Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Optimizing Wellness from the Inside Out | Dr. Gil Blander

Episode Date: October 6, 2021

This week’s conversation is with Dr. Gil Blander, an expert in nutrition, biomarker analytics, athletic performance, biochemistry, and aging research.Gil holds numerous patents and has published peer-reviewed articles in these fields. He received his PhD in biology from the Weizmann Institute of Science, and undertook postgraduate research on aging at MIT. Gil is also the Founder and CSO of InsideTracker, a personalized health and performance analytics company created by a team of scientists, physicians, nutritionists and exercise physiologists from MIT, Harvard, and Tufts University.InsideTracker has been a longtime partner of ours and I love the actionable insights I’ve gathered from the personalized data they've provided me to help optimize my health.InsideTracker has been a longtime partner of ours and I love the personalized data and actionable insights they support me with to optimize my health.I wanted to have Gil on to learn more about why he founded InsideTracker and the difference it can make for longevity.We discuss how different variables such as nutrition, movement, psychology, and genetics not only impact your life span, but more importantly your health span - the amount of time you’re able to live life in a high quality manner._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And we need to take care of ourselves as good as we can. And we need to start doing it as early as possible. Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. And by trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist, fortunate to work with some of the most extraordinary thinkers and doers across the planet.

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I'm pretty intentional about what I eat, and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals, on a demanding day certainly, I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put him on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here.

Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters,

and that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value, and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. Now this week's conversation is with Dr. Gil Blander, and he has expertise in nutrition, biomarker analytics, biochemistry, and aging research. He received his PhD in biology from the Wiseman Institute of Science and then undertook postgraduate research on aging at MIT.

And he holds numerous patents and has published peer-reviewed articles in all the fields mentioned above. He's got a deep understanding of the science here. And he's also the founder and CSO, chief science officer of InsideTracker, which is a personalized health and performance analytics company that was created by a team of scientists and physicians and nutritionists and exercise physiologists from MIT, Harvard, and Tufts University. InsideTracker has been a longtime partner of ours, and I love the actionable insights that I've gathered from using their testing kits. And there's things on their assessment that you don't get when you go to your internist and ask for a blood draw. There's things that are specific to your performance aspect of, you know, being vibrant. And so, you know, things like, you know, let me just pull up my test here, like my liver enzymes, which you don't normally get if you, if you don't ask for them, C-reactive protein, which is a really interesting

inflammation indicator and also, you know, indicates other things as well. Ferritin, for example, like how iron is being stored. We're looking at creatine and obviously there's a hormonal panel testosterone as well, but things like vitamin B12, omegas, to see how you're doing with some of the essential fatty acids as well. Magnesium is something they take a look at. So there's, you know, what I like is they're looking at these and then they give you actionable insights about, you know, what the test looked at and then what you can do if you need some work in that area.

So it's the actionable insights that really pays dividends here. And because of that, I wanted to have Gil on to take a deep dive on longevity. We discuss how different variables like nutrition and movement and psychology and genetics not only impact your lifespan, but more importantly, your health span, which is the amount of time that you're able to live life in a high quality manner. So it's not about just extending life, but the quality of the time that you have left. And with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Dr. Gil Blander. Gil, how are you?

Very well. How are you, Michael? Fantastic. And where in the world are you calling in from? Yeah, I'm calling from Boston, Massachusetts. Okay, beautiful. Okay, so where did your passion come from to be so dedicated and interested in longevity, specifically through nutrition? Yeah, so it's coming from a very young age. I was fascinated by the longevity and basically in the problem that why do we die? And the reason assume that it happened to every person at a different age, but I took it really to heart. And I said that I want to dedicate my life and try to understand why do we die

and how can we live longer, a better life. So that's the reason why I studied biology and we can discuss it later. That's basically the background about that. And so obviously this person was, and this event was game shifting for you. And if you maybe help me understand what it was about the way you grew up. Obviously, I think you grew up in Israel. Is that correct?

Yes. And so what was it about your philosophy or your spiritual framework that was ripe for you to have the deep questions about life at that age? Because that is rare. Yeah, it's a good question. And I think that Jim Carey is like he's all in a movie and everyone around him are like someone that actually playing in the movie and I felt like all the world was around me and I think that because of that, I felt like I should maybe make a move. I think that I changed things then and I'm much more, awfully, much more modest and realistic.

But I think that because of that way of view and let's say that I felt a bit bright and all of that, I saw that that's a problem that maybe I can help solving. And then just to be clear, just to level set, because your work is around longevity and lifespan. Correct. What happens in your best estimate, what happens after we physically die? I really don't know. It's a good question. I never thought about

that. But what the biology or the physics or the chemistry saying that they basically, our body is decomposed by bacteria and the East and other basically will disappear. So that's the scientific explanation but as you know there are a lot of religions that have a lot of explanation about that that uh let's say a bit more exciting and positive but i don't know i haven't been there yet okay the reason i ask you that is because you've spent your life on increasing the quality of life, you know, for yourself and others. And it, to me, it begs the question a bit about why.

And I don't ask that glibly or insensitively, but if your framework was that, listen, there's a lot of lessons that we need to learn. And, you know, it's based on a karmic approach to life and death. Then I go, okay, gotcha. And if you say no, it's more hedonic, meaning that, you know, life is to have fun and, you know, pleasures and to explore. Okay, got it. So then without sounding trite, like, why does longevity matter to you? I think that, as you said before, life is fun and it's supposed to be fun.

And we can accomplish a lot. And because of that, I want to live to do it more and do it longer and continue to do that. And I hope that it's the same for everyone. My assumption is that it is that it is. So because of that, let's try to get the most of it. And also, I think that it's very important to distinguish between lifespan and healthspan. And lifespan is how long we live, basically, from the moment that we are born to the moment that we die. And health span is how long do we live in a good quality of life. And I definitely don't want to live to 200,

but in the last 120 years to be connected to tubes and lie on the bed. That's not health span, that's life span. So I think that it's very important to have a longer healthier lifespan and sorry lifespan with a good healthspan okay and can you put a number what you think is reasonable for the longest person to be alive in our lifetime? So we know that the longest person that lived so far was 122. And I don't think that it's a changed a lot before. But we can see the change in the average lifespan. So if you look at the end of the or the beginning of the 20th centuries, the average lifespan was around 40. It's a crazy, but that's what it was. And let's say

that we are in the beginning of the 21st century, and the average lifespan is around 80, some places 82, some places 84. So I think that for sure, we can get above the 100 in the average with all the achievement that we are having and will have in the future. The maximum lifespan is a good question, and there are a lot of speculation about that. There was a paper that published a few weeks ago, I think, that looked at theoretical based on data science. How can you predict the line and see what is the maximum lifespan? And they go to around 150. So that's one way to look at that. Some other people are saying that theoretically there is no limit.

And you can look at whales that live in the water and they are they can live to hundreds of years and if you look at turtles they can live even longer and if you look at the the biggest planet in california the sequoia they can live for a thousand spheres so theoretically why can't we do that uh and I don't have a good explanation why not. I think that what happened is that the evolution, because basically we were created for the evolution to create the next generation. For human, the creation of the next generation

is between the age of, let's say, 20 to 40, roughly. And there is not any evolution advantage to live much longer after that uh so uh but with with time or if we can expand evolution somehow and find a good um enhancement in the biology i don't see a reason why you can't we live much longer yeah i'm familiar with the 150 um and if i was to be a betting person i would say it's going to be older but i'm not sure that that's going to happen in my life span lifespan i think it might happen um in my child who's you know in his teens uh to date so i think in my lifespan i'm 50 that we're going to see the average move up to 100.

And in that average moving up, I deeply appreciate the call out that you're making right now about healthspan and lifespan, because I'm interested in healthspan as well. Now, all that being said is, I want to just pull on the thread where you're saying, you know, trees can live for thousands. Yeah, they don't have the stress that we have. They don't have chronic stress. Somehow their chronic stress is more adaptive and ours is maladaptive. And so we've got to figure that thing out. And then there's also this kind of underlying obvious condition that we're working with

where the bright minds in geoscience are not clear, like when is our planet going to exhaust? And so it's a real concern obviously as well, but that's not really for this conversation now, is it? Yeah, it's up to you. I can discuss whatever you like. Yeah, no, no. So let's get into some really practical ways that we can think about increasing the quality of our life. And I think about micro choices. And so from micro choices, just from that idea, making micro choices towards health, where do you naturally take the conversation? Yeah, I think that I tend to agree with you because it's not like a one decision. If you look at as simple as what should I eat today?

If you look at that decision, we're making around 200 decisions like that. Because think about it. What should I eat for breakfast? When should I eat breakfast? What is the amount that I should eat for breakfast? And then you have to talk about snack and lunch and dinner and between that. So you get to around 200 different micro choices like that, which are pretty important.

And if you look about the possibilities, we have around 8,000 different food items that we can eat, and we need to choose between them. Most of us don't choose between more like 20 to 40. So basically, we have a universe like that. And we usually eat the same food every day, which is a completely different topic. But I think that making those micro choices are very important. And we're most of the time making a not educated decision about those micro choices. So basically, we are going to the refrigerator and opening the refrigerator and choosing something and eating it.

It's not because it's good for us. It's not because it's good for this situation. It's because we have it or because, I don't know, you read an article that a man else said that it's good for this situations because we have it or because I don't know, you read an article at the MNLs that they said that it's good for you. So I think that we need some, have more educated decision and it's very hard specifically nutrition. And so if we think about lifespan and healthspan in particular, you know, and we put a frame on there from inputs and outputs. So healthspan would be the output and the micro choices are the inputs. And when you think of all the available inputs, nutrition is that at the top of your list. And obviously some of the other inputs are movement and supplementation. Maybe you love that into nutrition along with hydration.

Um, but there's also psychology and genetics and, and so how much space of the available pie, if there's a hundred different variables that we could take a look at, do you place the importance of nutrition? Yeah, it's a, it's a very tough question. I think that it's definitely more than 50%, but I wouldn't, I don't know exactly what is the exact value. Because if you think about it, you have the nutrition, as you said, then you have the movement, or I call it more like exercise, but at the same, which is also very important. And then you have the psychology, as you said, then you have the supplementation. And I say supplementation more like, let's say a lazy solution in a way, not always, but most of the time,

because most of the supplementation you can compensate by the right nutrition, not all of them, like vitamin D is a good example of something that it's hard to do, but it's much easier. It's much easier to come and say, I will take vitamin D supplementation every day,

5,000 IU and you do it. It's much easier for the user to do it than to come and say okay i need to get my vitamin d from food and eat let's say fatty fish three times a day it's much much harder to do that um and then you have all the lifestyle which i think that it's also very important so basically sleep, and maybe meditation and going outside. And so it's maybe going to the mind that you mentioned before, but I call it more like lifestyle. And I think that that's also very important. And you mentioned the stress a lot. Yes, stress is not good. And we have a lot of stress today, especially when you have this guy on your hands and you look at facebook and see all your friends that posting oh they're having fun all the time

but basically in our a minute a day they are having fun and that's what they are posting and you feel everyone's feel frustrated that everyone else is having fun and they are the only one that are miserable so i feel that there is a lot of stress in in our society right now that we are pushing on ourselves um but but the bottom line is i think that nutrition is a is definitely very important because it's a it's like a in data science you have garbage in garbage out meaning uh if you will feed yourself in a good food, it's like feeding the car in the right gasoline. The car will drive longer. And if you'll go every day to McDonald's and feed yourself with the food there, the car won't run as long as if you will

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Just head to felixgray.com and use the code findingmasteryMASTERY20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. You know, I think that nutrition takes a big chunk of the available resources as well. And I don't have a model. That's why I was asking if you've, if you've been playing with the, the, the model for inputs to outputs. But

I think my experience has been twofold. One is that people either really dialed in on the value of nutrition and they are well-educated on the micro choices, or it feels like a total mystery and they're eating what they grew up eating or they're eating what is convenient. And they, most people want to choose well with nutrition, but there's a deeper need, which is to satiate some other cravings that we have, which is, you know, why sugars feel so good and, you know, salty food and fats and whatever. Most people want to live healthy. Most, not all. Some people are absolutely on a destruction path of stress and partying and drinking and drugging and whatever. Okay. All that being said, I'm really interested in the

people that are switched on to the value of nutrition, but don't know where to go, don't know how to start. And I know that this is how it led you down the path probably to InsideTracker. So maybe you can just talk a minute about InsideTracker, which in my mind is a way to move the education needle at scale about the value of nutrition. But I want to speak to those folks, to me, who I know the value of it. And I try to make my best choices, but it's hard. And by the way, I would have no idea where to start if I didn't have some sort of blood panel or draw to say, this is actually what my body is needing. And this is what I'm doing well at. So can you just kind of start from inside tracker to assessment to informed micro choices

and get really specific if we can on the micro choices? Yeah, of course. So the idea of inside tracker is, again, helping people to live a longer, better life. And again, if we are going deeper, is allowing them to understand first what happened inside their body. So what are the issues that each of us have? And I think that our body is a very complex machine. It's maybe the most complex machine that we have. But if you think about it, we are not treating it well.

So we don't have, let's say before in Sraga, there wasn't any real plan for prevention. We have the physician, which are doing a great job. I really think that the physician are doing a great job, but their job is when the machine is broken. So they know how to treat a body that is broken, basically sick. But before that, they don't know what to do with us. And my philosophy is if we will keep ourselves as further away from being sick by optimizing the body, then hopefully we'll live longer, better life because we'll be sick later. And we know there is a lot of data in the literature that show that a lot of the diseases are aging-related diseases. So when you go older, you have a better chance to become sick. And because of that, if we delay that, hopefully we'll prevent at least part of those diseases and live a longer, better life. So what we decided to do is to look inside your body.

And we started with blood biomarkers. So currently we are looking at a bit more than 40 blood biomarkers that allow us basically to understand what's happening inside your body. And I like the analogy for the car. So in the car you have a lot of gauges, amount of fuel, and how full is the battery, and the temperature of the car, and all of that. So then you look at that and you understand the situation of the car. Unfortunately, today we cannot do it with our body.

In addition to that with the car, you take the car to the technician every 5,000 miles or so. The technician plug a computer into the car, know exactly what are the issues of the car, change, replace, and fix it. And then the car is good for another 5000 miles. And research showed that since we incorporate this intervention for cars in the 1980s, the lifespan of the car increased on average from 100,000 miles to 200,000 miles. So the way of thinking that we had is,

let's do something similar to human now unfortunately today you cannot plug a computer into your brain not yet at least i don't know about a successful way to do that so we said let's say plug a needle into our vein and extract a liquid gold called blood that will show us what's happening inside the body. You have too little vitamin D, too high cholesterol, too high glucose, too little testosterone, too much cortisol, which is the stress hormone, and so on. And then when we know that, then we understand what's happening. And then we can intervene. And the intervention, again, as I said

before, in our opinion, should be simple and natural. So mainly food, but also exercise, supplement, and lifestyle changes. So what we have done, we develop an expert system that basically extract data from the peer-reviewed scientific publications. So we have a team of scientists that look at the peer-review review scientific publication and try to understand what are the interventions that allow you to increase the vitamin D from level X to level Y. And more specifically, does it work for male or female? Does it work for someone that is young or old? Does it work for someone that is athletic active or a couch potato? And then we have all this data. We structure the data for the peer review scientific publication into a database. And then based on the age of the person

and the gender, ethnicity, and athletic activity, and his food preferences preferences and the blood biomarker that he have, we are trying to find the best intervention for him or her in order to optimize this blood biomarker. Now we are talking about one, but what happened if you have, as I said, we are testing more than 40, then you have infinite possibilities. So what we've done, again, we know that, for example, let's say fiber, okay? High fiber can allow you to improve glucose but also cholesterol. So suddenly, if you have a person that have high glucose and high cholesterol,

an intervention with fiber will, let's say, eat two birds with one stone. So we are trying to find what is the best intervention for a person based on all the issues that he has. Gail, just quickly on the cholesterol bit and related to the fiber, are you looking at 23 markers of cholesterol or are you looking at the big three? How many markers are cholesterol? We are currently looking at the big three, basically HDL, LDL, and the total cholesterol. Okay, yeah. And just to be clear, the reason fiber is so interesting for cholesterol and glucose is that glucose and cholesterol are related.

And why would you choose fiber and cholesterol? Yeah, because basically the fiber for cholesterol, it's basically attenuated absorption of the cholesterol, and because of that, allow the body more time to deal with the excess cholesterol. So that's how we understand the science. So basically, we are trying to give the person a holistic view of all of his biomarkers. We started with blood only, but now we also have activity tracker. So we are connected to Fitbit and the Garmin and working on

Apple Watch. We're also looking at the genetics of the person. And, for example, let's go back to let's say Watch, we're also looking at the genetics of the person. And for example, let's go back to, let's say, cholesterol. We can find whether you have high cholesterol or not, but we can also know whether you are predisposed to have high cholesterol. So basically, do you have a risk for high cholesterol? And then based on that, we can give you the best recommendation possible so so so basically it starts with a diagnostic so it can be blood dna and fitness tracker then we have the expert system that look at all the possible intervention and out of that selecting let's say the 20 best for you showing it to you and also asking you what is your goal. Do you want to sleep better?

Do you want to de-stress? Do you want just to live longer? Or do you want to optimize your body? And we have around 12 goals or so. You select the goal, and then based on that, you receive the recommendation, and you select which ones are doable for you. When you have them, you can start to follow the plan and we're sending you a notification and you need to check in. And we're also sending you some pro tips, like for example, let's assume that you connected your fitness tracker to InstaTracker

and we realized that your deep sleep was very low last night. We'll send you a notification and say, hey Michael, last night your deep sleep was pretty low, but don't worry, we have a plan for you. So tonight at 8.35, because you fall asleep at 10.35 on average, do X or do Y. So basically, we're trying to give you a plan that will allow you not only optimize the blood biomarkers, but also allow you to optimize your physiological markers, such as deep sleep and REM sleep and resting heart rate and so on.

Yeah. One of the things I appreciate you guys have done is traditionally nutrition interventions are based on education. And that's good, but it doesn't move to behavioral change easily. And so what I've appreciated that you guys have done is you've said, listen, this is about behavioral change and let's take the, as many factors as we can understand the person and at scale, make, make recommendations, you know, where I feel like there's a bit of an individuation that's, you know, in your experience. And the reason I wanted to have you on is because of the micro choices. So yes, assessment, you get some data. Now with that data, there's some

responsibility. And some people, they get overwhelmed with the data and the responsibility, and they go back to the habits that their parents taught them about nutrition. And some people say, okay, great, I'm in. And then it's still hard. Like, I'll tell you, I'll tell you what I do. And I don't know if this is of interest to you or for others, but I do tons of blood analysis, you know, maybe two or three a year, tons, two or three a year. And then I also, based on that, I will look to change some foods that I eat, but more it's about fine tuning with some supplementation. But the foods, I'm not a good chef. I'm just not good at it. And so I don't have the ability to have variety of foods other than like kind of putting individual bits of food on my plate, but mashing it all together and making it tasty, like it's a

whole different deal. So I'll actually outsource to some kitchens that will deliver. And, you know, based on what I'm looking for, based on the blood work. Now, all this being said, there's a part of me that says, oh my God, this is such a first world problem, you know, or first world luxury that I'm afforded to have this deep knowledge about how my micro choices are affecting my chemistry. And I'm wondering, how do you wrestle with that? And because I'm not, I'm definitely not speaking light of the purpose that I think you and I are aligned on, which is health for individuals. But how do you wrestle with the first world nature of what we're talking about? The privilege, if you will? Yeah, no, I understand. I understand the question. So I think that we need to start

somewhere. And we are not a non-profit organization. So we also need to make profit and also find the population that will help allow us to continue to develop it so i see i see the the people that we have right now our users as in a way i don't know if it's nice to say but in a way like a guinea pig i'm a scientist so they are helping me to build the platform and to optimize it. And right now it's pretty expensive, but I think that with time it will be cheaper and simpler. And I think that then maybe everyone will be able to use it. So you always need to start somewhere. Let's take the example of the electric car.

Elon Musk started with the Tesla that cost, I don't know, at the beginning, maybe a couple of hundred of thousands of dollars. Most of the people cannot afford that, but he started and built it. And yeah, it was a status symbol. And now if you look around, he came with the less expensive Tesla

and almost 5% of the user or the driver in the US driving either Tesla or other cars that are electric cars. So you need to start somewhere. The same with the, we are now in the midst of a revolution of the space traveler. In the last couple of months, we've seen a few different billionaires flying to space. And definitely, it's not the budget that I can fly to the space yet. But I think that in five to 10 years, I might be able to afford it. Yeah, very cool. No, I totally get your model here. And then just to be really concrete, what does the assessment cost to get to the actionable plan? Yeah. So if it's someone like you that have the data in his,

getting it from his physician or something like that, it's cost $119 per year and you can upload as many tests as you want. If you don't have it, we can give you a lab slip and you can go to Quest Diagnostic. And then it's between around $100 to $150 to around $600. So again, it's not cheap. But if you think about it, a person that goes to Starbucks every day and spends between $5 to $10 a day and just multiply it by months and don't drink a Starbucks coffee for months and you can do it.

So I don't think that it's too rich. No, I don't either. And my experience has been that when the high performers that I work with go through an assessment like yours, that the next thing they want to do is have their husband or wife or girlfriend, boyfriend to also take it so that the family is they want to do is have their husband or wife or girlfriend, boyfriend to also take it so that people, so the family's on the same page. And so I've seen that play out over and over again. And so, okay, so good. So there's under a thousand dollars a year would be. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, again, it's depends on the person. You said that you're doing the test

couple, between two to three times a year. I'm doing it the same. So in that case, it might be more expensive. But I think that even doing it once a year, it's enough for the beginners. And then it's definitely much less than 1,000 a year. And yeah, I think that the value that you receive, it's much, much bigger than the cost

because you learn so much about yourself and you can optimize your body. It's like the best present that you can receive. So how do you answer the psychology of folks that say, you know, I love it. I want to know more, but I don't really want to know. Like they're saying to themselves out loud, like they want to be better, but they don't really want to know. They're saying to themselves out loud they want to be better, but they don't really want the data because the data can become overwhelming. And again, that responsibility takes front hold. So how do you speak to them?

Say, hey, listen, if you're not playing this game, I'm not sure what game you're playing is kind of how I would answer it. But how do you respond to those folks? Yeah, I think that you should start with the intrigued population. So I think that a person should be an open-minded. And I think that that's the first point. If you are not open-minded and you strongly believe in what you need to do,

so don't do instant tracker because most likely we need to change a lot of things. If you are not 100% sure what you need to do. So don't do instant tracker because most likely you will need to change a lot of things. If you are not 100% sure what you want and you want to learn and you want to be better,

then come to us. But if you're 100% sure what you need to do and you don't want to learn, don't waste your money. That's good. Okay, I'm right there with you. Anne, do you have something

that you would, oh, I don't know, ban? You know, if you could ban a handful of things from what people put in their mouth from a nutritional standpoint, what would it be like? Yeah, I think that one thing that is really bad is all the industrial food that we eat. And again, it's very hard to ban it. But I would say, why do we need to eat everything inside the package that is very highly industrial? And so I think that that's one thing that I wouldn't ban, but I would say to people, eat as less as possible. And then all the sugary drink that we have, which is, I's a, I call it an empty calorie.

So you drink the, in the US you have the bottle of, you go to McDonald's or any other place and buy half a gallon of Coke. And only that, I know it's like 500 calories and it's really bad for you. So don't drink all of that, drink water. Water is the best best drink that we have uh and then yeah the fast food we i would say that that's something that

we need to be very careful about it but even if you go to fast food try to eat there the if you don't have a choice of stuck in the airport or something like that try to eat the thing that is the least industrial so try to eat the salad or something like that so so that's a i don't know a rule of time but i would i wouldn't say that we need to bend anything because we are people and we are okay to make a decision um so even marihuana now is illegal in most of the u.s and i'm not sure that it's good but people can each each of us can make his own choice. So on that note, what do you think of alcohol? Or what's your position on alcohol from a philosophical standpoint, but a health standpoint?

Yes, scientific. I think that alcohol is not bad. I think that there are some people that react to alcohol badly and some people that don't react to alcohol badly. And I can elaborate about that. So basically, the risk with alcohol is mainly the damage for the liver because the alcohol is getting into our body and then the liver detoxifies. Some people, it's harder to them or it it's make a bigger toll on their liver.

And we can see it by looking at some liver enzymes, basically a protein that localizes the liver. And when the liver gets damaged, they are leaking into the bloodstream. So there are a few of those, ALT, AST, GGT, and so on. So some people are really sensitive to alcohol. They drink like one drink, and basically they really damage the liver. Others can drink 10 drinks and nothing happens. So I think that it's good for you to know and understand what is the relationship of your body with alcohol.

So that's first. And you're speaking from a metabolic standpoint. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Metabolic. Yeah. Yeah.

And there's also lifestyle some people drink one and it's too many yeah a thousand is not enough you know and so there's also that bit to it as well but so strictly from a liver standpoint you you're not as you're not as concerned about the pure sugar part of it because you know my understanding from my lenses is is that sugar is a real challenge for people from a health perspective yeah but there are some kind of alcohol that you don't have too much sugar so you can look at that um and and also um i think that again everything you should take in moderation. So I wouldn't recommend anyone to drink, as you said, a thousand.

I'm not sure that anyone can drink 1,000 glasses. But let's say 10 glasses, in my opinion, is too high. But if you really like to... Wait, wait, are you talking about 10 glasses a week? Because I think that's actually the recommendation for men. No, I'm talking about a day. A day, yeah. So on a weekly basis, are you following kind of the newer guidelines?

I think it's one to two glasses a day, five days a week or something like that. It's about 10, I think, for men. You're saying, yeah, that seems reasonable. Yeah, yeah. No, it seems reasonable. Again, if you really like it, because we are going back to your point from the beginning about the mind and body. So some people I'm not like that. I am Israeli, as you said before, I haven't been grown in a

environment that drink a lot of alcohol, I can, I have sometimes six months that I haven't drank one glass of alcohol, and I'm fine, I don't need it. But there are some people that in order to feel well or open themselves in a social event or something, I need to drink like, that's okay. You should do it. Just be careful about it. And then also monitor the effects. So the effect on the liver is one effect,

but then it's interesting to know what is the effect on your sleep? What is the effect of your resting heart rate? So now with the integration that we have with the activity tracker, we can know exactly what is the effect. Whether when Michael drinks alcohol, whether his quality of sleep is going down. Maybe not. Some people, it doesn't affect them at all. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep.

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And what keeps me coming back, it's really simple. Their products are simple. And they reflect the kind of intentional living that I want to build into every part of my day. And they make my morning routine really easy. They've got some great new products I think you'll be interested in. A shampoo, conditioner, and a hair serum. With Caldera Lab, it's not about adding more. It's about choosing better. And when your day demands clarity and

energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. And even, even like one glass. And if I, let's say I have a glass and then I fall asleep in two hours, the two hour window is even problematic. That needs to be more like for three hours for me to metabolize it in a,

in a way that it doesn't affect my HRV. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I'm saying it's, it's very hard to come and say, and I don't want to say alcohol is bad. Um, and the same as with coffee. So people ask a very similar question about coffee. Coffee is good or bad. So it depends. And again, there are a lot of, uh, there is a lot of data in the literature also about some genetic predispositions. Some people are more sensitive to coffee. Some people are less sensitive to coffee.

Some people know that, like for me, I don't drink coffee also, maybe once a year. And I remember I drank coffee like a few months ago in the morning, and I had a really bad sleep the night after. Think about it. I drank in the morning, and I'm so sensitive. Maybe I'm so sensitive because I'm not drinking coffee at all. So my receptors are so sensitive. But it's really personalized. So if you really like coffee and you don't feel that it's doing so bad for you, coffee

is a great, I'm sure that you know that, it's a great athletic activity enhancing drug. If you drink coffee before a performance, you might increase your performance by maybe 5% or something like that. It's a really good performance enhancing drug, which is okay to use. So what I'm saying, I wouldn't say that coffee is bad, and I wouldn't say that alcohol is bad. It's depending, is it good or bad for you? So let me ask something super technical, because tea leaves and coffee bean shells are really, you know, the skins.

The polyphenols are really interesting properties, you know, for brain health and whatnot. So where do you get your polyphenols in? Yeah, I eat a lot of foods and you have it in the food, especially because wine, red wine have a lot of polyphenol relatively, so I get it from grapes. But yeah, I'm not getting it from a from wine. And if you want to get enough of it from wine you need to drink a lot of wine and i'm not sure you certainly do so so let's let's kind of follow this thread i want to go to some concrete places like resveratrol and so as a supplementation and we're talking about grapes and red wine and the skin of grapes, you know, I think it's the skin,

is a high incidence of resveratrol. But can you just talk about, you know, are you bullish on it? Do you have concerns about resveratrol as a supplementation? So I don't have a problem with that because I think that it's a natural supplementation that they have been used for a very long time so it's not something new it's not small molecule and i have a new small molecule that we haven't tested and i think that if you look at the longevity and i don't know how much your audience know about that but what happened i would say i don't know maybe 15 years ago is that david sinclair professor david sinclair from harvard medical school found that resveratrol is an activator of the co2 family of proteins which he and other have shown that they are longevity genes so

basically in that case resveratrol is great. It can extend the lifespan. They showed it in yeast and worms, and he also showed it in some instant in mice. So it's a very interesting molecule. But I think that on top of that, resveratrol has been also showed before that is a very strong antioxidant so i think that if you think about resveratrol is not a a clean uh activator of

a co2 family it is activator but it's also doing a lot of other shame um and i think that from looking at the literature and again i'm sorry i haven't looked at it recently, but I remember that it's doing a lot of things other than only activating CO2. One of them, one notable is being antioxidant. So I don't think that I don't know about any side effect or negative effect of resveratrol. So I would say that it's okay to take it. Again, I'm always recommending trying to get it from food on top of a supplement. But if you don't have time or you don't feel like or you really believe in that, by all means, I don't think that resveratrol is bad. Okay. All right. So slight pivot to autophagy as a principle and rapamycin as an interesting compound that I'm learning more about now.

But what are you doing with restricted feeding times? And that's why it's related to autophagy. But what are you doing with your restricted feeding times? So me specifically, you're asking, right? Yes. And then also, what do you recommend for most people? So I'm trying. I think that a feeding restriction, or I call it a caloric restriction, it's definitely

something that there is a lot of data, again, for model organism getting back to hundreds of years ago, and the first study was done in the 1930s, that basically a scientist grew rats in the lab and basically restricted the amount of calories that they received and surprisingly increased the lifespan of those rats by 30 to 50%. And then a lot of other scientists done it again and again and again mice and rats and yeast and worms and even monkeys and the data is repeat repeating itself so basically restricting the calories have been shown a lot of positive data in model organism

from east till monkeys in humans there is a data that shows it's very hard to look at lifespan in humans because I will start an experiment today and I will die before the data will come. So it's very hard to do a formal lifespan experiment in humans. But what you can do is look at the biomarker for longevity. So, for example, we know that the level of glucose is very correlated with longevity you have a longer a lower glucose you live longer or the blood pressure

and the other and based on that they've seen that when you do some caloric restriction or feeding restriction in human, you can see a significant improvement in dose biomarker of longevity. So there are some correlation between restricting your calories and longevity also in human. So what I'm doing, I'm trying to restrict my calories and basically I'm trying to do what it's called 16-8. So 16 hour of fasting and eight hour of feeding. There is more and more data actually recently that show that it's not only important

what is the time that you feed yourself and the time that you restrict yourself, but also when in the day. So it's, for example, it's better to have the feeding time as early as possible, will terminate as early as possible, because if you eat late, we know that's not good for your sleep. So there is some data that appear that they don't do a feeding between, let's say, 4 p.m. to midnight, but do it, I don't know, start eating at noon, but finish eating at six or something like that. So that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to have dinner as early as possible

and try to either skip breakfast or have a very late breakfast. That's the way that I'm doing it. And the reason for that is? The reason for that is that first is longevity. And second, there is a data in humans that show that, as I mentioned before, it's good for your metabolic related markers. So the glucose, the lipid, the inflammation markers,

definitely the blood pressure. It's also some data, it's not clear cut, show that the people that are doing that also tend to be a less severe and basically it's a good way to lose weight but some people are taking it into the extreme and they're doing the short feeding phase they are eating alone so then you lose this this effect um for sure and and the reason i was that i was kind of prompting that way is because you know the the cleansing or the cleaning out process it gives it a longer chance the autophagy process to be able to clean out the system and and it but that is not of interest

it sounds like maybe to where you naturally go for why restricting food is interesting yeah yeah no it's it's definitely is because like uh again if you're thinking about ourself as a machine um consume having our gut working 24 7 is not good and allowing it to rest and the rejuvenate it's it is important so it's definitely part of it and it's it's the same with sleep why sleep is so important because let's say that on average your heart rate at the day is 80 and if you can decrease it to 55 think about how many heartbeats you you save uh and allow your your heart to be to have those beats at the your 90s or 100s um so it's definitely a part of it okay i love that you're talking about gut because um you know the prebiotic probiotic um age that we're in is really interesting and

you know the gut brain access and and and so um do you have a a way that you recommend people increasing both their fiber slash prebiotic and probiotics? Because I don't know. My panel doesn't look right when I eat fermented food. And so supplementation and a variety of supplementation is what has shown the best value or the best return for me. So do you have a recommendation for enhancing the gut biome? Yeah, it's a very good question.

And actually, we just published a review about that, specifically about does it make sense for the general population to get tested with a gut microbiome and know what kind of bacteria they have and what is the ratio between them? And our conclusion was that it's not yet because we don't understand it good enough. It's okay for you to do that, but it's very hard to give you a specific recommendation based on that. What we are doing, we are giving a recommendation based on a specific markers. If you have an issue with them, some of the recommendation is to consume a specific mix of bacteria. And that's again, based on a peer review scientifically future. So unfortunately, I don't think that it's very easy right now to give a very personalized recommendation based on a gut microbiome. And if your audience is interested, we can also add the link to that

paper. Oh, that'd be great. Yeah. I'd like to read it for sure. So, okay. That's good. Thank you for that. And then just to kind of rewind back just quickly, do you recommend a restricted calorie or restricted feeding time for athletes? Because I don't, but I wanted to hear your take on it. Yeah, so I would say the following. I don't think that an athlete that, let's say that you're going for a long run today okay or tomorrow i wouldn't recommend you to be to do that on during the caloric restriction phase so uh if you are doing it day on and day off do it in the day off the day that you are not exercising but definitely at the

day that if you are exercising more than an hour a straight uh you should eat uh if you are not exercising but definitely at the day that if you are exercising more than an hour a straight uh you should eat uh if you are not then it's okay to do it that's that's the way that i see and yeah and so i like to explore it with folks that are in their off season and sometimes on a day off but most athletes are training six days a week if not seven you know some of them are active recovery, but some are high workloads. And now, if you could recommend somebody getting good sleep or good nutrition, and this is a reductionist question here, which is, I know, hard for folks like you and me here. So where do you lean?

I would actually start with a good sleep because the rationale is good nutrition is hard to get because it's, as I said before, 8,000 different food items. And it's like, it's not easy. But good sleep, it's much easier to get because it's one intervention in a way. So I would say start with that because it's easier to achieve than good nutrition. That's my rationale. And then, you know, this is like a party conversation

where it's like, okay, if you could only have one type of food for the rest of your life, you're stranded on an island, you can only have one type of food, what would it be? Yeah, that's tough. I think that if you look at a a specific population you can see that for example the eskimos are a

mostly consuming a fish uh and they some of them will live longer so maybe that but it's i don't know it's a tough question that I never thought about it. I thought for sure you would say Mediterranean, a Mediterranean diet. But Mediterranean diet is not not food. It's a collection of foods. It's a collection of foods. Yeah, well, actually, that's where I was going. I wasn't going one food only.

I was going like Italian food or Mediterranean or, you you know like a japanese cuisine or south america yeah okay yeah that's the yeah that's easier so you're sharing a specific diet yeah yeah there is a ton of data that shows that a mediterranean diet is a one of the superior diet that we have so i definitely i agree with you how about mct oil i know i'm bouncing around on different trends if you will but since we're talking about mediterranean as being a stable choice yeah um i which is you know the majority of my diet but um yeah what about mct oil and then uh we'll round this up and talk a little bit about red meat. And we'll talk a little bit about that. Yeah.

Let's say that I'm not a big fan of that. But yeah, I don't want to say more about that. I know that there are some people that recommend it, but I'm not sure that it's something that you need to drink every day. I assume that you're talking about coffee and all of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a little bit of a hot topic. I, I think there's something interesting there. And it, for me, it's a way if I am extending, because it doesn't kind of pull me out of ketosis ketones for the restricted period that if that's the case, then I, it extends that 16 hour just a little bit easier. And I, and I have some fat in my system

for some processing, you know, so, you know, just for disclosure, I'm not eating red meat from a compassion standpoint, but what is your take on red meat from a health perspective? And for people that are not eating red meat like myself, how to maybe solve some of the deficiencies? Yeah, so again, red meat, the advantage of red meat is the amount of iron and the bit worth. I think that those are the two things that someone that don't eat red meat or don't eat meat at all need to be worried about it and measure. But if you are good with that, I don't think that red meat is the most healthier diet. And also, it's not the best for our planet, as you discussed before, because if you look at it, when you grow a farm animal,

they have something that's called FCR. It's food conversion ratio. Meaning is how much of, let's say that you feed an animal one pound of feed, what is the amount that you receive by meat? Okay. So if you look at the chicken is around one and a half. So basically you need to feed one and a half pound of a feed to receive one pound of a chicken. Okay. For a red meat is more like six so basically you need to feed six pound of a feed in order to receive one pound of red meat so i think that from that regard it's a not the best

conversion and not the best way to save our planet uh but i think that eating red meat is okay again don't don't eat it every day for sure yeah very cool thank you i i love what you're trying to solve and um i know we're kind of all over the shop but we drill down to some very specific things and so is there are there any takeaways that you would uh want to pass on to our community who by the way like our community of listeners are really smart very um ambitious and they are committed to living well in life both from a high performing standpoint and the the most traditional sense of well-being so are there are there any last takeaways that you'd like to pass on yeah i think that it's very important for us to understand that we are the most

important and sophisticated machine that we have. We need to take care of ourselves as good as we can, and we need to start doing it as early as possible. It's the best investment that you will do. If you have a bit of time or a bit of money,

always invest it in your body. Because what is the sense to have a retirement at the age of 65? Let's say that you save a lot of money for retirement if you cannot use it. So again, invest in your body and try to make it as good as possible for as long as possible. Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time, your expertise, Gil, to make a difference on the planet and for humans. So I just want to say thank you. And I'm stoked to introduce InsideTracker to our

community and what you've built there. It feels sturdy and it feels like you're just getting started. So thank you. Thank you so much, Michael. It was a pleasure. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community.

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