  Vitamins right now.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  I would, oh, yeah. Good call. Thank you. Make sure you take your vitamins.

• 45:42Gary Brecka?

  Thank you.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Thank you. It also applies to adults.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Mood and behavior. Anyway, so kids, sometimes it'll take two in the morning and two after school because you want, you don't want to give it all four doses, all or all four gummies all at once in the morning. It will over methylate them. So spreading it out through the day and even so much as I remember telling my sister, give them one in the more, like one and a half in the morning and one and a half in the evening. So it's like you, you gradually go up and you can go out by half gummies. I know it sounds crazy, but it really, you will see the difference in your kids when you get the right dosage.

• 46:23Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. What, oh, how can expecting mothers continue their biohacking efforts while pregnant? Ooh, there's a lot you can do as an expecting mother to biohack while you're pregnant. I would say that mobility is one of the best things you can do as an expecting mother. Simple walks. Walking is uniquely designed to move our lymphatic system and the more weight you gain, which you will, because your estrogen will go from in the 400s into the 4000s as you get pregnant. The primary role of that form of estrogen is to retain water, which is necessary to have a healthy baby because you, you want to pad the, the uterine wall. So you are going to retain water. But what this also causes is a lot

• 47:05Gary Brecka?

  of lymph trapping. It traps lymph fluid. Walking, one of the best things that you can do. You actually can still take cooler showers. You don't have to get into a cold plunge. We can take cool showers. You can expose your skin to sunlight. You can do breath work because especially in the latter stages of pregnancy, there's a lot of pressure on the diaphragm. There's a lot of pressure on what we call the auxiliary muscles of respiration. Sitting up straight a few times a day and just focusing on doing a few rounds of deep breathing can be excellent for expectant mothers. As the day goes on and your breathing is more shallow, you get more fatigued. So just consciously reminding yourself that I need to stop, do a few rounds of just really

• 47:47Gary Brecka?

  good, deep focused breathing. I know that I can walk throughout my entire pregnancy. You can take methylated vitamins. If you are pregnant, please do not dose up on folic acid. Now, your doctor's probably telling you to do so. Dose up on methylfolate. You're trying to prevent a neural tube defect. Folic acid has to be converted into methylfolate in order to prevent neural tube defects. Methylfolate is already in the available form. Very often, pregnant women are told to take high doses of folic acid, and this actually can solicit postpartum depression, which for the record can begin during pregnancy. Even though they call it postpartum depression, it usually begins with the onset of taking prenatal vitamins. So you're

• 48:32Gary Brecka?

  going to take a prenatal, take a methylated prenatal vitamin, look for methylcobalamin, look for, look for methylfolate. Those are what will prevent neural tube defects in your fetus. You can also take amino acids. You can absolutely take minerals and nutrients like mineral salts. You can take hydrogen tablets. These are all very safe to take during pregnancy. I would avoid the extreme biohacking things like saunas, red light therapy beds, although most of what I've read, I have not read any derogatory studies, but I would just avoid red light therapy. I would avoid cold plunging, any of the extremes.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, think of like, you can't get in a hot tub when you're pregnant. You wouldn't want to do the opposite and get in a cold plunge.

• 49:18Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  But.

• 49:20Gary Brecka?

  Remember, babies and fetuses are parasites. It is a parasitic relationship.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  That's weird.

• 49:26Gary Brecka?

  It sounds terrible to call their baby a parasite. But what I mean by this, it's a very one-way relationship. It is taking from the mother. So if you're deficient in calcium, or magnesium, or zinc, or amino acids, it will strip them from the mother's body. If that fetus wants calcium, it'll leech it from your bones. If it wants amino acids, it can strip it from lean muscle and take calcium. So making sure that you're neutrophied, so that the fetus is neutrophied, so that you don't actually suffer the consequences of nutrient deficiencies during pregnancy.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  They take it all. I remember.

• 49:59Gary Brecka?

  They take it all.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  I actually hate eating. It's worse when you're breastfeeding because you think it's you've got to eat a lot when you're nurse or when you're pregnant, but it's gets significantly worse when you're breastfeeding full time. But I just remember I was sick of eating. I just so annoyed that I had to eat so much to keep up with growing a baby and then feeding a baby. It's a lot of work for mamas.

• 50:25Gary Brecka?

  How do we help our children eat more nutrient dense foods?

• 50:31Speaker 01

  I'm going to take this one.

• 50:32Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I was gonna say Sage is actually really good at this.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  I am really good at this and it's not just for children, but for elderly people too, who have very specific palates that they don't want to change. And we've had some of those in our family.

• 50:45Gary Brecka?

  I noticed that you talk to our nieces a lot about how they feel after eating. And she's done this for years. And what's really interesting, this is just not, this is an observation. I mean, this has been for the last 10 years we've been together is letting them eat what they want and then focusing them on how they feel. And what was really interesting over time was I noticed that our nieces stopped wanting to eat the foods that didn't make them feel good. And most kids that I think aren't having their attention drawn to how they feel, they're only drawn to how it tastes in that moment. And they don't realize that now their tummy hurts and now they have a headache or now they feel tired.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  Or having a temper tantrum or a meltdown.

• 51:29Gary Brecka?

  Cranky. So I will give you credit for that. She's constantly drawing attention to how they feel, but go ahead.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  I think if you have a picky eater, again, whether you have a child or an elderly person or even a middle aged adult that hasn't figured out how to eat good stuff. Hiding things, I know that sounds terrible, but hiding like curing veggies and adding it to, let's say they just like regular old spaghetti. Well, instead of just doing a tomato sauce. Puree, you know, saute and puree, squash, zucchini, broccoli, you know, whatever kind of veggies and add that into the sauce. Cause they're just going to see red sauce and throw that over some, you know, some good organic pasta. And, you know, you could even add some sort of protein into that too, with beans or whatever.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  And so things like that, adding it into protein smoothies. So you can still have the berries and the honey and the sweetness of it, but add in Greek yogurt for added protein. Add in some avocado for good, healthy fats, some coconut milk. What else? Oh, mac and cheese is a good one to hide things in too.

• 52:39Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  So there's a lot of different ways to, you know, take pizza, but hide the veggies and add in the protein.

• 52:47Gary Brecka?

  And a lot of times kids think they have gluten allergies or gluten sensitivities and they have folic acid sensitivities. So again, really getting the folic acid out of diet is huge for behaviors. And in fact, the next question is, how do we best support young boys with ADHD symptoms without medications?

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Do you also like me to take this one?

• 53:08Gary Brecka?

  Yes, go ahead.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Well, I know a lot about, I feel like I have a PhD in ADHD.

• 53:16Gary Brecka?

  Are you trying to point fingers?

• 53:18Speaker 01

  And an OCD. I've got the OCD, you have the ADHD and we're just, you know, we can be a hot mess if we haven't had our vitamins. But I think, again, I, you know, I'm so big on methylated multivitamins. I think, or just vitamins, if you don't want them all together in one, you know, separating them out, but it's so crucial. And for ADHD, I think what has really, really helped, and OCD, is a good form of B12, so methylcobalamin, hydroxycobalamin, good form of B9, which is the methylated folate or five methylfolate, and then zinc and magnesium.

• 53:54Gary Brecka?

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Magnesium has been a huge addition to your routine. So if I were to take magnesium in the morning, it would put me to sleep. I'm very affected by magnesium, but I don't have ADHD. You have the H. The hyperactivity piece of ADHD. Which is why you're so popular and because you have all the energy of 10 men. And you have a smile on your face, but you are trying to go like 80 miles an hour at all times. And but if you have a little bit of magnesium in the morning, or you have it at night when it does make you go to sleep and you've got it in your system, but even just a little bit in the morning or the afternoon,

• 54:34Speaker 01

  it just calms you. It brings you back to a normal level instead of being always like, like your head is going to blow off your shoulders.

• 54:41Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I feel like my head's going to blow off my shoulders.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:43Gary Brecka?

  Pretty much all the time.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  So if your kid is deficient, I would look, I would get a panel, you can get a panel on kids too. But look for deficiency in zinc, magnesium and B12 and vitamin B9 for folate. So I think that those four are crucial.

• 54:57Gary Brecka?

  Um, I think supporting young boys with ADHD symptoms without medication, threefold. Number one, methylated vitamins, huge.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  Huge.

• 55:06Gary Brecka?

  Folic acid is an absolute no fly zone.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Get it out.

• 55:09Gary Brecka?

  If they have ADD or ADHD, zero folic acid. So the bagels, the pop tarts, the cereals, those are going to be fortified or enriched and that is going to send them into a tailspin. And then must have scheduled activity, you know, one of the, I'm the chairperson of the Maha Action, which is Bobby Kennedy's big push to get not just corruption out of our food supply and our nutritional research, but also to get physical education back into the public school system. You know, one of the interesting stats that you look at is the increased incidence of what we would call behavioral disorders, poor attention span, lack of focus, lack of concentration,

• 55:51Gary Brecka?

  inability to complete assignments, disrupt the behavior when you start taking physical activity out of the public educational system and a lot of. Well, the school systems have actually replaced

• 56:04Gary Brecka?

  physical education with classes that have nothing to do with being physically active. I can promise you this, young boys were not meant to sit in seats for six or eight hours a day and learn, take in information. And so having times where your boys can actually get energy out is critical. They build up something called catecholamines, which are fight or flight neurotransmitters. They cause their mind to race. They make them hyperactive. And they need activity. So if they're not in sports, getting them into some kind of structured exercise program, whether it's karate or jujitsu, or if they're not actually

• 56:46Gary Brecka?

  qualified or don't like playing team sports, even getting them into individual sports, tennis, anything where they can actually move during the day. Activity will do more to bring down their their ADHD symptoms than just about anything. But the three musts are methylated vitamins, getting folic acid out of their diet, critical for ADD and ADHD. Uh, young boys and movement.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  We're gonna add two more things to that.

• 57:11Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  You gotta get out the, which is this down. Thank God it's a push right now is getting the food dyes out of our food. So no food dye for kids, especially if they have ADD or ADHD. And didn't your mom put you in a trampoline class? Okay. So that I just laugh about it, but actually trampoline.

• 57:32Gary Brecka?

  I have the H in ADHD.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  You do. Yes. It's cute sometimes.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Sometimes not.

• 57:39Gary Brecka?

  It's cute. I'm gonna remind you that you said, I'm gonna clip this part of the podcast. And you actually tell me to shut my face.

• 57:48Speaker 01

  I do. It's just a lot.

• 57:50Gary Brecka?

  Leave you alone.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  But I love you.

• 57:51Gary Brecka?

  I'm gonna play this video.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 57:52Gary Brecka?

  No, I never question.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  But I think that's why you wake up with the zoomies and you, that's why you go to the gym and you are consistent with it because it truly makes you feel better. So I think. Giving that gift to your children and helping them get their energy out by, you know, let them run around the block or something, or if you, you know, you're trying to get them out the door for school. Seriously, buy one of those little mini trampolines and let them just bounce around, like get the zoomies out. And we also need to bring back recess and I'm so glad that they're doing the presidential test again.

• 58:22Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. Oh, so, so awesome. So how to transition off of caffeine without losing productivity? That is a great one. So I know so many of us. So first of all, delaying your caffeine for 69 minutes after you wake up and have a demonstrative difference in how much the caffeine impacts you in a beneficial way. That's the first thing. Secondly, if you're trying to get off of caffeine completely, lots of ways to do this. Cacao, raw cacao is actually tastes just like coffee. You can get raw decaffeinated cacao and it will taste like coffee. You can put the things in there that you like, like raw milk creamers or MCT oils.

• 59:08Gary Brecka?

  We use one called Alkamind, which actually reduces the acid and does have some flavoring.

• 59:15Gary Brecka?

  But matcha teas, which are an acquired taste, and I find that people that switch from caffeine, caffeinated coffee to non-caffeinated matcha actually say that it makes them feel better. There are several.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Unless you have a comp tea break and then you don't want to have that.

• 59:31Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  That would make me feel worse.

• 59:33Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, you don't want to have that if you have the COMT break.

• 59:37Gary Brecka?

  And so, so transitioning off of caffeine does not have to crush you. I would implore you to try the morning cocktail that I use, which is sea salt. I use a Baja Gold sea salt. I put a scoop of something called Perfect Aminos and I put one or two, sometimes three. Hydrogen tablets. What very often you are feeling in the morning is the inflammatory compounds that are still left over in the brain. So you're trying to switch the lights on and feel clear and focused and energetic. So for about a dollar a day, you can drop an elemental magnesium tablet into a glass of water. You can add the sea salt and then the, you will feel the lights

• 1:00:18Gary Brecka?

  come on and that clarity that you're looking for, for caffeine is not so stimulatory, but when the lights come on like that and you just feel clear and focused and awake, you're doing it without caffeine. The other thing is exchanging caffeine or light movement. One of the best ways to wake up your brain, actually make you feel more alert and more focused is to move. So try to transition from caffeine to movement, even if it's just 15 minutes of walking, 20 minutes of walking first thing in the morning. Movement will do more to wake your brain up and improve your alertness, focus, concentration, as well as your short-term recall. And then just taking

• 1:01:01Gary Brecka?

  caffeine and trying to stay sedentary. Overcoming being in a sedentary state is what a lot of us are trying to do with caffeine. Movement will overcome that sensation of being exhausted, sit.

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  But for the rest of us who still like a cup of coffee in the morning.

• 1:01:17Gary Brecka?

  I don't have any issues with caffeine, by the way.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  Cause as much as I, I've quit coffee twice in my life, once for a bet and once because I was pregnant. Otherwise, I've been a coffee drinker since college, since I did a study abroad program in Italy and I just learned to love and appreciate and enjoy it. But I think if you really did need to back it down on the caffeine, again, it's kind of the, the same thing I told my friend with the sweet tea, go half and half. So do half caffeinated, half decaf and work your way down. Because if I were to quit caffeine right now, that cup of coffee, I would for sure have a headache. I know that for sure. And that's okay. But I would have to ease myself into detox, not detoxing,

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  but just ease myself into giving it up, I guess. But you can also replace it with either an herbal tea. There's, what was the mushroom one we tried before too? There's that.

• 1:02:13Gary Brecka?

  Higher dose.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  No, that's the face mask.

• 1:02:16Gary Brecka?

  No, no, oh, Doze, D O Z E.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think that was good. So you still sort of get that earthy, kind of dark, add milk to it kind of flavor.

• 1:02:27Gary Brecka?

  And those don't have caffeine.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:29Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  So I think you can ease yourself into other things, but you can, you know, go slowly into it. You don't have to just give it straight up because that's.

• 1:02:36Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I mean, giving up caffeine, cold turkey, especially for people that drink a lot of coffee can be very tough.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:42Gary Brecka?

  Um, one of the things I would implore you to do is to get a certified mold free coffee. There is one that is about to hit the market called True Eста that is certified mold free, certified chrylamide free and USD organic. It is not much more expensive to go USDA organic and mold free. Coffee has a very special type of mold in it called an an ochratoxin, ochratoxin A. We have both had ochratoxin A poisoning from coffee and also from stored nuts. I know that sounds crazy. Oh, my gosh, man, my coffee has to be mold free. And you're just fear mongering, but I will tell you that if you are a consistent coffee drinker,

• 1:03:25Gary Brecka?

  the marginal increase by going mold free will be a game changer for you. If you like coffee and you're going to enjoy coffee, and I have zero issues with caffeine. I think caffeine is actually very good for you. It has a whole bunch of positive consequential effects. That

• 1:03:44Gary Brecka?

  just make an effort to go organic and mold free.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  One little trick that we found, oh, it's a blue box. It's coffee in a tea bag. So when you're purity or something, I don't know what they're called. But it's really.

• 1:03:59Gary Brecka?

  We'll link that in the show notes. No affiliation.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  Just something I found, but because we travel so much and I think that our mold toxicity came from, I'm sorry, but there's really crappy coffee out there. Yeah. And we were drinking it by the boatload. And, and I think that's what happened. So I bought these, it's too hard. I mean, how else are you going to travel with coffee? So they're tea bags. And so you just order, you know, good hot water or make it in your hotel room. Or ask for it on the airplane. And then you've got the tea bag and then you, you bring like the non, or with those coconut milk creamers, like powdered.

• 1:04:33Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  So just add that. So it makes it easier to travel and get good coffee when you're traveling.

• 1:04:39Gary Brecka?

  How to overcome incredibly itchy skin with no rash, especially at night.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  Okay, itchy skin, that is a thing for perimenopause too, and we can go to that later. But weird itchy spots. I don't understand it. Why? And what do I do?

• 1:04:54Gary Brecka?

  Usually, these are circulatory related. Remember, the 70% of our circulation is not done by our heart. Our heart only circulates 30% of the blood in our body. The balance of your circulation in 63,000 miles of blood vessel is done by an activity called vasomotor or vasomotion. Usually, when the itchiness comes, it's coming from the vasomotor activity below the dermal layer, the capillaries, the smaller blood vessels that are just below the surface of the skin. So, things that increase circulation are usually good for the systemic itching. So, resveratrol is an excellent supplement for this. Magnesium is an excellent supplement for this, especially at night.

• 1:05:34Gary Brecka?

  Try magnesium 3 and 8 if you need a magnesium to help you, to help you sleep. Anything that improves vasomotor circulation, like hydrogen water, hydrogen gas, hydrogen bathing, that will definitely take away the itchy sensation. The other thing you can do is warm shower before bed. I like to end on a 30-second cold shower, not prolonged, so it doesn't wake you up. Warm showers will actually improve the surface circulation and very often will remove the itchiness. So, here is what I would do in decreasing order. I would make sure that I'm getting the right minerals. Mineral salt, magnesium, resveratrol, and potentially warm showers right before bed.

• 1:06:19Gary Brecka?

  Usually, when you get out of a warm bath or exit a warm shower and then dry off and get into bed, you'll see that that itching doesn't occur because you've actually had the vasodilation below these. If you know me, you know I'm a huge believer in the benefits of hydrogen water. H2 Tab delivers cost-effective portable tablets that generate ultra-clean molecular hydrogen at 12 parts per million, one of the highest concentrations on the market, with over 1,300 published. Studies showing benefits of oxidative stress, energy, recovery, brain function, and so much more. Taking charge of your health has never been easier or more cost effective. Just drop a tablet in water, let it dissolve, and drink it back.

• 1:07:03Gary Brecka?

  It's less than a dollar a day, science-backed, and part of my daily routine. I never travel without this, and it is my favorite biohack. Visit drinkh2tab.com. That's drinkh2tab.com and upgrade your hydration today. Now, let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  I'm trying not to laugh because I'm thinking about how I take such a scalding hot shower.

• 1:07:29Gary Brecka?

  You do.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  That it terrifies you.

• 1:07:33Gary Brecka?

  Yes, I can't even, we have two showerheads in our shower. And I sometimes, for whatever reason, I'll walk over and use hers. And I'm like, babe, I don't even know how you can stand the water hitting your skin this hot.

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  Kind of like cold plunge. It's like the extreme, and it just feels so good.

• 1:07:50Gary Brecka?

  She will stand in it. Skinny little sage will just stand there forever and just let the water run over her body. I feel like my skin's gonna peel off. Okay, weight training, did you have any more for that?

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 1:08:03Gary Brecka?

  Weight training in a fasted state. Should I take amino acids before my workout and how much? Absolutely. Positively, you should be taking amino acids before your workout. I get so much flack for this online. Don't follow the advice if you don't want to. I'm so irritated by this, but.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  No, but give your explanation of why you have to have some sort of protein before you work out. Because the thing, the myth for women was go to workout on an empty stomach, like you were gonna lose all this weight, and actually it's the opposite.

• 1:08:36Gary Brecka?

  There's nothing more frustrating, especially, it seems to be a lot more prevalent in women than in men, to say, look, I wake up in a fasted state. I have a cup of black coffee. I go to Orange Theory. I go hammer down for 55 minutes. I've been doing that five days a week for three months, and I haven't lost a single pound.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  We heard it all the time.

• 1:08:56Gary Brecka?

  All the time, in the clinic.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  All the time.

• 1:08:58Gary Brecka?

  And it's very frustrating because, you know, women are trying, they're doing the right thing. They're like, Gary, I'm not even eating.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  You finally get them to the gym, and they're going to the gym, and then they're not seeing any improvement. And when we dialed it back and asked all the questions and figured out, oh, it's because they're going starving.

• 1:09:14Gary Brecka?

  You're not eating, but your body is. It's just eating you. You know, the priority of energy in the body is first we use glucose. And we burn the glucose down to a certain level. When glucose gets to a certain level, you will switch to your reserve form of energy, which is glycogen, which is stored glucose in the liver. Glycogen will be thrown back into the bloodstream in the form of glucose called gluconeogenesis.

• 1:09:38Gary Brecka?

  And very often you can exercise through your glycolic reserve, at which time your body has a fat source and it has a lean muscle source. So we saw hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times, women that would wake up in a fast, fasted state, have a cup of black coffee, sometimes a pre-workout, they would go to the gym, they would really go hammer down. And, and then they would come home, they would delay their eating because they're not hungry after exercise. They would eat later in the day and they would do this repeatedly and not lose a single pound. Here was the shift that we made that worked.

• 1:10:16Gary Brecka?

  You know, there's a, something that Tim Ferriss pioneered 30, 30, 30, 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking, followed by 30 minutes of steady state cardiovascular exercise. Again, I am affiliated with Perfect Aminos. And I am a big believer in Perfect Aminos, but amino acids are not proteins. They are the building blocks of proteins. When you take amino acids, all nine of the essential amino acids in the right ratio, they do not convert to sugar or to fat. They build protein, which is muscle, natural killer cells, collagen, elastin, fibrin. So try this, wake up in the morning in a fasted state, have your cup of black coffee,

• 1:10:56Gary Brecka?

  take one scoop or five tablets of supplement called Perfect Amino, try this for one month. And then go to the gym.

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  Or take 30 grams of protein.

• 1:11:07Gary Brecka?

  Or you can take 30 grams of protein. But a lot of times, especially women, they just don't want to pile in that much of a macro right before they work out. You are still in a fasted state. I want to be clear about that. They will not break fast. They're 99% absorbable. They're equivalent to 29 grams of whey protein. So you're essentially giving yourself the building blocks of proteins before you go exercise. I have seen miracles in our female patients, not saturating.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  Within a week, it's crazy. Like all of a sudden, then they start dropping the whey.

• 1:11:39Gary Brecka?

  You will notice right away. Make that one change. Drink your black coffee. That's what you like in the mornings. Take a scoop of perfect aminos. I would add mineral salt and hydrogen tablets, but at a minimum, take a scoop of perfect aminos and then go to the gym and go hammer down.

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  Well, you don't even have to hammer down though either. And I do tell this to people who haven't been to the gym in a while or intimidated by the gym, haven't lifted weights in a while. If you can just walk around your block, like even if you got to knock out your phone calls, your Zoom calls, whatever, just walk around the block that first 30 minutes of the day or within the 30 minutes of the day, but have your protein first and then go and do it. And what is it? The steady start? So 130, keep it under 130, 140.

• 1:12:23Gary Brecka?

  130 beats per minute.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  So where you could still have a conversation, but you're walking fast or walking your dog or whatever, just get out and move. And that, because every time we have somebody that's like, I don't know, I don't know. I can't run a marathon. We're like, we're not asking you to.

• 1:12:38Gary Brecka?

  No, the, the, the, the women that work out in the fasted state that had just the perfect amino and continue to work out in a fasted state and stay fasted.

• 1:12:48Gary Brecka?

  And that is when we saw dramatic body morph changes. And if you'd like, I can refer you to literally hundreds of women who have done that and dramatic changes in their, in their physique in very short periods of time. And they say that in the first week, they just feel better. So that would be my very succinct advice for that.

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  I think the one you skipped was how to fix low testosterone without TRT. And I think this is important, especially for young men. We, we, we used to see a ton of young men and I had talked to somebody else that owns clinics and they're seeing it too. A lot more young men than ever before, I think, with low testosterone in their twenties, which is scary. And I think a lot of it is phones, cell phones in the front pocket are terrible for them. Put in your back pocket or somewhere else. I think processed food and all those things. But anyway, what is a good way to solve TRT issues, testosterone issues?

• 1:13:43Gary Brecka?

  So low testosterone, remember, no matter what anyone tells you, there is no better hormone than one the body produces on its own. Full stop. So getting on TRT too early for men, I think, is a big mistake. So here's the five things that you want to look at. When you get a hormone panel done, you want to look at your testosterone, your free testosterone. You want to look at a protein called SHBG, sex hormone binding protein. It is exactly what its name sounds like. It is a protein that binds to sex hormones, mainly testosterone. So you're producing healthy levels of testosterone. This protein is binding to it and carrying it out of the body as if it weren't there and you exhibit signs of low testosterone. If you have high SHBG, you take

• 1:14:26Gary Brecka?

  a mineral called boron, which you can get over the counter just about anywhere. You take a mineral called boron as directed on the back of the label. It will bind to the SHBG, lower SHBG, and very often raise your free testosterone. Problem could be solved. If not, look at the, take the next level and look at your DHEA, dihydroepiandrosterone. DHEA is one of the building blocks of hormones. And very often, when you're deficient in the raw material to make the hormone, your hormones are low, not because you can't produce them, because you don't have the raw material to make them. And so I would look at your DHEA level. I would start with between 10 and 25 milligrams of DHEA on a daily basis. It's in your bloodstream right now.

• 1:15:11Gary Brecka?

  You're watching this podcast. So it's a very easy supplement to supplement with. Start with the lower doses, 10 milligram, work your way up to 25 milligram. Women, I would also start in lower doses because it can activate sebaceous acne. So you want to start slow. But raising your DHEA level into the upper third of the range can do dramatic things for hormones, as does raising your vitamin D3 level. On your lab, this will be something called vitamin D25 hydroxy. You want that to be between 60 and 80 nanograms. I think vitamin D3 is one of the most Clinically under supplemented things in the, in the world. 5,000 IUs to 10,000 IUs of vitamin D3 with vitamin K2.

• 1:15:55Gary Brecka?

  Good manufacturers will put the right ratio of D3 and K2 together. So you don't need to buy these separately. They should be in the same supplement. So vitamin D3 with K2, DHEA, looking at the SHBG, looking at your free and total testosterone. After that, I would look at things that turn the signal up to raise testosterone before you replace testosterone. So things like enclomiphene, gonadorelin, gispeptin, HCG, human chorionic anatotropin. Talk to your doctor about peptides and signaling hormones that can actually raise your natural production of the hormone.

• 1:16:37Gary Brecka?

  Very often, people that are low on hormones don't need hormone therapy. They need nutrients or they need the raw materials.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  What about if men are on testosterone therapy, doing injections? But then they decide they want to start a family or they want to have another kid or something. Do they, they back down to?

• 1:16:56Gary Brecka?

  Yes, they would back, they would back off of regular testosterone injections. They would titrate down on the testosterone injections and they would switch over to testicular stimulants, things that are mimetics of luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone. Remember, your testicles don't decide how much testosterone they produce. The pituitary does, and it does it by signaling not only for sperm, but also for testosterone. Luteinizing hormones stimulate the luteal cells. Follicle stimulating hormone stimulates the follicular cells, which makes sperm. And so you can mimic these signals by taking the mimetics.

• 1:17:37Gary Brecka?

  HCG is good for men and women that are seeking to be more fertile. Getting off of the testosterone and onto things like enclomiphene, HCG, gispeptin, gonadorelin. These are things that will raise not only your sperm level, but also your, your testosterone level. So I would be talking to your doctor about those luteinizing and follicle stimulating hormone mimetics. And those will help raise.

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  Just think, people are going to go into their doctor and they're going to say those words. And the doctor's going to be like, how the heck did you figure this out?

• 1:18:13Gary Brecka?

  I want a luteinizing hormone and a follicle stimulating hormone bi medic.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  They're either gonna love you, they're gonna hate you.

• 1:18:19Gary Brecka?

  Take this podcast in and just put it to that one place. Okay.

• 1:18:23Gary Brecka?

  Guys, this is amazing. I love these. I love these Q and As. Thank you, guys, for submitting your questions. I hope you found value in this.

• 1:18:31Gary Brecka?

  You know, we've created something called the VIP community. It is my community where I spend a lot of time in Q and As. We built a course called Becoming the Ultimate Human. It's a university that goes through everything from improving your sleep to the best morning routines, diet, supplementation, breathwork, sunlight, grounding, travel tips. I go deep into the research behind each of these. I give you the evidence. I tell you exactly what supplements to take, not all of which are my supplements or supplements I have affiliations with. We have an online community.

• 1:19:08Gary Brecka?

  The course that we built, we built to actually market to the world for $1,795. We decided to put it into this VIP community for free. I do private podcasts in this community. So after every podcast, I take the podcast guest into a private room and answer my VIP community questions. It's an amazing, amazing community. It's $97 a month. Always our information will be free on my podcast. Always it will be free on our podcast shorts, my Instagram. But if you want to go deeper, if you want more handholding, if you want mold and heavy metal detox protocols,

• 1:19:49Gary Brecka?

  if you actually want a community that water fast together, that goes through detoxification together, that really lays their crazy on the table and solves it in real time, head over to theultimatehuman.com/vip and become a member of the VIP community for 97 bucks. You'll get the course for free. I think you will absolutely enjoy it. If not, you can cancel anytime. But.

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  I think it's a really cool community too of like minded people that are.

• 1:20:17Gary Brecka?

  They really are.

• 1:20:18Speaker 01

  Helping each other, supporting each other, lifting each other up.

• 1:20:21Gary Brecka?

  Stories in there are incredible, autoimmune.

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  If you're on in the beginning of your health journey or just trying to figure out like there's so much information, how do I wrap my arms around it? I think it's such a great like group of people. And yeah, there's a lot of great benefits to it too.

• 1:20:36Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  And one other thing that I'll say, since I don't do on these as often. Everything that we talk about that we use, it's on a daily basis. Like I would, I think the one thing that I love about when you started this is that you don't, you test everything. We are guinea pigs all the time. Um, we, so if we, if we're talking about it, it is because we've tried it, used it, do it on a daily basis.

• 1:21:03Gary Brecka?

  We've usually used it in our clinic system. So we've usually, like when I say Boron lowers SHBG, it's because we've put thousands of clients on Boron and watched their SHBG come down. If we talk about, you know, DHEA and D3 raising testosterone, because we put thousands of clients in our clinical system on to these supplements and they've had positive results. So it's not always about trying to sell a supplement or a product. Um, it's because this is what we use every day in our daily life. And I will tell you exactly what has worked in our clinic system because, uh, there is a lot of confusion out there. And I think a lot of people, when they start this journey are like, oh my gosh, should I take CoQ10 or is Veritrol, St. John's Wort, NAD? What's the difference between NAD and NMN? And, and, and all of those supplements are great and they're probably made in great facilities,

• 1:21:47Gary Brecka?

  but don't mistake a really well manufactured supplement for something that you need. And

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  Well, and what works for, great for you, like NAD, for instance, works great for most people, gives them good energy. It is horrible for me. If you feel depressed, anxious, even to like having a panic attack, which I've had before.

• 1:22:09Gary Brecka?

  Happens with methylene blue. It happens with a lot of supplements that, you know, elderberry, quercetin, which are great supplements, but if you have certain gene mutations like comp T.

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  Terrible for me.

• 1:22:20Gary Brecka?

  Could be a disaster.

• 1:22:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. So things that are healthy for other people don't always work for me. And, and that's okay. So we've, you know, that's again, we lay our crazy out on the table.

• 1:22:30Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  This is what we're here for. So if you have follow-up questions, if you want us to go deeper on anything, I mean, you know, this is the, the VIP community is a great place to, to ask those questions.

• 1:22:41Gary Brecka?

  I wrote, um, dozens of guides that I, some of them I spent months on, just very intentionally putting together eight-week detox for mold, eight-week, 12-week detox for metals, very specific, um, uh, protocols for different types of autoimmune, um, from thyroid to Crohn's to what have you, the different types of gut binders, really deep dives. You can download them for free in the community. Um, you can take the ultimate human course for free once you're in the community, but. Would love to see you in there. Would love you to be a part of this journey with us. But most importantly, I thank you guys for taking the time to submit your questions. If you got value out of today's podcast, and until next time, that's just science.