Barbell Shrugged - Why Magnesium is the Secret to Better Sleep, Less Stress, and Increased Recovery w/ Wade Lightheart, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash Barbell Shrugged #594

Episode Date: July 14, 2021

3-Time Canadian Natural Bodybuilding Champion, Wade Lightheart, is one of the world's premier authorities on Natural Nutrition and Training Methods. Having majored in Sports Science at the University of New Brunswick, he has authored numerous books on health, nutrition and exercise which have sold in over 80 countries. Wade is sought out by athletes and high-performance oriented individuals worldwide for his advice on how to optimize their health and fitness levels.   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   Why magnesium is the secret to better sleep Overcoming anxiety using magnesium Why finding a full spectrum magnesium is so important Deep sleep and performance training How to support the brain and body through better sleep BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Mentorship Application: https://bit.ly/DDMentorshipApp   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   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, we are talking to Wade Lightheart from BiOptimizers. You hear us talking about his products, the magnesium breakthrough, all the time. Talking about the Masszymes product that they created, one of my favorite digestive enzymes. This week on the show, we are talking about why magnesium is the secret to increasing and optimizing your sleep, overcoming anxiety using magnesium, why full-spectrum magnesium from Bioptimizers is so important in making sure that you are getting all seven forms of magnesium and how to support your brain and body.

Before we get into the show, I got to tell you about our friends over at Organifi. Most of us could use more energy in our day, but caffeine can only do so much. At some point, we need to look at the root causes of our fatigue. It turns out two main factors are low energy and chronic stress and a lack of nutrition. Organifi creates delicious superfood blends that address both of these problems.

They use adaptogenic herbs and mushrooms to help balance cortisol levels Organifi creates delicious superfood blends that address both of these problems. They use adaptogenic herbs and mushrooms to help balance cortisol levels associated with the stress, and they make it easier to add more nutrients into your day. You simply mix a scoop into water or the plant-based milk of your choice and enjoy a natural boost any time of the day. Friends, I've been telling you for four years, every single morning, how do I start my day? Organifi Greens. That's the answer. You got to get the greens. You got to get the micronutrients, the vitamins and minerals to fuel all the processes that go on inside your body that you don't even know exist. It all starts with micronutrients. So get over to Organifi.com forward slash drug to save 20%. Organifi.com forward slash drug to save 20%. And I got to talk about our friends over at Bioptimizers, Magnesium Breakthrough, Mag Breakthrough. Mary wasn't getting

enough sleep. Every night she struggled with poor sleep and restless legs, but then she made a small change. And one month later, everything was better. And it was all because she started taking Magnesium Breakthrough by Bioptimizers, the only organic, full-spectrum magnesium supplement that includes seven unique forms of magnesium. Mary left a five-star review saying, I'd give this 100 stars if I could. Within one month of use, I went from daily struggles with restless legs, constipation, and poor sleep to no struggles with any of that. I know it sounds dramatic and far-fetched, but it's true. And Mary is not the only one getting better sleep after taking Magnesium Breakthrough. Amanda says, I fall asleep much faster

and stay asleep now until normal waking hours. You have a customer for life. And Bill says, on the first night of taking Magnesium Breakthrough, my deep sleep jumped two hours, which has been the highest reading so far from my aura ring. Listen, if you're having trouble falling asleep

and staying asleep, one of the best things you can possibly do is start getting enough magnesium. But please do not run to the store and buy your first magnesium supplement you find. Most magnesium supplements use only two of the cheapest synthetic forms. And since they're not full spectrum, they won't fix your magnesium deficiency or help you sleep better. There are actually seven unique forms of magnesium, and you must get all seven of them if you want to experience its calming sleep enhancing effects that's why i recommend magnesium breakthrough by bio optimizers simply take two capsules before you go to bed and you'll be amazed at how much better you sleep and how much more rested you feel when you wake up for an exclusive offer to barbell shrug listeners go to

magbreakthrough.com forward slash and use the code shrG10 during checkout to save 10%. And make sure you use the code SHRUG10 at checkout. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson. And from BiOptimizers, Wade Lightheart. You're like a full-time celebrity on Barbell Shrugged now. Once a year, we got to come in and check out how life is with you. The last time we talked, today on Barbell Shrugged,

we're going to be talking about magnesium. And I got to talk to you about the dreams I had when I started taking magnesium before I went to bed. The last time we had you on, we were like, we were just getting into quarantine. We were just talking about how you had moved out to Arizona, I believe. Correct. You were on your back porch doing banded workouts because all the gyms had closed and you were like, no, no, I'm a real fitness person I can't be out here with bands how's the last year been how are things crazier than a sack of hammers

so good which is great because now I'm just literally a couple miles from our first podcast when we we met you're back in LA but yeah off in in Lincoln. So I'm now just off Abbott Kinney. I've got the bio home. So it turned out really well. I went to Arizona, came back. My area that I was living in was just destroyed with the homeless situation and violence. I was going to say, if you're on Abbott Kinney right now, you're probably within like three blocks of some sort of gigantic tent city right now. Yes. And just literally down the street, a half mile is not even as is the like, I'm right on the beach at Venice. And so it's very fascinating to see this. I'm in kind of this little, I don't know, it's kind of like a little palm tree bubble or something that I'm living in.

We'll have to get you guys over. I call it the bio home. I've got a gym on the roof. I've got my studio downstairs. I'm not in my studio at the moment. I'm in another, because it's four floors here. I've got filming going on in the studio right now. I've got a film team and a studio team.

I'd love to have you guys over. But yeah, it's been crazy. But we found a way to survive and then thrive. And things have never been better at Bioptimizers. We're helping more people. We're getting the message out about how to deal with anxiety and stress, which has gone rampant. Magnesium is a big part of that. And yeah, just great to be here to see if we can help alleviate some suffering out there. And I cut you off pre-show because we were talking about a lot of the stress and anxiety and i was like stop we gotta we gotta talk about this on the show that people need to know because uh as we were all trapped in our houses and the only real communication we had

with the world was through the internet social media and then if you escaped your phone for a minute you turn the tv on to like mainstream news and it really looked like with the end of society was coming like we all had no clue what was going on nobody believed the same thing it was just constant chaos um have you been have you looked into kind of some of the, what the last year has done to people's health? 30 pounds is the, I think is the average weight gain, which interesting enough, 30 pounds is the average weight gain. So if you think about that on the average person being somewhere between 150 and 200 pounds, let's say, and now extrapolate 30 pounds on top of that. That means there's a lot of people that put on 40, 50, 60.

And I've dealt with people like that, very successful people who just really came undone. That's one thing. I think with the economic components, there's been certainly an increase in anxiety and stress across the board. It glued into blue lights on TVs and getting emotionally activated through the politicization of human challenges, the politicization of the mitigations that have been implemented with the pandemic, the fights. And what you're seeing is a lot of the division. What I'm seeing as a general product of all of this is division. We have now and when people are stressed, you go into your lower brain center, the fight or flight that you are under a chronic stress. What happens is you start running a hair trigger so for example

when they deal with military guys if they've been in a high stress situation after they they're assessed by psychologists and then they're pulled out of that if they're feeling that they're starting to go undone right this is an unprecedented sort of externalized stress what's unique about this stress this is not like stress, hey, we're in the gym and we are engaging in a workout and we're putting a controlled amount of stress to produce in the body. We're talking about an ongoing and ever-present stress that's hitting us socially, economically, biologically. And what we've done as mitigations is we've, in my opinion, we've done everything backwards. We put people indoors. We've reduced people's immune systems.

We haven't put them around other people. We've taken away for many people, the source of their economic certainty, which is a big factor in stress factors. So what do we have? We have everybody living in their amygdala, their lower brain center, where every single thing is seen as a threat because the overarching feeling is, I don't know if I'm going to make it in life. I don't know if I can support my family. I don't know if I can walk out on the street and be healthy. And you see it, people yelling at other people because they're not wearing a mask, people saying everybody needs to be vaccinated. other people saying you can't be vaccinated that's crazy you know travel like and it's gone totally bananas and what that leaves is analysis paralysis and a growing anxiety and people lying in their bed

at night looking on their phone with the nasal social media and going, I can't believe Mary's saying that. You're fighting your phone. It's like, wait a minute. Is that really affecting my life? And it is. And it is not because of what's happening, but I think because of a very poor response to what's happening, but I think because of a very poor response to what's happening.

If you look at my Instagram, you'll easily see this. But when the pandemic hit, I very specifically was like, I do not want to just be sitting in my house on social media with nothing to do, so to speak. My kids are home. They're not in school. I have to be at home more or less all day long. There's nowhere to go. And so I started reading real books again and really just like got way off of social media where I was only posting, you know, probably to the detriment of my online popularity, but I was only posting like, you know, once or twice a month, not very often at all. And that was a good condition that I put in place to avoid the trap of being sucked into too much technology and have really enjoyed getting back to reading real physical books. Have you put any conditions in your life to help buffer the downsides of too much technology?

Yeah, you know, I think I went through the scale. I think I went deeper into the rabbit hole, certainly, to start this whole journey. I think, you know, I moved away from what I felt was the localized threats because at the first, we didn't know what was happening. And I moved to a relatively small bubble, if you will, that I operated out of for a period of time. And then having gathered a bunch of information, I started to get more involved. But what I did find is I was doing less physical socializing and being an extroverted type personality. I

derive a lot of energy and enthusiasm and connection by being in proxy to other people. And so I think that need personally got more involved in social media, more involved in watching the political debates and the potential mitigations and then, you know know trying to seek out contrary positions because i always believe that it's important to chip away at one's own biases you want you before you have an opinion you want to you want to carefully consider its opposite first to see you know where am i wrong what am i not thinking about and it's very hard to determine an accurate assessment i do believe ultimately everybody needs to make a decision yourself. And I'm more of a libertarian on that. I don't think

if you want to stay hold up in your house forever and take as many vaccines as suggested, hey, power to you. But if you're going to tell me that I can't do that, I have an issue with that. And so I think that we need to go back to the freedom of the individual. And if it is something that is going to destroy everybody or destroy all the people who aren't safe, those people are going to get wiped out first. I don't buy into the story that my church or things is going to kill grandma. We're all going to die. And I think we're living in this world like we're not going to die or that we're not going to die. And I think we're living in this world, like we're not going to die, or that we're not going to suffer or, and so I go, yeah, I'm willing to accept a certain amount

of risk, because I know that eventually, the risk of dying is 100%. Yeah. But the risk of, of not living, I think is a deeper risk. And so, and not everybody shares that. So anyways, I went in deeper and then now I've done what you've done. I've stepped back a little bit more from the integrations and I've sought out physical books, which have been really nice. I'm putting in cutoffs on, okay, off the phone time.

And I've been using the phone, the time trackers, you know, to say, oh, we're over one hour a day on Instagram. Yeah, I'm not on Instagram other than I do an IG live once a week. There you go. That's all I do Instagram. I do take in a lot of information off YouTube but that's usually when I'm walking around. I try to listen to intelligent people who have an area of expertise to gather information so that doesn't really count because it's kind of like reading while I'm doing other things but even that I started taking away from that. I started

leaving my phone at home and going out into the world without my phone. You recognize that there's not a lot of quiet time in your life. My wife and I just spent a week out in the mountains. And it was the first time we had felt bored. And it was like, oh, this is it. We're totally bored right now. This is incredible. We're not going to try and do anything because we don't want to get in the way of feeling bored right now. Like this is amazing.

Hashtag boredom is under underrated. Yeah. Right. The one thing that I think, and I'd love to hear your opinion on this because, you we always hear like stress is this leading killer stress leads to inflammation so stress leads to a a host of problems yet when it comes to understanding what stress does to our body i don't think many people understand like why it leads to inflammation cancer all all of these things. Can you walk us through like why having all these external stressors coming at us and what it does to us inside leads to so many problems? You know, it's interesting because I was just in this conversation

with a friend of mine this morning in regards to that she underwent a contest. During this, she decided that she was going to go into a bikini competition. And she's four years old and had a couple of kids and all that sort of stuff and went into it, did extraordinarily well. It was very difficult, won her divisions and all that sort of stuff and did really great.

But during that, some other issues that she wasn't aware of before came up from a health perspective. Now, the underlying causes of these health conditions were present in her life before she did the contest. In other words, if you look at Sele's stress response mechanism, it's not stress is the problem in fact if you didn't have any stress you would die there is the optimal amount of stress and as training people we look

at implementing optimal levels of stress balanced by the periods of recovery recovery being rest nutrition and things that switch you out of the fight or flight response into the rest and relax response right that's that's essentially what training optimization is and as people who are on the bleeding edge we're always looking at ways to maximize the amount of stress that we can implement in our lives as trainers and athletes and people in that area, but balancing it with a superior amount of recovery so that we progressively move towards our goal. That's why it's called progressive resistance training or areas of expertise or development of skills related to athletic endeavor, which involve the repeated stress of various components. Now, so we understand that,

and I think that gives us an advantage as trainers in the athletic world because we're looking at that. Now, if your athlete gets cancer, if your athlete goes through a breakup, if your athlete is in a situation with an injury or they go under some economic situation or psychological or there's some impairment that's outside of the training parameters a high performance trainer starts to mitigate the training load and the expectations you may not be able to alleviate you might not get to that ceiling right as every high performance athlete will understand is you know trying to achieve a gold medal is not just about do you have the capabilities of the athletic skill to do that

but as all the conditions lined up perfectly on the way to the performance of that event that you show up on your day at your very best that's better than everybody else. So there's a lot of factors that maybe the top 10 people in the world, maybe all of them could potentially win on that given day if the circumstances was right. But how do you manage those circumstances is a big part of it. And we see Tom Brady, probably the best example of someone who can manage or LeBron James as people who can manage an incredible amount of stress on all levels. Now, let's deal with the population at large, which we're dealing with. We have a massive array of technological, biological, economic, and social stressors that have been implemented in the last 12, 13 months since the start of this pandemic. We have absolutely no idea how to manage all of those

individually or simultaneously. And they've just washed in and have upset the apple cart. So it's like the athlete that, you know, he's ready to play in the sporting game, walks out on the field, he caught a cold. His wife texted him before he went on the field that she's leaving him with the kids, right? His lawyer called him and said that he's got a lawsuit from the people that own him that he's got a contract with

and they're dropping him. And he's been falsely accused of some sort of misconduct in his personal life, which is all over the media. And just before he walks onto the field falls down on down on the strain and has this massive swelling in his leg and he's expected to walk out on the field and win the game what's the chances that person's going to be able to do it zero and yeah we're doing something that's even bigger than that because with those things those are kind of direct and singular influences that

could create an anxiety or the requirement of a stress response. But now we have all of these unconscious things that are creating these unregulated feedback loops that are putting people into a continuous state of fight or flight. And in Saley's response, you go to a position of exhaustion and when you go to a position of exhaustion what happens is that anything that may have been present inside the system that was doing a little sucking on the system maybe you had an infection maybe you had an alley maybe you weren't sleeping properly and your recovery levels aren't good or your neurotransmitters not not quite the best because now you've gone off your diet, your microbiomes off. All those things now become amplified and the potential for one of those to get out of control is highly likely. And so

it's almost impossible for the ordinary citizen to possibly mitigate all of these issues. So the key answer is you need to get yourself out of the fight or flight situation. Recognize everything that I can do both personally in my life to remove that. Like we've figured out, hey, we've got to get off social media. Maybe we've got to get away from my phone. Maybe I've got to get some quiet. Maybe I can read some books. Maybe I can do these things to stop the input of emotionally stressful situations

that we don't really have an ability to change, and what are the things that I can manage in our lives? And I think, you know, we're a year into it. Some of us have done all right, but I think a great deal haven't. Which is a great segue kind of into why we're having you on the show today, talking about magnesium and inflammation, kind of lowering blood pressure, all these signs and symptoms that over time start to stack on top of each other that create really big health problems. Just Bioptimizers as a company, I still take mass signs every single day of my life. That's so cool.

I wake up, I don't know how many people still take mass signs. single day of my life. I wake up. I don't know how many people still take mass signs. I hope tons of them. It's a ton. But I still take mass signs every single day. It's so great. But I just recently started taking the magnesium product probably about two months ago. And my sleep is fantastic.

It's been phenomenal to take about 30 minutes before I go to bed. As a company, what are kind of the high-level goals when you guys are creating supplements and coming across the magnesium product, solving problems in people's lives that they may not see in black and white in front of their face every day. But over time, you know, these things start to stack up and really harm people's health. Our mission in the company is simple. It's to end physical suffering and activate

biologically optimized health. Matt and I were personal trainers when we started this company way back in 2004. And we fell in love with helping people overcome their challenges physically. And then that was both in training and nutrition. And then we realized that there was a deeper issue, both psychological and then understanding nervous system function and things like that. And so we started off with digestion. Most inflammatory conditions begin and end in the gut and then start cascading to the system. And so we started off with digestion. Most inflammatory conditions begin and end in the gut and then start cascading to the system. And we solved that really well and we got well known for that. But then we got into the nervous system. And how we got into that is we had to fix our own problems, not your maniacs. And we both- where all companies started like, I got to solve my own problems.

They go, yeah, other people have these problems too. And so being serial entrepreneurs, there was a period of time a few years ago where I was literally working 14 hours a day, seven days a week for two years without a break. And being a high performer, I was just like, hey, I got this. We could do more. Sleep, we'll push that to a side. And one day I was real, I was, I was snapping at my girlfriend at the time. Well, it wasn't really, it was nothing she did. I was totally not regulating myself. I felt horrible about what I was doing. I was running these, I was in a very stressful situation in another business. And I said, okay, you know, I'm going to take a couple hours off just to watch a football game.

Like just do something. And I'm into the first half of the football game. Like just do something. And I'm into the first half of the football game and I'm feeling a sense of guilt that I'm taking time off to watch this football game. And I'm like, okay, I'm snapping at my girlfriend. I'm feeling really tired. And now I feel guilty because I'm watching a football game. I've got a problem here. I went over to see my friend, Matt. I said, I think I'm really, he said, how friend, Matt. I said, I think I'm really, he said, how are you doing? I said, I think I'm living in hell, bro. I think I've got a problem here. I'm supposed to be a health advocate. I don't know. Something's wrong. I'm feeling guilty.

Watch the game. So he goes, well, let's see what's going on in your brain. He hooks up my brain. I got a brain of a 70 year old man. My brain's not working right. I'm not making good decisions here. And I realized I needed to make some shifts in my lifestyle. So I did it. I did some testing. I did some testing and there was some interesting tests revealed by my naturopathic doctor. One was I had an extreme deficiency in magnesium. And I'm like, that's, I don't know, I eat a lot of, I'm a plant based guy. And there's an incredible amount of magnesium in plant based diets. And I'm like, well, why am I not absorbing it or utilizing it? And the light bulb went off. I had been to an interview with Charles Poliquin. And I remembered him talking about magnesium in regards to allowing

Olympic athletes to recover better from the high levels of training stress that they were implementing. So I went, wow, let me see if I can find those notes. And I dug through a bunch of boxes and there was the notes. And I started reading and it's like, like oh yeah these need all this type of magnesium works with this part of the nervous system this is for vasodilation this is for neurotransmitter formulas and he was the first guy to connect Chinese medicine with neurotransmitter dominance and the the recovery of the nervous system using both modalities externally and nutritional wise to rebuild the neurotransmitters because he said the neurotransmitter formation was a big part in the alleviation of the stress response and i was like holy cow so then i'm like well which ones do i need so matt and i went and bought

every magnesium we could on the market and started split testing well how many magnesiums can you take what happens if i take you know one gram of citrate one gram of malate one gram of this thing and we and then it got out of control right yeah so so so you took it all the way to the end again this looks healthy let's see how much we could take it till it isn't well that's actually something i've been curious about is like most most magnesium products i've ever seen that they're usually just just magnesium citrate one one variation but you guys have like six or seven in there right yes i'll tell you why that is um so well there's a couple there's a there's a there's a variety of reasons as i got into this magnesium thing and i'll just to share with people i back in the 70s

there were these guys dr linus pauling the two-time Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Abram Hoffer, and Dr. David Hawkins. And they created what was called orthomolecular psychiatry, which was treating advanced states of mental illness with super physiological dosages of nutrition. And, you know, that's where the whole vitamin C protocol came up with, you know, you increase vitamin C till you get the runs and then you type her down and you go again till you get the runs and it's called breaking the gi barrier and so i started to use that type of mentality in addressing nutritional deficiencies with my clients so we would find out that you know jane or joe would have maybe have trouble absorbing or utilizing a product. And it might be genetic,

it might be from their diet, or generally, it's a combination of both of those issues. And you can test for this. And you can write this down for your listeners. Spectra cell test is the best way to kind of determine that I'm aware of, of knowing how your body not just is what vitamins and minerals you have, but how well your cells actually uptake this. And so you can now target your vitamins and minerals and then taking that information and then marrying it to the Hawkins and Pauling and Hoffer's work and said, okay, well, I've established that I have these deficiencies, let's say. I'm going to increase the dosage in what I call the bucket theory. Your lifestyle is like a hole in the bucket, and that's how much you're burning that product, whatever the vitamin is, whatever the mineral is.

Now, most of the literature looks at, well, how do I just alleviate how much I'm using in my life, right? I just want enough to deal with the hole in the bucket. But I'm like what's it like to have a full bucket? Why not fill the bucket up and then I only need a little bit to deal with whatever I'm burning. That was my mentality. So I just said I want to get to the full bucket mentality, right? Jeff Lerner Yeah. Rodger Krosoczka Kind of like a bank account. Do you want to make just enough money for your lifestyle or do you want to have a ton of money and you only and you get to have the security of having that big ton of money in your bank account and you're

only burning a little bit it's like okay that kind of feels good as opposed to like every month you're going can I make it so it's just that that application so I said let's test these different magnesiums and see how well I can fill up my bank account. And let's test the different responses in my body. How does my neurochemistry look up? What happens with my digestion? What's my heart variability? And what we found is that different magnesiums had different impacts on different parts of the body that we were regulating. Oh, well, this one made me feel calmer and more relaxed. This one made me go to the toilet really quickly. This one made me sleep really well. This one changed how many times my heart was beating in a given minute, which is indication of

vasodilation or better contractual ejection of the blood through the heart. So I was like, okay. So long story short, we came down to seven different types of magnesiums that were working conjunction, and that you had less chance of baking the GI barrier as you scaled up and then titrated down. And I was able to solve the problem. I also dropped one of the businesses. I started implementing days into my life.

I started making better decisions. My brain came back online, and now I went to some advanced brain training afterwards and was able to increase my brain processing speed by two and a half times, which is incredible. Wait, tell me more about that. Yeah, let's go. What is this brain training? 40 years of Zen, and kudos out to Dave Asprey in 40 years of Zen where they would test your brain and various areas and you can actually change the physiological connections like you would train a

sport. Absolutely amazing. You get a snapshot of your brain. You look at where it's operating. You go through a training process and you actually see how processing happens faster. And now when you start processing faster, you give the appearance of more time. When you start processing slower, what happens is you get this sense of stress, stress response. So, you know, athletes talk about getting in the zone, the Satori state, the flow state

where your brain is processing so fast, there's a flow because it seems like you have more time regulating. Like even though real time is still progressing at the same rate, your perception of time is different because of the brain activity and the speed that your brain operates at. The highest level of athletes process information extremely quick. Therefore, they can see the punch coming move counter because they have these neurological adaptations that the untrained

athlete doesn't have. They've put stress on their system. So you can actually do this on a brain level. I did it there. Kudos to those guys. I highly recommend everybody go there. But then I was able to number one, increase my sleep better. Number one, relax, make better decisions. My brain electrical energy went up dramatically my heart rate variability improved and it only took me about three months of just going crazy and I went up to at my peak I was just over five grams of magnesium a day and now I'm at about one and a half grams a day so I went all the way up got the results results I wanted, and then eventually titrated in. So I need about one and a half grams a day now that I use.

And that's what I need based on my performance levels, which some people would say is on the high end. Some people would say it was on the low end, depending who you're relating to, right? I have to ask you, why do you have such crazy dreams when you start taking it is that all the neurons just firing at a rapid rate and all of a sudden i'm having just super vivid dreams at night yeah um well i'm not an expert in dreams but i can say that magnesium you don't have to read the dreams me right yeah that there's another podcast dream interpretation off the rails exactly no um what's interesting about magnesium there's two two really important components or three actually components relative to what could potentially be there number one is it's a down regulator of your nervous system okay so what happens it puts

you into a more relaxed state second thing it is essential in the formation of key neurotransmitters particularly gaba which is that kind of calm, zen-like state that you can drink specialized tea for, GABA tea or whatever it's been used in, oftentimes creates the lucid aspect of brain chemistry. The neurotransmitter is responsible for that lucid state. And then the third thing is vasodilation of increased blood flow. So my suspicion is for a lot of people, and I think there's somewhere between 10 and 15% of our clients report differences in dreams and significant improvements in deep sleep. That's the big one, deep sleep. So now those three factors, I don't know which one is the primary reason for it, but it'd be one or probably the combination of the three. Usually, there's an adaptive

response. Usually, a little bit later, it seems to regulate out. I think what happens, we always compromise. Our system has secondary and third options. What happens is your body has an unregulated maybe you're manufacturing neurotransmitters from something else you put all this magnesium in and now you haven't like down regulated the production over production of one neurochemical to the expense of the other it takes a little bit to adjust um it it definitely is a a very – it's an interesting experience for the first week that you take it. It happens a lot less now. But the first week I was like, whoa, this is interesting.

Yeah. Doug, you were about to ask a question. Yeah, I have one more question from my experience with your product. So you guys have been very generous over the years years and you've sent us all kinds of stuff. And so I have many things to try, of course. And one question I had along the way was for the Masszymes and the HCL Breakthrough, I feel like there's a lot of crossover between those two products. I'm always wondering, do I really need to take both of these in the same day or after

the same meal? Masszymes appears to be much more comprehensive, but they seem to be similar. Do you need to take both of those or just one or what's the difference? Well, yeah, they are different. And one of the things that we design all of our products is to be standalone products. In other words, each product is designed with a specific array of functions. HCL being the production of hydrochloric acid which contains a little bit of enzymes and at a certain dosage in conjunction with it because hcl and enzymes work concordantly together mass signs is that mostly for protein digestion uh well hydrochloric acid has two functions. Number one, changing, disinfecting from bugs, parasites,

viruses, any pathogenic organism that could get into your body and affect that's its primary function. The second is, is it changes the pH, which activates some enzymes and deactivate others, many particularly around proteolytic or protein digestion, which is called proteolytic or proteolysis, the breaking down of protein into the amino acids, which are utilizable by the body. You don't need protein, you need amino acids. Masszymes was designed to break down both protein, carbohydrates, cellulose, fats, like it's all in one, basically one-stop shop enzymatically. Hydrochloric acid, since a lot of people who are deficient in hydrochloric acid also have issues dealing with proteins in particular, or the enzymes around protein, we threw in a little

bit of protein digesting enzymes into it. Not to the level of the mass enzymes, but it's that way, just because it's 80% of the people that are using the hydrochloric acid are going to have problems breaking down their protein as well so we added a little bit in to deal with that in specific so why would people have problems in the first place with with digestion yeah not enough hydrochloric acid and no enzymes present in the food that they're eating because we're the only species that cooks its food. All species eat its food in a natural state which has its enzymes, which are the difference between plants, stones, and people,

the living and the dead. The dead doesn't have enzymes. The living do. And those enzymes are catalysts which are required for every single biochemical function in the body, which there are over 25,000 enzymatic reactions in the body. And we absorb enzymes from the food that we eat. If it's not been cooked, if it's not been irradiated and it's in its natural state, if we cook our food, if it's been irradiated or it's been polluted with

pesticides or herbicides or fungicides, which also disrupt enzymatic activity and bugs to kill them. That's how important enzymes are. How much do I have to eat before you kill me? I don't know. But that's why we introduce taking enzymes before we because that's how we should be that we would have had enzymatically rich food uh and then hydrochloric acid most people the time they're 35 or 40 are producing less than half the hydrochloric acid they were initially and that's why when you're 21 you can go out drinking all night and you know eat pizza at three o'clock in the morning get up the next day and you know squat all morning long and you know go out and run day and you know do that all over again and then when you're 40 you're like oh man that piece of pizza I had last night just didn't sit

with me well right well you just couldn't it's not the pizza the problem is that your ability to break it down has diminished that much um what are some of the signs of having low levels of magnesium in your body? I mean, I know you were talking about just being like overstressed, but I feel like that's a characteristic of a high performer that's typically about 28 years old trying to do all of it and then hitting the wall. But the average person, what are some of the symptoms that they're going to be coming across from having low levels of magnesium in their system or in their, in their life?

Number one is poor sleep. In other words, they're waking a lot, a lot up at night. Yeah. Their deep sleep is almost nothing, you know, or close to. Their REM sleep is oftentimes affected. And waking up with a sense of feeling tired. And I would say an overall sense of anxiousness. Like, what I've noticed is a lot of people just feeling worried about everything or, and it's kind of worried in the point that you don't know how to act it's like you're in this feed loop that you know you don't know how to make decisions so you start seeing decision making fatigue yeah in other words you start pushing things off that normally

you could handle like oh you know what i'll get the groceries tomorrow oh shit i'm out of toilet paper you know you know what i mean? And then memory issues are another issue. You start seeing impairment of short-term memory specifically, short-temperedness, right? And then also in extreme cases, extreme muscle rig so magnesium relax it creates a relaxation muscle response so for example i have a friend you might know of him josh hayward famous biohacker coaches madonna and people like that and uh he comes over the house when he's in town and he's a great guy and he says dude he had uncontrollable twitching his whole life. He started taking magnesium and it went away.

He used to have severe cramping issues. Now, that was the most extreme case I've heard. But as a bodybuilder, when you would have a disbalance between your calcium, magnesium, or potassium levels, you get cramping on stage and your muscle won't relax. So if you find yourself very, very tense, you have a lot of muscle neck tension inside the body, you have an ability to oftentimes that's a good indication. Yeah. Those bodybuilders, they go out there and dehydrate themselves and then try and get all jacked in front of people. Cramps are coming. Cramps are coming. You mentioned memory a minute ago, which reminds me of probably

the other of like the big four that I've consistently taken from you guys is the cognobiotics. Did I say that correctly? Yes. And if I remember correctly, it's a combination of pre and probiotics and some herbs. How do pre and probiotics help with cognition and brain fog and whatever else it helps with? Yeah. Awesome question. So what we were able to determine, so we've got PhDs, uh, in microbiome, which actually we run tests on every week. And through that, we, we knew that a lot of your neurotransmitters, for example, serotonin, 90% of the neurotransmitters in your brain, the serotonin, the kind of connection, happy, feel good, is actually built in your stomach by

specific strains of bacteria. And it's like, if you are deficient in those bacteria cultures, your ability to manufacture serotonin, for example, is severely compromised. And if you look at anxiety and depression and low mood and all this stuff, which are correlated with low serotonin levels, I believe that in order to address the root cause, I mean, sure, you can take a drug to kind of balance that out, many of which deplete magnesium levels, interesting enough, if you look at pharmaceutical enhancement. So it's like, okay, well well how do we reverse energy well if we put the right probiotics that are used in manufacturing these we introduce those people to that we give them the prebiotics so that then prebiotics is just food for bacteria in other words they have enough food that they can

cultivate and live because sometimes you might not have the bacteria because you don't have the bacteria or not enough of them or you're not eating the foods that support those bacteria in order to grow and colonize. So we address those two issues. The herbs were from Chinese medicine which had been used for thousands of years, a specific concoction of herbs to treat these type of conditions. So you get a quick somatic effect in the nervous system from the herbs while it probably was going to take a person at least 30 days and maybe 90 days to fully colonize,

to get enough of those bacteria cultures in there, wipe out enough of the bad guys so that you can manufacture these neurotransmitters. And then if you add magnesium to the mix on top of it, your ability to formate these neurotransmitters, in other you add magnesium to the mix on top of it your ability to formate these neurotransmitters you're not in other words you have enough building blocks so you need the building blocks of your enzymes converting your protein into the amino acids you need the right probiotics that have the right amount of food inside the intestinal tract and the building

elements like magnesium in order that you have the whole concoction to put together the neurotransmitters for your brain so i have a number of friends who suffer who've been in medical situations for anxiety and depression for for decades and i said hey i want to run some experiments on you i want to, you start taking these codibiotics, start taking magnesium in conjunction with these two things and tell us, just track how you're feeling over time. The results were pretty remarkable. They like, I started to

notice I had less down days. I started to notice when my psychologist, which one particular friend of mine, she was seeing them every week. And they started to notice less agitation at work, less confrontational issues, less crashes, whereas he was feeling like, and I can't say that's all because of it,

but anecdotally, we started to see this. And overall, what we have found on general from, because I read all of our customers, anecdotally we started to see this and overall what we we have found on general from because i read all of our customers i read every single customer service acknowledgement and every customer service complaint in the company everyone i and i respond to every single question in the company with an fh remember that from the first time we interviewed you yeah eight i've got over 8 000 responses so it goes into the system and we figure it out. And if my team can't find that I've answered that, I go and answer that.

You have a nice database. Yeah, I find out who it is because I'm interested in these things. I want to know the feedback. And the one common element is people are feeling calmer, more relaxed, less agitated, better sleep, and less anxious feeling in their lives. And considering the circumstances that we're in in life, I think that's an awesome thing. And I want to keep moving in that direction. When I actually, when we talk about the magnesium side of things, so where can people get high quality sources of that in their their daily diet um we we obviously as a population are not getting enough of it um but yeah if if people are trying to make their you know put their best

foot forward which most people are where are some of the the best sources for them to be able to find it at a grocery store yes so um avocados nuts and seeds so the nuts uh almonds cashews brazils pumpkin flax and chia uh bananas if you're not you know like carbophobic um leafy greens tofu interesting enough has a lot of magnesium so you know about this vegetarian you know these yeah and uh legumes and of course everybody's's favorite, dark chocolate. That's the one they're all going to choose. Everybody's going to – yeah. You know what?

I'm going to have dark chocolate with almonds. Yeah. Wade said eat chocolate all the time. It'll make me calmer. I actually believe – Something about chocolate just makes me feel so happy. What's interesting about this, I have noticed, particularly because I've got a lot of friends in the chocolate business, cacao business in particular. And there is a euphoric kind of feeling with really good chocolate and cacaos that have it. And I believe, and a lot of my lady friends will say that they increase when they different parts of their cycle, they'll start to crave chocolate at certain points. I've also noticed I'm an emotional eater.

Like I like if I get a little bit emotionally off or whatever, I want chocolate. And I do believe that there is some mechanism that my body is seeking out these things in order to alleviate the symptoms of maybe emotional discord or anxiety or stress or whatever it happens to be. And so I think that one of the reasons chocolate is used for that people feel good on it is because it does elicit those effects, plus the anandamide, as well as which is a neurochemical that kind of makes you feel good. I just watched Michael Pollan's, it's a, uh, on food. And one of them is about, um, about chocolate basically, and, and the process of making it and, and how it ferments

and, uh, watching the beat. If you just saw chocolate laying in a field, you would have no idea that that turns into a Hershey's bar. It's crazy, isn't it? It's absolutely insane watching it ferment itself and how they do it in the wood crates. It was a wild, wild process. Yeah. It's really fun. I had a couple friends that take me into their chocolate shop

in Sedona, Arizona, Buddy Kelly. And he first introduced me to what I'm actually seeing. They grind it and machines they use yeah really amazing it's totally amazing and I got a whole bunch of friends that are just lulu on this stuff it's great yeah I had heard what you just said a few minutes ago about there's some amount of euphoria like similar to like like light MDMA type euphoria that you could get from high dose cacao is that have you experienced that before specifically absolutely and of course if you get into like when you really

go up the cacao scale into the premium types of cacaos and there's people who do I've actually been in part of cacao ceremonies where you're you know you know really people are getting and then I've got a couple of friends one friend particular, I think she might be the world's biggest cacao broker. In other words, she actually has been to 120 countries and sampled cacao in every part of the world and can tell you every little nuance. And she's provided me some cacao products that she's made that elicit a drug-like response.

There's no question about it. You are in an altered state eating it. Do you know what kind of doses you would need for that? Asking for a friend. Usually starts at a quarter pound. Um, I, and,

um, and, and doing some research specifically for the show to talking about magnesium, it, it appears that, uh, low levels of magnesium, um,

show up a lot when it comes to type two diabetes, um, like high blood pressure, a lot of these like very systemic problems that people has is, I know there's a direct correlation. Is that because it's just these people are generally more unhealthy? Or is there more of a causation of having these that just continually leads to like a perpetuation and increasing the problem because they just more and more unhealthy as this goes as their problems go on yes so i think there's a correlation between um deficiencies and overall results and generally if you start with one deficiency your body will switch to some other system to compromise that's less efficient

and less efficient until eventually it can't manage it and then you start getting into unmitigated disease response systems inside the body which is overall the aging and degeneration process when it comes to blood sugar regulation magnesium has two distinct functions that I think are related. One is it interacts with the enzymes responsible for metabolizing sugars in the body, the enzymatic response, which are amylase-based enzymatic activities, which have magnesium as part of that interaction. So magnesium is involved in a lot of enzymatic reactions. The second thing is one of the things that go part and parcel with diabetic conditions is the constriction of blood vessels. I just had a guy on our podcast, Dr. Jacoby, who talks about sugar trauma and the building up of plaque and all these neuro conditions from diabetes to sclerosis to heart disease are all because of sugar being converted into plaque,

which is collecting in various parts of the body and causing restrictions. And so, but why do people eat sugar? Well, sugar is a quick and easy way to create a serotonin dump inside the system when you're not producing it regularly. So if I'm depressed in neurochemicals, I eat sugar, I get a 30 minute boost on that sugar thing, I get up and then I go down the roller coaster again, I get depressed, I need another hit, I need another hit. As you take in more sugar, your magnesium level demands start to go up okay and so you start so so now you start you know you're you're using a credit card to pay the mortgage well it works for a while yeah then the credit card runs out of credit yeah what do you do i need to take a second mortgage okay and then i need to get

another credit card and then eventually you you you go bankrupt and your health goes bankrupt. And we live in a society in North America because of farming production or production and distribution of farming and monoculture farming over the last 80 years. We've stripped out almost all the magnesium out of the environment as well as the microbes that are involved in bringing the magnesium into the plants that we ate. So a peach from 55 years ago, need 50 peaches yeah pick up one peach from the nutritional quality point well that's actually a really interesting question because i i get the feeling that you chase around or you're very aware of places that are doing

local farming in a way that provides actually nutrient rich food that you can buy where where some of these places and what are these like communities look like where you could actually go get really high nutrient dense food start with your farmers market local farmers markets go talk to the people that produce it ask them is it organic are you? Are you using biodynamic? Do you use manure? Do you use, which is actually adding bacteria cultures, which are essential? What's the, how do you worm? What do you have worms? Do you make sure that there's enough worms that are involved in the soil production? Do you use herbicides and pesticides? Is this heirloom seeds, which have been passed on, or is it, you know, killer seeds that have been brought that don't reproduce themselves?

What is the growing terrain that is and the temperatures in that climate? And you start talking to farmers and the good farmers, they know all this stuff. Yeah. Right. They are really intimately involved. And then what you do is you take a tomato, let's say, or a cucumber or whatever it is that you like to eat, whatever your favorite vegetable is. You take one of those from the store and you go to the farmer market and you eat, take another one and you take a bite out of one and you take a bite of the other and your body will tell you there is a difference. Yeah. One of the easiest ways to notice things

like that, like the egg yolk. Yes. There's like such a difference in color of the healthy one versus the one that probably never moved. And the shells too. The shells are like paper thin on like the cheap white eggs and then like buy like the $8 dozen eggs. And it's like, it's like, it's like knocking against the counter really hard. It's like, it's like a thick, healthy shell. It's really interesting. And I grew up with a chicken farm next to my house so eggs were orangey yeah right that's how they the eggs are not now they're like yellow

now they're yellow and i remember when we bought some eggs at the store i was a little kid and i saw the eggs in the pan and i'm like why why are the why are the eggs yellow mom yeah no she didn't know what happened but as an eight-year-old or something like that i i saw that the eggs were different color i didn't know what happened do you happen to know what specific nutrient is is causing the more orange pigment to to show up that that is potentially depl nutrient is is causing the the more orange pigment to to show up that that is potentially depleted which is why they look more yellow that might not be the right rationalization but yeah i can't offhand i did know it at one time

and i forgot i guess i need more neurotransmitters what do you guys have in the pipeline right now for uh new products for the future uh we've just blown the doors wide open on uh two things customized nootropic formulations we have a company a sub-brand that we've created called nootopia so we have eight different formulations inside utopia and you when you get that you give feedback first you do an intake form and so we can kind of our neurochemist can kind of see which neurochemistry dominance that you might have through a little questionnaire you get the product and then you provide feedback to us which ones you get the most out of and we have different products for that do different things some for concentration some for creativity some for social and verbal fluency all kinds of different combinations and you can take them

first independently and then you start stacking different ones with different ones to produce different results and it's dramatically. And then based on the feedback that comes back to our chemist in your next month, then you tweak out and say, well, I didn't feel much on this one or this one was a little too much. So then you start adapting it towards your own formulation. So we've totally changed the game in nootropics with Nootopia. We're really excited about that and then we just launched a blood sugar breakthrough which um matt my business partner his mother-in-law lost her feet from diabetes and his wife had insane levels of blood sugar response so it was a partly a genetic

and part of a cultural thing and so he went at uh how do you regulate blood sugar it's a big issue and we we did the same thing in magnesium we went bananas and tested all these different things that were known and then created the world's best blood sugar regulating and we tested it within our group with continuous glucose monitors so we could yeah and people ate it and it's dramatic and blue and blood sugar regulation so that's the that's the other product that we came out with and what was interesting is i i have world-class blood sugar response i'm lucky i'm one of the fortunate ones like my resting uh homo ir which measures blood sugar and blood sugar regulation is really good but i started using the product and what was

interesting is i feel pumped more. Like, you know, that, that full feeling that you have. So even though I, my blood sugar was okay, I just started to notice I felt fuller from my training. So, uh, those two, uh, those two products have been just barn burners for us recently. How has your training been? Oh, sorry, Doug. Go ahead.

You probably have a real question. I just want to hear about your training. Um, I just want to follow up a question there was, uh, uh, is. Go ahead. You probably have a real question. I just want to hear about your training. Just one follow-up question there was for that blood sugar product. Is that something you specifically take just before you know you're going to have a high-carbohydrate meal, or is that just like a daily thing you take any time? Yeah. Well, depending on how well you manage your blood sugar and your lifestyle. me i just take it before i have a high carbohydrate meal but you know just just before i take it and and it has a noticeable drop in my blood sugar response on a on a blood sugar regulator so like a like a nutrisense or levels whichever one you're using it's great so you can actually see the effect which is cool i'll eat the same meal without it and then i'll eat the same meal at another time

with the blood sugar and for me it's it's just under a 20% difference. And I have good blood sugar response. For some people, it's as much as 30 or 40. Yeah. Oh, wow. You're not on the bands out in Arizona. Is it good to get back? Are gyms open in California? Have you gotten back to training?

They've got – I just actually filled out a questionnaire. How is Gold's Gym right now and i said it sucks it's a fitness facility now not a bodybuilding gym yeah uh we're wearing masks and they got everything separated and they don't have as many as they'll it's getting a little better but it's it's it's it sucks it's kind of become a fitness gym and it really blows. I built a gym on my roof. I did have a shoulder injury last fall that was the worst shoulder injury I ever had. And it was just, I got watching the UFC and I got one of those double ender bags that you punch. And so I was punching and I was really taking out my opponent really deep. And I threw a left and something went really wrong in my shoulder.

And my upper body training was severely impaired for several months. And I'm almost out of that. I'm at about 70% now. Like I can't bench press or movements like that, but I can use machines and things like that. So it's coming around and getting a little better. Yeah. Make sure you get over to magbreakthrough.com.

It's M-A-G breakthrough, B-R-E-A-K-T-R-O-U-G-H.com forward slash shrugged 10. You save 10%. It's been an awesome, awesome time working with you guys over the last couple years. And it's always a great time to have you on the show, man. Always a pleasure. And I guess with all of our products, if you try them and it doesn't work for anybody,

we just give you your money back. It's really easy. You do have a 365-day money-back guarantee. Yep. Really awesome. And that link is magbreakthrough.com forward slash shrugged10. If people want to connect with you personally to ask additional questions or follow up, where can they find you? Yep.

They can just reach out to me at Wade at Bioptimizers, support at Bioptimizers, Instagram, Facebook, text, carrier, pigeon, email, all that sort of stuff. It will eventually filter through and get to me. There it is. Doug Larson. All right. Find me on Instagram. Wade, good to see you, man. Always appreciate you coming on the show.

It really is. I love having you on. It's so great. Thanks. I wish people heard all the pre-show banter too because that's where all the super fun stuff. We immediately – I always enjoy when people are on multiple times. In the pre-show, it's impossible for us all to stay at, like, level one.

Like, oh, how's the weather in California today? We're, like, straight into politics, training, socioeconomic problems. We're solving everything in the first three minutes of hanging out. Absolutely. I love it. Start at the end and good things happen. I'm Anders Varnerarner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged.

Barbell underscore shrug. Get over to BarbellShrugged.com forward slash DieselDad. Where all the dads get strong, lean, and athletic without sacrificing family, fatherhood, or friends. And if you are in San Diego, LA, Palm Springs, or Vegas, we are on the shelves in Walmart. Get to the pharmacy. Three programs. We will see you guys next week.

That's a wrap. Make sure you get over to barbellshrug.com forward slash diesel dad challenge. 21 day commitment. Cut the crap. Eat right. Train hard. barbellshrug.com forward slash diesel dad challenge. 21 days to cut the crap. Eat right. Train hard. The busy

dad's guide to boosting metabolism, burning fat fat and building muscle also want to thank our friends over at organifi organifi.com forward slash shrugged save 20 on the green red and gold as well as our friends at bioptimizers mag breakthrough.com forward slash shrugged use the code shrug 10 at checkout to save 10 friends we'll see you on wednesday