Barbell Shrugged - Four Pillars of Anti-Aging w/ Blair LaCorte, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash #815

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

Blair LaCorte is the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging—the world’s first biomedical research institution dedicated solely to understanding aging and age-related diseases, and the largest independent scientific institute in the Bay Area. A seasoned leader and strategist, Blair has a track record of transforming companies across five industries, leveraging his expertise in change management to drive operational alignment, scale, and market leadership. Most recently, he led AEye’s $1.5B IPO, advancing the company’s mission to enable safe, reliable vehicle autonomy. Prior to that, Blair served as Global President of PRG, the world’s largest live event technology and services company; CEO of XOJET, one of the fastest-growing aviation companies in history; and Senior Advisor and Operating Partner at TPG, a leading private equity firm managing over $97 billion in global investments. His earlier career includes executive roles at technology innovators such as VerticalNet, Savi Technologies, Autodesk, and Sun Microsystems. Blair is an active board member and advisor to organizations spanning science, business, and education, including the Positive Coaching Alliance, the Kairos Society, the Graduate Business Foundation, and alma maters Dartmouth College and the University of Maine. His leadership has been recognized by Fast Company, Ad Age, NASA, and the ITAS “100 Most Influential Leaders in Transportation” list. His insights have been featured in Forbes, Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, and on major networks including ABC, Bloomberg, CNN, and CNBC. Holding multiple patents across hardware, software, communications, security, and defense, Blair is also an astronaut-in-training and is scheduled to fly with Virgin Galactic. Outside of his professional pursuits, he is a dedicated father to three sons and the owner of a slightly anxious Weimaraner named Bella. Work With Us: Arétē by RAPID Health Optimization Links: Blair LaCorte on LinkedIn Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram  

Shrug family this week on Barbell Shrug Blair LaCourt. It's coming to the podcast, wildly fascinating conversation. We kind of hit on a wide range of topics, but he is the vice chair and border director at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. And we spent a bunch of time talking about anti-aging, kind of like his four core principles, and a lot of like a lot of people look at the aging side of things. They're talking about muscle death. He has a not a wildly different perspective, but a different framework.

an idea on connection with human beings that I think is very fascinating. But on top of that, he just took another company public. He's big into the AI world and all kinds of fun stuff. So this is, it's a little bit wandering, but wildly fascinating human being here. As always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That's where Dan Garner, Dr. Andy Galpin, are doing a free lab, lifestyle performance analysis. And you can access that at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Marvel Shug. I'm Andrews, Doug Lars, and Coach Travis Mash, Blair LaCourt.

We were, I had to stop you. Anytime I have to stop the guests from talking, we're in for a good show because that means got a lot of good stuff to say. First off, in your bio, it says you just had an IPO for $1.5 billion. That's a, the B is a level of business. Not many people get to. And I promise to the audience, we're not just going to talk about. about IPOs, but anti-aging as well.

But I'd love to, what company did you just take public? Sure. Well, it actually was a couple of years ago. So three years ago, I actually retired two years, well, a year and a half ago. But look, it was a, it was a company that meant a lot to me in the sense that it brought together a lot of things I'd done throughout my whole life. I've been, you know, I was head of strategy for one of the biggest hardware companies in the world's on Microsystem.

I was head of strategy, one of the biggest software companies were top four software companies in the world. I had done a bunch of force deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq with military technology. I had done a lot of stuff around logistics and invented a lot of technology for the global supply chains. And I had a chance to make, you know, the people say good news, bad news, who's to say? I got divorced.

It was a terrible time in my life. And I stepped off the track and I joined a bunch of guys that I loved. in a startup. And so I got a chance to take some to a company that had hardware, had software, had logistics, had military, had consumer, and take it to, take it to market. And today, you know, the technology is out there changing the world. So I would never have done that if I had not, my life had not been thrown into absolute chaos, worst time of my life getting divorced with three kids and so you just never know as the chinese proverb says good news bad news who's to say that happened to turn out very well but it was a it was a very long journey from

a you know a startup to a public company yeah and yeah go ahead Doug sorry that's good kind of gander said we're going to tell by anti-aging is probably the most applicable thing and an interesting thing for audience here but that that last company was on on autonomous vehicles and making them more safe and effective and reliable, et cetera? Right. But, you know, in reality, when you step back far enough, it was really about biomimicry, right, understanding the human body.

And it's funny, when we started to, you know, I had done this early in my career for logistics, but vision systems, what we're really doing is biomimicking the human eye. When you start to realize how you're buying, because we built targeting systems for all the military jets, right? So how do you actually find things or defend yourself against incoming faster than you would

with your human eye? once you start studying the human eye, you find that what it really does well is it actually has neuron spikes that guess really quickly. It jumps and it determines things. And the way at the base level through the demiglia is that it looks at size, speed, and vector. Big things moving fast towards me. And so when you develop systems for cars, what we were trying to do is find things to not kill them versus find things to kill them. But in doing that you had to understand why the human eye did that and it turns out it was attached to your parasithic nervous system and that that was the trigger for adrenaline so when we start to talk about

anti-aging what I'm going to tell you is that what you hear and what you see subconsciously have as much to do with how your body functions balancing your paris nervous system so although we were taking an acute version of human biology which was how to find and kill things or find in and protect yourself from things. In reality, it was really the key to how you could be healthier, which was it's okay to be stressed. Humans are made to stress.

They're made to stress. If you don't stress, you're dead. You will die. All muscle growth is because of stress and ripping it. All cognitive growth through neurons is by stressing the system and cognitive distance. Humans need to stress. On the other hand, they need to recover from stress.

And that is the key to parasympathetic balance. And that's the key to not only happiness in your life, but extending your health span and your lifespan. So while autonomous cars seem a long way from anti-aging, when I left there, that's why I took the job as Vice Chair of the Buck Institute, the number one institute in aging, is because I had been, my curiosity had been piqued. If we're a system of systems that is very similar to AI, but we're more sophisticated, how could I actually understand that? And that was where my journey started two years ago into this any agent. Before we dig into that, which I really want to do, I've always had a question about an eyeball that I really hope you can answer just because you've brought up eyeballs. Sure. You know, I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV. So my knowledge is very specific to what I was doing. Yeah. What's great about me is even if you confidently say something completely false, I will believe you.

All right. If you are driving down the road and you're looking straight, but then you look right without moving your head, you would think that your eyeball is panning. But it really happens is you have like a snapshot of looking forward. And then your next thing is the jumped over location that you are trying to look at. And it never made sense to me what physiological benefit there was to the eye not panning and what you see every...

So this is actually, it's a great question, and it was one of the most difficult questions we had to solve with autonomous cars. Now, listen, let me first say, you know, I know Elon Musk, I have a great respect for Elon Musk, and I know the truth, and I know he knows the truth. You know, Teslas don't have LIDAR systems or laser systems only because they were too expensive.

It was the right business decision to make, and then he signed this contract, said you never have to upgrade your car. So if he had said you had to use them, you'd have to bring your car and get it upgraded. But there's a reason why I bring up laser systems because the human eye actually guesses. That's how it actually figures out the...

So when you talk about how it's taking different snapshots, the key is the temporal rate. So it's all about timing. How many times can I take pictures and then I can weave them together so that I can guess what's changed and what hasn't changed. In fact, that's part of the hallucinatory function of your brain is because you expect to see what you just saw,

you're looking for slight differences. And when people put the thing that would trick you in it, you just recreate the scene assuming nothing has changed. That's why a Funhouse Mara can work because it's basically saying we can't do distance, right? So what we do is we guess by the size of the object. So if a Funhouse Mara changes what you see, it changes whether you think you're far away or you're close up.

So everyone thinks that we're taking actual pictures, but what we're really doing is taking multiple snapshots in a temporal, like in a time-based thing and stitching them together and guessing what's changed and what hasn't changed. And that's been the problem with autonomous cars is because when you're going 60 miles an hour and a car is coming 60 miles an hour at you, your brain is not fast enough to guess. And therefore, you have to use what we use in military jets, which is a laser. But even a laser, the speed of light is only so fast. so you can't get that feedback back in time.

And that has been really the challenge in autonomous cars, which is why Waymo and everyone cruise only function in cities at short speeds. But the human eye is still better than a laser, because the laser is more accurate, but can't guess as well. But we're getting closer, right? Wait, what is the state of autonomous vehicles right now? That was awesome. You just solved like a thing that I think about all the time

when I'm driving, like, why don't my eyes pan? So, great answer. It's because you're not seeing, you're guessing. And in fact, you know, after a rock, my face had to be reconstructed, and people didn't recognize me. And, you know, one of the things is, you know, people don't even store your face. They store eight different pieces of your face, and they put it together and they guess as fast as they can. That's why when you're walking down the street and you look at someone, you know, the aggressive piece of an alpha dog is that you look me in the eyes, that's telling me you want to fight me. So you will look away within three to four seconds if you don't recognize someone's face, right?

And so, again, think of your brain as this unbelievably powerful guessing machine. Now, the benefit to that is speed and creativity. The negative to that is that when you can't figure something else, you figure something else you have confirmation bias and you go to a pattern that you would have that you think you did. And that's why you kind of make mistakes because you're expecting to see confirmation bias what you're seeing. you know the you know all these lasers were developed basically back in the 60s and 70s by the military um but they are actually they are changing the way artificial intelligence actually guesses this is the thing that most people don't understand because when you talk about the state of the autonomous car business most people can look at the LLMs and how well the LLMs absorb information

and then guess right um they also can look at robots that have visual systems camera systems that can look at contrast and differences, things. What ties a human together that they don't have. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the Artei program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garland and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers,

award-winning athletes, billionaires, musicians, executives, and frankly, anyone who just wanted to be at their absolute best. Arte is not a normal coaching program. It's not just macros and a workout plan. It's not physique transformation and pre-imposed pictures. Arta is something completely different. Arate is incredibly comprehensive and designed to uncover your unique molecular signature, find your performance anchors, and solve them permanently.

You'll be working with not one person, but rather a full team of elite professionals, each with their own special expertise, to maximize precision, accuracy, and effectiveness of your analysis and optimization. plan. Artae isn't about treating symptoms or quick fixes. It's about unlocking your full potential and looking, feeling, and performing at your absolute best, physically and mentally, when the stakes are the highest. To learn more, visit Arteelab.com. That's A-R-E-E-Lab.com. Now, back to the show. What ties a human together that they don't have is the ability to actually change the temporal scanning rates and to actually make guesses. And that stuff, believe it or not, autonomous cars are actually helping AI do. So for the first time, I've seen it, usually the technology, my technology

has gone from the military. Like when you open your car, that was technology we used for sea containers, right? It usually goes from the military to commercial. For the first time ever, a lot of technology is now going from commercial back into the military. So all of the, you know, search, acquire, and act algorithms in Ukraine for drones are autonomous car algorithms. So the autonomous cars have actually dropped. When you shoot a javelin missile today, I have a LiDAR system we use in a car for $300. That's the equivalent of a system that used to cost $2 million to increase accuracy so I don't waste a shot.

Right. So the loop is closing much. quicker. So it's not just that AI is functioning in the commercial realm. It's being used in China everywhere, and it's being used in Ukraine and places like that. And so the feedback loops of being able to replicate the human brain are, it's intense right now. I mean, we just can't keep up with it. But again, we've walked away from why that matters to humans. But really, aging is all about managing your system of senses. So you went from the autonomous of the local world studying, studying visual systems and brain systems.

And then that kind of was a natural transition into wanting to learn more about aging in general before. That's why you moved on to the, I wanted to pick up my wife was a double PhD and psychoanalyst. And so we drove by the Buck Institute. And most people don't know what is. She goes, well, that's the number one institute in the world in aging. and I said, well, I could be on the board there, and she started laughing at me, and I was still dating at the time. So the first emphasis was a biological emphasis, is that I wanted to close her, so I did join. But once I got in there, I realized that it is really about system biology, which is system of systems.

And most of the stuff we were trying to solve in technology, and especially autonomous cars, was a system of systems. Do you process at the edge? Do you process in the car? Do you process in the cloud? and what systems actually feed into your ability to guess. And once I realize that, I will tell you the most important thing that I could say to you today is that mental health, your effectiveness and business and leadership

and physical health span are all based on the same thing, which is your ability to balance your parasympathetic nervous system between mental and physical. Now, a lot of people go, oh, that's just flow. It isn't. Flow is a state that you get into by doing that. But the reality is that everything you do, including your immune system protection from cancer, has to do with how your parasympathetic nervous system actually functions.

So you could give me anything, give me any of the trends, right, that are out there today and I will work your way back to how at the end of the day, it's really personalizing how you actually manage your parasympathetic system. Even one of my buddies, unfortunately, is going through cancer treatment right now. I can tell you that listening to classical music during chemo increases by 10 to 20 percent your effectiveness of how you kill cancer cells. The reason being that your ear doesn't like discontinent sounds,

the same way your eye doesn't like things that may be attacking me, because discontinuous sounds actually signal again, through your amygdala signal danger. And so if you can have resolving chords with classical music, it actually increases your brain's ability to calm down, and then increases the strength of your immune system. So a lot of these things which you think are random, people who know people are praying for them,

have a 25% increased a recovery after surgery. People who listen to classical music. They're not separate things. They're all about it's you stupid and you're different than everyone else in the world. So figure out how to get in touch with yourself and that's the way you're going to actually be stronger and that's the way you're ultimately going to connect to other people.

You know, Mr. Cort, when I was at the Limit Training Center in the 90s, there was a study where they wanted to see what types of music, you know, would be effective or would it not be effective at all. And, you know, classical music by far was shown to recruit the most muscle fibers. Whereas, like, you know, music, less rhythm, you know, less rhythmical music would hardly recruit. It maybe would probably shut. And it's amazing. You got access to that back. then because nothing has changed. The reason it helps muscle fibers is because it's helping you repair. Now, what I'll tell you is I used to run the world's largest live entertainment

company, right? So I ran the Olympics of Super Bowl, the Grammys, Academy Awards, ran most concerts over 2,000 people from U2 to Michael Jackson to have my favorite band ACDC and Metallica. When you go to ACDC and Metallica, it's not about repair, it's about activation. And so by having discontinuous music, which is loud, and it actually is, the chords don't resolve, but there's strong bass and guitar riffs, it actually activates you to actually have more adrenaline and activates your system. So there is different music for different times, but the key is when you're under attack, you want to be activated, right? When you're in the repair, you need to be not activated. and the issue isn't good or bad. It's are you doing the right thing at the right time?

In fact, one of our biggest partners is aura. And if you look at your aura ring now, and you'll see that they have a restorative calculation on it. So they'll watch your heart breathing and you're breathing, and they'll tell you how much of the day are you in restorative and how much are you in stress. Let me repeat. Anyone who is in stress dies.

Okay, you cannot be strong and survive physically and mentally. if you don't have some stress. Anyone who's stressed all the time dies. Okay? So it's about, you know, modulation, but it just sounds too simple. I just pulled mine up to make sure I'm not going to die. I'm good. Am I stressing you out?

Probably I am the worst guess because, you know, I'm uncontrollable. So I'm sure your stress level has gone up. So I'm going to demodulate down so you can take control again. Well, the one funny thing, watching the NHL playoffs this year, I could see two, there was like, on a nightly basis, two moments of stress in my day. It was like training in the morning. So like there'd be like 6.30, you're in stress. And then at like 9.30 at night. And it'd be like, what am I doing this causing all these problems at 9.30 p.m.

Edmonton Oilers, that's a problem. I can't, you can't do it. It's too stressful. So one of my best friends, George Mumford, was their performance coach. Oh, yeah. That was Michael Jordan's. Yes, he was Michael Jordans. I read his book.

Yeah, great, great guy. But also one of those stories of coming from, you know, he was Dr. Jay's roommate in college. That's how we got into this. He's a Dr. Jay fan, too. Yeah, and he got, you know, he had a few problems with, you know, like everyone. We all have our problems. And he had some problems with alcohol. and he had to find the center again, right?

And once he found the center, he found the secret. And once he found the secret, he was able to actually take these relationships he had and help them. Oh, man. He was amazing. That book is, his book about being the coach for the Bulls was amazing about, you know, helping them find flow and, you know, more than that. But, yeah.

Yeah, no, and he is a true, you know, a true compassionate human being. and part of the ability to be a great coach is the ability to connect and because he's authentic when you talk to him you guys are all welcome i do these uh like conferences like invite people on all my friends to come speak um you're you're welcome to come listen but you know when i leave that conference i think to myself i you know he's given me space he's given me space to think yes i i feel like what many people think about kind of like balancing their nervous system, uh, they immediately go into breath work. Yeah. Like that's like the first thought, everybody says, well, I should start meditating. Um, one, would you agree with that? And two,

like, are there, are there additional ways that you've seen that maybe people are just missing because they, they have this like obvious answer already pre-programmed in their brain that they need to sit down and breathe? Look, so what if we just assume we were an athlete and it was a system? And by the way, when you guys have all been athletes and you go back and think about this, you'll see the parallel is very, very clear, right? If you've been activated, right, the coach brings you to the side of the field and says, shake it off, shake it off, shake it off. So once your system has been activated and you want to calm down, like I tell people to give a speech, shake your arms, do some, you know, heal-ups, get some physical activity that releases the kinetic energy through the extremities,

right? Because if you're going to calm down, you need to calm down. So if you're already activated and you need to calm down, I would say that, you know, shaking and jumping, you know, is the best way to do it. If you're actually, if you have time, breath work is good because it's very difficult to actually think when you're doing block, block breathing. You're going one, two, three, four. You actually calm your mind and your body. So it's fine. But there's a ton of different ways. All you're trying to do is make sure that your brain and your body actually become re-aligned again. Now, breath is the most popular

because it's impossible physiologically to actually not have your breath affect your body. Now, shaking it out should affect your brain, but really it's just a release of energy, whereas breathing is the most common because it helps you to actually, your brain is affected when you go in through the nose and out through the mouth,

and when you're making a noise, you're signaling. So what I would say is it's just an easy one to do, not the only one to do. Positive visualization, you know, I was on the board of the Positive Coaching Alliance with Phil Jackson and Steve Kerr. We were all believed in the, you know, positive visualization can calm you down, even when you're not breathing. Why?

Because your brain doesn't know the difference between what you're thinking. And, in fact, saying things out loud to yourself does not make you crazy. Your brain actually takes that in as input, right? So, but think of it as breathwork is a tool in your toolkit. And if it works for you, that's great. Meditation works for some people. It doesn't work for me. But what you're doing is you're noticing that your brain and your body are out of sync.

Yeah. By the way, the mindful athlete is the book. The mindful athlete. Yep, you're right. That's exactly right. What are your thoughts on the performance side of things? Like you were talking about the music up, activation, kind of like bringing your, intensity higher um there was one uh there was at some point in my meathead career um and i don't want to

call it maturity because that's i don't like labels um where i realize that like i don't need to scream at the barbell to get excited and still lift big weights um i don't need to be like angry to do it i'm i'm able to almost be in a parasympathetic state but still do more than I've ever done in my life. Right, but that's where you have actually advanced to more of the zone-like thing. When you look at what the zone is, it's doing things that are hard and having stress at the same time that you're actually focusing. And so your body is deciding that it will eliminate.

I don't need the extraneous things. I'm in the zone. I'll focus at the higher level things. But, you know, when you look at a tennis player, you know, as they breathe out, screaming. I mean, do they need that or not need that? You know, again, if that helps you, I'm not saying that screaming when you're lifting weights is bad. What I'm saying is if you can't come down from that very quickly, that's bad. So if it happens to be that you can really get into the zone, that's awesome. If you need to get into the zone by activating the adrenaline,

then you scream or, you know, you do something that gets you there because you're trying to rip muscle and that once you rip that muscle, it's going to get bigger and you're going to advance. that what I found, and again, I don't like the word maturity either because my new wife uses that, and I think it's, I like to believe that being immature is actually an advantage in life to play, because again, you can have fun with it and, you know, you don't have to be serious all the time. But when you take a look at, you know, I spent a bunch of time with, you know, special forces and different ranks, and especially with the seals, one of the greatest attributes, is to plan so well, I mean, people talk about, you see it on TV, you know, it's shooting and all,

the whole point is not to shoot, because once you shoot, you can get killed by a moron, right? You never know what's going to happen, right? You want to get in and out before anyone knows what you do. But if you do have to, you want to be in the zone so everything slows down. So the key is to be very emotional and physical when you're in an activity, but to strip the emotion out when you leave. So if you're under high stress, be stress, feel everything, understand everything, don't go over the edge so that you're freezing up but be aware emotionally of what you're feeling and use fear for

your but as second you come out you have to bring it down so if you go lift weights and after in between every set you actually calm down i think that that's awesome it's hard to do um but i'm you know the fact that you can actually be in the zone when you're doing it that that's the higher level uh it's the biggest advantage but you know as competitive you know power lift your weight lift or if you can relax you know if you can internalize the energy and release it as needed like that becomes but even even think what yoga is you know when we go back down to our basics of system you know yoga isometric stress at the same time you're relaxing so you're breathing at the same time I mean that's why yoga's been around for thousands of years and why it has this theory now

some people will like yoga some people won't athletes sometimes think it's just about stretching you know people who are trying to heal themselves think of it as just but But again, we have to strip away and say, these are just tools. Could I use that tool? And if yoga can work for you where you can be stressed and breathe at the same time, it will go over into other parts of your life. You know, the cycle of stress recovery is very familiar to anyone that lifts weights and our audience certainly is, you know, into training. And everyone understands your breakdown muscle tissue. You recover.

It grows back. You can grow back stronger, more powerful, more muscular, et cetera. That certainly plays into aging, all the different ways that can happen. But at the highest level, what are the most modern theories or hypotheses of why we age at all or how to attenuate the process of aging? Look, so there's the one that no one wants to talk about, and then there's the core four. And I would say, I'll tell you what the secret is, and then I'll tell you the core four, but rather than repeat what everyone says, I'll give you what I think are two hacks in each of them.

But in order to understand why the core four, which are what fuel do you put in your body, which arguably is going to be the number one right it's arguably going to be number one the number two in the core four is going to be movement it's not exercise humans weren't made to exercise they weren't made to exercise they weren't made to exercise we exercise because we are we're sitting around all day we're made to move right so if you could move 15 minutes every hour then lifting weights is a friggin accelerator right if you don't and you you sit for eight hours a day and you then you lift at night it's not an accelerator. The third is maintenance, which is sleep and touch.

People don't talk about touch. And the fourth is the environment that you put yourself in. And so I'll go through the core four, which are much more familiar people. But in the military, we'd call it a force multiplier, the ability to refuel or logistics on the ground. It has a 10, you know, I'll say it's 20. The buck will say it's 10, 10 to 20 times force multiplier on the core 4, where those core 4 would be multiplied.

is going to be connection and purpose, okay? Because connection and purpose are all about parasympathetic nervous system. Humans are very different than other animals. We have two things that make us different in the way that we come together, and one has got to do with how we look at ourselves, and the second is how we look at other people.

And what I mean by that is that if you don't actually feel comfortable within yourself, which is there's a whole thing called the Johori window for anyone who's taking a psychology course, what you project to the tribe versus what you actually know about yourself internally. If you can't get in touch with who you really are and be vulnerable enough that people like you

for who you really are versus who you're projecting, then you will always have an issue subconsciously connecting. And the second is, how will I be accepted by the tribe? When people talk about social comparison on the Internet, it is built into our brain that young girls who see that they're not skinny, It's the equivalent of death because if you believe you're not going to be accepted by your tribe, then you'll either be kicked out or you'll be killed. And so that is not a fake thing.

When you do so, we all do social comparison. Is that guy making more money than me? Am I as in shape as that person? Do I, does people like me as much? That was designed into you. There's only two real main pillars in your brain. One is anything that goes through your amyglia, which is coming first, which is what are my senses telling me about danger? what are the patterns telling me about danger that is the first thing you think about now you go to your

executive function you try to override that stuff the reality is you can only override so much stuff why do people in the city actually have more stress than people not in the city because even though you know you're on the sidewalk and the car's going by you your subconscious still has to reprocess that because it still looks like a big object going very quickly so what what i would say about connection and purpose is that the most powerful thing in connection is this whole idea around the Johori window, what you're willing to share with at least one person about yourself that you don't like and how that person in a diatic relationship accepts you or doesn't accept you. So when I say it's about fear and love, love is really about do people, are people not only empathetic to me,

do they care about me? And you'll look around and go, that person cares about them. They were nice to me. That person cares about me. But the power of that is, do you believe they're compassionate to you? And the difference between empathy and compassion is your subconscious and conscious belief that by deed or action, when you're in trouble, they will help you, even if it's not helping them. Now, I want you to stop and think about that, and that you believe that they will help you. Now, in order to do that, and to find someone, at least one person, it can be more at any given time in your life you have to spend enough time with them and they have to actually know you well enough that you believe that and the biggest issue in the united states today is that

even when people believe my wife is compassionate she does care about me and she will help me you don't believe you deserve it which is back to this subconscious which is the jury window because there's things about yourself you haven't been able to share and you don't feel that she can love you because deep down you're not worthy and that has everything to do with how that how that you grew up and all of us have it. All of us have it between 8 and 12 years old, how we processed what love was and whether we were loved. And our parents aren't perfect, so no one's going to be perfect. Right. But that idea to be able to find in any given moment someone who loves you and you believe it is the number one predictor, the number one predictor, whether you look at the Harvard study over 80 years or you look at the tactical studies around people praying for you. There's actually a spot in your brain that the scientists call the God complex that lights up when you feel loved. When you pray or you believe in spirituality or you believe your love, this part, we don't know what it means, but we know that it lights up. And it turns out it's very similar to what lights up sometimes when people take a lucidogenic and they are calm enough to believe that they're connected to the world.

Right. And so that's the number one. The second is this whole idea around purpose. It's not what keeps you up at night. it was get you up in the morning life sucks buddha would say it's you know life is suffering and that's how you get to happiness your day is not going to be perfect right no matter what but do you what gets you up and what's your purpose there was a study done during the bosnian war that showed that lifespan went up by four years why because people the grandparents who take care of their kids didn't die they died

within four years after the end of the war they had purpose which is why the blue zones work right If you believe you have purpose to get up every day, then you actually calm yourself down and you actually focus. So connection and purpose are the force multiplier. You know, the number one cause of mental illness under 25 is loneliness. The number one cause of death, number one cause of death over 65 is loneliness. The number one cause of physical illness, inflammation-based chronic illness is loneliness. So stop fucking around, guy. This is, it's not mansy-pansy.

if you can't hug someone for 10 seconds you don't get the endorphins if you can't connect to someone and you didn't tell someone something you're afraid of or what you hate about yourself you will never connect you will never be loved so the number one thing to longevity is this now that affects all of those core four okay right so i just want to you know this is it sounds dramatic because it is we're killing ourselves and why our health span is lower than anyone else in the world in the United States is this level of disconnection. And I would argue we work a lot with the TIA. Everyone comes to us for our research, our basic research. We really were the leaders in autophagy, leaders in senescence, the leaders in ketosis. I can tell you the physical things that are happening, but you have to bring it to the system level to understand why they happen. Implemation chronic illnesses, we started 35 years ago.

We were the first people. We invented geroscience and we said aging illnesses are an outcome. they're not aging and all of the illnesses that you consider aging illnesses diabetes one two and diabetes three which is Alzheimer's all of the illnesses like cancer heart disease chronic inflammation based and what causes chronic inflammation oh my god your immune system is overactivated so number one it can't attack new things and number two it's tired and it causes misreplications in cancer it causes plaque and heart disease so it is about calming down because when you're calm your inflammation system can rest even when you're sick so that is to me

the secret and you know when you're training like you trained in an elite place think back to a lot of things they tried to get you to do and they were all about figuring out how to calm yourself to get higher performance yeah uh you briefly mentioned hallucinogens there i was going to ask is one of the reasons why MDMA is so effective is it just you're referencing the Johari window like it just allows you to be honest enough and vulnerable enough with another person to create a deep enough connection to to walk away having more peace of mind i am not a doctor and my wife would tell you just she's got res you know she's got issues because she thinks every time you do something you got to be careful who you're dealing with if you're on mdama you got to deal with someone who's

kind and you know and when you're on you know something else you know you need a a guide to do it. So let me just put my qualifier. This is my interpretation as a non-doctor is that if you can find a way to actually be honest with yourself about your subconscious and who you are and accept yourself and the trauma that you've been through or you can connect with someone else in a group environment, I truly believe that those are short-term bonuses that allow you to get to a different level. But just like training, that itself doesn't make you better. It gives you a chance to open up a window and then you have to have the discipline to carry it out so are they next jump starts i think i've seen people make unbelievable and when you have an acute injury

maybe that jump start that trauma you needed to get rid of it but i would be reticent to say that that is a a regime that is a it's it's you know something that you can do but you know we like for instance you know your users or your listeners won't want to hear this because we don't like to say it because our board members scream at us because you can't raise any money if you say it but look alcohol is a poison it's a neurotoxin right especially after 60 years old it's really bad okay now when would we say that alcohol is acceptable because we had to really sit down and think about it well there's always a trade off right between if you're going to starve to death you eat something that's probably not good for you but it gives you calories and you live with it

um if you you know for instance alcohol other than tequila which is a is a is a a stimulant. Most alcohol is a depressant. So what does it do? It takes down your inhibitions and allows you to connect or allows you to do things that you may wouldn't have done. You've got to be careful with that. But if you're an environment, if you drink and you're happy, the effect is five times higher and the downside is lower. If you're an environment where you go and sit in a room and you're depressed and you just want to forget about things, all of it is negative. Okay, although you do get a collapse, right? You know, that's not, it's not a win. It's not a good trade to make. So if you're going to be with people and you're in a good mood and you're going to do it in moderation,

then you're going to get the biggest impact out of that calming down and connecting with other people. And that theoretically, if you looked at the blue zone stuff, connection should offset it. But you've got to be very careful. So that's a long answer to a short question. So I don't have to be sued by someone. Sure. I mean, another... I don't know, a single person that has, like, stopped drinking, maybe not, like, quit completely. You know, they'll have, like, a celebratory beer or glass of wine or something.

But every person in my life that I know that has made a very conscious effort to not drink would never go back. Yeah. It's right now, it's the lowest level in United States history. it's 54% people drink now again the cultural emphasis on drinking you can't watch a movie that when someone's sad they're not drinking when they're happy they're not drinking so it is really difficult um i you know i just went away for a weekend and i i didn't drink and i it was i just noticed how many times it was a chance to drink um because it's very profitable now i want to make an analogy to you um this capitalism is awesome but capitalism with no restraint is not. And so just the same way that you're being marketed to to drink all the time, you're being marketed to for longevity cures. And because there's money to be made.

So you've got to be really careful, right? There's a reason why the Internet has blown up with these things. And you have to be, like, so for instance, CGMs have been around for a long time. I think one of the things everyone should do is CGM to see what, you know, spikes their insulin because that's what causes insulin resistance and what's, it's what. it causes inflammation in your body, which is what we already said causes most of these illnesses. But you will see everywhere that these programs are, you know, they're just selling them off itself. Some of them are good and some of them are. And you have to be very careful because you

have to be diligent to see what tracks. So have you guys, have all of you guys done CGMs, constant glucose monitors? Yes. So you know that you have to be careful. Like you have to do it for at least a couple months, you know, because you have to see, if I work out in the morning, what happens when I eat strawberries for breakfast, when I don't work out, because your system biology is going to be different than other people's. I can eat rice, but pasta doesn't, pasta spikes my inflammation and my allergic reaction. Why? I don't know, but it does, right? So, CGMs are a great way of fine-tuning what's working for your body, but you have to pay attention. If you went to the

internet you'd say oh there's a program that does that for me and it's just not they're they're selling because they're making money yeah nobody wants to die so of course yeah of course it's a great it's a trigger yeah you know circling back for the conversation about about connection again most of our audiences is pretty up on on working out they with weights they go for runs they're they're into being stronger and having good cardiovascular fitness etc but one thing i've said on the show many times is that regarding kind of the down regulation piece and just having calm peace of mind etc i train every day uh but i've also done jiu jitsu and wrestling and martial arts essentially my entire life and there there is a noticeable and tangible difference and how i feel

post training when i leave jiu jitsu and i think a part of it is that i've been in this like one hour long prolonged hug you know with a dozen people and that i just that that level of physical contact for me uh is is so yeah i'm telling you this is where it's going to to sound very simple to you when you look at system biology. So take a look at fuel. What fuel do you put in a machine? Is it diesel? Is it a non-deasel? If you haven't, and I'm going to get to the maintenance thing, and you're going to find out that touch is a huge freaking deal. Because the biggest organ in our body is our skin. And that connection, it's not just the physical touch, it's being in the energy field of someone else who you're aligned with, which is why sometimes

when you're in a yoga class and everyone feels like they're aligned, you walk out and you feel better. Why? Because you actually benefit from the energy of the other people. But let's look at the core four and how you, everyone knows what they are, but how you would do them in a more effective way. When you look at fuel, the first thing is you need to know what fuel is good for you. If you haven't done a biome, now again, you can do a skin biome, you do a mouth biome, you can do a stomach biome. We know the most about the stomach biome. So I would say for 250 bucks, you can do a stomach biome or a food sensitivity test. Find out what food is working for you and what isn't. Now, sometimes a food you eat too much of is going to have a six-month allergic reaction

because your body is pushing back and saying, my biome doesn't want any more of this, it needs diversity because a more diverse biome is actually stronger, right? So first thing, do you do a biome? Second thing is do you do a CGM, constant glucose monitor? What foods do I eat that spike my insulin. Now, why am I suggesting those two things, which would cost you about 400 bucks if you did them? Because without information about your body versus someone else, it's all bullshit. I was a co-owner of Nutra System in the old day. We made a lot of money. I also was a co-owner of Eitrim. Okay, the most effective diet came out of Sweden. The first one that was you could write a prescription for. Okay, no one has the same diet because

no one is the same. So for some people, you know, a ketone diet may works for some of Mediterranean. You've got to start with understanding who you are. So my first thing with fuel is to say what kind of fuel works with your system. So maybe a bio, maybe a CGM test. Then obviously there's things in fuel that you know are going to be good for you. Anything that comes out of a window or is made in a plant or you can buy at a gas station is not going to be good for you. Why? Because if it's made in a plant in less than eight hours and it's shipped more than two days and it's served in a place that has long shelf life or has low margins, it's going to be unhealthy because it's going to be processed. It's just the way it is, right? So processed food is going to be worse than

eating, you know, fresh food, which is why, you know, in Europe, you know, things come from a shorter distance and the food's healthier. So first is test yourself. The second is eat, you know, the right kind of foods. And the third is the number one cause of chronic-based inflammation illnesses, and they just came out with something on heart disease, it's not cholesterol, it's sugar. Okay, it's sugar stupid. Now, why are we so fucked in the United States around sugar? Why is our health span and our lifespan 14-year difference, number one in the world? We die 14 years before we die. When the average person in the world is five years and the top nations are less than two, they have healthy lives and in the last couple of years they'd why is it because we hate the

fucking Russians what happened after world war two was we decided that they were not our friends and we decided through the CIA and USAID to go to the agricultural department and say we need to produce more food because we need to use food as a weapon and if we're going to control countries around the world we're going to give them food because those leaders will align with us because we don't want to have boots on the ground, we're going to give them food. That's where USAID came from. It was a CIA-based program to make friends after World War II.

Now, if you're going to actually produce more food, you've got to incent people to do it. So the Agriculture Department increased the number of carbohydrates on the triangle. What that did was, in the 1950s, was increased production of carbohydrates like soy, corn, and wheat by 400% in the United States. states, we became one of the most efficient natures in the world at producing carbohydrates. Well, what leaked out of the system? The dinosaurs get off the friggin' island. What happened is the average American over those 10 years picked up 1,000 calories per day of carbohydrates because

it was available and cheap, right? We had a lot of stuff and it was cheap. Now, that was only the first shoe. What happened later in the 1980s is that there was a big battle between candy and soft drinks and everybody else because they were selling you know they were selling high and so they you know the sugar lobby went to department agriculture and said don't count sugar as calories because it hasn't been processed yet and by the way it's not us it's them it's fat and so what you saw in the 1980s is a is a huge underground movement to make fat the enemy and what we know now is fat is not the enemy but it had what it did this when the second shoe dropped is Everything went low fat, no fat.

And when you do that, you make stuff taste really bad. So 98% of processed goods include injected sugar, including the beef that you buy in your supermarket, okay, to make it taste better when they take out the fat. So not only did we not think of sugar as the enemy, but sugar actually expanded its market share dramatically, which is why in processed foods that wouldn't taste good or have preservatives in them, you're going to find hidden sugar, which is why now they've started to say, what's the sugar content and what's the added sugar content on the nutrition label. So what I'm telling you is that this is what happened to our diet. It's not a conspiracy in the way you think that

someone was trying to do it. They were trying to make money or they were trying to control the Russians. And unfortunately, because we didn't pay attention to it, it gets out of control. And so the number one thing you can do in food is to eat less sugar, right? So for only four things, I'm telling you, do two tests, and then, you know, look at fresh foods versus processed and look at sugar. When you look at movement, which I purposely don't say exercise, we owned 1,800 gyms at one point. When I was at TPG, we owned 24-hour fitness, we own lifetime fitness. I know a lot about gyms, right? I still, I have a company called Active Fitness. We do most of the gyms for corporations, and we also do for hospitals, for better outcomes,

and we do now for senior centers. Gyms are great. Jims worked because they also were connection. I went to the gym to see my buddies. And what happens to guys later in life is we have better outcomes for connection when we're in college and we're younger, and we have less outcomes later because we get limited to work because we're working so much,

and women end up with more connections because with kids and community and things like that. So if we don't find particular activities that bring us together, we spend a lot of time with our family, which is great, but we don't spend a lot of time. The average man in the United States has less than one best friend, and they define it as the people that have known the longest, not how much contact they have with them. So gyms are frigging awesome, you know, for a couple reasons. But when you think about movement, there's two things that matter. The trade, why the aura ring and why the Apple Watch now signals you, they haven't been moving it up, is because every study that we've seen has said that if you don't move 15 minutes every hour,

it's like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. So not moving for six hours, but working out for two hours at HIT is a terrible trade. You'll die. It is the worst trade that you can make, right? Because your body is meant to move because the toxins will sit in your organs and your joints, and it will cause inflammation. So even getting up and walking around the office as you're talking or standing desks

and moving and swaying back and forth is really important. That's why when you take a look at a study of hunter gatherers and you take a look at us today, they didn't exercise more than us. But they went out and hunted and they ran away from things that were going to kill them.

And the rest of the time they had sex and sat around the fire and played drums and they didn't worry. And so it wasn't about the amount of exercise. It was about the amount of movement that they had and the amount of connection that they had that allowed them not to have to exercise. So number one is movement.

Number two, you guys all know it. We lose 10% of our muscle after 50. If we don't build muscle, it's the number one thing. And why? Guess what muscle does? It absorbs glucose. It absorbs glucose. So it eats the sugar that you need.

So you have to have muscle, not just because it connects to your bones and makes them stronger, not because it reduces fragility, but because it provides a very important system function, which is absorb glucose and to actually change your system biology, right? So again, and when you look at this, it's all about movement, it's all about muscle mass, and it's all about fragility in not getting, if you fall down or if you hit your head, you'll be dead within 18 months. Okay, that's the statistic. Now, is that causal, or is it correlated? It's correlated because what it's telling you is that you're not doing enough things that are actually protecting your body. So you eventually fall down, but it's because you're, you were deteriorating anyway.

When you talk about maintenance, which is where you, you, you've asked that question, listen, sleep obviously is maintenance. But it's not the thing that you think the most. The studies now will show you, of course, eight hours is a norm. They did a study in the ad agency about the most beautiful people in the United States. Now, the way your brain works is there's nine levels of intimacy. So what you are attracted to is what's familiar to you. Okay, which is why prejudice is either built in or not built in. Saying that you like, if you're white and saying you like a black person is, is not going to work. Because the way you connect to someone is getting down the levels of intimacy. So if it's just on the way someone looks, that is your first

sense of fear. You walk down the street, someone looks different than you or someone looks scary, you will be scared. And you'll actually take, if you just say, I'm going to like someone that looks different than me it doesn't work you have to interact with someone that's different than you you have to find out they're the same as you right you have to work your way down the levels of intimacy to the point where you go fucking i love that guy yeah you don't remember that they look different than you right that's why guys struggle to make friends so much because if we don't have a dragon to slay we can't stand the surface it drives me well personally And I think this is like a very masculine trait is that you just need a problem to solve together and sitting around and like it's exactly is like it is the worst thing.

And I actually feel like there's an op like if you try to put two magnets together and they push away, that's how I feel with people that I have surface level relations. And look, I'm not saying that this is, you know, look, everyone has X and Y. Okay. So some I'm probably more feminine, right, in some ways. but I'm still male dominant, right? And so when you look at it, the average male, go back to that thing about having one friend, right? And you define it by who you know the longest. And by the way, the conversations are usually short

and they don't have a theme. The average female has three to five, what they'll call best friends. They are not determined by how long they've known them. They're determined on what they talk about and how often they talk to them. And by the way, they rotate. So just society and your natural inclination.

So to your point about being a male, if you're a male and you have a lot of testosterone, you can only look at someone in the eye for three to five seconds walking down the street before they look down or you look down. That's built into you in your biology. You have to stop yourself, look them in the eye, and you have to smile. That is actually hugely beneficial to your system biology. To smile at someone, and when they smile back, that makes you feel safer. So to your point, we don't connect as quickly on the surface,

whereas women tend to find either through kids or find through looks, they find people that they like much quicker and they go down those nine levels of intimacy that you need to get down. So when we're talking about this connection and then we move it over into maintenance, you will sleep better when you feel safer, right? But sleeping is more about knowing when you should sleep because this whole thing around who's beautiful, they couldn't figure out who's beautiful. because when you take all the different features and put them together, no one has all of them. And so what you really have to do is you're different than everybody. You have to find what's beautiful to you.

And the same thing is about sleep. What is the way you sleep? Your chronotype about, and you can, by the way, do your genetics for $250, it will tell you your chronotype. It will tell you when you probably should go to sleep because some people should go to sleep at 7 p.m., some at 10, and some at 12. And when you go to sleep,

if you're aligned with that, your quality of your sleep is better. You'll get better deep sleep and better REM sleep, but your maintenance crew knows when to come in. If you're a factory and they have to do maintenance, if you go to bed five days a week at the same time, that's more important than anything. Because your body knows when to come in and repair. You do a power washer your brain,

your muscle fibers return. So finding your right chronotype and doing it five days a week is number one. Now, you may find, by the way, it's not what time you wake up in the morning. I mean, it's not what time you go to bed. It's what time you wake up in the morning. So let yourself naturally wake up, and that's your chronotype. Right.

So it really is playing around with when you go to bed is the most important thing to you because you will automatically wake up on your chronotype. But you have to figure out when you need to go to bed, which will tell you how many hours you need to get. So when you go to bed, what your chronotype is and being consistent with it. And then getting no one needs less than six hours sleep. There's 1% of people. getting at least six or seven or sometimes eight, depending on who you are, is important.

But the second piece that no one talks about is touch. Do you hug for more than seven seconds? Because that's seven to ten seconds is how long it takes where your energy feels and to get the endorphins. You are within three meters of someone in their energy field. We did a lot of studies early on on the POS of Coaching Alliance, but also, you know, Positive Coaching Institute. We did a lot of studies on being in a negative work environment. I am Anders Varner at Anders Varner and we are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged and make sure you get over to aretaylab.com.

That is the signature program inside rapid health optimization where you can go and experience all the lab lifestyle performance testing analysis and coaching to help you optimize your health and performance and you can access all of that over at aretay lab.com friends we'll see you guys next week. Thank you.