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

Biohacking expert Gary Brecka spent 22 years predicting people's deaths for life insurance companies. While analyzing millions of medical records, he discovered that many health problems stemmed from preventable nutrient deficiencies and poor oxygen management rather than genetics. Yet he was legally forbidden from warning the people behind the data. Frustrated by the system, he walked away from the industry and dedicated his life to helping people reclaim their health. In this episode, Gary shares powerful biohacking and wellness strategies to boost energy, improve brain health, and add years to your life through simple daily habits. In this episode, Hala and Gary will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (02:12) Predicting Death in the Insurance Industry (07:06) Gary’s Early Fascination with Human Biology (13:51) Hidden Nutrient Deficiencies Causing Illnesses (24:13) How Nutrient Deficiencies Affect Mental Health (34:50) How Oxygen Powers Health and Longevity (48:04) Hormone Balance and Energy Optimization (51:36) The Impact of Sugar on Metabolic Health (57:46) Why Physical Discomfort Slows Aging (1:01:18) Real Biohacking Health Transformation Stories Gary Brecka is a human biologist, biohacker, and co-founder of 10X Health System, a wellness company specializing in genetic testing and personalized supplementation. With over 20 years of experience in biohacking and functional medicine, he helps people optimize their health and performance. Gary also hosts The Ultimate Human podcast, where he interviews leading researchers and physicians on bio-optimization, longevity, and overall well-being. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Spectrum Business - Keep your business connected seamlessly with fast, reliable Internet, Phone, TV, and Mobile services. Visit https://spectrum.com/Business to learn more. Northwest Registered Agent - Build your brand and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes at northwestregisteredagent.com/paidyap Framer - Publish beautiful and production-ready websites. Go to Framer.com/profiting and get 30% off their Framer Pro annual plan. Quo - Run your business communications the smart way. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to quo.com/profiting Experian - Manage and cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reduce your bills. Get started now with the Experian App and let your Big Financial Friend do the work for you. See experian.com for details. Bitdefender - Start protecting your business today with Bitdefender Ultimate Small Business Security. Get 30% off your plan at bitdefender.com/profiting Intuit - Start paying bills the smart way, not the hard way. Learn more at QuickBooks.com/billpay Resources Mentioned: Gary's Instagram:instagram.com/garybrecka Gary's Podcast, The Ultimate Human: bit.ly/TUH-apple 10X Health Gene Test: 10xhealthsystem.com Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Motivation, Manifestation, Life Balance, Self-Healing, Positivity, Happiness, Sleep, Diet

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

• 0:00Hala Taha?

  Today's episode is sponsored in part by Northwest Registered Agent, Whatnot, Mod, and AG1. Northwest Registered Agent gives you the tools and guidance to build a complete business identity. Start using free resources at northwestregisteredagent.com/ yapfree. Whatnot helps sellers grow through live shopping, community, and real-time connections with buyers. Search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the App Store, download, and you can start selling right away. Mod connects qualifying patients with licensed medical providers for modafinil to support sustained energy, focus, and alertness throughout the day. Visit mod.com for a free consultation and get 10% off your first order plus free shipping with promo code PROFITING.

• 0:45Hala Taha?

  See their website for important safety information. AG1 Next Gen supports your nutritional foundation with vitamins, minerals, pre- and probiotics, and superfoods. Go to drinkag1.com/profitting and get a free immune support bundle with your first subscription order. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com/deals.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  If that database that I had access to could see the light of day, and unfortunately it never will, but if it could, it would permanently change the face of humanity.

• 1:17Hala Taha?

  Well, this is gonna be a juicy, juicy interview because I have so much to dig in.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Gary Brekka.

• 1:24Hala Taha?

  Gary Brekka is a biohacker and one of the world's foremost experts on

• 1:28Speaker 01

  When a life insurance company is getting ready to put $10 million or $25 million worth of risk on your life, there's only one variable that matters. How many more months do you have left on Earth? The reason why people were not living longer, healthier, happier lives was not pathology, was not disease, was not some catastrophic illness that they had. It was for things that we called modifiable risk factors. And you know why? I was prohibited by law from contacting the patients. So even if I saw life-threatening drug interactions, I could not contact the patient to warn them. If I had been able to just pick up the phone and talk to that patient, I could have added, on average, seven years to their health span.

• 2:06Hala Taha?

  Do you ever think that there could be some sort of regulation to make that data available publicly so that we could save more lives?

• 2:16Hala Taha?

  Young improfitters, today we're unlocking a yap classic that might completely change how you think about your health, aging, and what it really means to feel normal. In this episode, I sat down with Gary Brecka, a human biologist, biohacker, and former life insurance mortality expert who spent decades predicting exactly when people would die. And after seeing the same patterns over and over again, he walked away from that career to help people live longer, healthier lives instead. What Gary discovered is that most modern health issues, from fatigue and brain fog to chronic disease and accelerated aging, aren't driven by genetics at all. They're driven by oxygen deprivation, nutrient deficiencies, and the everyday lifestyle habits we rarely question.

• 2:59Hala Taha?

  You'll learn in this episode how your body actually works and how a few practical, accessible biohacks can dramatically improve your energy, focus, hormones, longevity, and overall quality of life. Yap, bam, let's get into it. Gary, thanks for joining us for this super important conversation, and welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  So excited to be here.

• 3:21Hala Taha?

  I am very excited for this conversation. I love talking about biohacking, and you are so experienced. And when I was doing research for this podcast, I found out that you spent 20 years in the life insurance industry, and you basically would predict when people would die to the nearest month. And first of all, I didn't even know a job like this existed. So it was so fascinating to me. How did you end up in the life insurance industry to start with?

• 3:49Speaker 01

  You know, what's amazing is how much of this science is actually done on an annual basis. I mean, there's, there's more than $30 billion of these types of policies issued every single year. And remember, in the life insurance industry, when a life insurance company is getting ready to put $5 million, or $10 million, or $25 million worth of risk on your life, there's only one variable that matters, right? I mean, and it's how many more months do you have left on earth? And so some of the most accurate science in the world is actually held by life insurance companies. I always used to say that If if that database that I had access to could see the light of day,

• 4:31Speaker 01

  and unfortunately it never will, but if it could, it would permanently change the face of humanity. I mean, it would upend modern medicine in a way that would be catastrophic. And I made my way there because, you know, my undergraduate degrees were in biology. My postgraduate degrees were human biology. So I'm a human biologist by trade. I I had another concentration in neuroscience. And when I graduated, I went into this industry, I thought temporarily, to work as a mortality expert because I was just fascinated by the data. And if they got five years of medical records on you and five years of demographic data, you know, we could tell the insurance company how long you had to live to the month. Wow.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  You know, after doing this for more than two decades, I really began to realize that these were not just spreadsheets, right? This was not just data. There were human beings on the other side of these spreadsheets. And, you know, I was prohibited by law from contacting the patients. So even if I saw life-threatening drug interactions, I could not contact the patient to warn them. Wow. And it became glaringly apparent to me that the reason why people were not living longer, healthier, happier lives was not pathology, was not disease, was not, you know, some catastrophic illness that they had. It was for things that we called modifiable risk factors, right?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  I mean, if I had been able to just pick up the phone and talk to that patient, I could have added, on average, seven years to their health span, not just their lifespan, but how many healthy years they had left on earth. And I decided, you know, one day I had a massive epiphany and and over a case that I was working on that they prohibited me from contacting the patient. And I just decided that I wasn't going to spend one more day of my life predicting death. I was going to spend the balance of my lifetime, you know, trying to help people live healthier, happier, longer lives. Wow. And you know what's astounding about that career? I always say if I was to boil that entire career down to a single sentence. It would be that the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  And nothing is more truthful than that statement. Um, you know, we did not find a single disease etiological pathway, not one, that did not have its roots in what we call hypoxia, lack of blood oxygen, or was not exacerbated by a lack of blood oxygen. And this includes every form of cancer, autoimmune disease, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, early onset dementia, type 2 diabetes, um, weight gain, water retention, hormone imbalance. You know, all of these um, things because the body is in a hypoxic state. In fact, all human beings leave this planet the same way. We all die of the same thing. The definition of death is lack of oxygen to the brain, hypoxia. Only we tend to think of it as an event, right? A gunshot wound, a car, a boss, a stroke, a heart attack.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  But the truth is, this is a predictable curve. You are either managing oxygen well, or you are managing oxygen poorly. The more poorly you manage oxygen, the faster you are accelerating towards the grave. The more, the better you manage oxygen, the, the less quickly you are accelerating towards the grave and all forms of pathology and disease.

• 7:45Hala Taha?

  Hmm. Well, this is gonna be a juicy, juicy interview because I have so much to dig into. There's some interviews where like, I'm always excited to, to interview guests. But there's some topics where I'm like, man, this is so interesting and nobody talks about it. And this is one of those interviews where I'm like, this is just so interesting. But before we dig into a lot of the things that you just said, because you just rattled off a lot of information that I have a lot of follow-up questions for. But let's take it back to your childhood for a minute. What was your first childhood memory of getting interested in human biology?

• 8:21Speaker 01

  So I grew up on a 300 acre tobacco farm in Southern Maryland, um, Upper Marlboro, Maryland, the Marlboro man, um, never smoked tobacco, never chewed tobacco. Um, my parents owned the land and they leased it to, to a farmer to, to, to grow agriculturally. And I was an only child and you couldn't even see another house from my parents' home. So I spent actually a lot of my time alone in the woods, you know, I would, I would, you know, go into the woods during the day, I would ride my bike eight miles to my best friend's house. There was a lot of animals on the adjoining farm next to me. I got really fascinated by nature and animals, you know, and I was always fascinated when cattle or

• 9:04Speaker 01

  horses or livestock got sick. And as a little young child, and they would call this veterinarian out and the veterinarian would show up and do some magic stuff and then all of a sudden this animal would heal. And I just thought that that was really, really cool. And when I got into school, I found out in the eighth grade, I was tested as clinically photographic. For a while, they thought I was borderline savant, or maybe, maybe on the autism spectrum because I had such a hyper concentrated photographic memory, which I later, you know, I've learned to use as a superpower. And so I naturally gravitated towards science because science is a lot of rote memorization. So chemistry, anatomy, science came very,

• 9:48Speaker 01

  very easy to me. You know, I've learned to manage being clinically photographic now. I don't, I can't read for pleasure, for example. So I don't read menus in restaurants, try not to look at street signs, things like that, because I record all the information that I, that I see. But in terms of, you know, building a basis for a future in science, it was, you know, I was sort of especially well crafted for kind of a voluminous amount of storage of, of detailed information. And so, you know, my grade school years and my high school years were all full of science experiments. I was a super, super science

• 10:28Speaker 01

  geek. And, and then when I went to college, I chose biology as a, as a major, chemistry as a minor, and then I took You know, I'm on for four more years of just human biology.

• 10:40Hala Taha?

  Yeah. So you talk about people, everybody can unlock their superhuman and it's clear with this photographic memory, you literally are superhuman. And I thought it was very interesting to find out that there's disadvantages to you having this photographic memory. Like you were just saying, you don't read menus or read anything for pleasure because you essentially, you can memorize anything, like anything that you see, you can just memorize.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so like I don't take the, I don't take the seat back magazine out of the pocket in front of me on a flight, you know, because three months later, I'll tell you where the, you know, sales center is for a condo project in Sao Paulo, you know, so you can store senseless information as well. But I've learned to cultivate that, you know, I'm, I'm, I am obsessed with the human body and its form and its function. And, you know, when I was in the insurance industry, I had access to this database of 370 million lives. And remember that insurance companies have data that no other enterprise has, no other medical enterprise, not even the federal government, the CDC, the National Institute of Health, because an insurance company knows the day, the date, the time, the location, and the cause of death for 370

• 11:52Speaker 01

  million lives. We know exactly the disease ideological progression of things like statins, all forms of pharmaceuticals, narcotics, you know, corticosteroids, you know, common antidepressants, antibiotics, we know exactly what happens and what the impact is on mortality when people are, you know, subjected to these kinds of chemicals or synthetics or pharmaceuticals. And, you know, if you're, if you really want to look at health trends, you know, follow the pharmaceutical, I mean, follow the life insurance industry because they have data. On what terminates people's lives and they have voluminous amounts of that data. Remember, they they bet tens of millions of dollars on a single risk factor.

• 12:35Hala Taha?

  Wow.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  And so, um, you know, that was naturally fascinating to me, um, you know, until I really had this sort of moral epiphany about, um, you know, wasting my life predicting death instead of spending my life impacting life.

• 12:51Hala Taha?

  Yeah. Now, do you ever think that this data would become available publicly or that there could be some sort of regulation to make that data available publicly so that we could save more lives? Do you think that would ever happen?

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Well, I think unfortunately, no. I mean, the, you know, insurance, the insurance lobby is the second most powerful lobby to Congress, um, you know, first being Big Pharma and then right behind them, you have Big Oil. So, um, it's very unlikely that something that they're able to use to profiteer from in these financial services products. Because remember, there are a lot of financial services products that are based on when you're going to die. Um, annuities, reverse mortgages, uh, life insurance, um, you know, uh, these are all products that are based on human mortality. And so that database, um, is, is highly, highly, highly guarded by that industry. You know, we knew, for example, in the nineties that, um, you know, opioids had an addictive

• 13:48Speaker 01

  amyloid long before you heard about the, you know, pain medication crisis. And, um, and, you know, we thought that they were just, um, pain amyloids, but we realized that there was mixed in there. There was an amyloid that not only could cause a cardiac event, but also created an addictive quality, which from a pharmaceutical standpoint is a home run, right? Because if I can, I can create something that's addictive and toxic, then I can actually get patent protection and I can get, um, uh, become a prescriptive pharmaceutical, right? As soon as, as soon as something's toxic and addictive, it's prescribed and patented. And if it's prescribed and patented, then it's covered by, you know, health insurance. If it's covered by health insurance and it's patented, you have a monopoly.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  And so a lot of these compounds that we put into our bodies that are seeking To reduce inflammation or to elevate serotonin or reduce the use of serotonin or elevate thyroid function are actually also designed to create dependency reliance and what we call tachyphylaxis, a desensitization response. And that's all built in so that they can create the longevity and the patent protection, the prescription protection of it. But the truth is, you know, I, I, I think the second big thing that I learned in, in, in studying mortality for 22 years is that the majority of the reason why people are

• 15:13Speaker 01

  affected by aging, for example, and we chalk all these things up to a consequence of aging, weight gain, water retention, brain fog, poor sleep, poor focus and concentration, lack of waking energy, these things that we accept as a consequence of aging, they are not a consequence of aging at all. They are a consequence of missing raw material in the human body. You deprive the human body of, of certain raw materials, certain nutrients, minerals, vitamins, amino acids, you get the expression of that disease. And then we label this as a disease and we treat it chronically as a disease. When the truth is, um, you know, there are a lot of myths about how disease travels in families.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  So for example, um, you know, we say that, um, people have genetically inherited hypertension. They have genetically inherited hypothyroid, genetically inherited depression, anxiety, um, alcohol addiction, you know, all of these things that run in families. But what's fascinating about quote unquote genetically inherited disease is that we've mapped the entire human biome. We know every single gene in the human body and no physician can tell you what gene causes any of those diseases. The reason why they can't tell you what gene causes those diseases like hypertension, hypothyroid, hypercholesterolemia, hypertriglyceridemia, all of these genetically inherited diseases is because that gene does not exist.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  And if that gene does not exist, then it means that those diseases do not exist. We do not pass disease from generation to generation. What we pass from generation to generation is the inability for the body to refine a raw material. This causes a deficiency, which leads to that disease. So for example, if I was able to magically go into your body and deplete vitamin D3, okay, the single most important nutrient in the human body. If I could go in and magically deplete vitamin D3, you would eventually develop rheumatoid arthritis-like symptoms. Now, you don't have rheumatoid arthritis, but you would develop those parallel symptoms.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  And amongst other things, hormone imbalance, you know, brittle bones. But if you went to the wrong physician and you started talking about your medical history and said, "Listen, doc, I get out of the bed in the morning, my feet and ankles are sore when they touch the ground in the morning. I wake up sore and achy like I had a workout the night before. Lately, you know, my neck is really stiff and so is my low back and it's kind of hard to make a fist." The wrong physician is going to go, "You know what? And that's exactly what rheumatoid arthritis does. You have rheumatoid arthritis. I'm going to put you on a corticosteroid, an anti-inflammatory, you know, to help you manage these symptoms." And then you start on corticosteroids, but what you don't tell the patient is that once

• 18:03Speaker 01

  you start a corticosteroid, you have six years and one day until you're having a joint replacement. And then as soon as you have a joint replacement, your mobility begins to reduce. So for example, if you were a 55-year-old female, 60-year-old female, and you applied for a life insurance policy, and I saw that you had been misdiagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, even though I knew you only had a vitamin D3 deficiency, and I saw that you were put on corticosteroids, I would artificially advance your age six years and one day. I would schedule the joint replacement for you. And then after the joint replacement surgery, I would reduce what's called your ambulatory profile, how well you ambulate, how well you move. And as I reduce your mobility, I can bring in all of the diseases that exacerbate with reduced mobility.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  We know now, for example, that sitting is the new smoking. Sedentary lifestyle is the leading cause of all-cause mortality. And so now that I advanced those diseases that you never would have had, now you end up succumbing to a disease you never would have had because you were diagnosed with a condition that you didn't have, put on a medication that was not required, which caused a surgery that was unnecessary and led... For you, your passing seven years earlier than you should have passed.

• 19:20Hala Taha?

  Wow.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  And I can give you hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of examples like this. And the truth is, there's such a paucity of, of understanding of basic human physiology in, in the majority of the medical community that we have stopped. You know, we just don't have faith in human beings, in mankind, in humanity, and the ability of this to heal this. And how powerful frequency and how powerful um, basic exercise and sunlight and grounding and hydration. Um, and, and simple things back to the basics. How much this could entirely change the trajectory of somebody's life. There are listeners right now, listening to your podcast, and I bet more than 90% of your listeners right now

• 20:02Speaker 01

  are walking around at about 60% of their true state of normal. They have forgotten what normal feels like. They have accepted this baseline sense of normalcy. They might think they feel great. They have no idea how good normal could feel. And the, and the difference between where they are now and where they could be is simply knowing what deficiencies are going on in your body and supplementing for those deficiencies rather than supplementing for the sake of supplementing.

• 20:30Hala Taha?

  This is so crazy. Like, hearing this information to me is almost shocking. It's overwhelming because you think about, everything's working against us. It's like, your health insurance is working against you, the pharmaceutical companies are working against you, the life insurance companies are working against you. The doctors, I think, have good intentions.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:49Hala Taha?

  But they don't know enough, you know, they don't, they don't understand the full picture and they're getting taught something. And then for, I've got a family full of doctors, they become very cocky. Right? So they, they feel like, I went to school, don't tell me what I like, don't tell me about, you know, natural ways to heal yourself or whatever, because medicine is good, right? They believe medicine is good because they have to, because otherwise it, it, it, it, it makes what, what they do. Um, you know, evil, right? And doctors are, are.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  His intervention is great.

• 21:20Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Don't get me wrong, if I, if I hit a windshield at 25 miles an hour, I, I mean, I want a surgeon, I, I want painkillers, I'm going to the ER. You know, I'm.

• 21:28Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Anti-modern medicine, but when you realize, you know, there was a 2016 Harvard University study, it was repeated again by Johns Hopkins in 2019. We know now that modern medicine, medical error, is the third leading cause of death. So, modern medicine kills more people than morbid obesity and diabetes combined. And when you start to think that only cardiovascular disease and cancer kill more people than modern medicine, it's astounding. But when you really process the fact that the industry designed to prevent death is the third leading cause of death, that is just mind blowing. If you, if we translated that to any other industry, it would be laughable, right? I mean, if you sold home security systems and you were the third leading cause of home invasion, you'd probably be out of business, right?

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Or if you were a roofer and you were the third leading cause of roof collapse, probably wouldn't sell a lot of roofs. But we accept this in modern medicine, but we are excellent at crisis management, but we are terrible at bio-optimization. And, you know, there are 32,000 named diseases, you know, in the PDR, in the Physician's Staff Reference, 32,000. Nearly every single one of these can be traced back to nutrient deficiencies in the human body.

• 22:43Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 22:44Speaker 01

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

• 23:10Hala Taha?

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

• 23:26Speaker 01

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

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Because the car doesn't understand that fuel source. Once crude oil is refined into gasoline, now the car can run because it understands that fuel source. Human beings are no different. So we put all kinds of compounds into our body. Let's take the number one nutrient in the human diet. Folic acid, for example. So folic acid, for the record, is an entirely manmade chemical, right? It is a synthetic chemical. We make it in a laboratory. It does not occur anywhere naturally on the surface of the earth. You cannot find folic acid anywhere in nature. But we've been thought to believe that folic acid is a necessary nutrient. It's the most prevalent nutrient in the human diet, by the way.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  It's in all white flour, all white rice, all white bread, all white pasta. It's in all grains of any kind. And we don't call these foods sprayed with folic acid. We call them fortified or enriched. Let's take just folic acid for a moment. Well, we know that when folic acid enters the body, it's useless until the body converts it into something called methylfolate. Now the body can use it. Well, what if, like 44% of the population, you have a gene mutation called MTHFR? I don't want to cuss on your podcast, but it's affectionately called the motherfucker gene. It actually stands for methylenedetrahydrofolate reductase,

• 25:38Speaker 01

  but everybody calls it the motherfucker gene because it's MTHFR. And 44% of the population, including 44% of your listeners, have this gene mutation. Well, if you have this gene mutation, you cannot convert the most prevalent nutrient in the human diet into the form your body can use. So what does this mean? This means that the level of folic acid skyrockets and the level of necessary methylfolate declines. Now you have a deficiency. What are some of the expressions of that deficiency? Well, depending on how severe this gene mutation is, nearly everyone that has this gene mutation reports some form of anxiety. So if you either suffer from anxiety or you know somebody that's suffering from anxiety,

• 26:20Speaker 01

  if you ask them these three questions, you can prove very quickly that it is not coming from a cluster of symptoms in their outside environment. It is coming from their physiology. And the first question is, you know, have you had this on and off throughout your lifetime? Most people will say yes. The second question is, can you point to the specific trigger that causes it? Most people that suffer from chronic anxiety will tell you, no, I cannot point to the specific trigger that causes it. I can be driving home from work on an otherwise innocuous day. I can be overwhelmed with anxiety. It can be at dinner with my friends and start having just these feelings of anxiety. That's your second clue that it's coming from your physiology and not your outside environment. And the third question is, if you've tried anti-anxiety medications, did they work?

• 27:05Speaker 01

  And they'll say, no, they made me feel like a zombie. So now, how could this deficiency in methylfolate cause this anxiety condition? And is, by the way, it's the same with depression. It is the same with ADD and ADHD, which are not attention deficits at all. They're attention overload disorders. They are not attention deficit disorders. And so when you, when you break down the physiology of what is anxiety? Well, it's an excess rise of something called catecholamines. These are fight or flight neurotransmitters. And we think that we need to have the presence of a fear in order to feel fear. That's absolutely not true. Right?

• 27:47Speaker 01

  If you drove home tonight and you got out of your car and somebody was standing in front of you with a knife, that's an obvious, very real fear. And you would have a fight or flight response. Your pupils would dilate, your heart rate would increase, your extremities would flood with blood. But I'm here in my log cabin, and as you can't tell, I'm in Pickin, Colorado, I'm at 10,500 feet. I could be laying in that bunk bed right there and I could start thinking about getting eaten by a shark. Now, the chances of a shark making it 10,500 feet up into the mountains and biting me in that bed are zero, but I could have the exact same response. So how is it that I can have fight or flight response to the presence of a fear and a

• 28:30Speaker 01

  fight or flight response without the presence of a fear? In fact, without even the chance that that fear would come true. This is because of a rise in something called catecholamines. Deficiency in methylfolate does not allow us to metabolize these fight or flight neurotransmitters. And so they rise and fall seemingly without trigger. And they can go all the way to the point where they trigger a panic attack. If you actually look up this gene mutation, MTHFR, and anxiety, you will read hordes of peer-reviewed, published clinical literature that link this simple folate, methylfolate deficiency to these conditions. And it is the same link to attention deficit disorder. Right?

• 29:15Speaker 01

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

• 29:55Speaker 01

  the right balance of specific forms of B12, and using methylfolate. That's why I think everybody, once in their lifetime... Should do a gene test and look for five actionable genes. It's only a test you do once, you'll never repeat it. And once you know exactly what your body can convert and what it can't, now you supplement for that deficiency and just watch the magic happen.

• 30:21Hala Taha?

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

• 30:40Speaker 01

  You have.

• 30:41Hala Taha?

  What deficiencies you have.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you can stop supplementing for the sake of supplementing and you can start supplementing for deficiency. You know, the question we should ask when we're about to supplement is not, what's the quality of the supplement? Where was it manufactured? You know, what's the reputation of the manufacturer or the person that's pushing this? The first question we should say is, does my body need it? Right, then go down the road of the quality of the supplement. Because there are a lot of phenomenal supplements on the market. You know, Pure Encapsulations, Thorne, Symbiotica. I mean, these are amazing supplement companies. And the products that they manufacture, including my own at 10x Health, are products lots of people need, but not everyone needs the same thing.

• 31:24Speaker 01

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

• 31:59Hala Taha?

  It's so incredible. So I recently interviewed the CEO and founder of 23andMay. And I see this whole movement of medicine just going D to C, right? Everybody's just going direct to consumer. Have you ever met Anne Wojcicki? I'd love to introduce you guys because I think you guys, I think that she would be amazing for you to meet because you guys have so many similarities in terms of the outcome and the goals that you guys have. But you came from totally different like angles in terms of how you got there. So I think you guys would have an awesome conversation. I'm definitely going to introduce you.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:35Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  You do also get a lot of what I call non-actionable information, right? So if I see that you have olive skin or detached ear lobes or you're, you know, Irish ancestry, there's not a lot you can do with that information. You want to make sure that you look at actionable genes, right? Meaning genes, when they're broken, that you can supplement for their deficiency. That's when really magic happens in the human body. A lot of the rest of that information is just data. It's good data, but the fact that you have brown eyes and olive skin and detached ear lobes is, there's nothing you can do with that information. But you can find it in your genome, right?

• 33:12Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 33:13Speaker 01

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

• 33:42Hala Taha?

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

• 34:11Speaker 01

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

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Well, every time this motor makes one revolution, it has two choices. It can either create two units of energy, two ATP, or it can create 36 units of energy. Same term. It's either 16 times more powerful or 16 times less powerful. It's hard, really hard concept to grasp. I mean, it's like walking onto a car lot and they, you know, the salesman says, hey, there's two choices here. It's the same car. It comes in a 1,600 horsepower version or a 100 horsepower version. 100 horsepower is like a lawnmower and 1,600 horsepower is like a professional NASCAR, right? And so this is what's going on inside the cell of our body. 10% of your body weight, by the way, is mitochondria.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  You have 110 trillion of these in your body. Anything that downregulates the mitochondria or harms the function of the mitochondria, accelerates aging and makes fertile ground for all forms of pathology and disease. So now we're kind of inside the cell, inside the mitochondria, talking about this little motor called the Krebs cycle. Probably boring half of your readers to death, but listeners to death, but um.

• 36:06Hala Taha?

  No, I don't think so. I do not think so.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Because if we're, uh, because if we're going to talk about aging and performance, we have to talk about mitochondrial function, right? We know that the dysregulation of mitochondria is, is linked to every form of disease and pathology in the human body, including Alzheimer's and dementia. You know, there's so many myths about these diseases. For example, we know that Alzheimer's now is not Alzheimer's disease at all. It's type 3 diabetes. Right? The big lie, the big myth about Alzheimer's is that patients are losing their memory. That's actually not true. They're losing access to their memory. And the access to this memory is disabled in large part because of down regulation in the mitochondria. So we know that this mitochondria can produce 16 times more energy

• 36:50Speaker 01

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

• 37:35Speaker 01

  last time that you had bare feet touching bare soil. I mean, like, dirt, grass, sand. Okay, that was the last time that you actually discharged into the earth. Human beings, we build up a charge in our body. You know, we all know about the acid alkaline scale. Well, pH stands for potential hydrogen. It is a charge. If you want to change the pH of the body, you don't drink alkaline water. That is the most, that was the biggest marketing myth ever sold to the public. You cannot make the body alkaline by drinking alkaline water. If you want to make the body alkaline, you change the charge. How do you change the charge? You run a low Gauss current through the body. There's two ways to do

• 38:17Speaker 01

  this. There's a way that you can pay for, and there's a way that's free. If you want to pay for it, you buy a PEMF mat, pulse electromagnetic field, right? And you lay on that mat 16 to 30 minutes a day, you just put it in your bed, and every morning that you wake up, you will wake up alkaline. It will alkalize all 32 trillion cells in your body. If you don't want to spend five grand on a PEMF mat, then take your shoes off six minutes a day and come in contact with the surface of the earth. Right? Magnetism in the earth will change the polarity in your body. It will change the polarity of the surface of every cell in the body. And what will happen is, instead of cells sticking together because they have opposite charges, they will repel because

• 38:59Speaker 01

  they have the same charge. Why is that important? Because if I can increase the surface area of the cell, now the cell can exchange with its environment, eliminate waste, repair, detoxify, regenerate. And this also increases the surface area to absorb oxygen from the bloodstream. So magnetism is one way to improve the oxidative state of the body. The second is oxygen itself. Right? This is why sedentary lifestyle is the leading cause of all-cause mortality, because we are getting less oxygen and therefore less circulation. The majority of these pathologies and diseases too have a circulation component. So I tell people

• 39:41Speaker 01

  that to learn to do an eight-minute breathwork technique, I borrowed it from Wim Hof. I'm not the purveyor of this technique. You know, he's the father of modern breathwork. You go to my Instagram, I do tutorials on Instagram all the time about breathwork. But you can wake up in the morning, you can do eight minutes of breathwork, three rounds of 30 breaths with a breath hold in between. And this does two things. Number one, the number one vasodilator in the human body is not nitric oxide. Nitric oxide, by the way, is toxic. So if you're listening to this podcast and you're taking a nitric oxide supplement because you're an exercise enthusiast, or you're a bodybuilder, or you want to be

• 40:22Speaker 01

  more vascular, please stop. That is toxic to the mitochondria. It actually for oxygen in the mitochondria. Something called cytochrome c oxidase, it pulls oxygen out and forces itself to dock. The major vasodilator in the human body is carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide causes our veins to dilate. So by doing breathwork and flooding the blood with oxygen, and then holding our breath for a prolonged period of time and dilating our blood vessels, we actually, when we breathe in again, we get more oxygen to the tissues. We can actually change the oxygen tension in our tissues. Now, I use something called a Hypermax Oxygen System, a multi-step oxygen system. Again, it's about five grand, but it's an oxygen mask.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  You put it on, you breathe ninety-three to ninety-five percent O2 for ten minutes while you're mildly exercising, but you do not have to spend money on that system. You can learn to do breathwork. And then the third thing is to expose your skin to natural sunlight. And the truth is, most of us are not getting enough sun. It's not that we're getting too much sun. And the safest time to expose your skin to sunlight is the first forty-five minutes of the day during first light, because there's a very special type of light during that forty-five minutes. There's no UVA, there's no UVB rays, so nothing that can damage your skin, nothing that can burn your skin. And, you know, I sit out on my porch with my shirt off, I'm in a pair of shorts, even

• 41:46Speaker 01

  when it's cold outside, and I do three rounds of thirty breaths. I expose my skin to sunlight. Sunlight, certain wavelengths of sunlight, when they pass through the skin, they will go into the mitochondria, they will go into the motor of the Krebs cycle, they will kick out nitric oxide and force oxygen to dock, just by exposing yourself to sunlight. Now, I also have a red light therapy bed, and red light therapy, as you may or may not know, is the rage in sports recovery and anti-aging and healthy skin now. But if you don't want to go out and spend money on a red light therapy bed, you can expose your skin to sunlight. So those are three things your listeners could do for free, starting tomorrow.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Grounding, sunlight, breathwork, to absolutely change the trajectory of their life. The reason why most people will not do it is because it's too easy. It's because they're like, it can't be that simple, but it is. And, you know, I really try to impress upon people how these tiny little habits could completely change the trajectory of their life.

• 42:54Hala Taha?

  This has been such valuable information. And so I interviewed Wim Hof on this podcast.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  Oh, awesome. I'm going to the Piers of Nails with him this year.

• 43:04Hala Taha?

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

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would actually encourage you. I have a friend named Dr. John Laurence. He's in Sarasota. He's chiropractor in Sarasota. He does something

• 43:54Speaker 01

  called a balloon nasoplasty, where you get a small balloon in and you reshape the sinus cavities. It's outpatient. It's a 10, 15 minute procedure and no downtime. He also wrote a cranial sacral book. I forget the name of the book. I actually read the whole book and now I can't think of the title. But the, you know, the ability to open up these nasal passages and actually get more air.

• 44:20Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  You know, over those olfactory bulbs, close to the to the base of the brain and into your lungs. It is a massive difference in your mood, your emotional state, and the oxidative state of the body.

• 44:33Hala Taha?

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

• 44:55Speaker 01

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

• 45:40Speaker 01

  and I'm gonna walk you all the way down into the roots below the soil. So up in the leaves, you're saying, I lack energy. So when you say you lack energy to me, I know that you're low on oxygen. So how, what transports oxygen around the blood? A red blood cell and the fluid inside the red blood cell called hemoglobin. So that means I want to raise the number of red blood cells and I want to raise the amount of hemoglobin they have. So let's move down the tree. Where do I go to get more red blood cells and more hemoglobin? Well, I go to the factory that makes red blood cells and hemoglobin, and that's the bone marrow. So now I get to the factory and I want to increase its production. How do I increase its production? Well, the boss of the bone marrow is the hormone testosterone.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  In men and women, the primary role of testosterone is not male characteristics, it's not deep voice, aggression, facial hair, muscles, it's none of those things. In men and women, the primary role of testosterone is to put pressure on the bone marrow to increase red blood cells. It's called erythropoiesis. So if I'm deficient in testosterone, I'm very likely deficient in red blood cells and hemoglobin. So how do I raise testosterone? I don't just start taking testosterone. I go further down the tree and I find out what is testosterone made from. It's made from something called DHEA. And you can get your DHEA tested. If you are clinically deficient in DHEA, you will be deficient in testosterone.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  If you are deficient in testosterone, your bone marrow will produce less red blood cells and hemoglobin. If you produce less red blood cells and hemoglobin, you will be low on oxygen. If you are low on oxygen, you'll be low on energy. So that now let's just go right through the soil into the root. What is DHEA made from? Vitamin D3. So the first thing we want to do before we start talking about taking hormones is we want to make sure that our D3 is in the optimal range and our DHEA is in the optimal range. Because 70% of the clients that we see that are deficient in hormones do not need hormones. They need the raw material for the body to make hormones.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  So D3 and DHEA will raise testosterone, raise the pressure on the bone marrow, improve red blood cell and hemoglobin levels, and improve your oxidative state.

• 48:03Hala Taha?

  Amazing. So let's switch gears and talk about sugar for a minute. Is sugar or kryptonite? Yeah, it's our kryptonite when becoming superhuman.

• 48:15Speaker 01

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

• 48:57Speaker 01

  And when it passes by this receptor, this receptor doesn't register sweet, it releases dopamine. And this is why most people are not, don't just like sugar, they are addicted to sugar. In fact, the entire synthetic sugar industry, aspartame, sucralose, all of these synthetic sugars or sugar substitutes, the majority of their chemical component is not designed to taste sweet. It is designed to ding the dopamine receptor. It is designed to cause your brain to release dopamine, which gives you a pleasure response, which is why people are addicted to sodas, you know, artificial sweeteners in sodas,

• 49:40Speaker 01

  which is why people are addicted to all kinds of sugar because they don't just like the taste of sugar, they are addicted to the dopamine ding. And in the mortality space, we used to say the absence of dopamine. Is the presence of addiction. The reason why most addiction has a tendency to shift. If you've ever been an addict or ever known a true addict. Drug addicts become alcoholics. Alcoholics become work alcoholics. Work alcoholics become workaholics. Why does addiction have a tendency to shift? Because we never address the dopamine deficiency. If I was able to magically go into your body right now and deplete dopamine. You would begin to engage in dopamine seeking behaviors. Right? Dopamine is the primary driver of behavior.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Serotonin is the primary driver of mood. So when we talk about sugars, we really have to talk about this dopamine cycle. And that's why sugar addiction is right up there with drug and alcohol addiction. Right? We have increased the intake of sugar 400 fold in this country since 1964. The worst thing that ever happened to humanity was the war on fat in the 90s. And where they started to replace everything with high, high sugars. We know now, for example, that Alzheimer's is type 3 diabetes. It's insulin resistance in the brain. So sugar is really the root of all evil.

• 51:04Hala Taha?

  So when it comes to sugar, then are you suggesting that we should like completely remove sugars? It's something that we don't need as a raw material?

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Um, no, I'm just saying that we should eat, when we eat whole foods and we eat less processed sugar. This is where, um, this is where we get into trouble. Right? So processed foods and high glycemic sugars, especially your white sugars. And these are really dangerous for you. You know, my, the majority of my sugar intake comes from three sources. Natural honeys, natural maple syrups, um, and fruits that end in berry. The problem with the majority of sugars is that they pay, not only, um, do they ding the dopamine receptor and then fall off, which create, makes you crave the next sugar ding. But what sugar does is it raises our insulin level.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  And most people think that the primary role of insulin is to lower blood sugar, and that's actually not true. The primary role of insulin is to block any other form of energy use in the body. So if insulin is high, the body cannot burn fat. So what happens when insulin is high? We store fat at an accelerated rate. The first place that fat builds up is in the blood. So people that eat the most sugar have the highest blood fat.

• 52:28Hala Taha?

  Hmm.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  So the heaviest people eat the most sugar because high sugar causes high insulin. High insulin forces fat storage. Your body does not have the choice to use fat as an energy source. And so one of the healthiest things you can do for a lot of my patients that are, um, you know, sugar addicted, or they have high triglycerides, high fat in the blood. I do what's called a keto reset. I put them on a prescription ketogenic diet for 10 weeks. It's a very easy diet to get used to. And at the end of that, you start to reintroduce sugars and you give their pancreas a break. You make them insulin sensitive again. Um, you know, high levels of insulin is one of the signs of something called metabolic syndrome.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  And high insulin leads to another symptom of metabolic syndrome called high triglyceride. Um, and it's so high insulin, high blood sugar, high blood fat, um, mild abdominal obesity. Um, this is what we call metabolic syndrome. It's the leading cause of cardiovascular disease, which is the leading cause of death worldwide. And all of this can be traced back to sugar. And so, um, when people say, well, what diet should I be on? You should be on a whole food diet. It doesn't matter keto, paleo, carnivore, um, you know, raw food, vegan, vegetarian. You need to be eating clean, whole foods. Um, you know, wild caught salmon, pasture raised chickens, free range eggs, you know,

• 53:56Speaker 01

  um, um, organic grass fed meats. These are, these are excellent sources of nutrition for you. Um, and organic fruits and vegetables. More processed foods, especially processed sugars we have, the higher the incidence of, of all disease pathways.

• 54:14Hala Taha?

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

• 54:43Speaker 01

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

• 55:26Speaker 01

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

• 56:06Hala Taha?

  Oh, God.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  So why is our immune system so weak? Why are we so susceptible? Because we actually stopped challenging the immune system. This is why things like cold water exposure are so good for you, right? And I know Wim Hof is a major fan of that. Remember, we're not trying to become cold adapted. We're trying to cold shock the body. So what happens, for example, when we expose the body to cold water? Well, we get a peripheral vasoconstriction. We actually get an increase in the release of endorphins like dopamine that actually give us a pleasure response. We force all the oxygen into the core, to our liver, lungs, pancreas, our kidneys, up to our brain. We activate brown fat, which is our thermostat in the body. We improve our metabolic rate. And you can do this by getting in cold water three minutes a day or taking a three-minute

• 56:52Speaker 01

  cold shower. Now, why won't most people do that? Because it's uncomfortable. We don't like to go outside because it's too hot. We don't like to go outside because it's too cold. We like to just lay down and relax because that's comfortable. We stress the body. It has a hormetic response and it strengthens. And so the reason why I say aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort is that most people just, they don't, you know, they, they avoid exercise or high temperatures or low temperatures or cold exposure or all of these things because they just don't want to be uncomfortable.

• 57:28Hala Taha?

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

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Well, you know, my favorite stories are where you take a myriad of seemingly unrelated symptoms, right? So think about all these symptoms people have as like spokes on a wheel. Waking, water retention, poor sleep, hormone imbalance, um, um, lack of focus, lack of concentration, low waking energy, poor libido. And it seems like the whole world's going to hell in a handbasket. And what I always try to do is I look for the hub. Where do all of these things meet? So for example, um, you know, Dana White just disclosed on, on my podcast very publicly, my, um, uh, work with his mother-in-law. Um,

• 58:48Speaker 01

  and, uh, she's 79-year-old woman, beautiful woman, um, was, you know, diagnosed with three very significant conditions, um, early onset dementia, peripheral neuropathy, and congestive heart failure. Um, when you ask yourself, where do all of these meet? Right? So the clinical team and I sit around, remember, I'm not licensed to practice medicine. So, you know, eventually there is a physician involved, um, that is licensed to practice medicine. Where do all these things meet? They all meet at circulation. If I reduce circulation to periphery, I get the symptoms of peripheral neuropathy. If I reduce circulation to the brain, I get the symptoms of early onset memory loss or early onset dementia. If I reduce circulation to the heart, I get the expression of congestive heart failure.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  And so, these are not independent of one another. They all meet at this core of circulation. So we use things like oxygen baths, hydrogen water, um, filtration systems for her to drink hydrogen water, resveratrol, um, to increase blood flow, um, and simple raw materials and nutrients to improve the blood flow and circulation. 65 days later, um, after she was diagnosed with these conditions, she no longer qualified for those diagnoses. And there's so many people that are listening to this program right now, that have some kind of condition going on in their body. And they've been told they have hypothyroid, or they've been told they have hypertension. Um, and they've just accepted that diagnosis

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  and now they're, they, they subscribe to a lifetime medication. Um, I would really encourage them to get that one-time genetic test done. You do it once in your lifetime. You'll never guess again on what you need to supplement with, and it could permanently change the trajectory of your life.

• 1:00:27Hala Taha?

  So, most of the listeners that are tuning into the show, they're probably in their 30s, right? So, where can we go?

• 1:00:37Hala Taha?

  To learn from you. What books do you have? What websites do you have? What services, products? Like, how can we further work with you to learn from you on how to optimize our bodies?

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, um, so I just started a podcast on human optimization called The Ultimate Human. Dana White was a guest on there. You'll see Stephen A. Smith, Steve Harvey, Steve Aoki, lots of Steves, um, uh, you know, and you'll see lots of average patients, but I also interview the leading PhDs and, um, MDs and researchers in the world on bio-optimization, longevity, optimal health. Um, on my Instagram, I don't do anything but teach. Um, so if you just go to at Gary Brecka, just my first and last name, um, you'll see tons of videos on breath work, morning routine, um, cold plunging, oxygen light, magnetism. You'll see all of the different topics that I lecture on. I put all of my stage talks onto my Instagram. Um, and then finally,

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  you can go to, um, uh, 10x, the number 10, the letter X, healthtest.com and order that gene test. Um, you can see the supplements that I've manufactured myself. Um, and, um, and I have tons of information on that site on bio-optimization.

• 1:01:51Hala Taha?

  Awesome. And are you in business with Grant Cardone? He also came on this podcast, 10x Health. Is he an investor or something?

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  Yes, we, it was Streamline Medical Group was my company eight years ago. Grant acquired it and now he and I and my wife and, uh, Brandon Dawson are partners in 10x Health.

• 1:02:09Hala Taha?

  Oh, awesome. He's been looking amazing.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. He was one of my, it was one of my early success stories, right? One of my earliest clients. And, you know, Grant does not look, act, or perform like a 65-year-old man.

• 1:02:20Hala Taha?

  No.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  Right? It runs circles around those 25-year-olds.

• 1:02:24Hala Taha?

  So, uh, the last two questions I ask all my guests are the same. And then we do something fun at the end of the year. So the first one is, what is one actionable thing our young improfitters can do to become more profitable tomorrow?

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Um, find something that you would otherwise do for free and monetize it.

• 1:02:42Hala Taha?

  And what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond business, financial, but what is your secret to profiting in life?

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

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

• 1:03:26Hala Taha?

  Um, yeah.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, so I feel like most people have a passion.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  Some people have a purpose. If they don't align their passion and their purpose, what, what really lights your fire, wakes you up in the morning? What would you otherwise do for free? And then when you have a purpose like, uh, you know, which is by the way, linked to longevity, all of the blue zones in the world, isolated the fact that the elderly people still felt like they had a purpose.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  So when you have a purpose, meaning, you know, mine is to change the face of humanity. This information that I have does not belong to me. It belongs to your listeners. It belongs to mankind. I'm just blessed enough to have it flow through me. And since I'm so almost psychotically passionate about the human body and I read voraciously and I study voraciously and my purpose is to touch the face of humanity, those two aligned. And I'm telling you, it's like, I feel like I won the lottery every day.

• 1:04:20Hala Taha?

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

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  Um, at, uh, my Instagram, at Gary Brecka on Instagram.

• 1:04:40Hala Taha?

  Amazing. Thank you so much, Gary.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  You're so welcome. Thank you for having me on.