188. James Beshara: How to Find Productivity Without the Hustle

We're living in a culture that celebrates being busy. More coffee. More hours. More hustle. But what if those things are actually making you less productive? The truth is, many high performers are stuck in a cycle of chasing energy instead of creating it. We rely on caffeine to wake up, push through stress, and squeeze more into each day - only to end up burned out, distracted, and wondering why success still feels exhausting. My guest James Beshara, is an entrepreneur, angel investor, and founder of multiple Magic Mind, one of the fastest-growing mental performance brands. After experiencing burnout firsthand, he set out to rething what sustainable productivity really looks like. Together, we explore why optimizing your energy matters more than optimizing your schedule, the hidden costs of caffeine and stimulant dependence, and how adaptogens, functional mushrooms, intentional routines, and timeless philosophy can help you perform at your highest level - without sacrficing your health. In this episode, we discuss: Why sustainable productivity beats hustle every time The "Pin Action" framework for creating outsized results with one simple habit How a consistent morning routine can transform your energy and focus Why process-not goals- is the real key to long - term fulfillment The surprising downsides of caffeine and other stimulants How adaptogens and functional mushrooms can support cognitio, stress resilience, and performance Practical strategies to overcome procrastination and reduce chronic stress Whether you're building a business, leading a team, or simply trying to feel your best every day, this conversation will change the way you think about productivity - and what it actually takes to perform at your highest level. Learn more about Dr. Shah: Website: drshah.com https://www.drshah.com Clinic: next-health.com https://www.next-health.com/summit Instagram: @extend_podcast and @darshanshahmd Learn more about James Beshara Website: jjbeshara.com https://www.jjbeshara.com Instagram: @jamesjbeshara Try Magic Mind for 50% off new subscriptions to enhance your mental performance with clincally backed multivitamins for your mind at www.magicmind.com https://www.magicmind.com ! Thank You to Our Sponsors: Next Health Longevity Summit: Head to next-health.com/summit https://www.next-health.com/summit to secure your spot at the first ever Next Health Longevity Summit, featuring keynotes by Dr. Shah, Dr. Vonda Wright, Dr. Jeremy London and Dr. Louisa Nicola! September 12th in Nashville, see you there! Function Health: Learn more and join using my link - www.functionhealth.com/drshah https://www.functionhealth.com/drshah using gift code DRSHAH25 for $25 credit towards your membership.

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

• 0:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Before we get started with this episode, I'd like to invite all of you to the first ever Next Health Longevity Summit, happening in Nashville, Tennessee, at the Conrad Hotel on Saturday, September 12th, 2026. This is an all-day summit where you're going to be hearing from some of the best speakers in longevity's medicine, including Dr. Vonda Wright, Dr. Luisa Nicola, many of the podcast guests that you've heard here on the Extend Podcast, and of course, I'm going to be there, curating the entire day. We also have incredible vendors coming, so you can try the latest technologies in health, wellness, and longevity. Go to next-health.com/summit and buy your ticket today. We only have 400 spots and

• 0:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  they're going quickly. That's next-health.com/summit. I look forward to seeing you all there. Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21, and trained and board-certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We are living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality.

• 1:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Join me as I interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease, and most importantly, extend your health span.

• 1:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Today, I'm thrilled to introduce a truly extraordinary individual, my friend, James Beshara. James is not just an entrepreneur, he's a visionary who has successfully founded three different nine-figure companies. This is a testament to his unparalleled productivity and strategic thinking. Beyond his remarkable business achievements, James is a deep philosophical thinker, a musician, and a dedicated father of three. He's also the brilliant mind behind Magic Mind, a company born from his profound understanding of biochemistry and personal optimization. In this episode, James will share his unique philosophy on productivity,

• 2:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  moving beyond the traditional hourly focus to a more sustainable, long-term approach. He'll reveal the pin-action strategies that has allowed him to achieve incredible success while maintaining grace and avoiding burnout, even discussing how he manages to be at inbox zero by 7:00 AM. Get ready to transform your understanding of efficiency and well-being with James Beshara.

• 2:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hey, everyone. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to talk about something that you hear me talk a lot about, your biomarkers. And I want to tell you how I'm approaching this situation right now with all of the patients that are calling me from listening to this podcast. So what happens is, every day, patients are writing to me saying they feel exhausted, they can't lose weight, they're having brain fog, and they see their doctor, and the doctor tells them all their blood work is normal. But the problem is, this doctor usually is only checking about 10 to 15 biomarkers that only tell you if you have a disease developing. Meanwhile, your body has 160 different systems that are running. Then all of these have blood tests that we can test on how effective they're working for you every single day. So if someone is not close to one of my clinics, one of my Next

• 3:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Health clinics, then I tell them, go to their local laboratory and get on Function Health. Function Health gives you access to 160 different biomarkers, the same kind of comprehensive testing that we do at all of our Next Health clinics. And if you try to get this on your own through your regular doctor, it can cost you thousands of dollars. Hormones, inflammation, toxins, nutrient levels, they're all tracked over time in this one platform called Function Health. They can even help you get an MRI scan or a CT scan if you want one. So what I love most about this company is that they don't have a crazy incentive to do this. Function doesn't push supplements, they don't have pharmaceuticals they're trying to get you to take. You're just getting the data, and you're getting insights from the

• 4:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  data. And you can bring this data to a clinic like ours, and we then have the information that we need to tell you how to improve your health. Membership is now only $365 a year. Literally, it's just a dollar a day. And right now, if you're one of my listeners, you can get a $25 credit towards the membership. You just go to the link in the bio, or go to functionhealth.com/DrShah, and use the code DRSHAH25 for a $25 credit towards your membership.

• 4:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  James, it's so incredible to have you here, man. Thank you so much for joining me.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Dr. Shah, thank you so much for having me.

• 4:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love getting to know you over the last few months that we've really started talking, and we've been learning so much from you. So I'm excited to bring you to all my guests.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Well, it's a nice repayment, because I've learned so much from you over the years, and love this podcast. So it is really fun to go onto a podcast that I myself really love.

• 5:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No, thank you, man. That's so good to hear.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're great at it.

• 5:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love it. So you know, we'll tell the story about you being Santa Claus later, because I want people to hear that.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have been to this location, dressed as Santa Claus, giving out Magic Mind to staff at Next Health, three years ago, and lo and behold, organized by our social media teams, and then lo and behold, now we're here talking on this podcast.

• 5:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I know, it's incredible. And I've gotten to know you as an incredibly successful guy. You've started multiple, three different nine-figure companies, is that correct?

• 5:32Speaker 01

  That's right, yeah.

• 5:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And then, you know, then to know you personally, like you're an incredible father of three children, you love philosophy, I mean, I mean, you're a deep dive into philosophy, and you host events, you stay fit, you do all these things, and you're a musician, too, is that right?

• 5:50Speaker 01

  That's right, yeah. Got a show on Sunday in Marina, yeah.

• 5:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's incredible. And, you know, you really take the time to do a deep dive on the science and the biochemistry of your body as well, which then led to Magic Mind. And then you apply those learnings into your day-to-day routines, and I just am so blown away by you. You're the most productive human I know.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Oh, well, thank you, Darshan. I'll say, by the way, your name, Darshan, meaning sight and vision, that is the philosophy that I study each day. I was just mentioning on this philosophy podcast that I have yesterday, that in the West, we have Philosofia, love of wisdom, and great pointer for timeless truths. But in the East, it's the word Darshan, which means sight, vision, Darshana, seeing clearly. And, yeah, I think my philosophy on life productivity, building companies, is to try to see as clearly as possible.

• 6:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And I think that's what really attracted me to you, is because not only do you do so much in the little time that we have, but you do it with grace, and you do it with a lack of, like, the normal stress response that people feel as they're trying to build new companies and do all these things, in living on this planet, you know, having families, and doing all the things that we have to do to just stay alive. It's just mind-blowing to me. And so, you know, you've really thought deeply about this, you've created a structure around that, that you've told me a little bit about. And I want to do a deep dive with you on that structure, and just talk about, not just productivity, but also your philosophy around life. Why do people feel so stressed when they're trying

• 7:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  to do a lot of things and get through life on a day-to-day basis, and kind of how you've also applied some biochemistry, kind of hacking that system as well. So that's what we're going to talk about today.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  I hope it's helpful for the listeners, yeah.

• 7:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's going to help me, at least, so that's for sure. So tell us a little bit about kind of how you think about productivity in your day-to-day work.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  This is a topic that I think a lot about, and this maybe comes from my Silicon Valley background. We were up in San Francisco for a decade, and the first decade of my career, the first two years of my career was in poverty alleviation, and then the first or the next decade was building software. And one led to the other. But being at the heart of Silicon Valley for a decade, everybody there shares the slightest optimizations. And I know you know this, the tiniest little optimizations, someone, someone figures out a way to, I don't know, get to inbox zero a little bit faster, and they're going to spend 30 minutes writing a blog post on it and sharing with everybody.

• 8:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I don't know this, actually. This is new to me.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Oh, it's a productivity prawn, is what it's called. So this productivity prawn, and this whole love of sharing these insights, is, is almost like a subculture within Silicon Valley, where there will be blog posts and essays written around, I don't know, a compiler that's a little bit faster, or programming languages that are a little more efficient, how to hire, recruit a CMO, or a CTO, and all the way down to the productivity of how to get to inbox zero, three times a day. I still remember that, that blog post from this great founder. And there's so much knowledge sharing in that realm that I would see, you

• 9:14Speaker 01

  know, being down here in LA now, I don't see that, that type of knowledge sharing in the music industry, and the entertainment industry, being from Texas, it's just not in the water to share these types of optimizations. And there's no wonder that someone like Andrew Huberman is huge in Silicon Valley, and God, his start in San Francisco. I would imagine Next Health is, is loved by all of these tech entrepreneurs that are listening to these productivity podcasts. And there's just a huge subculture of sharing these insights. And when you tap into some of these insights, like the best professional advice I ever got, the best professional advice ended up being the best, some of the best personal

• 9:56Speaker 01

  advice that I ever got, was from a sleep doctor about 12 years ago. And she told me, wake up every morning at the exact same time, and it will set your body's 24-hour circadian rhythm, to where you can drop into, into flow and into a rhythm within 15 minutes of waking up. She told me that a little over a decade ago, and I still wouldn't feel like, what's the best business advice you ever got? I'm like, wake up every morning at the same time.

• 10:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What time is that?

• 10:23Speaker 01

  For me, it's 4:30.

• 10:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, wow.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  But wake up every morning at the same time, and that, that single piece of advice, it's almost like in bowling, there's, it's called pin action, where in any setup of the pins, there is a mathematically optimized angle, that all the best bowlers know, okay, that's the place that, for that set, I'm going to have to hit the, the pin action at this angle. And I'm going to have to hit it from this specific pin at this specific angle, and you can knock all the other pins down. And I think about that metaphor with life, or with any type of set of challenges or dynamics in front of us. I look at it all and try to understand what is the highest leverage thing that will knock down all the pins?

• 11:10Speaker 01

  And the professional advice, I think the best professional advice I ever got comes down to this pin action metaphorical point of wake up every morning at the exact same time so that you hit the ground running within 15 minutes and you are able to maximize the time you have with the people you work with, with the work that you have before you. For me, that's been the biggest pin action item in my professional life and I'd say with, with three little kids, same thing in my personal life.

• 11:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's great to wake up early because I feel that for me and being a father, just like you are, the kids are still asleep. So I give some time to myself to do my morning routines. And then when they wake up, I'm already ready to go. Like I've already got a lot of things checked off my list.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And for me, it's the most creative time of my day as well. So I really try to protect that time with creative pursuits, like knocking off big projects. I would love to know kind of like your morning routine after you wake up, what happens?

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, and to, to your point, by seven, I'm at inbox zero, typically inbox zero, to do list zero.

• 12:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  By the time the kids wake up, or at least their little green light lets them out of the room at seven. And, and I'm playing with house money. It feels like I'm playing with house money the rest of the day.

• 12:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Amazing.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  But the, the morning routine is, is pretty set to where I wake up at 4:30 and then, and you can skip, if you're travel, if kids wake you up every once in a while, I'll have to wake up at 5:15 or maybe six if I'm really jet lagged and trying to, to readjust, but, or a real late night for some professional, personal reason. But at 4:30, the typical structure, wake up and then 90 minutes of spiritual study, stillness and quietude. So listen to a lecture from an ashram that I study with in, in India with this philosophy called Advaita Vedanta. I've got two podcasts on this, this obscure.

• 13:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What's the name of your podcast, by the way?

• 13:02Speaker 01

  One of them's called Yoga for Your Intellect, which is a conversational 45 minute episode, podcast on this philosophy called Yoga for Your Intellect, or YFYI, with one of my teachers. And then I have a daily podcast on this philosophy called The Daily Vedantic, just right off the page from Daily Stoic. And I was like, man, Stoicism's, it's good. But man, the philosophy of ancient India, in my view, far more helpful for me when I discovered it when I was 30. So I do that for 90 minutes, listen to a lecture, reflect on it, and then do a little bit of journaling. And then at from six to seven, start knocking out emails and the to do list items. And, and then usually because the day before I

• 13:46Speaker 01

  got to inbox zero, maybe around 8:00 PM, it's pretty easy to get back to inbox zero and to do list zero, which just means getting to zero. I've got all my emails replied to and whatever to do list items that I've put together, I've usually knocked those out unless there's like a three hour one that I have to leave for later in the day. And I use Superhuman for email. I love.

• 14:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's what I use as well.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Oh, I love it. It just allows me to, if there's a to do list item that I can't do until seven or before seven, and I need to do it for, let's say for three hours in the afternoon, I'll just have it to where it reminds, it comes up in my inbox at 12:00 PM. So my inbox and Apple reminders ends up being my two go to compasses for, for my productivity. But that's kind of in the, in the real detailed, nitty gritty details of, of productivity, even the two tools that I love leaning on. But the other thing on this topic that I'd be remiss to, to not mention is, I think societally, we think of productivity in terms of hours, even how I talk about morning routine. And I think we're far better served by thinking about productivity in terms of weeks, months, years, decades.

• 14:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  What do you mean by that?

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Meaning finding the rhythms that allow you to, to wake up 700 days in to your work and the energy is still generating.

• 15:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Instead of, all right, productivity, I gotta knock these things out. And I'm gonna do these unsustainable things over the next two days. I'm gonna pull an all nighter at, with one of my last companies we had sold to Airbnb and I was there for two years. And, and there were just times where I thought, okay, we gotta pull all nighters for this. It becomes radically unsustainable.

• 15:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Throws you off for multiple days. And if you can fine tune the, the details and things like waking up every morning at the same time, then you can wake up in seven weeks and you're just building more and more momentum. Seven months. And, and now with two separate, helping lead two separate companies with Magic Mind and an AI career coach company called Apt. It's, I don't, I feel like I have more energy now than I ever did in my twenties when I was spending, you know, seven days a week, 14 hours a day, obsessing over the one company I was running and ultimately running myself into the ground.

• 16:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, makes, makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of people think that they, the more time they spend on work, the more that they're getting done. But the, there's a law of diminishing returns for sure that happens if you're doing, if you're doing your work with lack of flow or lack of energy and you actually get burnt out towards it. I just did a podcast on burnt out, burnout. And burnout actually is the most detrimental thing to your productivity because now all of a sudden you've lost your passion to getting the work done.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Right. And you've treated people probably pretty, pretty steadily on your way to burning, complete burnout. And then you have to spin. And I've been in that burnout when we sold our last company, I was in burnout mode for the 12 months leading up to it. I was so exhausted. Just PTSD, even opening my email inbox. Cause I was like, I can't handle any more, were any more, you know, unexpected tasks that people are now putting on my plate. Then when we sold, it was probably eight months of needing like two hour naps every afternoon to then recover. And Darshan, I'll tell you, I thought a two hour nap every afternoon was normal. I was, I had convinced myself, it's like, well, I stay up late and I work and, and I worked so hard, a two hour nap. And then probably eight months after

• 17:18Speaker 01

  the acquisition, when I no longer needed a two hour nap, I realized, whoa, that was actually pretty weird that I needed a two hour nap every afternoon to get through the day. And so many cups of coffee that it sent me to the ER with a heart condition. And I just thought like, well, if it'll all be worth it. If I can make it to that, that, you know, eternally eluding destination.

• 17:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  And sold the company and there was no feeling of, of like, we, we did it. It was honestly, it was just, all right, now we gotta integrate the company into Airbnb. And then it was like, now we got these crazy big goals. Now it, there was no destination and it was just a whole lot more burnout. Luckily, when you're bought by another company, you get to relax a little bit. And I was able to get over the burnout, but it was, it was destructive to relationships, to, to, to my family, to myself for months and months.

• 18:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You know, I think about this a lot because in my own personal life as well, whenever I have a goal, it's almost counterproductive for me because it seems like there's a time limit between now and the achievement of the goal. And the harder I work and the more I do like all nighters, maybe the goal will come a little bit sooner. Right? And then my brain tells me that once you achieve the goal, then on the other side of there will be less work, potentially more happiness. And the reality is, there's always more work to do.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right? And so it sounds like what you've done is had a mindset shift from goals to just, how is the work fulfilling? How is the work itself building upon itself to the goal and then even well beyond the goal?

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. And this is the cliche that we hear a thousand times and at least for myself, never paid attention to, or didn't really understand what the hell these people were talking about when they'd say, fall in love with the process.

• 19:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  And find work where it's, you know, Joseph Campbell quote, in his earlier years, he said, follow your bliss. And then his later years, he said, follow your blisters. It's like, I should have said, follow your blisters. And when you fall, I think when you surrender into the work that you don't mind whatever blisters comes, it feels like play to you. And when you surrender into that, which is the cliche that we hear from so many different sources. And, and for me, it was, and I would hear this of like, just manage the process and the results, take care of themselves. I hear that a thousand times. And then I found the work where I don't, I would do that even if the only result was that I got to do more of that.

• 19:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Creating things, making things, helping people, whether it's with Magic Mind and just, I would tell people about these ingredients. I wrote a book on this whole world of these ingredients that are in Magic Mind and 50 others in this book called Beyond Coffee, way before I ever started a company in this space. I couldn't wait at a dinner conversation to talk about the improved blood flow, if you consume enough choline or the detrimental effects of excess caffeine. I would talk about that stuff in my sleep if I, if I could. And then it was like, okay, well, I'm talking about it and it's 14 bucks a day. If you order each of these ingredients wholesale, maybe it'd be fun to build a brand universe around this and a small little Shopify store. Now it's, I thought the biggest it would

• 20:33Speaker 01

  be, would be like a two person side project. And so it's been so wild to see how big it's gotten. But following your blisters, it's like, what, what are you aligned for? That is absolutely fundamentally key to your productivity.

• 20:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Because that is the only input in the beginning that will allow for an output 10 years into where you're generating more energy. As a 55 year old, then even as a 25 year old, it's work that you're aligned for. It's looking at productivity in terms of years and decades instead of hours and days. It's the daily rhythms of, of recognizing, well, how do I get the most out of that process each day or that workflow? Well, waking up at the same time, everybody listening, just try it for seven days in a row. And by day eight, you won't need an alarm clock and you'll see what I mean of like, oh damn, that's a way to do it. And, but then the, the other aspect that on this topic of, of goals that I think about is, I used to.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Obsess over the goals to exactly what you're talking about where like, okay, it'll make all of the work worthwhile. And it would be honestly, like 90% of my energy focused on the goals, goals, goals. And now, and this is a very Vedantic principle, this philosophy that comes from the Vedas. It is 1% around the goal. The goal gives direction, but it does not give purpose, does not give peace. And process gives direction. Process gives peace. Meaning that process, you, you ultimately find the process where you are so enlivened by and energized by the process.

• 22:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  And you have to, this is all, everybody's got to do their own personal homework to figure that out. But where the process is so rewarding that you think less and less about the goals. You're like, okay, the goal is the direction, but do I sail around the world 5,000 times if my family would let me? And okay, for this trip, I'm going to look every once in a while at the compass and the goal to make sure we end up there. But I'm just built to sail, find whatever that is for, for your life. And then you wake up each day so energized for that work, but also you're thinking about the goal 1% of the time. And you're thinking about sailing the other 99%.

• 22:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I totally agree with that.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  It's how, how is your relationship? I would love to know just as a scientist, as a doctor, what does the science say around goals? What have you applied to the framework of goals?

• 22:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I think that based on the science, I think that the science really focuses on the things that prevent you from achieving your goal from like a psychological and a physical state, right? I think a lot of people are trying to achieve goals and they're working themselves to the bone. And they're using all sorts of, you know, whether it be drugs, even like caffeine is a drug, right? There's more drug usage now for achieving productivity than ever before, right?

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Caffeine is the most widely consumed drug in the world, right?

• 23:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. And then, you know, like, I can't tell you the number of entrepreneurs I know that aren't Adderall.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Oh God.

• 23:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's mind blowing.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Oh, and it's, and I think it's, it's one of the most prescribed drugs in America. And yeah, people, I, there is a, a real epidemic, epidemic of that in Silicon Valley specifically. And that's the, I think the misorientation around productivity hours and weeks.

• 23:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Instead of, instead of years and decades, because I know the people I've worked with that are hopped up on a lot of Adderall.

• 23:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  They think a meeting went great and the other seven people are like, holy shit, that was a train wreck. And they walk out thinking it went great, or they think, all right, let's set these seven ambitious goals, knowing that what makes you good is what you do. What makes you great is what you don't do. Maybe set one.

• 24:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  And have the hyper focus to achieve it instead of, yeah. A drug addiction that makes you feel like you can do seven all at the same time.

• 24:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I know. Exactly. And then the other big thing I think also is in related to stress, right? I think stress is another factor that people don't really take into account a lot because, you know, our bodies are just innately very resilient, but until they're not, right? And so I think a lot of people function with a chronic low level of stress from the moment they wake up until the moment their head hits the pillow at night. And that chronic low level of psychological stress builds up into physical detriment over time. Right?

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a, that is one of the, and we've chatted about this before. One of the primary causes of procrastination is low grade pervasive stress and anxiety. It's not, we think of procrastination as a function of motivation or lack of motivation. We think it's a function of energy. I'm just not, I'm tired. It's not, it's rarely a function of energy and fatigue. It's also paradoxically to our cultural misapprehension or mistaken views on procrastination. We think it's tied to motivate, you might be really motivated for that big presentation. That big paper you got to write in college or that big work project that's going to take you three hours or that home project

• 25:28Speaker 01

  that you know you need to do, you might be greatly motivated to do it, but this low grade pervasive stress and anxiety keeps you from doing it. And how that ties to the most widely consumed drug in the world, caffeine, is I know for in my twenties, I thought, okay, for that big thing, I just need to grab another energy drink.

• 25:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  You grab another cup of coffee. And what is ironic there is that's the thing that's going to, maybe it gets me through the next hour work, but it's going to spike my cortisol, my body's stress levels. To where it's going to be the very thing that the next item on my to do list, I don't want to do because of that thing I drank an hour before. And, and for me, it was this very torturous, it was this kind of compounding, negatively compounding cycle where I was putting off these big tasks, these hard conversations. And it was because of this just low grade pervasive stress and anxiety. But if you can attack that, you can attack that with exercise, you could attack that with breath work, you could attack that with adaptogens, which Magic Mind is one of the,

• 26:25Speaker 01

  it's one, it was when I developed it, when I started to develop it for myself 10 years ago. And when we launched it as a, as an actual product, and it's so cool to see you drinking, see you talking about it on, just as, as someone that's see you from afar. Well, probably 70 million people have seen me from afar on Superbowl commercials. And then to see you just bringing up Magic Mind and conversations, it really, it blows me and the team away to see your love for the product.

• 26:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love it. Yeah, we dig it every morning now.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Well, it's, it really just, it, it's so cool to see, yeah. And the sleep product works so well. It's, we're really proud of just put 14 months of development into, into Magic Mind Sleep. And the, which also has natural adaptogens like ashwagandha. But when we launched Magic Mind into the market as, as a product, it was the first energy drink that was formulated not only for energy, but also for decreasing stress and anxiety. And it was because of this aha moment, once I saw the science around procrastination, I was like, well, damn, I should be putting in as much thought around naturally decreasing stress and anxiety in my morning routine. As I'm thinking about energy or cognition.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  So the three, the, the three parts of Magic Mind are around energy, they're around cognition, focus, memory, recall. And then also decreasing stress naturally because of this.

• 27:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  All at the same time, which is incredible to decrease stress while increasing energy and cognition. I think caffeine kind of does the opposite, right? Like you, you increase your energy in temporarily.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  Perhaps your cognition, but.

• 27:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Your stress levels also go up at the same time.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. It's a, and it's a real, like I said, really vicious cycle, especially as you lean on the caffeine more and more to do the thing that you've been putting off or to go into the meeting you don't want to go into, or, ah, okay, today's going to be, I got seven people I'm going to be interviewing for this open role. And you start chugging caffeine and you leave the office physically at five or six PM and mentally you're with your kids or you're with your significant other or with your friends and you're, you're, your head's still at the office. And I thought that was just because I was an entrepreneur. And then I, I've been building companies without that massive caffeine addiction and stimulant addiction.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  And then like, oh, this is how it not only can be, but this is how it should be. Applying the science around this and, and you really can, and that's what flow ends up being is your to do list is melting away, your task is melting away, the process is just like you're rewarded by it and you're loving it. And time disappears and you leave the office or you shut down the laptop and you're completely present in the next thing.

• 29:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I think it's, you know, to have a life that you can lead like that where you're on at work, but then also on afterwards. It does take a complete rethinking of what you're putting in your body because you're right. I mean, I think about your two hour naps, that was probably a time where you were drinking a lot of caffeine.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  A shit ton.

• 29:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, because it suppresses your endocrine system.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Seven cups of coffee a day.

• 29:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right?

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Ended up sending me to ER with a heart condition that I still have to this day called atrial fibrillation. That, that, that was kind of the inception of, of needing to figure out a different morning routine and, and how to get the most out of minimal caffeine for me.

• 29:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, you're the one that you taught me with Magic Mind when you and I started talking about the negative aspects of having caffeine throughout your day. And so I've really switched to obviously using Magic Mind, but also using like decaffeinated versions of coffee as well, myself personally. And I feel so much better.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and for people listening, I'd say 70% of our customers, they drink Magic Mind alongside their morning cup of coffee or their morning tea. So it doesn't need to replace it, but yeah, it's, yeah, it is a fascinating, fascinating world of excess caffeine and what it does to us.

• 30:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And then I think what Magic Mind does is it replaces your need for caffeine throughout the day. So if you do that, like combine it with your morning, because a morning coffee is a ritual for people, right?

• 30:21Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 30:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And so it's, it's hard to give that up for people, but it's not a ritual to drink caffeine all, coffee all day long, right? That's something that we do to ourselves to try to stay alert, to try to focus and then try to cope.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Try to cope. Exactly. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's a. Wait, was there any point in time when you were drinking excess caffeine as a, as an entrepreneur, as going through medical school? Is there, was, or were you always kind of like a one cup?

• 30:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No, my whole life I've been drinking excess caffeine until just like recently, to be honest with you.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's been, uh, it's been a problem because of, you know, just the stress of entrepreneurship and having a practice and all these things. It's the only way to, I thought it was the only way to, you know, get, get through my day. And then I would suffer for it every evening. Like you said, I would not be present with my family. I'd have trouble sleeping later on, all of it. And so just recently switched the model. And especially when I learned about adaptogens, right? And I think it's great to talk a lot of, a little bit more about adaptogens. If you don't mind, because they come in all different forms and how, and I'd love for you to tell the audience, like the science of adaptogens. How do they work? And what are some of the forms they come in?

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Magic Mind has three, and, and like I said, I wrote a book on this, this whole world of a sustainable approach called Beyond Coffee. A sustainable approach, a sustainable guide to nootropics, adaptogens and mushrooms, functional mushrooms. So with a sustainable approach to these things, and there's basically three buckets with all of these nootropics, adaptogens, functional mushrooms, three buckets. There's hype and not backed by science. And it just doesn't really work for cognition, for energy, for, uh, it could be for decreasing stress. And people, it might be folklore and just doesn't really work, at least according to the science. And then there's another bucket where it works, like an agree, a comment called modafinil comes to mind where it can work,

• 32:12Speaker 01

  but it'll give you crazy headaches or gave me crazy headaches the next day, leads to dehydration, uh, terrible sleep quality. But for that, like I said, uh, that misorientation around productivity in terms of hours instead of weeks, months, years. You might feel like you got a lot done in 10 hours on something like modafinil. And then you crash hard and you recover for two days. That was my experience. And there's, and the science confirms that quite.

• 32:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I mean, it's a drug too.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. And it's, and it's a well-studied one to where it's like, we got 40 years of science around many of these compounds. Or you have something like cordyceps mushrooms that they'll increase, increase the body's production of ATP. Body's fuel currency. That's where we actually derive our energy. And that increase, you, you'll feel great 70 days in, you'll feel even better 70 days in than day two, day three. So there is a very sustainable approach to energy. And then this third bucket would be it's safe, but not effective. So you have, you have this bucket of hype and there's no, no science around it. You have this bucket where it's, it's effective, but not safe. And then you have a bucket where it's safe, but ultimately what you want is safe and effective.

• 33:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  It's beautiful intersection of safe, safety and efficacy. And all of these compounds in, in the book that I spent a little over a year and a half writing. I sum up the book with here are the 12 things you could add to your morning ritual that are right at the intersection of safety and efficacy. And then here after that of enough people just being like, just tell me the 12. I don't want to read the whole book. Friends being like, my brother very loudly was like, dude, I don't want to read your book. Just tell me what I should take in the morning.

• 33:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Just ship it to me.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. I put together a Google Doc. I was like, here are the 12 things you can buy off Amazon. Here are the links and the best suppliers of these things are the ones that, that I felt like were the, the best, the most reputable suppliers. Cause you can also get lion's mane and as a small example, you can accidentally buy the stock instead of the fruiting body.

• 34:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Which a lot of people want to sell you lion's mane cheaply. And if you buy the stock instead of the fruiting body, you get nearly none of the value of the product.

• 34:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  So you want to buy it from the, the right suppliers and I would list these off. And then friends would be like, this is like 14 bucks a day to buy all of these things individually. So then three different people were like, we should get this in the, into buy it wholesale into a commercial kitchen in the South Bay of San Francisco. Where I was living at the time, and it turns it, it would make it about three bucks a day. It was like, yeah, let's do it. And then after 27 different people were pooling their money to do this. And it becoming kind of like the nootropic stack of Silicon Valley. I was like, all right. There's probably a, a small little, like I was saying, Shopify business to be built around this and I'll, and I'll do that.

• 34:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Seems like a social scientific committee forum out there that is kind of like doing this with you.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was like, I was like, one of my buddies, Lenny Rochitsky, who's, who's this, uh, really well-known product manager. It has one of the best substacks. I think it's the highest grossing, uh, business substack on the planet. He's a really great writer and he would joke that I was like the Silicon Valley drug dealer, Silicon Valley nootropics drug dealer. So I was just like at Airbnb handing him these little dime bags of pills of like, here are the things that wholesale. But, uh, but the, um, that adaptogenic side of this equation is so under discussed for energy. People typically take things like ashwagandha, rhodiola, um, and that you could take ashwagandha at night.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  And it'd be great for decreasing stress, uh, leading into going into bed or relaxing after work. But it's actually really, really helpful in the morning. Your morning routine, like we're saying to decrease that low-grade pervasive stress. So that you can drop into your work and, and your, your to-do list melts away. The other adaptogens that something like Magic Mind includes, which these are my three favorite adaptogens on the planet. Ashwagandha, rhodiola, and then bacopa monari.

• 36:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  So, uh, rhodiola, it's an alternate to caffeine and stimulants for energy that doesn't jack up your cortisol. Doesn't spike your, your body's stress hormone.

• 36:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And how does it do that?

• 36:19Speaker 01

  The mechanisms, I, I actually, I'm not the, the scholar to know exactly how the, in fact, a lot of these things. As a doctor, I'm sure you're well aware, we don't know the mechanisms of action. We just know, okay, it's safe.

• 36:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  And this is our hypothesis on how it works.

• 36:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  But rhodiola also activates ATP production.

• 36:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Like I was saying, cordyceps. So caffeine, the MOA on that, the mechanisms of action for caffeine is really interesting. And that it does not give you a whole lot of energy.

• 36:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  It just blocks the neuroreceptors, the adenosine receptors that tell you you're building fatigue.

• 36:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  So it's like turning off the check engine light.

• 36:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Instead of fixing the engine, instead of improving the engine.

• 37:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Now it's a good analogy for it.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  It's going to turn out, it's going to block those neuroreceptors that tell you you're building fatigue where you're like, all right, I'm ready to rock. I no longer feel fatigue. It's very different than I'm no longer fatigue or building fatigue. And then those adenosine receptors, those blockers, they wear off. And then adenosine rushes the system and that's why we feel the crash.

• 37:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  It does spike a little bit of our adrenaline. So we get a little energy from the spike of adrenaline from, uh, from caffeine. But it's far inferior to something like cordyceps mushrooms, rhodiola that actually improve the body's production of ATP. The fuel, the fuel currency, as I mentioned, for the body. When you do that, then you actually have more energy at the office, at the gym, uh, at the park with the kids. But one downside of adaptogens is that it takes five to seven days for you to start to feel the full effects. For some people, for ashwagandha, it can take up to 10 days, up to 14 days in rare cases, but it can take a while.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  So if we're sitting in, uh, in a, in someone's lounge 400 years ago, and they give you a cup of coffee or a distilled cup of ashwagandha tea.

• 38:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Within 30, 45 minutes, you're going to be like, no, it's the coffee that's giving me energy.

• 38:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Because we don't, we didn't know the science.

• 38:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  We didn't have the understanding to, to know that, oh, it's not giving you energy. It's just blocking the neuroreceptor that you're building fatigue versus, hey, actually that cordyceps tea, that's going to give you better energy. It's just going to take seven days of, of taking it, uh, for you to feel it. So the subjective experience led the whole world to, oh, caffeine must be the end all be all for energy. But now as we've gotten the scientific literature in front of us and for decades of study around these compounds. Now it's, it's well understood scientifically, but mainstream, the mainstream audience has not caught up quite yet. But it's starting to around the benefits of these, these adaptogens. Bacopa, can I mention one thing about bacopa, which is maybe my favorite ingredient in Magic Mind?

• 39:01Speaker 01

  And by the way, anybody listening, they can buy all of these ingredients from great suppliers just directly. You don't need to drink Magic Mind to get these benefits. Bacopa, uh, bacopa monari is an Indian herb that's in India and in China, it's given to children and adults way before a pharmaceutical grade stimulant for focus is given for pharmaceutical, like ones that anybody can think of. When you think of ADD or ADHD.

• 39:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Bacopa is phenomenal for decreasing impulsivity and.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  We typically think of focus issues as you want to be dialed into the thing in front of you. Instead of what if you can also at the same time, put blinders on from the distractions that continue to pull at your attention? And one is to lock you in. It's almost like a magnet locking you in further. The other is a blocker that blocks off all the distractions that pull at your attention. And Bacopa is phenomenal for decreasing impulsivity by up to 45% within 30 minutes of drinking it.

• 40:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It works that fast?

• 40:09Speaker 01

  It's very fast. After about seven days of a loading phase. So then after seven days of getting to, like I was saying, of reaching full effect, then within 30 minutes, you're dialed into whatever you're working on, whatever conversation you're in, whatever three hour task you know you need to finish. And you're not reaching for your social media or the 15 different text messages that are pulling at your attention. So I always, whenever I'm talking about my favorite ingredients of anybody's, yeah, of anybody's morning routine, I mention those. And then I also mentioned the detrimental effects of caffeine, of excess caffeine consumption as well.

• 40:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. You had a, you told me about a structure that you have, a mnemonic around the CPP.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  PCC, yeah.

• 40:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  PCC, yeah. What is PCC?

• 40:53Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, CPP. That's a CPP is, and really I only mentioned that mnemonic, I don't think about it in terms of CPP, but in terms of going into our podcast, when I was thinking about your audience, I was like, you know, I think what could be helpful is these three areas that are wildly under discussed and it was really just a mnemonic device for you to remember. And it's based on just being a pod, having a podcast for a while.

• 41:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I think we talked through most of it, right? Caffeine and productivity.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  We have, and I would love to mention a little bit on the C part, caffeine side of things. And yeah, I've been being a podcaster for, for a while. I just try to put myself in the listener's shoes. What might be interesting for them?

• 41:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Well, good, now our audience knows what they need to know about.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  For the, yeah, for this, this audience, I think CPP might be relevant for, for them. We already talked about procrastination.

• 41:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  We talked about productivity.

• 41:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Procrastination, low grade stress, right?

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Low grade stress. If you could exercise, breath work, magic mind, whatever you'll be on your own, just consuming things like ashwagandha in the morning and consulting with your physician to know that, you know, it's, it's gonna be a great option for you and all of those kind of caveats. But breath work is a phenomenal one for decreasing, anybody can do it. You don't need a consultant physician for that. You can do five minutes of breath work to decrease the body's cortisol levels for you to dive into your work and that five minutes is going to serve you well for the next eight hours. The C portion is the detrimental effects of caffeine consumption. So caffeine is, like we said, it's the, I mean, 90% of adults every day are consuming

• 42:28Speaker 01

  caffeine for the cognitive benefits, the perceived energy benefits, but we're consuming it every day. It's the same thing we've been doing for 400 years. Our favorite kind of like black soup to start the day, or it might be green tea for, or black tea for others. But there is these, there's a downstream cascade that happens when we consume caffeine. And you and I might have figured this out experientially, subjectively of consuming too much caffeine, but the detrimental effects of excess caffeine consumption is you get burnout, you get decreased sleep quality. But what people, I don't think many understand is that it spikes our body's stress hormone,

• 43:08Speaker 01

  cortisol, that leads to that, those issues with our to do lists, the issues of procrastination, one hour, two hours, three hours later. The caffeine in our body will peak around two to three hours after consumption and then it's decreasing, but that stress can remain elevated for hours after. And you're reaching for the next cup.

• 43:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  And then it's compounding the stress hangover after, after that. But the other thing that's really interesting around the science of caffeine is that it's a vasoconstrictor, meaning that it is going to decrease the blood flow to the brain. And this, if you're in a manufacturing plant in 1962, and you're doing the same repetitive task over and over and over again, by all means, drink three cups of coffee.

• 43:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, dessert, yeah.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  But if you're in the midst of a modern kind of work culture where you got 27 different emails with 27 different contexts, the academic term for, for creativity is lateral thinking.

• 44:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  So if you want to improve lateral thinking, the ability to switch contexts, the ability to, to make novel connections to solve some problem that you're working on. If you want deep creative work, the last thing you want to do is drink three cups of coffee, where you decrease the blood flow to the brain, vasoconstricting blood flow to the brain and decreasing the oxygen that's reaching your brain throughout your workday. The optimal approach would be to increase blood flow to the brain. Ways that you can do that could be exercise, it could be breath work. It's, it could be citicoline, choline, which is naturally found in eggs. Magic mind has choline for this very reason, improve blood flow to the brain.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Side note here is that'll also improve your REM sleep 12 to 15 hours later.

• 44:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Really?

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Choline, increase choline consumption. Improve REM sleep 12 to 15 hours later, or it's been known to. And for many individuals, it'll improve your sleep quality. Something you took in the morning can improve your sleep quality at night. And I mean, there's so many benefits for magic mind. I never, I rarely ever get to mention these, these other benefits. But like I said, you could consume six eggs and get the same choline that you'd get for a magic mind. And that increased choline consumption will improve blood flow to brain, improve, improve your, the oxygen that's reaching your brain for improved lateral thinking, creativity, context switching. And the modern workflow requires a lot. I would imagine your workflow.

• 45:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I mean, absolutely. Like, like you said, like from email to email, you're thinking about totally different things constantly. And yeah, when you're all caffeined up, it's really hard to make those switches and it's more exhausting and you get fatigue actually going through your day, trying to mentally switch from one topic to the other. And with not doing caffeine and adding like an ingredient like choline, like you're discussing, it could make that process so much easier.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's a, it is a, it's a huge cost of caffeine, because excess caffeine consumption is that that problem gets worse. And then you get into excess caffeine consumption that our site never talks about. If we talked about the pervasive stress, but there are areas that, that I, I've never heard on a podcast, but it's clear as day and, and anybody can look it up on chat GPT and Claude of the detrimental effects on fertility.

• 46:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  For sure.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  On, with excess caffeine consumption. And there's a fertility crisis in the US.

• 46:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  And over the last 30 years, every single decade, our average caffeine consumption has gone up. The latest, the latest innovation from Starbucks is a triple shot espresso. I saw a TV commercial for that recently where I'm like, God, this is like, just, just overtly we're adding even more caffeine in that same little, that same little can that used to be double shot espresso, now it's triple shot espresso. And the average caffeine content of a, of a Starbucks is over 300 milligrams.

• 47:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. It's like, becomes an addictive level of caffeine.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. So three times what a coffee was in 1995, but go, go ahead.

• 47:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No, I'm just saying that it becomes an addictive level of caffeine. And so then when people get addicted to the caffeine, it keeps on coming back to the store to buy more, right? And so it's, you know, the other thing that you had mentioned briefly was that you had atrial fibrillation, the cardiovascular effects of excessive caffeine are, are real.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's hypertension, blood pressure. For me, it's, I had, many people have the, the pre-wiring predisposition for cardiac issues. Like I had that for atrial fibrillation and drinking six to seven cups of coffee not only spiking my stress like crazy. And like I said, this is such a small little sentence I buried in, in one of our previous topics, that I just thought I was stressed because I was running a business.

• 47:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  I think there's nine out of 10 people that could be listening to this that think they're attributing, that, that will be told, well, it's a high stress job, or well, you're working really hard. Oh, you got ambitious goals. Dude, I, with magic mind, we're unabashedly trying to build an ex Red Bull.

• 48:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  In our own way, and healthier, organic, better for you.

• 48:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  We're unabashed about that as well, in a sustainable way where I want to love my work each day 20 years from now, instead of trying to just condense it all into seven years and burning out. So there's, there's a lot of caveats to that, that big unabashed statement, but at the same time, I'm not stressed at all. There hasn't been a single morning in the five years since launching a company that, that I've woken up in the middle of the night stressed. And that was not the case in my twenties with the three companies and three failures where I thought I was doing all the right things, I'm working seven days a week, 14 hours a day. But the, yeah, there is a, there is a real message in our heads where we justify being stressed all the time. And I look back and I'm like, no, I was stupidly addicted to a drug that I was drinking, consuming

• 49:00Speaker 01

  in excess every day and had no idea it had this, these effects.

• 49:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. It's so funny how we relegate our symptoms to something else, like our stressful lives or just working too hard, but it's really the drug that's causing it. And caffeine in excess is a drug, right? I mean, like you and I both said, a small amount every morning is fine, but.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  A cup of coffee, great.

• 49:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right. But people do want that additional level of lateral thinking, for example, focus. And there's other ways to get that besides caffeine, which is the adaptogens and the ingredients that you're talking about, like choline, et cetera. And these are safer and cleaner ways of getting the same effect, but without all the side effects.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Right. And people also will consume that, they'll, they will rapidly reach for their, their cup of coffee in the morning to improve mood and an ingredient like turmeric curcumin. Turmeric curcumin can rapidly improve mood even better than caffeine.

• 49:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Really?

• 50:00Speaker 01

  And almost 40% of depressive disorders are now tied to inflammation in the body.

• 50:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  And, and you could go to, I hesitate to, to say this because it's, I don't want to lead anybody astray, but because there's so many benefits of things like talk therapy.

• 50:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  There's so many benefits for clinical therapy with a trained therapist. But there's also a subset of people that might be consuming dairy on a regular basis and they're allergic to it.

• 50:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  And it is spiking the sinophils, that is spiking cytokines in their, in their system, spiking inflammation. This is the biomarker wave saying spiking inflammation. That inflammation, if you twisted your ankle in, in nature and a deer twists their, twists their, a, a leg or a hip joint in nature right now, the deer is going to get these biochemical signals of go sit under a tree and lay low while you heal.

• 51:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  And similarly, if we're inflamed, the body's going to say, hey, go to a dark room, rest. Don't go out and about into, you know, huge crowded spaces for the, those bias, same biochemical reasons of your body knows you need to, to rest and recuperate and heal. And if someone's, let's say, consuming something in their diet that is spiking their inflammation, it might very well benefit them to also do talk therapy. But something like getting that out of their diet or consuming turmeric curcumin in their morning routine to get rid of the inflammation, that could improve their mood. It's been shown, turmeric's been shown twice in 2013 and 2017 in large scale studies to be as effective at improving mood as leading pharmaceuticals.

• 51:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  It's so, so easy to try it with no, it's in 95% of Indian dishes.

• 51:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  Like, it's so easy for anybody to try it. And yet it just, there's no big turmeric.

• 51:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  There's no marketing initiative that's able to go around and say, all right, everybody should try this as it might not be the last line of fence. If, if you need something, something else, but it can be a first, uh, first line of defense.

• 52:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  And, and anybody can incorporate in their morning routine to try it out.

• 52:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And I think, you know, you and I talk a lot about brain benefits, but everything you're mentioning also has an equal benefit in our physiology beyond just the brain. Like turmeric curcumin, for example, we had Dr. Gupta on the podcast a few weeks ago. She's had a PhD in turmeric, believe it or not.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 52:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  PhD, yes. And, um, you know, all of the benefits of turmeric beyond mood benefits are it helps to heal your gut. It reduces cardiovascular inflammation. It can reduce pain from injuries and also people suffer from chronic pain like neck and back pain and really helps even replace the need for Advil and non-steroidal, so it causes a lot of damage as well. So, you know, the turmeric curcumin has benefits throughout the body and, and brain benefits that are very powerful.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And these natural herbs just don't have, they, they lack the marketing and, and profit centers to lead to a $400 million marketing budget.

• 53:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  And so we hear, or we think inflammation and we think, okay, Advil.

• 53:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  And, and what's so great about the last 10 years is now we're starting to wake up to, well, one, now we're aware of the detrimental effects of long-term usage of, of insides like Advil, but also we're starting to wake up to, maybe there's some more natural remedies that we should try as well.

• 53:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And Magic Mind has turmeric in it. So you get it every single day. And a lot of people are living with a chronic low level of inflammation, either through, you know, something going on with their gut or even their oral cavity. And this can help with that as well.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Yes. It's, uh, I just did my blood work with Nexel.

• 53:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Uh, I was telling you on the drive here, I think it was last Monday. So it might take a few more days for you all to see the results, but every time that I do my blood work, I love that it comes back and shows with biomarkers, the same thing that I subjectively yell from the mountaintops of no stress. So I have very low biomarkers and, uh, any of my stress biomarkers. And then I have no inflammation.

• 54:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Amazing.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Like zero inflammation, zero biomarkers for inflammation. And that wasn't the case.

• 54:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  Six, seven, eight years ago, before I started to put these things together in a formula for, for Magic Mind.

• 54:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And, you know, stress and inflammation are interrelated in a big way. When people have more stress in their life, psychological stress, they actually do show higher biomarkers of inflammation and vice versa too. So, you know, you're kind of getting both of those with an ingredient like turmeric curcumin as well.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  Yes. And it is a, it's one of these things where I, I, I feel like I almost want to say it three times in every, every podcast.

• 54:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Of, especially with AI tools is one, any listener can check anything that, that anybody says on a podcast, right there so easily.

• 55:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  And get a plain English answer.

• 55:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  Two sentences in two seconds. But they can also just ask and do their own research to say, okay, I'm dealing with this or I have, let's say you're feeling like you're in a, a real low mood stage of, of life. You can start asking it all the questions of what are the natural, organic, safe and effective things that I could try out?

• 55:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's a great idea.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  And, and do it all on your own and advocate for yourself, research for yourself and do a bit of, of really pretty safe trial and error that I'd say, that I'd argue is way safer than, well, the pharmacist recommended Advil.

• 55:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  And you wake up in six straight weeks of Advil. And I can tell you that is just as easy to look up on chat GPT and see how detrimental that can be for your health.

• 55:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's very detrimental. Um, okay. So we mentioned like four of the ingredients in Magic Mind. I know there's 12 ingredients, right? I'm going to have you pick one more to talk about. What's your next most favorite ingredient in there?

• 56:04Speaker 01

  The, so the source of, of pretty minimal caffeine in Magic Mind is, um, is matcha. That's why I say it's pretty minimal.

• 56:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love matcha. Let's talk about matcha.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  You can pair it with your morning, uh, your morning routine and your morning cup of coffee or morning tea. You can pair Magic Minds pretty easily with it because of that, that minimal caffeine. But the minimal caffeine, about a third of a cup of coffee in our original shot, Magic Mind Max is the first, it's the world's first. I, I, by the way, thank you for letting me ramble about the science and the ingredients behind this product.

• 56:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love it.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Uh, I did write a book, so I could, I will talk about it for, that thing was like 18 months and I loved every minute. I talked about loving the process. I love thinking, talking about these ingredients. Magic Mind Max is the world's first time release energy shot on plan. So for eight to nine hours of mental performance, uh, and you couldn't do liquid form of time release, uh, version of these ingredients. You could do pills, but not liquid form until about two years ago.

• 57:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, okay.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  The technology just wasn't, wasn't there until about two years ago. But in original, it's about a third of a, of a cup of coffee with 55 milligrams of caffeine and that comes from matcha. Matcha, which is the ground up green tea leaf, the ground up tea leaf. So you get all of the, the compound of, of the green tea leaf itself, in addition to everything that comes from the dilution of, and the solubility of that tea in the water, as opposed to green tea where you don't get the ground up tea leaf. Matcha has 140 times the antioxidants of green tea.

• 57:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  140 times.

• 57:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's crazy.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  And up to a hundred times a glass of red wine.

• 57:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  Like anybody that's like, well, I drink it for the antioxidants. You could consume green tea and it would be a hundred times, uh, better, uh, antioxidant benefits. The matcha also has these ingredients called catechins, polyphenols that are great for decreasing stress, extending your body's absorption of something like that caffeine over a longer period of time. That's why it's called nature's time release caffeine.

• 58:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, okay.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  The caffeine binds to these complex molecules called catechins. So this is great for any matcha drinkers out there. If you ever want to know why you have this steadier energy over a longer period of time, it's because the caffeine molecules bind to these much more complex molecules called catechins and it's harder for the body to break down and metabolize. So for caffeine and, and coffee, it doesn't have that binding to a complex molecule. So it's metabolized much quicker. So you have a peak much faster and a crash much, much faster. But for matcha, and people know this subjectively, they just feel it's a steadier, cleaner, calmer energy. And that's because of the longer, uh, the longer time it takes for us to, to metabolize the caffeine molecules.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  But much has all of these other benefits, like the antioxidants, the L-theanine that comes just built into matcha, L-theanine helps for this calmer, steadier feeling that doesn't, it's not in, in coffee, but ca- a caffeine to ca- to L-theanine ratio of typically two to one. So two, uh, molecules of L-theanine to one, for every one molecule of caffeine leads, it's this optimal ratio is what it's called, this optimal ratio of just steady energy. And matcha is so great because it has all of the, everything that I'm mentioning, it has it built into, into the green tea leaf that gets ground up.

• 59:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And there's a lot of studies on green tea and other longevity benefits as well.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. So. Yeah. The longevity of Magic Mind and, and any of these ingredients, uh, lion's mane, I didn't mention that.

• 59:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  Lion's mane is so great for neuro longevity.

• 59:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  Uh, but what were you going to say about matcha and longevity?

• 59:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No, I was just going to say like, you know, there's studies around brain health and people that live in areas of the world where they consume more green tea have less of a risk of Alzheimer's disease, for example, and neurodegenerative conditions, they have less.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Really? I didn't know.

• 59:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes. And so this can be, yeah, it's, it's considered one of the longevity ingredients that you can have out there.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Yes. It is, uh, like I was saying about choline and improved lateral thinking and then the side effect of, or the, uh, the additional benefit of the ram, improved REM sleep. We rarely get a chance to talk about neuro longevity around these ingredients. And when you have something like lion's mane mushrooms that can, at least in neurogenesis and improve synaptic connections, we used to think it was like, all right, by, well, we used to think 25. Now many researchers are saying the brain will continue to develop to 30 and some, in the last two months, I don't know if you've seen this, they're saying it could be up to 35 for individuals.

• 1:00:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No, I didn't see that, no.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  So just, you know, anybody with, uh, Thinking that it's like, all right, my brain's done. Now it's time to hit the bong. You might want to wait until much later in life than what we thought, because the brain is still developing. It's looking like until 35 now. And, and who knows, I feel like we know so little about anything with certainty that we might as well know nothing. Maybe it's going to be 40 when, by the time this episode airs. But all that is to say that now we're seeing that actually, no, the brain is not this static organ that develops and then is good to go at 35. And you've talked about this on, on your episodes before, around the synaptic connections that can still be generated with exercise,

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  with the right mental exercises, as well as ingredients in our morning or daily routines like Lion's Mane Mushrooms.

• 1:01:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. You know, I think the moral of the story is obviously everyone needs exercise. They need a healthy diet. They need to sleep well, but there, we have evolved with these plants for thousands and thousands of years and they have benefits and then they have even more benefits. Very rarely do they have side effects like drugs do, right? And so if you can find the right ingredients, like you've put into Magic Mind and combine it with a good exercise and sleep routine, it really becomes magical, right? You have all the things that you're talking about. You get your day started with energy the same time every day. You sustain the energy throughout the day, sustain the focus, the creativity throughout the day. And then when you're done with your workday, you get to apply those same benefits to your evening

• 1:02:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  with your family and your friends. And like, what an awesome life. And then you sleep great, right? I mean, they can all combine together to be just creating the perfect ritual for yourself.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's a, it is, I wouldn't fault any listener thinking, well, of course, these guys love talking about this stuff because, well, for my case, of course he loves talking about this stuff because he started the company, but God, they come to any, any cocktail conversation six, seven, eight, nine years ago, and I was talking about the same things and it's kind of the reverse. I loved introducing people to the best that, that the globe and the best that our science has and the best that nature has to offer on these topics versus the conventional, same thing we've been doing for 400 years. And I mean, when it comes to productivity, when it comes to our work, we don't do anything that we did 400 years ago in terms of like,

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  you know, we're not riding horses around, we're not using, we're not sending telegrams from 200 years ago. But when it comes to our morning routines, we're like, wow, this has to be the only thing, only game in town because we've been doing it for 40 years.

• 1:03:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Four cups of coffee.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Exactly. Versus, well, maybe there, maybe we can't improve it.

• 1:03:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I think for me, like what made me very attracted to the product is like, I have a lot of patients that are on supplements, right? Almost every one of our patients on some supplements and they have supplement fatigue, right? There's so many different things that you can take and I want everyone on some core supplements like vitamin D, a good omega supplement, creatine, like these are all for me, like basic core supplements that most humans will benefit from. But the problem is, is that there's so many other things out there and people don't want to take more than three to five pills a day, right? And so Magic Mind gets you 12 science-backed supplements all in one daily shot. And it's just so much easier and I think it tastes great and I just make it part of my morning routine. And then I get these ingredients every day.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  That was the, the, the goal, the two goals for, for Magic Mind, the kind of the 1% and then 99% was on, focused on the day, day-to-day work to get there was to create the most effective health shot in the world. And then also to make it the best tasting. There's a pretty low bar there with, with most health shots, but it, we, we've, we've worked so hard to make it taste great too. So thank you for, for, for that note. But it's a, yeah, it's a, two months ago, it's now the number one health shot in the country and, and the natural channel. So Whole Foods, Sprouts, places like that.

• 1:04:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And I know like high performers in sports are doing it too. Like Matthew Stafford talks a lot about how it's the only supplement he takes every day.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Outside of creatine. Yeah. I couldn't believe that when he said that in, in an interview. That yeah, the only supplements he takes are creatine and Magic Mind. And yeah, just won the MVP for the LA Rams.

• 1:04:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep. Fantastic. Well, you created something amazing here and I really appreciate you for it. I really appreciate you bringing this knowledge to our community out there and I'd love for people to give it a try. So if, you know, we're going to, I think have a discount code in our, in our show notes.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. If we, if I haven't given you one, I'll make sure that your listeners have one. Yeah.

• 1:05:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Fantastic. And where can people learn more about Magic Mind and more about you as well?

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  They can find out everything they'd want about magicmind.com. You can also, I love just telling people, go ask their favorite AI product about Magic Mind and all the ingredients. Are they legit? What's, what are the benefits? All of those things and, and get it from a third party like ChatGPT or, or Claude or something. And then they can find out as much as they want about me and the things that, that light me up on Instagram. Just James J. Beshara on Instagram, or you can just Google Creator of Magic Mind.

• 1:05:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I think your next book needs to be on productivity. Cause you see that figured out.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  I would love to. It's a, yeah, it is, it's a, it's a world that I think a lot about and have to with the different projects on the plate and wanting to be a present husband and father.

• 1:06:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Well, you're amazing, man. Thank you.

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  Thank you, Dr. Shaw. Thank you for having me.

• 1:06:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you.

• 1:06:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you liked this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps to support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best and it's always important to seek their guidance.