Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 243: 8 Weird Things I Do for Health, Longevity and Beauty

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

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This episode is brought to you in part thanks to some of our amazing partners like LMNT. LMNT makes the best electrolyte product on the market. In fact, I've actually started drinking my LMNT each and every morning before I have coffee so as to optimize my circadian biology, make sure that I'm hydrated, and make sure that I'm getting ahead on my water intake throughout the day and not reliant on stimulants, but instead being somebody who's reliant on hydration and the proper balance of minerals and electrolytes. If you want to feel your best all day, mentally and physically, it's imperative that you stay hydrated. LMNT provides a balanced ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to support

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LMNT is the official sports drink of Team USA Weightlifting, and it's used by athletes in the NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball, as well as athletes like you and I looking to take your fitness to the next level. My favorite flavors are definitely the raspberry and citrus. When I put a box together, I try to load up on raspberry and citrus. And when you put your box together, you can get a free sample pack containing all of Element's amazing flavors like mango chili, citrus, raspberry, orange, and more. To get access to this free gift with purchase, scroll down to the show notes and check out using the special link for Dynamic Dialogue listeners. This episode is brought to you in special part

thanks to our awesome partners over at Ice Barrel. If you're like me, you want to get the absolute most you can out of your fitness and out of what it is that you're doing in life. I like to make sure that I'm recovering well and prepped for hard workouts. I like to make sure that my cognition is sharp and I like to make sure that I'm doing what I can to maintain my long-term health. And cold water immersion is a phenomenal tool I use and have used for a while to help me do this. Cold water immersion or taking ice baths is a great way to improve your recovery and performance. Just a few short sessions a week can really make a difference

in how you recover. It can increase and improve your heart rate variability. It can enhance performance. It improves mood and brain function. It also provides an awesome boost of energy and focus because when you hop in an ice bath and you get this amazing vasoconstriction effect and your body starts releasing epinephrine and norepinephrine, it kind of lets you reenter the world awake, energized, excited, and enthused. And I would much rather take an ice bath in the mid-afternoon, especially if I had a hard training session in the morning, than consume more caffeine. Ice Barrel allows me to do this in a super sleek, aesthetically pleasing

packaging. It's a beautiful barrel that comes with a matching lid for keeping the ice cold and water inside clean, a nice step-up stool, a cover. It's portable and durable, and it comes in a beautiful matte black and a gorgeous tan. I have the matte black out on my patio, and I absolutely love the way it looks with the fencing I have around the yard, but you can put this inside, outside, on the front porch, on the back porch, in the side yard. It's quite portable. It's very durable. Like I said, the design is super, super sleek, and it's very easy to drain to make sure that you are only getting in to cold, clean water designed to help you improve your performance, improve your recovery, enhance the way your brain feels and functions throughout the day. This is an amazing one-time

cost tool that once you have it, you use it a couple of times a week. It is one of the best investments you can make in your health. And again, if you want to improve your cognition and performance, and you have those midday lulls, or you want to be more present for your family or for your friends when you get off of work and you don't want to caffeinate, temperature modulation like ice baths or cold exposure or sauna heat exposure can be really valuable for increasing that subjective sense of well-being and bringing you back to a place of alertness in a really chaotic world. It's also great for just cultivating resilience. I find I'm much tougher. Again, this is a more anecdotal thing, but I find that I am much tougher, ready to face the day's tasks when I am consistently exposing

myself to the elements. Call it bromeopathy, call it anecdote, but I will tell you one thing is for sure, cold water immersion has made a huge difference for my health and well-being in just a few short sessions a week, and Ice Barrel is the sleekest, best-looking, cleanest, and most affordable way to do it reliably. You can head over to icebarrel.com slash Danny to take advantage of their 100% satisfaction guaranteed with, again, a 30-day money-back guarantee and save $125 on your Ice Barrel using the promo code Danny. So again, icebarrel.com slash Danny and check out using the promo code Danny to save $125. This podcast has some awesome partners, and one of my favorite, of course,

is Legion Athletics. Legion is my go-to supplement manufacturer for what I like to call my big rock supplements. This would be my protein powder, my pre-training formula, my post-training formula, and creatine, and my kind of ancillary vitamins and micronutrient protection. and my kind of ancillary vitamins and micronutrient protection. So why do I like Legion so much? What sets them apart? It's quite simple. Legion uses all natural ingredients. All the formulas include natural coloring and natural sweeteners, no artificial sweeteners, just stevia. And every single formulation, be it a pre-workout or a vitamin contains clinically effective dosages of ingredients shown to work in humans in clinical research supported by robust trials. No filler, just

legit ingredients in each and every formulation proven to work. The whey protein isolate is so light. It's fantastic. It mixes in water. It tastes amazing. And I drink it every day, even as somebody who's lactose intolerant. That's just how high quality this whey protein is. And it's sourced from Irish dairy cows that are raised well, eat their natural diet and packaged in climate friendly packaging. I love their plant protein too. For those of you who like something that's a little on the thicker side and you aren't a fan of animal products. Also, I love Legion's pre-workout, but specifically the pre-workout that does not contain caffeine. That would be their Stem Free Pulse. I'm a huge, huge fan of beta alanine and

L-citrulline, but I don't like taking in wildly high amounts of caffeine. So if you are somebody who likes pre-workout with caffeine, you can try Pulse. Or if you like it without caffeine, because you maybe want to enjoy your morning coffee or monitor your caffeine consumption, try the Pulse Stim Free. My favorite flavors there for sure are the new grape and the amazing, amazing tropical punch. As for my creatine, I get that from Legion's Recharge. Five grams each and every day. I take it on the days I train as well as the days I do not because Recharge also contains

L-carnitine, which can help with promoting muscle recovery and decreasing soreness, as well as some ingredients to help with creatine utilization. And of course, my favorite supplements for my ancillary micronutrient health are Legion's Multivitamin and Legion's Greens Powder. Not only do these two products contain a ton of high quality vitamins and minerals. They also contain unique adaptogens like KSM 66 ashwagandha and reishi mushroom, which I like to take each and every day to promote my health. If you want to cover all your bases with a high quality protein, creatine post-workout or the ancillary micronutrient health stuff like greens, powders, and multivitamin, I encourage you to go over to legionathletics.com and check out

using the promo code Danny. That'll save you 20% on your first order and you'll rack up points that you can use the same way as cash every time you use the code and you'll also be supporting the show. Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga. And in today's episode, we are going to be discussing what I believe to be 10 tips, tricks, tools, and tactics that you can use to improve your health, performance, longevity, alertness, and even beauty. We'll talk a little bit about skin and hair today. And I'm going to be sharing with you tips that aren't as evidence-based as most of the tips we share. So much of what we discuss on this podcast is

rooted very, very heavily in science. And I look for data, specifically data in humans. I like meta-analyses and randomized clinical trials. I like to look for things that are shown to work in the evidence time and time again before I make recommendations to other people. But I also am a big self-experimenter. I don't like to describe myself as a biohacker because I do think that that term has a lot of negative connotations with it. And I think that so many people who biohack actually miss out on the big rocks. But if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, I'm sure that you are hitting on your big rocks and you might be open for a little bit of experimentation in your own right. But we want to make sure that you do that safely. So please remember, I am not a doctor

and neither are you in most instances. I know some of you are physicians, but you should run everything we talk about today by a doctor or healthcare professional before implementing it in your own life. So without further ado, let's go ahead and get into 10 slightly scientific and slightly unscientific behaviors and tactics I deploy to increase my health, aesthetics, muscularity, and well-being. The first is actually something that kind of spits in the face of the evidence as we know it. And that is my adherence to the anabolic window, but not for the reasons that you might think. You see, the anabolic window is a long purported idea that after each workout, you must immediately consume protein so as to shuttle the oh so important amino acids to your tired and

brutalized muscle tissue so that it has what it needs to recover. When I first started training, I always had a post-workout protein shake. I was very, very tapped into the bro science at the time, largely driven from marketing narratives. I remember the first ever EAS Myoplex commercial that I saw, and the tagline at the end of the ad was never waste your workout. Or I believe it might even have been a muscle milk ad. And the notion here is if you don't have protein after your workout, you have wasted it. And it's very intuitive and it makes a ton of sense. So early on in my training career, I got in the

habit of having a post-workout protein shake. And I think that this was largely beneficial despite evidence now supporting that the most valuable thing you can do with protein is get enough throughout the day. I still adhere to it to this very day because it's a time thing. If I have protein within an hour or even 90 minutes of finishing my workout, that's one extra protein feeding. And I'm always trying to get three to four protein feedings a day. After my workout, I'm not particularly hungry. My stomach's not discomfort or experiencing discomfort in any way, but I don't have a voracious appetite. So something that works really well for me is having a protein shake. Protein shakes don't require as much of an appetite to toss two scoops in water and drink it back.

And it also guarantees me a 40 to 45 gram low calorie protein feeding, which is huge for me. I oftentimes include carbohydrate with this because carbohydrates have a protein sparing effect, which is valuable and can enhance recovery. And I'm all about enhancing recovery, but I've taken the anabolic window one step further using Kevin Tipton's research, which I first came across when I was an exercise science undergraduate student. Kevin Tipton studied protein timing pretty religiously. And one of the things I noticed about Kevin Tipton's research was he found, or I don't recall the study specifically, that pre-workout protein might actually be better for gains.

And the reason for this is quite simple. The amino acids are more available for you post workout if you ingest protein pre-workout because it does take some time for nutrient absorption to occur, even with fast digesting proteins like whey protein isolate. So even though the research clearly states that the most important thing you can do is to get enough protein throughout the day, somewhere between, let's say 0.6 to 1 grams per pound of body weight. Uh, you know, you might go a little lower than that. You might go a little higher than that, but those tend to be ranges that are adequate for let's call it optimizing muscle growth. Um, and I did hear from the guys over on the stronger by science podcast that you could go even lower depending on protein quality and the

amount of muscle that you have. But let's say you're getting between 0.6 to 1 grams per pound of body weight. You're checking that box. And let's say you're checking the next box, which is having that protein spaced out across three to four feedings a day. Well, then I would say that it's probably reasonable that a few of those feedings are before or after your training session, if possible. So while I check those two big boxes and while the anabolic window research has been largely debunked, which is to say that if you do get enough protein throughout the day, getting it post-workout doesn't seem to matter as much. And if you get it post-workout and not as much throughout the day, it's very clear that you're missing something. I still adhere to having pre-workout protein and post-workout protein so as to get

two feedings in. Now, those are about 90 minutes pre-workout and about 90 minutes post-workout, assuming my workout's 90 minutes. Those are then about three hours apart, sometimes longer, and that helps me get enough protein in throughout the day. This second thing that I do is, again, it's not lacking for evidence. There's actually a substantial amount of evidence supporting using these supplements for this particular effect. But I don't think there is a bulletproof amount of literature out there that will, in my opinion, lead anybody to believe like, yo, this is far and away the best thing you can do for your skin, but it works tremendously well for me. And this is using zinc, vitamin C, and collagen to

improve the quality of my skin. I take zinc picolinate, 10 milligrams, okay? Not a huge amount, 10 milligrams every single day. Zinc is a very important mineral and it is fairly easy to be zinc deficient, but I don't take it for the reasons that many people think. I don't take it because it could be valuable for testosterone formation. I don't take it because it's an anti-inflammatory or even because it's an especially valuable immune modulator. All of those things seem to be more clear in the research and our standalone rationales for potentially taking zinc supplementation or engaging with zinc supplementation. But I take zinc because I believe it has very, very much improved the quality of my skin. Zinc is a mineral that helps your body inside and

out, right? And it can help maintain the health of your skin due to the anti-inflammatory and unique antimicrobial effects. I initially started taking it because it helped me manage my acne. I saw some unique, unique benefits in the research. Again, not enough research to say wholeheartedly, but I did see enough information and enough research to make me think, okay, I think this can help with acne. Let's try it. And it did. When I developed eczema, it helped with my eczema. I believe zinc is a valuable supplement for skin health. And it is for that reason that I take it each and every day. The other stuff that it can be helpful with is even more encouraging. So that's a big reason why I take zinc. Topical forms of zinc have been shown to be helpful with dermatitis

and eczema. So those things kind of all put together really make me think zinc has some valuable skin promoting. Now, collagen, on the other hand, does not have as much research to support its efficacy in enhancing the quality of one's skin. In fact, I go so far as to say most of what I've seen is somewhat anecdotal. There is some research out there, but I'm not entirely convinced. The line of logic I've used to make this make sense to me is that I think collagen protein has amino acids that are more consistent with the protein profile of skin than they are the protein profile of other tissues. Obviously, tissues like joints and connective tissue are mostly collagen or contain a lot of collagen. And there

is research to support that collagen can help with those tissues. So a line or logical inference I've made is if it could help tissues that have a protein structure or amino acid sequence similar or analogous to collagen, my skin contains a good amount of collagen too. Maybe it will help there. Your skin also contains a protein known as keratin, but I don't think you want to be eating keratin. So collagen supplementation and zinc supplementation tend to go really, really well together in that one is a capsule and it's not hard to take at all. And collagen can be mixed into any water or shake, which is very, very easy. And I do like to pair both of these with vitamin C or at least just generally vitamin C rich nutrition. I don't supplement with vitamin C. In fact, I eat a lot of kiwis, which I think gram per gram is

about as high as you can get in a vitamin C, but this helps with collagen absorption and collagen synthesis in the body. And so while I do believe zinc is the most evidence-based supplement I could probably recommend for skin well-being and collagen and vitamin C in concert are substantially, let's say substantially less likely, or we can lean into the evidence with a little bit less enthusiasm. All three of these things for many years and working together have helped me maintain better skin. Sticking with the beauty tips, and this one is probably going to be big for girls, but it's also very big for guys, is a hair mask that I have been using for a number of years. And outside of diffusing to increase the

kind of odiferous nature of the room that I'm in, making the room I'm in smell better, it's probably the best use case I've found for essential oils. I often knock on essential oils because many people in the natural health wellness and bromeopathy slash homeopathy communities believe essential oils can be extremely healing and powerful. And while many of them do have incredibly strong, unique chemical properties, for example, oregano oil is an extremely potent antimicrobial, I don't believe that they're as powerful as many people believe them to be. And I think many of the use cases are built on the back of placebo or just faulty science. But about five years ago, I dealt with some stress-induced alopecia,

where I lost large chunks of hair and huge lesions from my scalp. This was extremely stressful and very damaging to my self-esteem and ego, and I was doing anything I could to cover it up, wearing hats, wearing backwards hats, combing my hair over. It was one of the most embarrassing and emasculating parts of my life. I've always had a great hairline, and I still do to this day, and it gave me tremendous empathy for anybody who's dealing with thinning hair or especially men or women who are dealing with hair loss. So I dove into the research about what I could do for hair. And while zinc and collagen both might be beneficial for hair, I did find specifically for treating alopecia,

you might need to take it a step further. Many people use medoxidil, which is Rogaine, to spot treat hair loss or to prevent hair loss overall. They'll also lean into DHT blocking drugs to promote male pattern baldness or hormonal driven hair loss. I knew I wasn't dealing with either of those things. So after several visits to the dermatologist and unfruitful clobetasol injections into my scalp. Clobetasol is a steroid hormone similar to cortisone, and the shots were directly into the lesion. So imagine a needle going into your skull. They were quite painful and proved to be relatively ineffective. I was at a breaking point where I said, I'm going to try using Rogaine or Minoxidil, even though it completely creates what is known as a dependent

follicle. This means that without use or continued use, the hair will fall out. So I dove into the research a little bit and found that in rodents, again, and this is why I say this is fairly unscientific because this is not in humans, but in rodents, it appears that eucalyptus, lavender, tea tree, pine, peppermint, and rosemary can enhance and excite follicles to producing more hair. And many of these performed as well or close to as well as Rogaine on rodents who had been genetically bred to have alopecia or hair loss. So I used a combination of peppermint, eucalyptus, lavender, geranium. I tried it all and I settled on what I believed to be the best combination, which was rosemary, lavender, peppermint, and eucalyptus. I mixed all of these into one jar and pipetted

them onto the lesions, rubbing them in and massaging them. If I had the opportunity to shower in the morning, I would put them on at night and let them soak into my head, maybe sometimes sleeping with a beanie. If I had a couple hours before I would shower or I was going to work out and I knew that I wasn't going to bother anybody with the very pungent smell of all these essential oils, I would put them on and put a hat on. And what I noticed is a month of clobetasol injections did nothing, but clobetasol injections with and used in conjunction with topical essential oils, again, lavender, eucalyptus, rosemary, and peppermint. You could try geranium and cedarwood as well. I found research supporting those did lead to better hair growth. I continue to use this as a hair mask, pipetting it occasionally

into my scalp and massaging it thoroughly once a month to promote hair thickness. I've yet to try it on my beard because I do have a little bit of a fear around putting oils directly onto my face. Again, that's probably connected to my acne past or having had a little bit of acne. It was never anything bad, typical of a young athletic pubescent male. But it works wonders for my scalp. And while most of the data I could pull to support this is rodent data, I have tried it on myself and I did believe that it was an integral, integral part of building back my hair. I remember when I first saw tiny little black hairs coming in on these large bald spots, I was overcome with joy and I felt like I had conquered a huge demon. I think that losing your

hair, whether you're a man who's worried about a receding hairline or a woman who has hair thinning and falling out, can be a really, really unfortunate traumatizing experience that makes you think less of yourself. And while I don't subscribe to many of the beauty standards that I think are typical in Western countries, I can definitely empathize with anybody who's losing their hair because I know how much that bothered and hurt my feelings and made me feel shitty. So if you haven't, and you are losing your hair, you just want thicker hair and you have the means to try creating a hair mask out of some of these essential oils, I might recommend doing a little research and then trying

it for yourself. What's going on guys? Taking a break from this episode to tell you a little bit about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method. More specifically, our app-based training. We partnered with Train Heroic to bring app-based training to you using the best technology and best user interface possible. You can join either my Home Heroes team, or you can train from home with bands and dumbbells, or Elite Physique, which is a female bodybuilding-focused program where you can train at the gym with equipments designed specifically to help you develop strength as well as the glutes, hamstrings, quads, and back. I have more teams coming planned for a variety of different fitness levels. But what's cool about this is when you join these programs, you get programming that's updated every single week, the sets to do,

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Enjoy the episode. The fourth tip that I have, and again, the evidence on this is scant, but it has worked very well for me in the past, is using cold exposure when I'm sick. And while this is certainly not something that I would recommend for the faint of heart, cold water immersion and even cold showers when sick can have an immune modulating effect. And I'm not going to dive too deep into the research because like I said, I don't think it's convincing. I think you need a lot more research to make claims like this definitively. But when I have been sick in the past and I've been not so sick, particularly when I'm

so sick that my fever is extremely high, cold water immersion or cold showers on occasion give me a boost of energy, a better sense of vivaciousness and wellness. And I do believe that they shorten the duration of that sickness and they help me, quote unquote, clear it faster. There are many reasons to use cold water immersion. I've been using an ice barrel for a number of days and I really enjoy that. It's a phenomenal way to enhance recovery and reduce soreness, but that research is much more clear. But one thing I have tried when sick is increasing the number of cold showers I take and even cold water immersion. And I do feel,

again, anecdotally, it gives me a nice boost. It gives me some excitement. It really gets me going and it helps me feel better. And part of getting better is feeling better. The number five tip I have for you also has to do with temperature modulation and adjustment. And it's actually specific to the other end of the spectrum. And it is sauna use for not longevity, not the low level aerobic impact. And again, a lot of the literature people share about the sauna is like, oh, it increases your longevity by 50%. Yes. Much of that research was done in fruit flies, not humans. Is sauna still healthy for humans? I absolutely believe it to be very healthy for humans. That's why I do it so regularly. But the number one reason that I use the sauna has nothing to do with the clinical or evidential mass to support health. The number one reason that I use the sauna is my subjective well-being. I always feel better when I use the sauna. I always feel better. I feel

more at peace. I feel more relaxed. I feel less stressed every time I leave the sauna. And this could be because I'm no longer sitting in a 200 degree hot box, but it could also be that some of the literature supporting saunas increase of subjective well-being is spot on. I have seen it with myself. I've seen it with many friends and many clients. Using the sauna makes us feel better. And that's something that I want to continue to do and continue to enjoy moving forward. I love the health benefits, but it's the subjective well-being, feeling better, feeling more at peace, feeling more relaxed that I like the most. Number seven is actually probably, I'd say that of all the things on this list, it is the most supported by the research. Um, and it is not using static stretching pre-workout. And in fact,

I don't really do much static stretching at all. So pre-workout, I will do a dynamic warmup instead of a static stretching warmup. And I get a lot of the mobility I have from full range of motion resistance training. Not saying static stretching is bad. In fact, there's a ton of research supporting its ability to increase mobility and flexibility. There's also research showing that if you do too much static stretching

before weightlifting, it can decrease performance. So I've struck a middle ground here. And instead of doing what many people do, which is stretching before they train, I actually stretch after I train, which is kind of counterintuitive, but I find it helps me maintain my mobility better. So what I like to do is a dynamic warmup, train with weights through the fullest range of motion possible, and then stretch at the end of my sessions or as standalone sessions. The eighth tip on this list, it definitely spits directly in the face of the evidence, and it is using fasting as a fat loss tool. If you look at the evidence on body fat reduction, you will find it's quite clear that when you equate for calories and protein, when you eat your food doesn't seem to

matter too much. Meaning, if you give two people the same amount of calories and the same amount of protein, you can feed them across the day however you like and they'll lose approximately the same amount of body fat. For me, as a busy professional entrepreneur and somebody who wants to get the most out of life, I am on the go a lot. And when I am distracted or invested in my work, I do not feel as much hunger as when I am at home bored. So one of the things I like to do is push my calories to the back half of the day, which is a form of fasting.

Now, I do a protein-sparing modified fast when I like to lose weight, where I start my day with a large protein meal, then I go to work and I will mostly just fast. And if I do eat something, it's usually something with a good amount of protein with the goal of creating caloric restriction through decreasing the amount of time I spend eating in a given day. So what this looks like is it looks like me having a protein shake in the morning, training five, six sessions and recording a podcast, then having my second meal, which is very high in protein, having a small

protein rich snack, and then a big protein rich dinner, but being below my total daily energy expenditure in terms of total calories, because I believe it's a huge, huge benefit to me to stay focused on my work. And while I don't always have as much opportunity to eat, I'm certainly less hungry when I'm distracted. So a lot of things working for me there. And again, the evidence says you do not have to do this. This is just something that works well for me. I've used it with clients in the past. For some people, it works wonderfully. For other people, it works terribly and it's not worth doing at all. So something to consider, shortening your eating window, going into that shortened or reduced or eliminated eating window by starting off, and this is the big thing, by starting off with a protein source. So a protein sparing modified

fast to enhance fat loss. The next tip is utilizing a greens powder. And there is a ton, a ton of marketing around greens powder supplementation, is a ton, a ton of marketing around greens powder supplementation, but there's not a ton of evidence around greens powder supplementation in terms of their efficacy. I take what I believe to be the best greens powder on the market, which is Legion's Genesis. Our amazing partner Legion has a greens powder that is actually not hiding behind a proprietary blend. That number one greens powder you've probably heard of a million times on every podcast. Yeah, them, they hide behind a proprietary blend, which I don't like. That's their way of saying, hey, we're going to put some ingredients in here

that are really cool and have great names, but we're not going to tell you how much of them we put in here. So you might be getting 99% just grass in 1% of the good shit. You'll never know. And I don't vibe with that. But I like taking a greens powder, not for any of the marketing points that you often hear. You'll often hear it reduces bloating. Not interested in that. You'll often hear it's rich in antioxidants.

This is almost assuredly true, but I'm not interested in that. I take Legion's Genesis because it contains reishi mushroom. Genesis because it contains reishi mushroom. And reishi mushroom is a very, very unique, unique compound. So unique, in fact, I bet you've probably never even heard of it. And there is some human research around reishi mushroom that I find to be extremely, extremely interesting. But there's not a massive preponderance of evidence that would make me confident in recommending it for everybody the way I do creatine. But you will find studies that show, and again, not all of these studies are in humans. So it's very, very important to communicate this, that not all of these studies are in humans, but you will find evidence that supports the reishi

mushroom can boost immune properties. It can have unique tumor suppressing anti-cancer properties. It can fight disease. It can fight fatigue and depression and even help with heart health, managing blood sugar, and it's very potent as an antioxidant. So greens powders promote a lot of unique things and the ingredients inside them might have unique benefits depending on the dosages of said ingredients. However, I like legion specifically because it contains reishi mushroom and I love the literature and what it has to say about reishi mushroom paired with the fact that when you really think about it, we have plant foods, right? Which we are thinking about as probably fruits, vegetables, grains, potatoes, etc. Animal foods, right, eggs, dairy, and of course meat. And then we have a whole classification

of organisms in fungi that are extremely unique organisms, unlike any organism in this planet, which confer a ton of unique benefits. And I know this might make me sound like a bromeopathy major, but I really, really am encouraged and uniquely curious about all the amazing things that fungi can do. So I have long been a proponent of shiitake, mitake, lion's mane, reishi, and chaga mushroom as being potentially beneficial compounds and ingredients that you can include in supplemental or even whole foods form, although it's very hard to find them. The last thing, again, some evidence to support this, not enough evidence for me to recommend it safely, is getting more sun and using red light therapy to treat atomic dermatitis and eczema.

I've struggled with eczema and dry skin more as an adult than I ever did as a child. And what I have found works well for this, including zinc, collagen, and vitamin C, is red light therapy and sun exposure. I find that getting a good amount of light and sun on my skin leads for happier skin. And my reasoning to believe this is because I am of Mediterranean descent. I am Spanish, Sicilian, Italian, and Greek. You put that combination of things together, you have a Mediterranean sun loving organism. And I don't get sun as much as I should when I work in the gym all day, even though I live in beautiful, sunny California.

So I believe that sun exposure is particularly good for my skin as long as I'm being cognizant of, of course, the damaging effects of the sun. And again, you can use sunscreen to mitigate some of this. And you always want to make sure that you're perfect protecting certain parts of your face along the cartilage based structures. We talked a little bit about this with Dr. Kyle Gillette, but I find that the right amount of sun is good for my skin. Too little sun, not so good. Too much sun obviously could be very dangerous. So again, these are slightly unscientific takes. I am certainly not a doctor and I don't recommend you doing any of these things without conferring or getting a kind of the thumbs up from your doctor. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I know I had

fun recording it. I had fun thinking of this list. I wonder if you guys try some of this stuff, what you'll think of it. If you do, please send me a DM. I'd love to hear how it goes. If you have five seconds, do me a quick favor as well. Leave me a five-star rating and review on iTunes and Spotify. It does not take long at all. It's very quick and very easy. And I would love to hear what you guys have to say. Thanks so much for checking this one out and I'll catch you on the next one.