Barbell Shrugged - Bio-Optimization: Saunas, Stem Cells, and Living to 150 w/ Evan Demarco, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #553

Episode Date: March 3, 2021

Evan DeMarco is a leading sports medicine and nutrition expert, published author, public speaker and frequent guest on television, radio, and digital platforms. Leveraging his sports background, his entrepreneurial success, and his thirst for knowledge, Evan returned to school to bio- and organic chemistry and went on to develop a vastly improved formula for prenatal supplements delivered in liquid form after finding out he was going to be a father. From there he worked to develop numerous ingredient technologies to improve brain function in infants, children and adults.    His patented Alpha & Omega is used in over 25% of the global prenatal vitamins. Like most single parents, Evan has struggled with the demands of his career and the desire to be a present and engaged single parent. His daughter comes first, leading to many sleepless nights trying to finish work while she sleeps.   https://completehuman.com   Mia and the Go Away Monster Spray   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged: What is Bio-Optimization The mental and psychological ramifications of social distancing  Stem Cells for longevity and not just injury Optimizing to live to 150 years old What supplements you should be taking to optimize health   Evan DeMarco on Instagram   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

Today's episode of Barbell Shrugged, we are talking to Evan DeMarco. This is his third trip onto Barbell Shrugged. We initially talked to him about fish oil. We've talked to him about CBD. And now we are talking to him about bio-optimization, stem cells, saunas, sex, living until you're 150 years old. I don't know about you. That's a long time. I think I can make

it to 120. 150 seems crazy. I don't know how much I'll be able to squat when I'm 150, but I hope it's three wheels. That'd be savage. I also want to let everybody know before we get too deep into this, the Diesel Dad Class 3 launches on Monday. For busy dads that want to get strong, lean, and athletic without sacrificing family, fatherhood, or fitness. You have three training programs to choose from. You have EMOM Strength. That's our long, full-strength program. Our hypertrophy program is EMOM Aesthetics, as well as the Density Weight Training, which is the set it up and forget it training program. We are helping hundreds of dads find purpose in their training, getting strong, getting lean, getting athletic, finding a way to be a savage dad, a savage husband, and be a savage in the gym. And it's super exciting. So you can head over to barbell shrug.com forward slash diesel dad. That

is where you will be able to register on monday registration closes the following sunday the 14th and on the 15th that is when we are starting so get over to barbell shrugged.com forward slash diesel dad that is where registration will be taking place on monday for all the busy dads that want to get strong lean and athletic without sacrificing family fatherhood or fitness registration opens on Monday. Before we get into the show, we've got to talk about our good friends over at Organifi. Of course, the green, the red, and the gold, the sunrise, the sunset, the shrugged stack. I want to give a shout out on the Instagrams. I hit up. It comes when you get all three of them together,

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and use the code shrug to save 10% off any order. That is leakygutguardian.com forward slash shrug. 365 day money back guarantee. leakygutguardian.com forward slash shrug. Friends, by back guarantee leaky gut guardian.com forward slash shrugged friends by optimization with evan demarco let's get into the show welcome to barbell shrugged i'm andrews warner doug larson one of my favorite humans walking on the face of this earth evan demarco what? Dude, the worst part about this whole COVID thing is for the last like three years, I have always assumed that we're going to hang out a couple times a year.

Yeah. And now we're not hanging out. We have to do it on Zoom. We got this digital shit. I know. We're supposed to be traveling together, just running into each other at events, having dinner, doing our thing. Lifting weights on a beach in mexico and now and now i go shit it's been 18 months or something like that 15

months since we hung out well dude you know the worst part is you were supposed to have the one ton challenge like you know the event of the century here in beautiful sacramento and then someone had to eat a damn bat and now look at what's going on um what has uh dude you started a new business in the middle of all this though I started a lot of businesses in the middle of this you know I figured I had a lot of time on my hand so I just started create businesses yeah yeah You know, I think the last time we saw each other was the Spartan World Championships, right? Yeah. So Jana Breslin and I had just started the Life to the Max podcast. Yeah.

And Life to the Max had been kind of an extension of, you know, some work that I'd done with another company that I own. And, you know, what we ultimately decided is we wanted to create this platform of social responsibility and, and, you know, adventure. More people fell in love with the adventure than the social responsibility. So we kind of transitioned into the complete human show and, you know, wrote a book, really kind of focused on some of these pillars of bio-optimization and then along the way decided to, you know, start a products company. So it was dietary supplements. We've got a coffee line coming out. That's all in partnership with a company called Cafe Feminino, which is a co-op of women-owned and operated coffee farms throughout the world.

So all of the proceeds for the coffee go back to supporting these women coffee farmers. We've got cleaning supplies, which are environmentally friendly. Skin care, which is environmentally friendly. So I figured it was time to put my money where my mouth is. I've been screaming for so long that we needed to do something about the planet. I'm like, you know, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna hunker down in my garage and do something about it. Is there something unique about those, those skincare products that where they're not just like every other product on the market, but they're made with a specific set of ingredients or what? Yeah, I made them with exosomes.

What does that mean? Tell me about it. The floor is all yours, sir. You know me, I love to geek out a little bit. Exosomes are these little globules that come off of your stem cells. Every time your stem cell is stressed, it produces this exosome. Now, we all know about stem cells, and you guys have had the amazing Dr. Amy Killen on the show, probably talking about stem cells a little bit. So exosomes are kind of like these

downstream metabolites. They're the things that really activate the immune response. And, you know, so what I wanted to do was create skincare that was really important. You know, your skin's your biggest organ, right? So how do we actually start to undo sun damage? How do we start to undo a lot of the things that we've had issues with in our skin? And I've got this thing, like, I want to live to be 150. And I get a lot of shit sometimes people like, Oh, Dave Asprey said he wants to live to be 180. You're just copying Dave. I'm like, you know, what about the Holy grail? What about the fountain of youth? People have been wanting to live longer since the dawn of time. This is kind of our, it's in our DNA, but what's the point of living to 150 if I look like a leather belt

and not a good leather belt, not like a Gucci, but like a target brand leather belt. So the skincare line was, you know, it was all exosome based. It's all natural. None of the, you know, the toxic crap that you find in the that you find in the rest of the stuff out there. So I worked with Dr. Killen, worked with Dr. Kirabar, some of the best in the business on really constructing a skincare line that I was pretty proud of. The first time we had you on, we were talking about fish oils. Are you still doing OMACs and still tied into all of that? Yeah. So I still own a portion of OMAX and still, you know, focused on, you know, obviously

supporting their growth. And I think that, you know, as I just bought a CBD farm in North Carolina. Whoa, where at? Oh, God. It's out in the middle of BFE. That's probably only like four miles from where I live. Hold on. I'll tell you where. It's four in the middle of BFE. That's probably only like four miles from where I live. Hold on. I'll tell you where it is.

It's four miles west. I'm in like the burbs, and I'm two miles away from like old North Carolina. It's the weirdest thing in the world. It's like we're going to develop all the houses here, and then you go two miles the other way. You go, oh, my gosh, where am I? This is what I was afraid of out here. I need to go back to my suburbs.

It is Oakboro, North Carolina. I'll go check it out for you. I didn't even know there was a CBD farm here. That's awesome. Well, there's a ton of these, you know, there's a ton of these CBD farmers, these hemp farmers, right? So all these guys that were growing tobacco, you know, switched to hemp. So, you know, we've got this co-op, you know, built this whole extraction facility down there. So, you know, I'm just, you know, I'm playing, man.

I'm having fun. Yeah. Yo, how well did the CBD lube sell? Dude. Was that a successful product? People like that? Absolutely. Yeah?

Of course it was. I never tried it. Do you ever try it? Anders? No. I wish. I'll send you guys. I'll make sure we get shoot it over and you know email

your addresses and i'll get some i'll get some cbd cbd lube off to you guys beautiful because it's when you presented that to us at spartan it was like 2000 what year it was like 2018 i think you were launching that and i was like, oh my, he nailed it. He nailed it. Yeah, that one. I've always wanted to play in sexual health and I'm like, okay, this is fun. Let's try this. And I kind of thought it would do okay, but yeah, that one crushed it.

Do you have any competition? Were you the only one out there with that? Yeah, there's a couple other companies that have followed suit. And you know, the challenge is that everybody wanted to go, you know, CBD is an oil, right? So you have a lot of these oil-based products or a couple of these oil-based CBD products. I started getting complaints that people love the product, but they were pissed that I was staining their sheets. You know, it's oil, right? So there's, and I was hoping to stain sheets in a completely different way with that product so you know i totally geeked out again and i went back into the lab and i created the first uh water-based cbd lube and that is the shit that like that's that's where

the money's at dude just for people that haven't listened to the multiple shows that we've done with you over the last couple years what what is a little bit of your background and how, I mean, obviously, CBD lube is probably catching people a little bit off guard of how somebody would even start to formulate something like that. But what is the actual background that allows you to get to that place? Yeah, a great question. You know, like most people, I started off with dreams of, you know, doing something other than formulating CBD lube. And with that, I... Not me. Somehow I just wound up at strength conditioning. That was my path.

Not really. Yeah, so, you know, I wanted to be a professional baseball player and that didn't work out. So then, you know, my dad was a cabinet maker and I decided early on that I didn't want to do that. So, you know, I wanted a job where I could wear a suit and sit in an office and do paperwork. And I finally got that job after college. And every day, a bit of my soul died when I would, you know, put that tie on. And so, you know, after the mortgage meltdown, I was in investment banking for a long time. And after the mortgage meltdown and, you know, kind of the whole investment banking world was shuffled up, I decided to buy a sports nutrition company. And I did it from the business side of things,

thinking, you know, I could turn this around, I could really focus, I could take my business acumen and apply that to a company that was really having a hard time. But what I found, obviously, is sports being such a predominant part of my background, I missed the I missed the like the passion of sport, I missed, you know, how impactful it could be in people's lives. And I wanted to understand the product development side of things. So then I went back to school, and I studied all of the science geeky shit, you know, the bio, the orgo, all of the things that, you know, people don't like to predominantly study. And so I was going to school at night, and then I would take all the information that I was getting in school, and I would go into the lab at, you know, at the office the next day and just start hounding the lab techs,

you know, can we do this? Can we do this? They hated me. Like they just literally go away, go sell some stuff. But I really got a fundamental crash course in product development. So I was able to really kind of pair product development and the science with the marketing side of things. And, you know, that's the sad part, right? Like there are so many amazing products that aren't commercially successful. Some great scientists came up with something that could really change someone's life, but he didn't have the marketing piece to get it to market. And, and, you know, that's the thing. I mean, like how is Gatorade still an 80% market share of like a billion dollar global business when it's just, you know, it's, it's a horse piss in a bottle, but yet because basketball players drink it, you know, that's,

you know, so I think what it boils down to is, you know, I was able to really kind of take the science and the marketing and blend those together. And along the way, I've created about 1500 products in the marketplace on the dietary supplement side, you know, close to a billion dollars in sales. And, uh know, yeah, I've done so many great products for so many great companies. And COVID has really allowed me to go back into a cave and say, hey, what do I really want to create? What are the things that I would create for myself, for my daughter, for my family? And how do I use that skill set to better not just myself or my family, but better all people in their health and wellness, and then hopefully have an impact on the planet as well.

Man, you bring up your daughter. That was actually one of the biggest things that we wanted to bring you onto the show with is the balance of all of this. One, we joke about you on the show all the time because you're the most shredded dad we know. You're the most jacked dad of all of them that we hang out with. What does your training look like and how does kind of that background of having all the products and science and all of that just translating into your real life, what does your training look like and what are you actually focused on as far as, you know, you got a lot of things going on? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you said the word balance i've heard

that word before i don't know if i know exactly what that means balance balance oh shit man i mean like this this is covid i don't know about you guys but i'm doing distance learning you know my kids my kids in front of a computer doing zoom eight hours a day you know that's not healthy right oh god I'm like – Somebody with a brain like you, that would kill them. You as a kid bouncing all over? No way. I don't know if you guys are doing this, but I watch my daughter,

and you can tell the kids who are – everybody's ADD, and the ones that are in swivel chairs, like at about two minutes into the class, they just start spinning. This is lunacy. And let's talk about the cognitive issues that are going to come from this blue light activation, right? Like these kids are waking up and we're dropping them in front of a device. Their cortisol levels are spiking. Kids are starting to see sleep problems because of this. You know, they're so blue light activated that they can't shut off that cortisol switch and turn on their melatonin switch. So they're

not sleeping well. I mean, like, sleep is the fundamental thing that kids need to do that everybody needs to do for health. And we're putting these damn kids in front of a computer for eight hours a day. Like, you know, someone should be shot in the face for this with an elephant gun. Most people mention blue light, like, right before bedtime. You're saying, like, throughout the day, like, they start at 8 in the morning and they go until 3 p.m. or whatever. That also is affecting their sleep many hours later? Yeah.

My daughter is starting to do it where she's waking up in the middle of the night. And, you know, I can only point to that. I mean, we can look at a myriad of other factors. But I think the science absolutely dictates that the amount of screen time that these guys are getting is going to have is having a significant impact in their sleep. And I've talked to other parents in my in my daughter's class that are seeing the same things. Kids that normally sleep like the dead are waking up in the middle of the night. This is you know, this was a shotgun response to the pandemic. And obviously, we need to keep our kids educated.

We need to try to keep some continuity of lifestyle for them. But I think that, you know, we're not just going to see the ripple effect of this in the education that these kids are getting, you know, 10, 15 years down the road. We're going to see it just in some significant sleep challenges. And that's my biggest concern. So my daughter's got the blue light glasses. She's wearing those right now. You know, it's I'm doing everything I can to try to keep her as safe as possible and all this the thing that i i'm in a

way just lucky i have a two and a half year old she's she's not doing she's in daycare and they get to go run around and do normal daycare things um but when i talk to the parents around here the thing that they're most concerned about is like they just don't get outside they're most concerned about is like, they just don't get outside. They're inside all day long. And when you think about, I actually heard this on Rogan's show not too long ago, and it was super interesting because I have noticed my own parenting skills are dramatic. Like they're just awful. If it's raining outside, I'm like one 100th as effective as of a parent as I could be because I need to be outside. I need to be outside. I need to be running. I need to be playing. And the parents that I talked to around here that are doing this

distant learning thing, they're like, they're in front of a computer for six to eight hours a day. They can't go outside. There is no recess. They're not playing with other kids. And in a way there is no like biohack. There's no way to recreate that because the school system is like mandating them just sit there in front of this bright light. Well, here, here's one thing. And I did a, I did a podcast on the single daddy daily show a couple months ago with Dr. Nicole Wolf. And you know, here's the interesting thing. If you guys are in public schools, here's my hack on this one is call your school, call your principal and say, you know what? I'm taking a break. Like they have, they don't have a choice, right? Like they can't kick you out.

If you decide to leave, they have to let you back in. I called my principal when they said that they were going to do zoom PE. And I'm like, pardon the French guys, but fuck no i'm like i'm not putting my kid in front of us in front of a screen for physical education um so i i take her out like you know she finishes her work and then you know i take her away from the zoom and we go run around outside we jump on the trampoline i got the nerf guns and we just run around like outside shooting each other it's you know it's it's great and cathartic for both of us, but this is a toxic, toxic thing that we have to fix. And I encourage every parent, pull your kid out of the class five minutes early. Just go run around the block. Do something. Can we talk science real fast?

Please. Let's look at why the U.S. has the largest concentration of deaths in the u.s right we know that it's obesity related but here's the thing that nobody's talking about is our t cells our memory cells that kick in after the antibodies go away let's say you get covid right you develop the antibodies and once the antibodies go away you have your you acquired immune system, which is your T and your B cells, these memory cells. They're like the terminators that hang out in your system. And if you get that virus again, they're like, hey, I know what you look like. I'm going to go beat your shit up. Well, what happens when we're overweight or obese is that these T cells aren't

as effective. So what we're setting our kids up for in this type of sedentary lifestyle is an inactive acquired immune system. So whether it's COVID-19 or COVID-23 or something like that, all of these protocols that we're putting in place for these kids are just setting themselves up for health and wellness failure down the road. So I'm like, we have to change this. You have to get your kids out. You have to get them moving. And you know, that alone is going to help their acquired immune

system really start to fend off this virus as it goes through its multiple iterations of. It's not just the kids. I'm terrified of how healthy I have felt for the last nine months. I haven't had a single sniffle in nine months where typically we're on planes. We're like breathing the air of this dirty person that's sitting next to us. We have no idea where they came from an hour and a half ago. We'll just rub elbows with them. You get off the plane, you're like hacking up a long hill. What happened?

Or just recycled air with some guy that hasn't showered in four months. You have no idea. But your body is flying. It's Southwest. They don't let anybody on. with some guy that hasn't showered in four months. You have no idea. What airline are you flying? Southwest. They don't let anybody on. What's the one that's like the city bus spirit? Yeah, the Greyhound of the Sky. But you have no idea who these – anybody.

So your body is constantly fighting. We're big huggers. I like hugging people. Now I just fist bump, and I have not been sick at all. I haven't even had to challenge my immune system in the smallest amount for nine whole months now, 10 whole months. And it's terrifying what's going to happen because at some point we have to go be around a place that is going to challenge you.

And without being around it, we don't have a way of building our immune system back up. You know, I chatted with Wim Hoff the other day and, and, you know, Jen and I have been doing this kind of morning protocol. And this might be a way to come back to the initial question you asked Anders is, you know, every morning get up and, you know, I do eight minutes on the vibration plate, then meditation in the sauna for 30, 35 minutes, then get into the cold plunge, you know, I do eight minutes on the vibration plate, then meditation in the sauna for 30, 35 minutes, then get into the cold plunge. You know, then it's supplements and then it's PEMF.

And so, you know, I'm actively challenging my immune system on a daily basis, even just with that cold plunge, you know, trying to trying to bolster it and bolster that innate and the acquired immune system. Because as you're right, you're like, we're not around people, right people right we're not sharing bacteria we're not doing the things that support our immune response so we're gonna have to build up this immune system that is capable of handling what happens once we actually start going around people again assuming that ever happens what is real quick yeah pm and out sorryF, as I already said. Yep. Also, and then I want to hear if you know what the research says regarding how cold plunges affect not just the immune system, but just systemically, what are the benefits of cold plunge? Yeah, so I think there's a ton of science on this one.

And even if you kind of look at just what Wim Hof has done or the guys over at XPT, you know, our friends, you know, Gabby and Laird, the first thing is just building resilience, right? You know, you're impacting your whole immune response. So there's systemic inflammation, you're bringing that down. I think the thing that we really talk about with like Wim, and he really gets into this, is the breathing work that goes into it, it puts your body in an alkaline state for just a short amount of time and then once it comes back down it has the ability to fight infection a little bit better so that immune response becomes a lot more aggressive I think some of the research that I found is is that it activates NK cells so NK cells are kind of these fun fun bridge between your innate and acquired immune system and we have these two elements of our immune system just to kind of these fun bridge between your innate and acquired immune system. And we have these two

elements of our immune system, just to kind of dumb it down to high school biology, is acquired and innate. Innate is the thing that when you get anything in your system, right, the virus, the pathogen, the cold, the flu, it's like, all right, let's go take care of this. And so that's the immediate immune response to anything. The acquired immune system is the thing that hangs out, right? It memorizes your body, it memorizes these pathogens, and it fights them afterwards. And the bridge between these things are these things called natural killer cells, NK cells. And so we find that these are the things that really help eradicate virus, cold, disease, you know, these are the things that really kind of help with cytokine, you know, cytokine response

in the good and the bad way. And so what we see with some of the cold plunge work is, is that it really primes these NK cells. So these NK cells are, you know, they're a bunch of beefy barbell shrug guys just hanging out in your immune system saying, come on, bring it on, bitches. Let's, let's fight this thing. So I think that's some of the science that we're seeing with cold plunge, but it's also just kind of, it's, it's the temperature change therapy, right? You're going from hot to cold, you know, your body's constantly trying to figure out what you're doing with it. And it's not getting into this, you know, the sedentary response. It's not, you know, you're not going into like hang out and binge watch Netflix response with your immune system. Doesn't fish oil increase natural killer cell activity as well absolutely

um it does a lot of the research on nk cells has really been done more around like yeast beta glucans um so like the one six one three beta glucan which is uh in one of the products that we just launched but that's uh there's there's more of a inflammatory resolution phase of fish oil. And we see that in the PRMs, right? The downstream metabolites of polyunsaturated fatty acids, the resolvents, protectants, morissons. And that's what they're really good at is they prime NK cells, but they're really good at clearing the cellulite debris once the NK cells,

you know, you've got the leukocytes that just surround all of the bad stuff. And then the, you know, the fish oils is the good thing that kind of helps it clear through your lymphatic system. I think like one of the primary cells that also lead to the rejection of organs, if you get an organ transplant, they detect that it's not a natural thing in your body and they, and they make it where it doesn't pair well. Yeah. And that's oftentimes where you see like organ transplant people, it's like they have to

suppress their immune system just so that they can get that thing to take for a while. Yeah. You mentioned the sauna piece as a part of your morning routine. Are you in the infrared or are you in the like hot, hot? You know what? I have hacked my sauna. Stop it. Hold on.

Okay. You took the governor off. And I put the heat lamps in there, um, as well as the, the red light therapy. So my, my infrared sauna has got, you know, it cranks up to like 165, but I also have the red light therapy. Beautiful. That's one thing about mine right now.

It only goes up to like one 45, one 45 when it's 110 degrees in your garage because it's the middle of the summer. It's awesome. One 45 when it's 30 degrees in your garage like feels like nice yeah like i need the diesel one yeah i dated this girl who lived in you know who lives in park city utah and you know she had her infrared sauna outside so it was like you know one winter day and i'm like let's get in the sauna i think it got to about 70 degrees like i did like an hour in there this

weekend i was like i just watched the whole chapelle stand up and i'm just barely sweating this sucks um what is a little bit of the science behind the sauna it's the sauna has really caught on it's caught some steam lately because uh they've had a bunch of of um science kind of talking about the benefits of it yeah and you know i had a conversation with a uh with a guy over at one of the sauna companies and you know he was really trying to explain the difference between old school sauna and infrared and you know let's be honest right like one of the one of the interesting things that i found is deep core miners who are around mercury are required at the end of every shift to sit in a sauna because that is the only way to get heavy metals out of your system right so we're exposed

to all of these environment environmental toxins mercury heavy metals you know arsenic poison and you know all the all the crap that's in our environment. So one of the things that I really discovered when we started doing this whole protocol in the morning is if I do eight minutes on the vibrational plate, you know, really activate lymphatic drainage. So then I'm getting all of the stuff out of my system. That's kind of just sits there while I'm sleeping. And then I go sweat it all out. Now there's some, you know, people are always going to argue about the science, right? You know, some people like, well, you don't really sweat this stuff out. Some people like you absolutely sweat it out. Now there's some, you know, people are always going to argue about the science, right? You know, some people are like, well, you don't really sweat this stuff out. Some people like you absolutely sweat it out. But I think, you know, one of the other things you're doing

is you're, you're opening up the vasculature system, right? You know, you're improving blood flow throughout your entire body. You're getting rid of some of those toxins. Sweating is by nature something that we need to do. It gets the heart rate up. It keeps us healthy. It keeps us active. So that's a big part of it, right? You know, just better blood flow, sweating out the toxins and then, you know, go jump in the cold plunge and completely shock your system, you know, shrink your nuts to the size of grapefruits. Is it really just about the sweating? Like if it's a hundred degrees out and you go for an hour long trail run, do you still, is there benefits still to getting in a sauna later that evening? That's a really good question. And I would have to, I'd almost have to defer to someone who's probably a little bit more understanding of the nature of this one.

I think by sitting in a sauna and just allowing your blood or your heart to pump the way that it does, really just helps with opening up the vasculature, you know, a vasodilation. I don't know if you get that when you're running, cause you have the muscle contraction. That's not necessarily doing the same thing. So I, that might be a little outside of the scope of my scientific purview. The, um, when you are, uh, looking at your training now, how does, how does that, like, how are you structuring the actual physical exercise that you're going through? You get through your morning routine, go back, do some work. And then how, what are you looking at when you're structuring like a week of training?

Yeah. So great question is, you know, I'll, I'll do my hour and a half in the morning, just kind of morning protocol and then go work until 2 33 o'clock and then i'll take about an hour and yeah just go get some movement and that's uh like you guys right i had to build the home gym um i had some equipment and then it was great like uh and i hope i don't cause any problems with this this is all janna uh breslin so if if this one comes back to bite me in the ass i'm'm blaming it on her. But we interviewed Dave Castro at the Castro Ranch. And he's like, basically, I was like, God, I just wish I could get some equipment.

So he goes and opens up this shed and just starts loading our car full of plates and barbed. And I'm like, my Alfa Romeo, which you guys have been in, is like doing a wheelie down the highway. It's nice when you get hooked up. Oh, my God. And everything you don't use, you can put it on eBay and be like, this was part of the 2011 CrossFit Games, and all the CrossFit crazies will show up and overpay you for it. Dude, I've got –

Like collector's edition. They say that, 2010 CrossFit Games. It's like branded blades. Not only can you sell used gym equipment for like four to one it's value right now but if it says crossfit 2012 on it whoa yeah you have like the museum at your house right now totally now that i've said this i'm gonna have people you know i'm gonna turn my security system up to like um but you know so really what i'm kind of focused on is really just same kind of workout that I've always been doing is, you know, start off with, you know, high weight, low reps. If I'm doing bench press, it's five sets of five, you know, kind of working towards failure.

And then, you know, then I'll get into more of some of the four sets of 12 type of stuff. Just trying to keep it consistent, you know, just keep the movement going, right? I think the challenge is for me going to the gym was always that mental break in a day. I could work for eight hours, nine hours. I could go to the gym and I could get a little of that social interaction. I could get a workout and I could come back and work some more. And now it's trying to balance all of it. So sometimes my daughter's in there, I've got her doing, you know, yeah, actually, Jana's got her doing, you know, like small barbell cleaning snatches and all this fun stuff. So it's

kind of just been more of a not necessarily focus so much hardcore on the workout, but just the movement. Yeah, that we're trying to all stay healthy. How do you talk about health and fitness and strength with your daughter? Oh, God, she hates me for this like i'm ready to learn because i have this coming right now i'm like teaching protein she's eating chicken nuggets i'm like that is what you need a lot of maybe not the bread stuff on the outside stuff in the middle uh you know it's it's funny i i i i don't know if i do the best job of this. You know, we talk, I talk, my daughter at six and a half, almost seven says she wants to be a doctor. So I bring everything back to this idea of being a doctor and helping people not get

healthy or get better, but stay healthy. And so we have to lead by example. So it's always talking about food. Food is the predominant source of health. Then exercise. How do we keep our bodies exercise. How do we keep our bodies healthy? How do we keep our system healthy? Now, she's a gymnast or she was before COVID. So I've got a balance beam and we've got the bars and everything in the garage. So she's doing a lot

of that stuff. But I think it always just comes back to our bodies are our most important thing, right? Once they start to break down, we can't fix a lot of that stuff right now. So we got to take care of it before the wheels come off the bus. Yeah. I actually feel like you have done a better job of this than the majority of people I know. Like when I see you, especially like you go into a set of pull-ups, I'm like, damn, dude, we all need to be on the DeMarco plan. This guy has got it dialed in up there in Sacramento. Where do you even see like any deficiencies and where you're at and things that you can still add to the mix of like little things that you're still tweaking? Yeah, I think, you know, really focusing on total body. And it was interesting once, once Castro hooked us all up, you know, I hadn't had a,

we'd been at like two months without really lifting any heavy weights. And so all of a sudden, you know, I've got 700 pounds of weights in the garage and I go, I'm like, all right, it's dead lifting. Lifted all at once. I wake up the next day and I thought I had COVID. So here's something interesting. Like I fucked my backup so bad that I thought I had this pressure in my chest. I can't catch my breath. I'm freaking out. I call my doctor and I'm like, I can't taste food. Yeah. So he comes in and he's, yeah, I go into the doctor and he's like, dude, you're fine. I'm like, no, I mean like something's wrong. I feel like I've got this major pressure in my chest.

He's like, what did you do yesterday? And I'm like, oh yeah. So I, I'd actually kind of missed my backup and it took a while to heal from that. Uh, luckily I went down to Mexico about a month ago and got some stem cell injections and that really made a big difference. But I think that was, so the deficiency for me is it has really been trying to lift heavy in, in this, you know, in this space. And, and, you know, I've been really focused on that since feeling a lot better is just getting back into really good technique, really good form, lifting heavy, um, you know, focusing on some of those major muscle groups, especially like pull, I love weighted pull-ups. That's, that's my, that's my thing, right. You know, throw a hundred pounds between the legs and start doing, you know, five sets of five pull-ups. Um, so that I think

the deficiencies have been really just lifting heavy in a world where the motivation wasn't necessarily there. Cause it's like my gym is three feet away. Yeah. Can you, can you dig into the stem cell stuff real quick? Like what, what have you, what has your experience been with getting stem cells and why, why have you done that? Um, in the first place?

Uh, you know, I think the biggest benefit is just the 24 hour erections. Those are nice. It's a continuous 24 hours. It just never goes away. You just tuck it up. You're good. The only problem is that it's been great. I work on my handstands because that's the only way I can pee now.

When I first met Dr. Killen, she talked a lot about stem cells, and I really kind of got excited about this technology. And then I started really looking at just the whole research platform, right? You know, in the early 90s, George W. Bush says, okay, we're going to outlaw stem cell research on embryonic stem cells. We're not going to be able to harvest any new embryonic stem cells. So what happened is a lot of that research went out of the country. Now, whether you believe in the ethical implications of embryonic stem cell research or not, it doesn't matter. What we've been able to do is understand that how stem cells work and how we can start to

graft embryonic stem cells from things as simple as like your skin. So all of that research went overseas, Japan, India, China. And what we're able to see in some of that research is how do stem cell or how does stem cell therapy really impact certain diseases? Now, most autoimmune, you know, inflammatory diseases really respond well to this type of therapy. In a bio-optimization world, if we take that same approach to how do we want to keep our system as little inflamed as possible, stem cells play an integral part in that. So this idea of, you know,

we can go get a 40 million mesenchymal stem cell injection and just watch our inflammatory markers drop. And I think, you know, inflammaging is kind of the term that we hear a lot. This idea that we get to a certain point and our body stops resolving inflammation the way that it should. And that's the disease of aging. Well, I think David Sinclair said in his book, you know, Lifespan is aging is

not, you know, aging is a disease. We can actually look at aging as a disease. And if we keep inflammation at bay, then our bodies will continue to work as well as they should well into our 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and beyond. And so I think stem cells, the way that the science approaches it is, is that you've just got this reserve of these stem cells, these mesenchymal stem cells that act as your body's first line of defense in controlling and resolving inflammation. I think most people think about stem cells, think about like injecting it just into your shoulder because you have cartilage that needs to be regrown, that type of thing. So you're talking about more of a systemic thing where you're not just attacking one joint that needs some regeneration of one specific tissue. You're talking about a total body thing.

Correct, yeah. So the way that the protocol works is you'll go down, and we actually work with a clinic in Mexico because a lot of the stem cell stuff is illegal here. And leave it to the U.S. government to, our best science and our best therapies to foreign countries. But you know, Hey, that's the food and drug administration. Is it also conveniently much cheaper just because it happens to be in Mexico than it likely would be if it was in the U S. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's, that's a big part of it too. But it, you know, it's, it's the legal framework. It's all of that. I mean,

a lot of people that I know, I don't know, did you guys see Mel Gibson on Rogan when he was talking talking about stem cells i listened to the show but didn't see it i mean it was something about his dad too right yeah his dad goes into the male clinic and is basically diagnosed with full system failure right the docs say he's got about 48 hours to live and mel gibson's like yeah i'm not cool with that so he starts calling people that he knows and ends up talking to this doctor in Panama, who's got a stem cell clinic down there. The doctor at the Mayo Clinic gets on the phone with the doctor in Panama. They start talking about it. He's like,

hey, it's worth a shot, right? At this point, he doesn't have any time to live. So Mel Gibson charters a private plane, flies his dad down to Panama, and he goes through this whole two-month regeneration process using stem cells. He was 92 at the time when he went into the male clinic, and they gave him 48 hours to live, and he just turned 100. So what we know about how these stem cells work, especially in the foreign countries where we're doing this research, is that, yeah, there's some really cool stuff that happens. So I go to Mexico and the protocol is you go in day one, they give you nutritional IV therapy, oxygen therapy, and then you go back the second day and it's 40 million mesenchymal stem cells injected into your system. Now here's the really cool thing about this,

and this is what I love about doing stem cells right now, is those stem cells actually pass through your lungs. They go into your lungs and then they're kind of disseminated throughout your body especially where you need them the most you know areas of inflammation that could be joints that could be organs that could be anything but having those stem cells those base you know those those bad asses that control inflammation in your lungs during the age of covid not a bad thing to have right now. Yeah. Can you do that anywhere in the States, or do you have to go to Mexico or wherever? Right now, yeah, you kind of have to go out of the country. The way that stem cells are legal in the United States

is that you can extract them from yourself, you can minimally process them, and then put them back into the same area that you took them yeah i the you know i don't think you have to be a rocket scientist yeah realize that just doesn't make any freaking sense um when we talk to amy be killing she crushed it by the way if you're if you're listening i want to go check that show out it was it was a lot of fun uh i believe we launched that show in november maybe late october so go back and check it out i wish i had the the actual show number right now um she talked about putting stem cells

in your penis have you done this uh dr killen has put some cells in my penis multiple times tell me about this i want to hear i want to hear uh I want to hear. Yeah, it's not a fun process. It was a very tiny shot. It took her three days. Basically, she'll do Gaines Wave therapy at her clinic in Utah or her two clinics in Utah and then follow that up with a combination of stem cells, PRP and exosomes.

And so the gains wave therapy, if you've, if you're not familiar with it, is basically just having like a, uh, it's an ultrasonic or sonic pulse wave technology that Jack Hammers captain Winky. Um, and it's, it's vasoneurogenesis or vasobiogenesis. So that actually creates new vasculature in the penis. And it's kind of a cool process, right? It was originally designed for cardiovascular issues. And then what they did is it really works well for sexual health. And she talks a lot about this as kind of the penis being the canary in the coal mine. Atherosclerosis, you know, really can

impact the penis first before we start to see cardiovascular disease later on down the road. So, you know, you get this, you know, they basically lidocaine you up. So you can't feel anything, jackhammer the bejesus out of you. And then, you know, she'll go in and do, I think it's four shots on each side. And yeah, and then that's it. And then, you know, you wait for about two hours until the lidocaine wears off and you can start to feel things again and it's just the most awkward feeling in the world but the results are the results are fantastic yeah I mean she does amazing work do you track your testosterone levels much yeah is that why we we have a big problem with

that in our country right now i would actually it would be really interesting to see you know this whole not being outside not being as active um this more sedentary lifestyle and what that's done to our like t levels as a whole um i guess have you had any injections or gone down that path at all? No. I'm not saying you're on steroids. No, I have not. We tested him before the show.

We only allow Evan DeMarco to come on as a clean athlete. Steroids. I have not gone down the road of testosterone therapy. And I think, you know, really, there's so many things that we can do naturally to keep our teeth up that, you know, if you're, if you're at that place where you want, or you need testosterone therapy, there's some, there's some issues in your lifestyle that need to be addressed first. And one of my good friends, Dr. Mary Party out of Los Angeles, who does a lot of testosterone therapy, she makes that the last line of defense, you know, even things like red light therapy on, you know, on your balls is one

way to naturally increase testosterone. So there's all these things that we can do. And I think I've always just lived such a healthy, clean life that I haven't had any issues. And, you know, hopefully I don't, I mean, there might be at a certain point that I have to do that. What does the red light therapy do? I hear it's going to give me hair back, but I don't know. Yeah, I heard the same thing. I've got the stupid helmet. It's actually right here. Check this out.

I would be so lost if the red light. Oh, my gosh. Of course you have the helmet. That makes me so happy. Wait, so is that really what that's for? It's supposed to regenerate hair growth? Yeah clearly i thought andrews was joking the first time okay there's good research on that yeah there's a lot of research on that but when you do the total body red light therapy does that promote hair growth everywhere yes uh so you know that's

been the biggest challenge in covet is is that'm having to wax myself. And I'm just not good at it. I don't think it promotes hair growth everywhere. I think it is just on top of your head. And I don't really fully understand the research behind it. I do know that red light therapy exposure to your whole body does increase testosterone. And even to the point that there's some of the new devices, like I think it's called the rocket, which is a do-it-yourself gains wave therapy. So rather than going to a clinic and having someone jackhammer your wiener,

you just do it at home. But it's also got a red light device on there, which increases testosterone. Yeah. Do you know much about the red light? Why is it different like what actually is in there i think it's just the frequency of the light is yeah it's you know is that it stimulates testosterone production and it's i i really don't fundamentally understand the science yeah but you throw it in the sauna just to make it happen it was the rest of the list of things you can do naturally to,

to keep your testosterone as high as possible without artificial means. Lower your fat. I mean, that's lower your body fat percentage is the big one, right? Like workout. Yeah. That's, that's a huge one. I think the simple things that you can do is avoid a lot of soy, you know, get rid of tofu in your diet. Not that you should be eating a lot of soy, you know, get rid of tofu in your diet. Not that you should be eating a lot of tofu anyway. There's some increase, increased protein intake. But I think the biggest thing that you can really do outside of all of like the stupid, you know, you'll see them on Instagram is like the five foods that are killing your testosterone is just work out. And that's lifting weights. That's getting those deep tears in your muscle fibers, allowing your body muscle protein synthesis to heal those, you know,

going on a 30 mile run. That's not going to help you, right? Like heavy cardio is not going to increase testosterone. You need to build strength. You need to, you know, use the muscles, get the, you know, get the muscles really activated. And that alone really is going to have a pretty significant impact in testosterone. You got to go be an animal. Be an animal.

Yeah, basically all the things that you would do to be a muscular, lean athlete also improves testosterone. They run together. Get enough sleep, eat healthy foods, get enough protein, strength train. Yeah, the sleep one is the big thing, right? And let's talk diesel dads, right? I think guys right now are so challenged with the amount of time that they have in the day. Right. We're trying to work. We're trying to create an income. We're trying to be distance learning facilitators, get a workout and do all these things. And so there's this instinctual need to, well, where are we going to make up that time? And a lot of guys think I'll just, I'll sleep less. And that's the worst thing that we can do. So all of the sleep research says, I mean, like that, we need that the most, right? You know, you're seven to eight hours of good sleep, you know, get into those five,

six, you know, sleep cycles. And, you know, that's where, you know, you're going to, you're going to have better testosterone levels. You're going to be a better parent. You're going to be a better husband. You're going to be just a better human being. So sleep is where it's at. I think that this is something that men are facing for maybe the very first time because my wife runs the women's group at her big company. And it was called like the Working Women's Club or the Working Women Something. And for the first time, she started having all of these men start going, hey, how do we get into this? Can we start calling this the parents group?

I need help because for the first time, all these dads are stuck in the house. They're not going to work. And the kids are running around all the time around them. And the dads are like, wait a second. Now I need the support system. I'm the one waking up at four 35 o'clock in the morning to try and get a workout in. I'm not getting any sleep. I'm not doing anything that's healthy for me. And it's the first time she's had to really confront that they're expanding this group from the working women's group to the working parents group. And it's purely because all of these dads, some of them are single dads that are in the house and now they're

teaching algebra and doing all of the stuff that was way out of their scope 10 months ago. And now they're all in the house realizing, shit, we need community. We need help. We need to put some systems together so that parents are able to stay healthy and be able to live their lives. And look, I don't think this is changing, guys. I have some friends in corporate America and New York and San Francisco, and they're pretty much forever banished to telecommuting. And that's great, right? But we've changed the, you know, we've changed the paradigm so much that there's this, there's this kind of like, well, I pine for the days of old because I could go to an office. But if that doesn't happen, we have to create new habits that

allow us to stay healthy in this new world order. And let's be honest, like it was broken long before COVID. Why are we wanting to go back to that? People are like, I can't wait for things to get back to normal. I'm like, really? you're still unhappy then i know right you sat your car for four hours a day commuting why would you want to go back to that yeah that's like you were in i was that's that uh that thing from point break i was like you know we stand for something for all those people inching along their metal coffins on the freeway i think that that's so funny like all the paleo people are like if we could just go live off the land i'm like are you talking about when all the native americans used to scalp each other that's when you want to go back that was like the sign of manliness you took someone's head i don't want

to go back there i just want the vegetables let me eat vegetables i don't need to go back there. I just want the vegetables. Let me eat vegetables. I don't need to be in a tribal war. I'm cool in my suburbs. Look, I think here's the interesting thing. People keep asking me, like, what's going to happen in the next couple of years? And I think this is going to be a return to small community. Yeah. I think this is going to force us to have this really tight knit group of people that we live and we work with and that's your community. Maybe it's on your block or maybe people go set up a compound somewhere out in

the middle of nowhere, but this return to small community is really where it's going to be at. And, and in that we can kind of have a little bit more of this tribal community. You can grow your own vegetables. You can, you know, start an emu farm if you want, but yeah, it's the new world order is going to change drastically. And with that comes the challenge for parents as parents of how do you balance work and life in a home environment where there's really not a lot of separation. Yeah. I think the interesting thing to living in North Carolina now, which was in a way kind of seen as like a, to me being in San Diego is like this like remote area. I'm not near a beach. Raleigh's our closest city, but I'm as far outside of the city as you can get while still being inside the county line.

And the amount of growth here from people from California, people from New York has been insane. Like the number of houses going up. But what's been really interesting is all the people that have been here for a long time are now heading out west to the mountains because this became too city for them. And they're becoming unhappy with the growth. So they're leaving. But the people that have been jammed in cities for so long. So everybody's kind of finding their own little path almost of like, where do we feel right? What is the size of this town that we'd like to be? But it all really starts with these cities and they're getting, you know, nobody's living in cities anymore. There's no need.

San Francisco said that the $117,000 in income was considered the poverty level. So if I'm telecommuting, why the hell wouldn't I move to the middle of Montana? Yeah. Well, I'll tell you why, because I watched Yellowstone and everyone gets shot. If you live in Bozeman, you will get shot. I know. I saw it on TV. So, yeah, that is true.

And I think there's also those areas that are just so anti-COVID. People are literally dying on a hospital bed from COVID. They're like, it's not real. It's a conspiracy. Okay. Yeah. We're actually building a ranch, which is something I'm pretty excited about. Where? It's the Complete Human Bio-Optimization Ranch in New Mexico. Oh, I thought that's why you were in South Carolina. Go ahead. I want pretty excited about. It's the complete human bio-optimization ranch in New Mexico.

Oh, I thought that's why you were in South Carolina. Go ahead. I want to hear about this ranch. So, yeah. So the idea is, you know, you're going to come through for a week, right? We're going to use diagnostic testing pre and post to understand where your deficiencies are and create protocols for each person. So you come to the ranch for a week. We're building aquaponics, right? So we're using tilapia-based feeder systems to feed the aquaponics. So you have this entire agricultural

system there, this entire food system. And then for a week, you know, you're you go through the whole protocol. And it's the stuff that Jen and I've been focused on, you've got your vibrational therapy, you've got your red light therapy, you've got heat and cold. You know, we've got the doctors that are going to be doing all of these different modalities. We're working with the ketamine doctor from San Diego, Dr. Feifel, who said this, right? He's like, we do ketamine therapy for PTSD, but you come into our clinic in La Jolla, you do your ketamine therapy, and then you go sit in your car for two hours driving home. That's like, you know, the therapy just doesn't work the way that it needs to. So, you know, the plan is get people there for this week, really understand where the deficiencies are, address those deficiencies, create habits that allow people to go back to

their normal lives and really bio-optimize the way that they should be. Can you dig into the ketamine? Yeah. Do you have experience with that? No, but Jen and I are headed down in about three weeks to do it. So we're going to be filming that. We're both going to be on camera going through multiple ketamine treatments. And, you know, we'll share that with you. What is a little bit of the goal of that? I feel like most people probably hear that and they're like horse tranquilizer.

I think I'm good. So ketamine is something that's used in so many, like if you go into surgery, right? Any type of surgery, the anesthesiologist is going to include ketamine. And one of the big benefits is that it doesn't have, it allows you to come out of that without the anxiety. So as we found, or as the doctors found in looking at ketamine therapy is it's very much like a psychedelic, but it's a controlled molecule, right? You know, we did ayahuasca and one shot is completely different than the next one just because of the inconsistencies in the way that it's made. But ketamine is unlike LSD or unlike psilocybin. It's fast acting, you know, so a therapy session for ketamine can be 20, 30 minutes. You have some of the same cognitive dissonance things that come with, you know, like LSD or psilocybin, but it's done in a very controlled setting. And so what we're finding or the research is showing is that it's really great for anxiety, for stress, for PTSD. So a lot of these war vets that are coming back from, you know, come back from Afghanistan or Iraq with some serious PTSD are using ketamine therapy as a major impetus to kind of get through that.

So we talked about it in the sense of can we deal with a lot of the global trauma that people are facing with ketamine? And then can you see some of the cognitive benefits that come from supposedly this therapy? There was a member at the gym that I sold here in Memphis who owns a ketamine clinic here in Memphis, which actually I just saw like two days ago, they finally shut down because of COVID. But I did it a handful of times. And walking out of it, like it definitely is a psychedelic type experience. Like there's some element of feeling like you're tripping while you're doing it. And then but afterward, for many days or weeks, I felt, um, an increased level of just mental of just calm of,

of just, just tough to describe. It's like, it's like, everything's just, everything's okay. I'm not, I'm just not worried about things in the same way that I, that I would have been. Uh, I wouldn't ruminate on, on the same thoughts that I might've been ruminating on prior, uh, with, you know, without really putting any effort into it. They just, I was just okay with, with being myself in a, in a different way that I wasn't before the session. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Um, I think it also has a, it's one of like the most, uh, well-researched things regarding, um, things regarding depression and more specifically suicide, which I feel like we should talk to Matt Hesse about this for FitOps and their mission to reduce veteran suicide. Because ketamine seems to be one of the few treatments that really can reduce the prevalence of suicide. That's the information that I've seen. And I think that, you know, there's this idea to send, you know,

war vets or vets to places like Costa Rica or, you know, Peru for ayahuasca. But if, if ketamine can do the same thing and it's legal here in the U S then, you know, these are therapies that we need to be discussing, right. You know, I don't know. The 22 number for vets is still really horrible and we need to address that, but suicides are up straight across the board with COVID so i keep calling it a global trauma right i don't know if you guys go to the grocery store and do this but like we're communal people we're tribal people we want to be

connected but because of covid there's this weird thing that happens where you see someone and you almost like you kind of move away from them i hate it when I'm walking down the sidewalk and someone leaves the sidewalk. Yeah. Like, no, we're cool. Maybe we'll even bump shoulders or something. Yeah. And let's look at the data, right? Like, if you're under 50 and you're in moderately decent health,

your chances of surviving COVID are like 100%. You know, you've got a better chance of being eaten by a shark in Kansas city than you do of dying from COVID. So yes, it's a tragedy and there's a lot of problems with it. There's a lot of disinformation, but you know, it's made us afraid of our fellow man. And that's, that's a trauma, right? If we're afraid of other people just walking down the street, how long is it going to take us to recover? And could ketamine be a way that people kind of come back to a normal sense of being after all of this? I'm really interested in your answer.

I am not scared. But I don't know if other people shouldn't be because most people are so unhealthy. And it puts me in a weird place have you kind of thought about like your level of risk in this and then what would or maybe like how you feel other people like the general american should should be concerned i think the general american should be concerned um i think that they need to do everything. Now, here's the thing. The WHO director said in a speech a couple weeks ago, masking and quarantining is not something you do to help the medical community get out in front of this. When beds and respirators are in short supply, when supplies are in short supply, the medical community, the frontline workers, need as much help as they can get to make sure that they have the resources to treat people.

Now, they're having to treat more people because Americans are just fucking unhealthy. And that's the problem, right? So if you're overweight, if you're obese, if you've got any history of autoimmune, if you've got any history of family history of cardiovascular disease or pulmonary disease, like, yes, you need to be aware of this. Diabetes, that's a major problem. But this should be the giant wake-up call that you need to get off your ass, get outside, get some movement, and focus on the things that are going to make you healthy because it's not if, it's when you get this.

Yeah. And you've got to make yourself as resilient as possible. Yeah, we're all getting it. I think that that's been the real struggle for me and the inability to live life as normal or whatever. I leave the house and I go, well, someone can sneeze on me. I don't really care. I might be one of the people that has a really terrible reaction to it. I don't know. But I trust my immune system. I trust my body. I trust my health. But if I were to walk into the airport, I would look around and go, oh, you should all be terrified right now. This is not a thing that

you want to be messing with. And I don't really know everyone's story, but just as a general population, I don't know what the best route to go is because we're so unhealthy. Like when you just look at people, you go, yeah, you should be worried. It's scary. You should. And I think the thing is, is that, you know, with our kids, our kids seem to be pretty much untouched by this. But we don't know what the long-term implications of this. Is it cardio scarring? Is it pulmonary scarring?

We interviewed Valentin Thomas, who is the lawyer turned free diver. I don't know if you guys have seen her. She's a fascinating person, but she got it right at the beginning. And she's like, as a free diver, she had lung pains for eight months after she got it. My neighbor got it and influenza at the same time. And I trained with him out here. He's in good shape. He's a young dude.

Everything's great. And he said he still feels like he has asthma every once in a while. Just walking around, he'll just get short of breath. Yeah. And, you know, there's some things that we know that can help with this, and whether that's hyperbaric oxygen therapy, stem cells are a great thing to help kind of with that post-viral inflammatory disease. There's a lot of things that we can do.

But I think, you know, first and foremost is, if you're unhealthy, you have to recognize it. And the first step is saying, I'm unhealthy, you can't be going to McDonald's on a consistent basis and thinking that you're healthy. Yeah, you can't be getting that frappuccino or that caramel macchiato from Starbucks thinking, this is healthy. So we have to acknowledge how our decisions are making us the way that we are, how this is going to slow burn to the United States. And then, I mean, let's look at antivirals or let's look at vaccines. Vaccines typically don't work on obese people. So we're an obese nation and we're all praying for a vaccine. Now, granted, it's an RNA vaccine, so the efficacy might be a little bit different, but typical flu vaccines don't work on obese people. So now we're

praying for this vaccine to help in a population that's going to be pretty much unaffected by it. Our heads up our ass. Yeah. You mentioned a couple of the things talking about the people's respiratory system. What, what, what can they do to, to make that? I can't remember it in a couple of the things you said, they caught my attention when you're talking about my neighbor that, that feels like he still has the asthma. A hyperbaric oxygen. Yeah. It seems to be one. What is that? They, they put you. So if, if you ever get the ben scuba diving you know

which is you you ascend too fast and the night bubbles can't escape properly then they put you in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber so um basically they're gonna put you in a you know oxygen saturated environment in this pod and you'll sit there for a while that seems to be one of the things that has a pretty impressive um in the short amount of time that it's being studied, a pretty impressive treatment protocol for post-viral issues, especially with the pulmonary side of things. I think that's when stem cells are definitely something to look at. Exosome therapy are things to look at. Um, and hopefully, hopefully the FDA gets to the point where they're going to recognize that because of this virus, that there is a place for these treatments, these modalities here in the U S so that people don't have to get on a plane and go to Buquima to get

one to get them. Yeah. The people that are listening to us, I mean, we've talked about so many different ways to kind of biohack your way into better health. Where, where, where should people just get their start? If they've gotten, you know, their training, they're listening to Barbell Shrug, so they're clearly one of the smarter people in the world. But, you know, they're working out and they're trying to take this thing a little bit more to the next level. What's maybe through supplementation or they're

not ready to jump fully into stem cells? What's a little bit of like the beginner's guide that people can start on immediately? I think it always comes back to diagnostic testing, right? So, you know, get a complete blood workup from your doctor and then go one step further. Let's look at your microbiome. Yeah. You know, you might be eating kale by the bucket load,

but you're one of those people that can't really process it that well. And so it almost becomes carcinogenic. So if you don't know what you're eating and why you're eating it, then that's a big problem, right? So a microbiome test, you know, mitochondrial function test, all of these diagnostic tests are going to give people a much clearer roadmap on what they should be putting in their body to optimize their health. Vitamin D is a perfect example, right? Everybody's like, oh, vitamin D and COVID. It's, you know, Trump cures himself of COVID with vitamin D. But if you're taking too much of it, that's a problem, right?

Now you're hypercalcemic. So there's a lot of things that people need to understand and understand where you're getting your advice. Don't take something just to take it. Take it because you need it. And the best way to do that is get your diagnostic testing. Then from there, figure out what you should be eating, how you should be eating. What happens when we get a virus like this is our body almost kind of goes into a diabetic state anyway. Blood sugar rises, you know, we become a little bit more insulin resistant. And so intermittent fasting is one of those things that by and large is a good thing to do. It's great for your health. It's going to keep your A1C levels where they need to be. It's going to help you really in that cellular autophagy standpoint. And I think that that's something we should all be looking at, right? Eat for eight hours a day. That's it. And the rest of the time you're not eating.

Yeah. Yeah. I almost brought up autophagy earlier. Can you dig into that a little bit? Yeah. So, you know, basically at the end of the day is your body has to clear out the cellular waste. And I think that this actually becomes a telomere conversation, right? So every time, for those of you guys who don't know what telomeres are, think of the plastic caps at the end of your shoelaces, right? So every time your cell divides, makes a copy of itself, the telomeres lock that cell in place, make a copy of the cell, and then the old cell gets flushed out through cellular autophagy. Well, every time you have a copy or you make a copy of that, the telomeres get shorter and shorter and shorter until you

can no longer copy that cell. Then you have cellular death. Or if those telomeres fray and they start touching each other, then you can have cellular death. Or if those telomeres fray and they start touching each other, then you can have cellular mutation, which could be cancer, all sorts of things. So I think the doctor that ultimately discovered telomeres postulated that if you could stop them from shortening, the average human life expectancy was like a thousand years. It's kind of cool. So we have to get rid of cellular waste. And one of the best ways that we found to do that is cellular autophagy, but we can do that through intermittent fasting.

So there's a whole bunch of crap out there online about intermittent fasting. People doing 10-day water fast, no, not healthy. Pull your head out of your ass. It just doesn't work. Honestly, like just every day, put 16 hours between your last meal of the day and your first meal of the next day. That's, that seems to be enough to really help clear cellular debris, clear that waste out and keep your body operating optimally. And then again, keep those A1C numbers down. The things that really show, put us in a pre-diabetic state.

Now, the guy was at Valter Longo, one, you know, is widely touted as kind of being able to reverse type 2 diabetes just by not eating. That's kind of cool. Yeah. I mean, is that basically correlating with dropping body fat? Like if you just don't eat, you'll drop body fat.

And if you drop body fat, then type 2 diabetes just kind of goes away. I think that's part of it. But I think it's also just the cellular autophagy is that your cells start operating optimally, and then you have less mitochondrial dysfunction. And for everybody, mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell, and the more insulin-resistant that we become,

the more we have mitochondrial dysfunction. So our mitochondria aren't operating as properly as they should. And so all of these things, like intermittent intermittent fasting allows you to drop body fat percentage, but if you're pairing that with working out, then you have mitochondrial biogenesis. We start to make more mitochondria, which means our system is operating more effectively. We have more energy. We're, you know, we're using fuel appropriately. And I think that's kind of this metabolic flexibility that we're all looking for, right? Things like keto are unsustainable because they make us metabolically inflexible. Whereas if we're metabolically flexible, we have great insulin

sensitivity, we've got great mitochondrial function, you know, we can kind of pair our carbohydrate intake to our activity level, and we need that. We're designed to take in carbohydrates for short periods of time so that we can go out and kill a zebra and eat it. Awesome. There's a theory of aging that basically says that as you build up a certain amount of senescent cells, that's when your body just doesn't have enough cells operating properly. And then that's when you die or something along those lines is autophagy. One thing that kind of can ameliorate the buildup of senescent cells. Yes. And, and that is, I think the,

when you talk to people like David Sinclair, when you talk to people like Dr. Killen, this is the one thing, right? Like there's all of these different, we'll call them hacks. There are things that we postulate that we theorize can do all of this, but intermittent fasting and cellular autophagy, clearing out that cellular waste is the one thing that all of these guys can agree on is the thing that keeps those senescent cells from building up. And basically what that means is you kind of go from, we talk about lifespan, but I think the most important thing is health span.

And what happens, you kind of notice this, right? Like people are healthy, healthy, healthy, and then they just fall off a cliff. That's when everything just starts to go south, right? It's like disease state. And so there's the health state and there's the disease state. And our goal isn't to live as long as possible.'s to live as well as possible and the best way we do that is to keep those senescent cells you know from becoming senescent we keep our immune system operating properly we keep cellular autophagy going we keep our mitochondria healthy and robust and when we do all of that that health state can last as long as possible yeah one one last question around intermittent fasting.

If you're a person that wants to keep on muscle mass and potentially you're still competing in something, even if you're a little bit older, like I still do jujitsu as an example, I want to be strong and athletic for that sport. What have you seen that works well for ensuring that you keep on muscle mass, especially if you're a hard gainer

and you've already been trying to eat as much food as you can kind of all day long, but you want the benefits, the longevity benefits of intermittent fasting, cutting down the time that you have available to eat could inhibit your muscle mass. I've heard that too. And the funny thing is my answer to that is look at Hugh Jackman in the Wolverine movie when he was 47, is did intermittent fasting, and he was eating like 4,000 calories during an eight-hour period. And, I mean, I think there aren't too many people in the world who wouldn't want to look like that when they're 47 or 37. I think that you can eat appropriately for muscle protein synthesis within that eight hours. And the old-school idea of grazing has been debunked, right?

Like eating these small meals throughout the day. I think it's, you know, figure out what your caloric needs are based off your activity level. The Harris-Benedict equation still actually works for this, but then just condense that into an eight hour, you know, timeframe. You might be eating a little bit more, but I think you're still going to be able to synthesize protein the way that you need to and cellular autophagy is going to allow you to recover quicker yeah dude always a pleasure yeah i miss seeing you in real life this digital shit just sucks

it's made uh it's you know we don't have to be in the same place to hang out, but it'd be nice. Well, we're huggers, man. I can't do that to the TV. I know. I miss seeing you run up the, what was it, Squaw Valley Mountain in negative one million degree weather. That was a cold day with a lot of wind.

You went shirtless to the top like 10 000 12 000 feet and i was like yeah my man yeah that's that was a big day that was a big day that you know did you guys didn't get in the water that day did you no the guy we ran it with from the special ops on the air force he got in i just looked i was like you did that for all of us we're gonna go to the next uh next station i'm not getting in that water at the top of the mountain yeah like well it was funny because the year before when we you know when we did that actually you know uh doug uh here it is here it is dude once we saw the bear i was out yeah you were gone man like we didn't see you till you started chasing us down at the car like four hours later like that was fun the last year that that

that weather kind of blew it was tough they shut a bunch of the stuff down too because people i imagine you get hypothermia pretty quick if you're not training in a specific way to be able to jump in those things at at altitude with that wind and it was i mean it had to have been in the teens that day it was really cold yeah i think even wim hof would have been like you know what i'm gonna go to the lodge and drink i'm gonna have a catch me i'll have an ip in my hand at the the finish line you know i was thinking guys like you know as much fun as we had with that, we need to do an eco challenge. That sounds awesome. What are you thinking?

Well, the next one is in Patagonia, supposedly that one's closed, but we've been chatting with their PR team. And I think the one after that is, is one that, you know, is definitely viable for us.

So, you know, I don't even know exactly what that, what that would entail. What's the the event actually look like oh the eco challenge it's so it's considered the world's toughest race um and it's usually like the last one was in fiji the winning teams are doing it in like seven days it's a cross-discipline thing where you're doing like stand-up paddleboarding orienteering mountain

biking hiking rappelling mountain climbing i mean just google it you look at these you look at these you know guys that are winning it, like the New Zealanders, and you're going for six or seven days straight with very little sleep. It is the ultimate mental, physical challenge. Pretty crazy. And in fact, Moe's done one, I think, back in the day. And he said it was by far and away one of the hardest things that he's done so you know they revived it it went away for you know about 10 years it's come back yeah this year's in patagonia but it just looks like something that

you know for guys like us where you need something to focus on we need like that thing why am i training you know and you know just to be able to get out there and go for six or seven days with your friends and see you know can we push ourselves to the breaking point and beyond, you know, what are our physical and mental limits? Yeah, dude, that sounds awesome. I totally want to do that. Totally. It does, especially after being cooped up for the last nine months. I want to go out and just do something adventurous.

Spending seven, eight days in nature in Patagonia. Sign me up. Yeah. Do you guys remember the movie? Was it crank with Jason Statham? I never saw it. Yeah. There's's a great scene like he ends up getting he's like a gangster or something like that and he gets injected with this stuff that slows down his heart and if he doesn't keep his heart rate up he ultimately dies there's this great scene where he his doctor says you got to go to the hospital and get some epinephrine and take 10 you know know, 10 micrograms of epinephrine or 10 CCS. And he wasn't paying attention.

So he does a hundred and he like injects himself with a hundred CCS of epinephrine. And then he goes screaming out of this elevator, like running down the street in a hospital gown, ass flapping in the wind, just like, yeah, I think that's how we all feel.

Totally. Man, when, where can people find your new podcast? This new company you just stood up with, Jana. Where can people find you? So it's the Complete Human Podcast. We're available on iTunes, YouTube.

But yeah, just go to completehuman.com. All the information is there. We've got an amazing resource, our library of resources, digital content on all things bio-optimization. I'm changing the vernacular. It's no longer bio-hacking. Beautiful. Here's my issue with this.

When's the last time you got hacked and it was a good thing? Yeah. Optimization is better. Yeah. You know, hacking implies it's just like we're going to go around what, you know, we're going to make a system do something

it wasn't designed to do. Optimization is kind of the future of this one. It's how do we optimize our lives in all areas amazing resources there um guys can i can i talk about my book real fast please yeah definitely okay hold on so have you seen this on social i have yeah so mia and the go away monster spray it's available only on amazon i wrote this when my daughter turned four she had a monster that showed up in her closet and if you guys have had this issue you know that like logic alone just can't make the monster go away you open up the

closet door show them there's nothing in there turn the lights on it's just clothes and toys but the second you close the door the monster comes back so you know that that was the case with my daughter and so I took a bottle of lavender oil and basically cut off her, like a piece of her hair, put in a little food coloring, shook it up and then said, this is your very, very own go away monster spray, sprayed it all over a room and it worked. And I wrote this book with the idea that I just wanted to kind of like chronicle that little adventure of ours. And then last year I was supposed to run a hundred miles for operation underground railroad, which is the charity that basically goes in and forcefully pulls kids out of sex trafficking.

And then they work with local law enforcement to make sure that these perpetrators can't continue to do this. Um, the whole point of the a hundred miles was just to raise some awareness and raise some money that didn't happen because of COVID. And so I wrote this book with the idea that I want to raise $2 million for this charity. I want to put an end to sex trafficking. And so that's it. It's, you know, I'm asking people, you know, a hundred percent of the proceeds go to operation underground railroad, go to Amazon. It's a great Christmas present. But more importantly,

you know, the whole idea is we all want to be home for the holidays, but I want people, I want us to be able to bring kids home for the holidays and keep them there forever. I love that. We'll have it in the show notes that's awesome man we send me uh send me a link for that maybe you have i'll check it out um dude this is always a pleasure doug larson where can people find you bet find me on instagram Evan, appreciate you coming on the show, man. Really enjoyed it. Yeah, dude. Thanks, guys.

Always appreciate it. Andrews Varner. I know. I'm Andrews Varner at Andrews Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged. Go over to barbellshrugged.com forward slash diesel dad. That is where all the dads are getting strong, lean, and athletic without sacrifice in family, fatherhood, or fitness.

And everybody in San Diego, LA, Palm Springs, and Vegas, get over to Walmart. Performance Nutrition, we've got three programs on the shelves right now. We'll see you guys next week. That's a wrap, friends. Evan DeMarco, what a great human being. Get over to barbellshrug.com forward slash diesel dad. That's where all the busy dads are getting strong, lean, and athletic. Class three registration starts on Monday. Make sure you get over to organifi.com forward slash shrug to save 20 on the green red and gold juices and then leaky gut guardian.com forward slash shrug to save 10 on leaky gut guardian from bioptimizers friends we'll see you on monday