Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #254 Michael Brandt

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

MIchael Brandt is a founder of Healing Via Modern Nutrition(HVMN). They make the best Ketone supplement I’ve come across. We dive into his backstory, education and move into this space. We go back over all things low-carb since it’s been awhile since I’ve touched base on diet/hunger. Go check them out, share the good word and let’s get this More Beautiful World going y’all!! Connect with Michael:   Website: hvmn.com  Instagram: @bdm_runner  Twitter: @bdm_runner  Show Notes:   Super Speciosa is the absolute best Kratom I’ve worked with head over to getsuperleaf.com/kkp and punch in “KKP” at checkout for 20% off everything in store! BIOptimizers Go check out P3OM if you get as gassy as me and the Kingsbu clan do. This is my go to probiotic. Get 10% off by going to P3OM.com/KINGSBU and entering code  “KINGSBU10” at checkout. Lucy Go to lucy.co and use codeword “KKP” at Checkout to get 20% off the best nicotine gum in the game, or check out their lozenge. Organifi Go to organifi.com/kkp to get my favorite way to easily get the most potent blend of high vibration fruits, veggies and other goodies into your diet! Click that link and use code “KKP” at checkout for 20% off your order! Sponsors:       To Work With Kyle Kingsbury Podcast   Connect with Kyle:   Fit For Service Academy App: Fit For Service Academy  Instagram: @livingwiththekingsburys   Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyles website: www.kingsbu.com  Zion Node: https://getzion.com/ > Enter PubKey  >PubKey: YXykqSCaSTZNMy2pZI2o6RNIN0YDtHgvarhy18dFOU25_asVcBSiu691v4zM6bkLDHtzQB2PJC4AJA7BF19HVWUi7fmQ   Like and subscribe to the podcast anywhere you can find podcasts. Leave a 5-star review and let me know what resonates or doesn’t.

What it do, what it do, what it do, baby, we're back. We got a phenomenal episode today with one of the co-founders of HVMN. I had Michael out at the farm and showed him everything that we're up to here, where I'm recording ads right now during full temple reset. We did a little podcast here in the office and went off on all things ketogenic, high-end training. HVMN has been one of my favorite ketone products on the planet probably since they launched. Probably the rate-limiting factor of them taking off was that it was so damn expensive because their ketone worked. It was the very best. I think it was $30 a serving when they first came out. Now it's

much, much, much more affordable. They have contracts with the Department of Defense, DARPA. They work with the Navy SEALs. These guys work with not just high-end athletes, but some of the greatest performers on the planet that put themselves in harm's way. And in doing so, they have learned a lot about peak performance and recovery, how to heal from TBI and CTE and all sorts of stuff, all with the use of ketones, as well as ketogenic diets. So it's been a minute since we've really gone down the rabbit hole of low carb. And I wanted to refresh all things. We talked about training, Michael's training style. He's a graduate from Stanford, which says a lot in and of itself. I mean, me being a Bay Area kid, that was the holy grail. If you grew up on the East Coast,

you got Harvard and MIT and all that stuff. But on the West coast, it's Stanford. And he and his co-founder, Jeff Wu, who I'm going to get to meet here at the end of the month, both Stanford grads, both excelled. We talk education. We talk a whole bunch of other stuff, even outside of ketones and performance optimization. But I love this podcast. Michael is an exceptional human. I will definitely have him back on. And I'm pumped that these guys have a new formula that has been made far more affordable. I've been using it all month in prep for this fasting mimicking diet, and it's made a world of difference. I mean, a world of difference in me being able to almost reverse engineer my appetite. For a while there, I was wearing a CGM. I'm going

to have Dan and Kara back on. I mentioned that on this podcast, as you guys will hear later. And I'm pumped to discuss some of the results that I've seen from wearing the CGM in trying to lose weight versus trying to gain it. And the ketones, you know, I basically, I did this fasting mimicking diet in January and have been keto adapted, but really have been eating a high amount of carbohydrates with every meal up until prepping for this, which I started using the HVMN product for. And it just killed my appetite. It was like instant cognitive energy, instant bodily energy, and no desire for food. So I'd have like a bulletproof style coffee. I would have a shot of the HVMN ketones and then fucking lift off ready to go. So proof's in the pudding. Even if you're not

keto adapted, this stuff still does work. And if you are keto adapted, it works that much better. But love these guys, love this company. And I'm stoked to share everything with you guys on this podcast. This podcast is supported by you guys sharing it. So more people get to listen to it and supporting our sponsors because our sponsors make this possible from a financial standpoint. They allow me to work less doing my other jobs and contribute more into researching, reading the books from the authors that I have on the podcast, really diving deep and self experimenting with all the supplements that I use before I have someone like Michael on the podcast to discuss that. I want to know, is this the real deal? And this is the real deal. Each sponsor I

have hand selected. And if it's not me, it is one of my closest teammates that has known me for years that knows me inside and out and says, hey, dude, you need to look at this. This is a dope company. So with that in mind, these guys are the best of the best. And we're brought to you by several of my favorite companies today. Today's podcast is brought to you by Super Speciosa.

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us to and restore us to balance. Check it all out. These are the adaptogens that support liver health over at Organifi.com slash KKP and enter code word KKP at checkout and check out the liver reset. It is awesome. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I dot com slash KKP. And don't forget the code KKP at checkout for 20% off everything in the store. And without further ado, my brother, Michael from HVMN. Boy, actually I got, well, who knows what's going to happen with Elon here. I still can't tell if he's a good guy or somebody we should be watching out for. But his purchase of Twitter, if it is about free speech, that will change the game. Yeah. You know?

Yeah, it'll be huge. We'll see. We'll see. I do have a good friend of mine who's been on the podcast, Justin Rezvani, who started a company called Zion, which is a utility platform, not just social media, but basically everything, a way to text, a way to engage in groups like you would on social media, post videos, podcasts. My podcast is available there. And that's built on blockchain. It's on the lightning network. So you basically run a node and no one can ever take that from you. Right. That was one of the original visions of Twitter.

That was one of Jack Dorsey's original visions of Twitter was that it's a protocol and then different services can build on top of it. So you can have the service that's censored this way or that's editorialized this way or that way, but it was meant to be like HTTP, like websites. Anyone can put up a website. Google will filter what they decide to show you or not, but anyone can have a website.

And if you don't like Google, you can go to DuckDuckGo or whatever. You can go to alternatives. Twitter, that was the vision of Twitter. And it sounds like Jack and Elon are vibing. They're trying to, yeah. So I've heard them say that they're going to do that. One of the first big changes is to open source

everything they've done, which is massive yeah that would change zion and anyone else you know and zion itself is open source so you allow you know cross-pollination and harmony between companies to actually take place and then like that for the first one to do that if they actually do it like yeah like i'm a fan of that oh you can you can have i will be back online yeah uh utilizing that bottoms up cheers oh baby it is better than the originals yeah we did a lot of work on it let's talk so michael usually i get uh some background on people What was life like growing up? What got you into the game that you're into now? Let's start there and then let's dive right into HVMN because that is why I brought you on. And I have no issue with that. There are companies that I find on occasion, not always, but there are companies that I find where I'm like, this is one of the fucking gifts to humanity. Like one of the best things in modern science. And we can, I can bridge the gap on why I believe

that. I've been a fan of HVMN for years, but let's talk about you first and let's bridge the gap into there. Thanks, man. Yeah. A lot to unpack there. Appreciate that. It's high praise. I've hired some amazing people around us. My-founder and I we've built an incredible team so first and foremost shout out to them I my co-founder and I I think are really smart and everyone we've hired is smarter than us and we're just building you know how it is with the group you got here you it takes a village it's everything yeah absolutely so begin at the beginning I'm from Chicago went to public school in chicago was a very interesting dynamic high school where all sorts of types of people there got held up at gunpoint at one point

got yeah get some crazy stuff that happened but i was in the like honors ib program so had the good what was your graduating class so school how big? No, well, what was the, when was the year? When was the graduation? Oh, I graduated high school in 2007. Okay. And- Cool, just trying to do the math. See, you look a little bit younger,

but you still don't look that young. You just look healthy. Yeah, I stay active. I think that's, so I'm 33. And I think there's something interesting that happens at age 30, where there's a fork in the road, where some people start looking 45 and some people stay looking 30 for the next couple of decades. And a lot of it has to do with

how well you've been taking care of yourself in your twenties and into your thirties. So yeah, you got to take care of yourself. So high school was cool. I had a good fortune to get into Stanford where I went for undergrad. I studied computer science. That's where I met my co-founder, one of the smartest people at all of Stanford, Jeff Wu, he's a G. And we both had this passion

for human performance optimization. We were always hardcore engineers, computer science guys. And we started applying our engineering hat, our engineering systems first thinking to the human body. It's like, okay, how do I be better at what I do? How do I have better cognitive output, better physical output? And we started asking a lot of questions. I personally got into marathon running. So I have six minute miles for the marathon. I get after it. Any given

marathon I run, I'll be in the top 1%. So not winning the Olympics, gold medal, whatever, but I'm up there. Like I'm faster than your average bear. And what's cool is I got fast, fast. Like within a few years, I got very fast because I was measuring my blood glucose. I was measuring my heart rate. I do things like I'll go on a run and I'll run as fast as I can without letting my heart rate go above a certain level, without letting my heart rate go above 140. So it's this exercise of like trying to go fast, but also trying to keep calm. Yeah. And so it's this duality to it. That's important. I have had Rob Wilson and Brian McKenzie on the podcast who are big on rate limiting factors like that. And Dr. Andy Galpin,

one of the things that they mentioned is like is if you only allow yourself to breathe through your nose the entire run, that's a rate limiting factor. But for somebody like you, you may still be able to crack 140, depending on your cardio and various other skills. For me, it was like, fuck man, I'm pushing. I'll do a 10K row on the Concept2 rower, you know, and not try to crush it, but somewhere in the 45, 48 minute mark and nasal only. And like, that's an amazing workout, right? To have that rate limiting factor. Yeah.

Another good rate limiting factor is I'll do a lot of runs barefoot because you can't run that fast. Like Nikes, they work. Like they protect your foot. They cushion your foot. They also hide a lot of information from your foot. Like your foot has 20,000 nerve endings in it. And you're not feeling any of that

when you're wearing your Nikes, your Adidas, your Hokas, whatever. I do a lot of runs barefoot because it forces you to slow down. It forces your feet to go faster because you don't want to take these big glomping steps, which isn't even good form anyway. And when you do it barefoot, it changes the gait.

Yeah, it forces you to slow down and run correctly. And then when you strap on the Nikes on race day, you're zipping. So do you run in Vibrams or actually sole to the ground? I run mainly in Vibrams because I've mainly lived in cities and stuff. And it's like, you live in LA, like you gotta be a little careful. But every time I have a chance, if I'm on the beach or out on a nice trail, I'll just go actual barefoot.

But yeah, it's like running from my house to the- Even sand can fuck you up sometimes. I mean, I grew up in California and would run a lot on the beach there. Mostly sprint work, things like that. But my wife was a distance runner at NAU. She ran cross country there and she got me into distance running,

the tail end of my fight career and after. And since I've done a couple half marathons, a few 10Ks, I did one ultra. Nice. In Zion, which was brutal. I fucked me up for months. Must've been beautiful though. It was incredible.

It was scenic. That's I think what carried me through there. But yeah, I think about that. Like if we do a distance run on sand, sometimes like that's enough to destroy your feet, you know? So yeah. Vibrams, vibrams are phenomenal. They're a great tool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I like a lot of, a lot of things like that. I'll do fasted runs again. It's a rate limiter. You're not going to set a PR if you're fasted, but you're going to get a lot of metabolic flexibility out of it. So I like what you, I like the way you put it, like do different rate limiting things, like running with weights on, so to speak, but there's a few different ways to do that, that make your body better at these different measures. So then

on race day, when you stack it all up, you're well fed, not fasted. You're wearing the nice shoes. You're, you're letting your heart rate go as high as it needs to go to win, to run as fast as you can. Right. Like you give yourself every advantage on race day, but because of how you've trained over the preceding months, you just rip it. Yeah. It's like sleeping at altitude training at sea level. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I've always been, my co-founder and I have always been very, you could call it biohacker, engineering, whatever you want to call it. We've been highly quantitative about our approach to performance optimization.

And we were really early. We had a Nootropics brand called Nootrobox that was pretty popular. And when the keto diet and Bulletproof, all that started really taking off like five, six years ago, it was interesting to us that everyone's taking their coffee and they're loading it up with MCTs and grass-fed butter. And everyone's trying to do the keto diet, ketosis, ketones. And it's like, okay, if ketones are so cool, we ask the dumb slash smart question of,

okay, if ketones are so cool, why can't you walk to the store and buy a ketone? You can buy collagen, you can buy whey protein, you can buy CBD, you can buy omega-3, right? There's all these other nutritional primitives that you can go and buy. And we asked that question, we started pulling that thread

of why can't you buy a ketone? And that led to some really interesting places where we saw that DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, they had in the early 2000s done some early work with the NIH around ketones. They'd figured out some of the basic science around ketones and basic ways to manufacture it. It was extremely expensive. It was like $20,000 a dose. We're sitting here sipping it. It's $4 a dose now. It was $20,000 a dose. We're sitting here sipping it. It's $4 a dose now. It was $20,000 a dose back then. And we started looking at it and we made the jump and we raised

capital and we launched the world's first ketone drink in 2017. And our first big customer on that was the U.S. DOD, Special Operations Command. was the U S D O D special operations command. We got a $6 million contract with SOCOM. We had general Peter Pace joined our, he's a, he's a senior advisor to the companies. No big deal. Small company. You probably haven't heard of him. Yeah, no, he was former. He was, he was the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, highest ranking military officer period, reported to Bush and then Obama. The president is not, they run the

military, but they're a civilian. The highest ranking military officer in the country is the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So Peter Pace is now an advisor. He's helped us navigate that. We also have retired Admiral Alex Crongard. He started Steel Team 7, did a lot of work out of

Coronado, just a great guy. He knows Jocko because Jocko actually trained under him. Alex was a senior to him. So plugged into that military space. It's been really interesting to see how that program in the early 2000s was called Operation Metabolic Dominance. Pretty badass. Hope that's the name of our movie when this all comes out. Netflix special. It's been cool to see how that's extended out, where it started as this concept in a lab in the early 2000s.

We were the first to productize it, make it at scale, make hundreds of thousands of units of it, make it at a somewhat affordable scale. Our V1 in 2017 was still very expensive and crazy tasting. It was like $30 a dose and tasted, tasted like gasoline. And Peter Atiyah called it jet fuel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's like, yeah, that's, that's, it's pretty on point. Yeah. Tasted like it works. We, you know, we would call it Navy SEAL juice and our whole mission always was to make it even more accessible. Like it's very cool that Navy seals and tour de France riders and

elite, elite people are using it. That was awesome. And it was this proof of concept of, okay, let's keep pushing this. Let's make this everywhere. Like if you can buy collagen at any store in America, why can't you get ketones? Like that? Let's not have it just be for these elite performers. Let's have it be for everyone. Because the same reason that it helps a Navy seal in hypoxia, it also helps everyday people. We're all doing metabolism all the time. So if you're able to get this advantage in this physically, cognitively demanding mission, when you're a peak performance person, well, it can also help you if you're sitting at your desk and you're just trying to get in a flow state and we're done some work. It can also help you if you're trying to set a PR in a marathon. It can also help you to recover better from a

hard workout. We're all doing metabolism all the time. So we always saw that the elite performers is a kind of test bed of proof of a concept and okay, let's expand it out. And so we're at this interesting spot where in January of this year, we launched V2 and brought down the price a bunch, made it taste way better. And we're in like Sprouts and just pushing it in all these grocery stores. You can buy it on Amazon.

So rocking and roaring. That's dope, man. I remember going to Sprouts and they have like a 25% off line drive. They, they open I'm from, I went to, well, I'm from the Bay area, but spent seven years in Arizona going to ASU and dicking off afterwards. And that's where Sprouts was born. And then when I moved back to the Bay in Sunnyvale, which is kind of a small town, in my mind, it was a small town, 120,000 people outside of San Jose. The first Sprouts in California was there. And I was like, Oh,000 people outside of San Jose. The first Sprouts in

California was there. And I was like, oh, this is sick. And they do like a 25% line drive where every supplement they sell, and they had the best, they had on-up products, all sorts of cool shit, 25% off everything. So I'd wait until that line drive about twice a year and just buy thousands of dollars worth of supplements. Yes. Yeah. I mean, Sprouts is clever. They figured out the game. In a lot of ways, a lot of people think they're the next Whole Foods because Whole Foods got acquired by Amazon and they're going more like norm core. They're deep state now. Yeah. Whereas Sprouts, I think has this opportunity in the market to be the, like the new, the new spot for like the insiders. Yeah. The new down to earth. Yeah. The, the, the thing you mentioned around elite level

performance, you know, like what we extrapolate from that and then how that bridges back to the masses is something that I've always looked at myself because I'm not, I knew I wasn't going to be a pro athlete my whole life. And even before becoming a pro athlete, it was like, well, what are they doing? Right. Like, what are they doing that I'm not doing? And that always continued, you know, the search. But in, as a coach now and working with a lot of people in fit for service and different things like that, I'm always trying to retrace my steps. Because right now it's, you know, and for you, it's so easy to eat clean. It's so easy to put what's healthy for me in my body. I have a love for delicious, healthy food.

You know, like we had last, and it's funny, I got the CGM on, you know. I wore this thing back in the day. I want to break down a lot of cool shit that I've discovered with it this go around. But, um, how does somebody get into ketosis without shitting their pants? Right? Like I've fucking lost so many pairs of shorts from overdoing the MCTs. They go disaster pants. Like it's comical and also embarrassing to a certain extent. Like I've called my wife a mile from the house, walking the kids and I'm like, you got to pick me up now. You know? And she's like, why? I don't like, and she's like, oh, okay. Cause she knows. It's not that one of the kids shit their pants.

It's the dad shit. I had to drive home. She's like, put a towel down. I'm like, I'm lifting my ass off the seat. You know, each other. It's funny, man. Cause it's like, why is it so hard to get into ketosis? Ancient humans were in ketosis all the time. 200,000 years ago on the Savannah, you were walking around without even like trying to do a workout. You're just walking around four or five, six miles a day. There's no, there's no frosted flakes. There's no peach rings, whatever. There's no refrigeration. Yeah. There Yeah, there's none of that stuff on the Savannah. Like I think there was a little bit of carbs here and there. There's maybe some berries and some grain,

but you didn't have like big gulp. You didn't have like this modern context of all this processed stuff. You go into a 7-Eleven and 90% of what's in there is like not good for you, highly processed carbs. And that just didn't exist. So ancient humans spent way more time in ketosis. And now in the modern context, we're trying to pendulum swing back out. And it's this challenge.

It's like, we have to work hard to get into ketosis. But I would say it's interesting here, we're talking about ketones and this is hyper-modern thing, but in a way it's the most ancient form of fuel. Like we're more designed to run off of ketones than we are off of carbs. In the modern context, it sounds weird when 88% of people have metabolic health issues and all these metabolic health issues are major comorbidities of COVID if we want to go there.

But like there's this massive issue in the modern dietary context and we're trying to return to ketosis, but it's the spot where humans were meant to be and it didn't used to be hard to get there. We're just fasting, endurance hunting. Our brain, the whole reason we even evolved the ability to make a ketone

is because we have these big brains and you can power your brain with glucose. You can't power it with fat. Fat does not cross the blood-brain barrier. So we evolved the ability to make ketones from fat so that we have the largest brain ratio of any animal on the planet. And in order to power these big brains,

when you don't have glucose present, you got to make ketones. So ketones are the most natural thing ever. It's interesting when people ask me, what's a ketone? It's like, I'm always straddling like, okay, is it this like hyper-modern thing that we invented?

Yes, but it's also this ancient thing that has always existed. I would say that this is like a tool on top of that ancient lifestyle. Like you should eat low carb, you should move around a lot, you should do intermittent fasting, have a feeding window,

do routine extended fast. And then having ketones to be able to drink is a tool in the toolkit among all those other things. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that's what I was alluding to is that since I've talked to Dr. Dominic Agostino, Dr. Peter Tia, many people in the game, the guys that first got me into this, listening to them on Tim Ferrris's podcast in 2014, right. As I was closing the door on fighting in the UFC and all the research around how it helped with cognitive function and brain repair and then endurance and other things as well. Um, but I haven't spent two years like really adamantly in it. And then I'd cycle off and come back to eating carbs. And just like, you know, Pete says, like, I love carbohydrates. That's why I'm not going to live in that space. It's always curious because time moves faster as you age. And before you know it,

it's like, oh man, it's been two years since I've done a fast. And maybe I should start with some MCTs. Boom, shit my pants. When I take ketone esters, I don't shit myself. And I think it applies to the usability, the lack of conversion necessary, and the fact that MCTs are from coconut. They're antimicrobial, and that does change the microbiome. Yeah. But in gearing up, we're doing full temple reset part two, where we're going to do a five-day fasting mimicking diet and a whole host of other things here at the farm. Amazing. I've been running the ketone IQ. And it is, you know, in the reverse engineering of things, I think a lot about, you know,

like the psychology aspects from Dr. Andrew Huberman, where, you know, he's studying sleep, he's studying stress, and you can reverse engineer the nervous system from fight or flight to rest and digest through breath work alone, right? Yeah, yeah. Activate that parasympathetic nervous system. It's the thought process, you know. The zebra doesn't think of the lion chasing it after the fact, right? But humans do. We repeat that thing and that lives on and that keeps us in the state of stress. But if you reverse engineer the breath to a longer exhale

than an inhale, now the nervous system responds to your breathing, your conscious breathing. And so I think about that with something like your ketones, because I want to fast, but I'm also starving for food. I need something to feed the brain. I'm not keto adapted. I take a shot and all of a sudden I don't give a shit about food. And I've been in ketosis for months. And it's like, wow, it's so immediate. And then there is the gift. That is the bridge to people who have never done a ketogenic diet. That's the bridge to people who've never tried any type of fasting,

let alone a water fast, a dry fast, or any of these other high-level things that people are getting into now. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting talking about the parasympathetic nervous system because there was a study, this Belgian research group, Peter Hespel's group,

they did a study on recovery for cyclists. So they did a three-week study where it was mimicking the Tour de France. So like hard riding every single day. And they had, the experimental group was drinking ketones and the control group was not. And they showed in the, over three weeks in the ketone group that there was increased activation of the parasympathetic nervous system and that certain stress hormones were suppressed when they were drinking ketones. And the net result of this study was at the end of those three weeks, the ketone group had 15% higher training volume. They were able to train 15% more. And in the final time trial, they had 5% better performance. So basically

this ketone was increasing parasympathetic activity, suppressing sympathetic nervous system and increasing rate of recovery. So, right. You want to be in that rest and recover mode. You want to be like that calm breathing. That's how you recover quicker and ketones were helping people to do that exactly so it's it's pretty interesting and i think i i want to like make sure it's not this like magic molecule it's like it's in conjunction with all those other things too like you want to like yeah like ketones alone did deliver those results but if you're really going for peak performance you also want to do the the breathing and breath work and you want to do the like cold plunges also want to do the, the breathing and breath work. And you want to do the like cold plunges. You want to do the other, the other activities to also activate your

parasympathetic system. Yeah. They had all the ducks in a row. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking about, um, this CGM that I've had on, you know, the, I, we had, uh, this is a NutriSense CGM. There's a few good ones now. Levels is another good one. I love these guys at NutriSense though. We had Dan and Kara on, the CEO and the lead RD from those guys. And this was early on in the pandemic. And that was one of the things they were talking about was comorbidities. And they really hammered that. What they're seeing is that with metabolic flexibility, no one's dying.

It was one of the first real inclinations to how important metabolic health was. Same thing, Dr. Paul Saladino, the carnivore doc came on, same exact science he was bringing up. And one of the really cool things is that, you know, even if you were severely overweight, like a hundred pounds overweight, to get into metabolic flexibility did not take you losing a hundred pounds. It just took you starting to practice some of these lifestyle principles, right? And that could be achieved in a matter of weeks, not in a matter of years. Yeah. Cause how do we define metabolic flexibility? It's that your body gets better at creating ketones and also gets better at utilizing ketones, metabolizing ketones. And you can show it. There's enzymes that increase when you're spending more time in ketosis. You have more of

the enzymes that transport ketones into your mitochondria and more of the enzymes that help to fully metabolize a ketone. And you're right. It's not that you have to completely lose that 100 pounds. It's that after a few weeks of having elevated ketone levels, that your body builds up those enzymes. Your body knows what to do when there's ketones present. The issue is that most people never have ketones present. You can live to be 30, 40, 50 years old and spend almost no time with elevated ketones, which is really weird in the context of human evolution.

But as soon as you start elevating your ketone levels, your body knows what to do. It's not an overnight thing, as you said. It's going to take a few weeks for your body to build up that ability to metabolize them, but it's in our genetics. We will know what to do. Our body knows what to do. And then you start feeling great. And then you start having less appetite. You start having more regulated energy levels throughout the day, like all these wonderful things that happen from it. Yeah. I think I was 32. It was the first time that I had ever done a form of fasting or any form of ketosis for 32 years. I never missed

a meal for 32 years. I had carbohydrates at every single meal. Right. And like, that's just not, that's not natural whether you're in a paleo diet or any of these other things, like it's not natural for anybody that wasn't born on the equator. Like if you're born in the Amazon and all food is present, cool. Or in the garden of Eden, maybe, but North and South of that, you've got big game. Yeah. You've got cold winters and there's no carbohydrates available during those times of year. So it was just natural. If you're not shipping bananas from Panama in around the clock that you would

go without that for at least a few months a year. Exactly. Serial was invented like Kellogg, whatever his guy's name was, Joe Kellogg. He invented serial like a hundred years ago. It's not like this thing that's existed. Humans have been around for 300,000 years and serial was invented a hundred years ago. And he was a fucking weird dude. Yeah. Yeah.

You know about this, the conspiracy theory around it, but I don't even think it's conspiracy. It's that he was intentionally doing it to like sedate the population. Cause he's like, if we feed everyone, he was kind of religious and he wanted to no masturbating. He wanted to kill people's libido. Yeah, exactly. And cure hysteria in women, which was, you know, to be hysteria originally was a woman that was irrational due to the need for orgasm or manual stimulation. And they were really against masturbating. And interesting enough, the first, I think Hamilton Beach, the blender company, was the first device that women could use as a vibrator to self-stimulate. I bet they saw it.

But prior to that, it was the doctor who would see a woman for hysteria and manually release her. So they had a monopoly on female orgasms. Consider how fucking weird the framework of society was at that point in time in order for a woman who never has orgasms, who man doesn't give a fuck about pleasing her, she has to go see the doctor to release the hysteria. That's so crazy how we want to make everything into a disease or disorder or condition. It's like the same thing going on right now with ADD, ADHD, restless leg syndrome.

Everyone wants to pathologize everything. And we can laugh at it in context. It's really weird that just having a normal female sex drive was pathologized. That's insane. I think certain parts of society are doing the same thing again now, where it's just like being a curious kid.

When I was in public school growing up in Chicago, I would get yelled at all the time because I would like stand at my desk and want to socialize with other kids. It's insane to think about it. It didn't fit the mold for me to sit in a seat in a cube for eight hours a day and not ask questions and not interact. I didn't, you know, I didn't get pathologized. Well, my teachers gave me a lot of bad marks on it. I, I, if ADD was like a bigger thing back then, I probably would have gotten diagnosed

with that, which is insane. Just like, you know, let, let kids go play. I just, I just had a daughter just turned three months old. Congratulations, brother. Thanks, man. It's an amazing, amazing journey so far. And I'm thinking a lot about this. I don't want her to sit in a block. I think kids are supposed to stand and walk and talk and be on a farm and go do stuff. And of course, if you try to force people into this mold of don't talk, don't orgasm, don't do it. As soon as people try to express their fundamental human urges and it goes against the grain,

then the system is going to try to pathologize it and say, you are bad, you are wrong. You need this drug. You need to go to special weird doctor to have your orgasm. You need ADD medication. It's like, what do you think is even the drive of human culture to do that? It's like, people do you think is even the drive of human culture to do that?

It's like, people want to control each other. Like people want to put each other into boxes. Yeah, I mean, on one hand, you could say we're just missing the mark. On the other hand of that spectrum, you could say that school is designed to indoctrinate and maybe not for a nefarious purpose, but just for the purpose of fitting into

becoming cogs in the wheel of a consumerist society. I don't think that's super far off. Ivan Illich, who wrote Deschooling Society, even paints a broader perspective of how you could universalize classism. And he talks about the caste system in India and how repulsive that is outside of the country and how it's looked at differently within the country. But he really breaks down that when you make standards for everybody and you grade people at certain milestones based on where they're at and you force them to learn in one particular way, then you can withhold others, right? So this happened with the Native Americans here in Northica where um they would hold them

they'd make them go to school through 12th grade but they would only teach them the third grade level of vacation of education from grades 3 through 12 they would repeat third grade right this is in um john fire lame deer's book lame deer's secret visions uh how he had to repeat for nine fucking years the third grade right so you get out as a native american and you go to get a job and he's like yeah i went to school cool what was the highest level you've finished third grade oh sorry you can't work here or you can only work in the mail room or you can only mop floors uh in south america they did the same thing with um indigenous cultures from the andes they would give them a fifth grade education they'd go down to lima which is like los angeles and peru and they'd go for the jobs and, oh no, you need a

12th grade education at least to get even to get into university, right? So it was a way they could hold back certain pieces. And that is a little bit more nefarious, but at the very least, you could just say it isn't working, right? It's not working. Rudolph Steiner understood this a hundred plus years ago, ago you know and he talked about like what do what do kids actually need and i had um dr thomas cowan on the podcast who brilliantly stated he was like hey if steph curry uh tweeted he was going to do a basketball seminar at oracle arena how many people do you think would show up i'm like fucking everyone and their mom right yeah and he's like yeah do you think there'd be any disciplinary issues and i was like hell no

there's a hundred percent buy-in and he goes's like, yeah, do you think there'd be any disciplinary issues? And I was like, hell no, there's 100% buy-in. And he goes, okay, if there was, what do you think would happen? And I was like, I don't know. And he's like, they'd probably beat the kid's ass, right? And I'm like, yeah. He's like, so it's self-policing. You're either there because you want to be there,

nobody's going to be disruptive in that scenario because they have 100% buy-in. And as it turns out, if you wait long enough for kids to want to learn and to let them self-direct to the things they're passionate about, they can learn very quickly. And he gave an example of a lady who had taught at Waldorf for 30 years. She retired during the pandemic because of all the CDC nonsense, really going flying in the face of what Steiner taught about the human body's innate ability to heal itself, forgetting natural immunity, you know. And just dove

deep where she worked with four kids between the ages of 10 and 12. They were unschooled, meaning between the ages of 10 and 12, all four of them did not know how to read or write between the ages of 10 and 12. And within two years of working with her in the subjects they wanted, all of them not only were fluent in reading and writing, they were taking college level courses within two years with the things they were passionate about. They went from no reading, no writing to college in two years, right? And there's four fucking different kids

from different families, right? Now that's one example of an N equals four, but it doesn't matter. The point is that you can repeat that and it has been. And we're going to see big shifts, right? And similar to, you know, you look back on Kellogg and the craziness of that a hundred years from now, they're going to be like, what the fuck were they doing in 2022? Yeah. You know? Yeah. What were they doing? Locking these kids into schools? What are they doing? My mom always had this philosophy,

which was like, she never forced me to learn how to read. This is what you're, similar to what you're saying, which she, she wanted it to come from me. So I learned how to read like somewhat late, like first grade. I don't know that it's late. Some kids learn to read when they're, when they're younger. And her philosophy was always like, don't force a kid anything. Like don't force it down their throat. Let them want to read. I don't know. I think I'm a pretty good reader now. It's like having it want to come from the student. And I think it's interesting how much we work against it. I think it's a control thing. I think it comes a lot from, I think that the, the power class in a given society always wants to keep a walled garden around it.

And then they institute some tight structure around what everyone else is and like who's allowed. And like, so that very few people can cross the garden. I think America has done the best. The American experiment is the best of a meritocracy. I don't think we have it perfect yet until you compare it to every other country. And then I think we are the best,

but I think we still have work to do as far as making it true meritocracy, making it truly where everyone has a chance. And I think you're right. It's like when you force certain classes of people to be in this very lockstep, rigid program where they're held back, it's not really fair. It's not quite the caste system, but it's not quite a total meritocracy. So I think education has got to change a lot. I'm really excited by the innovation that's going on there. I know that Elon Musk had that school inside of SpaceX, or was it Tesla, that spun out

and now it's its own school. It's called Synthesis School. Have you heard about this? Where it's basically taking this whole philosophy and trying to do it at scale and letting kids, because this is for like, if you work at Tesla and you want your kids to have daycare and education, that they provided that as a perk to the people that worked there.

And then the guy who ran that spun it out as its own company. And now they're trying to scale it. So basically, it's similar to a Waldorf or Montessori, but with tech enabled so that it can potentially scale to much larger. So I think education is probably the spine of society. If I had to think of one thing that can change outcomes and can make a country go ahead or fall behind, it's education. Like that's just at the root of everything.

And it's going to be super interesting to see how that unfolds in the next a hundred years. I don't know if we'll be around, hopefully we'll be around a hundred years. I think we're here to make the big changes. In the last couple of years in particular, I've looked at a lot of the things crumbling and the cracks, and we've all seen this. The exposure, right? The exposure of the cracks in the game, the thin sliver that society's held with. And we're going to see more exposure and more cracks in the game before it gets better. But at the same time, instead of dwelling on the failures of education, the failures of finance, the failures of farming, the failures of X, Y, and Z, how do we do it better? And then in that way, can we be the proof in the pudding?

So like, I've got kids, you're a dad now, fuck yeah, right? I'm going to sign up for that. I'm going to run the human experiment differently. Yeah, yeah. So how are you thinking about things for your kids? You got this farm. They're already going to be, you know, nature education is a big one. And there's a class at McKinney Falls, which is a really cool Texas state park, not far from us. And we've got a bear who's seven years old now and a couple of girls that are six and nine that are all going to be a part of the older kids class there one day a week. And they teach you basic survival skills, stuff like that, but they're outdoors. Nice. Working with Chad Johnson, who I had on the podcast here,

and building this food forest out and really getting, you know, sovereign with what we put on our body. It's a biodynamic farm following in Steiner's footsteps. He's done a lot of educational work in the past. I've heard great things about this Chad Johnson. Yeah. And so understanding that, and Sepp Holzer was one of his mentors, Sepp's just an OG in the game of regenerative.

We have a lot of opportunity here to do something big with that and not just have it for ourselves, but seed that out, let those ripples expand, not just with our food, going to food banks and things of that nature, but also through education and giving people an opportunity to fall in love with nature. This is the game board we all share. It's something I love. I mentioned Paul Cech before when we were walking around. He's one of my heroes. And one of the analogies that he uses, it's like, if you are a scientific materialist that thinks that everything here is just gifted for our taking, it will run out. There are certain things that are going to run out. We can, the fundamental thing we must all agree upon is that we share the same game

board. That's it. Right. Whether you call earth Gaia or, or, or not, you know, this is,

it's the same game board and we got to take care of that first. And I think there is some real science on how we go about that. And then there's also some politicized science on what's going to happen there within 50 years and things of that nature. And I think that more and more, the cream rises to the top and we begin to see like,

where are the ways that we can benefit each other and benefit the earth in simultaneous fashion quickly. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting because what you're describing, I don't think it maps to any political party that exists right now where it's like self-sovereignty and caring for the earth and sharing and leaving resources for other people.

And I wonder how that's going to disrupt things going forward where we're at all-time highs people on both sides be feeling disconnected from the political system. And what you just articulated, it's like, who's, who's speaking that way. That's running for president.

You got to run for president or something. I don't know. You got to, I've got so much shit on me from ASU. We were number one party school in the nation. I wouldn't even make it to fucking mayor. No chance of that. It's just interesting. I think you said it well.

Lead it from nothing to it, but to do it. Do it yourself in the scale that you have here and it'll continue to grow and educate. I'm inspired being here. It's cool. You're showing that it's possible. It's exciting. One of the main things we did

here in particular, because I'm coming from a 10th of an acre in Austin, we have the tiniest backyard. It's in a typical suburb, new build. And our backyard is fucking gorgeous. I would be hard pressed to find anyone in that 400 home neighborhood has a better backyard than ours. And all it took was like three grand. We put in bunch bamboo that only extends three feet in each direction. That's like our living wall that offers us privacy on a really small lot with other two-story homes. We've got banana trees that self-plant themselves

and they look incredible. Like you feel like you're in the jungle. I got a buddy of mine who illegally keeps bees in his backyard. You know, so we put in these eight foot tall wildflowers, HOA, right? Another couple of buddies that have their own chickens. We're raising 38 chicks right now in our house and backyard that we're going to bring out here.

We'll do turkeys next, then we'll do ducks. To do it at each scale is totally doable. It's really not hard. And one of the cool techniques Chad talked about is if you have grass or weeds or things like that, you just lay cardboard over it. Then you throw your top soil on top of that. The cardboard dissolves, but it kills off the grass and the weeds underneath. So you can really create on whatever plot you have. If you wanted to do raised beds and things like that, you can do it very easily and efficiently. And it'll actually work with

what you have right now without needing to dig up grass and weed the garden and do all these other things. So there's little hacks like that. Yeah, yeah. So what else is your advice to someone who's getting started, who's like, okay, I want to start small. I want to get a quick win. In the next three months or six months

or what's a good timeline, I want to see some progress in my garden before I go and buy the 40 acre ranch and get after it. Yeah. I mean, I mean, it depends where you live, right? Are you still in California? Yeah. Yeah. I live in LA. I have like a decent yard for, it's probably like your yard in Austin. Yeah. You can probably grow anything there. And when I was in NorCal, I grew all sorts of different stuff in California. So you look at the agricultural zone, you go to a local nursery that's got organic produce and you just see like what does really well here. And, you know, by the high end soil, like we get Fox form organics and

company called micro life. You can order on Amazon to these big ass 50 pound bags that inoculate the ground with mycorrhizal fungi and literally turn it into a living system that can connect to all the trees and start that carbon transfer. And, um, and, and it's just about what are the things you love? Yeah. Like we love apples. So we put two apple trees in, we love, uh, plums. We put a big ass plum tree and all those are cold hardy because we got hit really hard the last two years. Yeah. Um, so it's little things like that. And then, you know, in having it be easily managed, you take care of it. You know, if I missed the exact window to put soil amendment down, but I'm a month late, big fucking deal.

Like the micro life of these little organic pellets you put on that slowly release every watering. Yeah. And so there's little things like that that make it relatively easy. And then, you know, like with the, with the farm here, here we're 118 acres but we're only doing a nine acre farm and you saw everything we have there right there's 400 plus fruit trees and nut trees in there it's a lot 60 plus grapevines blackberries raspberries and we still have five acres to work with within that plot and we'll do a pond for for the birds because we want to have

you know this cohesiveness we're building an ecosystem, not just a place to grab food. We want that to thrive. I found out from our bird man, Clint, who's awesome, that duck poop is incredibly good because it's a cold manure, meaning it comes out and the plants can utilize it immediately. They can utilize the nitrogen from that poop. It doesn't take time for it to change its pH and everything else and be usable from the plant so you can just come right out and they'll eat snails you know have you seen biggest little farm yeah yeah it's so good

right so they get the snail problem from the cover crops they bring in the ducks the duck eat all the snails shit out the snails and then boom you've got more right yeah that's such a good that's such a good loop yeah it's it's a fun game. It's almost like a board game where you're moving the pieces around, just optimizing the system. It's interesting what you said about a certain type of soil that connects. Does it have some kind of fungi in it that like- Yeah. The mycorrhizal fungi will connect it all. And then you can grow mushrooms anywhere. The legal kind, of course. I think you can grow the illegal kind as long as you don't pick them. It's so weird what these laws are.

But yeah, there's a lot to it. We're still learning as we go. Like mycelium network. They all got to talk to each other. Yeah, all the stamet stuff, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you want to create that and feed it and then give it the opportunity to thrive.

And that's a lot of what's going to help break down hot manure. If it's a living soil, then it's going to help break down earthworms. All these things are going to help break down that stuff further. And earthworm poop is great, right? All these things are great for it. So I like thinking of things, you know, like if I add it to my life or my schedule, does it leave me with a net positive? Does it leave me more whole than when I started? You know, and I can compare this to the partying days where I'd have a great night but i had to pay for that on credit right you know it's gonna hurt me the next few days the next two weeks depending how hard i went

next two weeks how are we going hard to the paintway um but you know in in an ecosystem and then when you build out that ecosystem like you're you're you're planning for things and building into it but just like in biggest little farm it's beyond yeah what you have planned yeah right like the the 89 barn owls that show up there and the wolves that come in all the different elements that come back to strengthen that thing as a whole yeah the snakes that come in to eat the overpopulation of ground youents. Everything starts to balance within seven years. And I think of that, there's a great, I talked to my buddies at Rome Ranch, I was telling you about out in Fredericksburg

doing regenerative bison. And they had a soil expert come in that said, and forgive me, I know I've mentioned this a lot on the podcast, but they mentioned initially they thought it would take a decade to build 1% organic material back into the soil. And in a Paul Stamets untouched forest where we've never farmed and he's hunting for rare mushrooms, that's going to have 8% organic material. Most European tilled places

through modern farming, let alone glyphosate and all the other shit they're spraying, just for European tilling alone are down to 0.5% organic material. That's why we get soil erosion, landslides, that kind of stuff. They thought it was 10 years to raise it 1%. Through regenerative, it's about 10 times faster than that. It's 1% per year. They're already up between three and 4%. When we got this land, because it hasn't been farmed, our average is between 2.8 and 3.5% organic material everywhere we did a study on, three different places on the land. So we're starting from a good place, right? But even if you aren't, you can change that rapidly. Yeah. That's inspiring to know that it can correct

quickly. It's like what we're talking about in the human body. It's like when it, once you start getting more keto adapted, you can actually do it pretty quickly. Like your, your body can return to how it's meant to be like your, your nature, your plot of land can return to how it's meant to be. If you stop choking it from what it's meant to be. Yeah. Let's, let's talk about that. I want to give people some hacks, you know, I've, I've had these guys on, you know, bucket list guys like Peter Attia and Dominic D'Agostino, but it's been a few years. What are some of your best ways for people to hack this? And look, as I mentioned with Dominic D'Agostino, there's a group that say live in ketosis. There's a group that say, like Dominic D'Agostino,

will say modified ketosis, 60% fat, cyclic, use ketones, those kinds of things. And he's got a different approach than most people. And there's other people, you know, like Mark Sisson, who's been on that say, you know, if you just do three weeks of keto every quarter or some form of fasting like Atiyah does now once per quarter, that that will keep your metabolic flexibility throughout the year. Yeah. So talk a bit about these hacks and what are some of your favorites, right? Yeah. Just hung out with Dom last weekend in Santa Barbara, the Metabolic Health Summit.

Cool. He brings all the experts in the metabolic health space together. And we gave a talk there presenting some of our research data on our work with the USDOD SOCOM. So yeah, I just saw Dom. Good vibes. Great guy. OG of the space for sure. Definitely inspired by him a lot. And I agree with the cyclical keto school of thought where I don't think that ancient humans were 24-7 keto because there were berries and grains and stuff like that. And there's some people in the modern context that love keto and I don't want to tell them not to do it. Like if you just love it and that's where your body feels amazing and you've been doing keto for four years and it's amazing. Okay, cool. Don't stop. Like do

it. In my experience, that's like 10% of people. A lot of people do keto. They learn a lot about hidden sugars everywhere, moving around more to burn off excess blood glucose. They wear the continuous glucose monitor, really understand their metabolism. And then they go to a state of low carb or cyclical keto, where they do that keto for a few weeks every quarter,

or they make a point every week to spend some time in ketosis, whether that's through a fast or doing a fasted long workout on a couple of days a week, spending more time in ketosis. That seems to be matched to more of the evolutionary context where it's not necessarily full keto, definitely not like standard American diet,

but it's this like cyclical keto. And then even when you're not doing keto, you're still not like slamming the carbs all the time. You're still doing relatively low carb. That seems to be the sweet spot where a lot of people just feel really good where, hey, a little bit of carbs. It feels good. I enjoy it. I think fruits are good for you. Like I think some keto people, I think, I think keto

has this branding image problem over the last decade where it's this like black or white thing. It's this like special underpants club of like, Oh, you're either you're like keto or you're not. And I think that that's just not the right way to think about it. It's more of the spectrum, like spend more time with elevated ketones. If you want to do full keto, some people, if you're on an aggressive weight loss plan, keto, I think works really well for some people. Epilepsy is something like, yeah. Yeah. If you're on doctor's orders and you're doing, you need to be in ketosis as a adjunct therapy for your cancer. I think that falls all into the 10% where if you need to do keto, you need to do keto. I think for a lot of people though, I want to open the aperture for spend more time with elevated ketones. It feels

really good. Have that metabolic flexibility, but you can also enjoy your life too. You can also have pizza on a Friday. Like you can, you can hang out and, um, you know, carbs can be, can be really good for a workout. And the thing is you got to go work out. Like you got to go, like you got to eat the carbs and then like burn them off, like use them for something. Like what you don't want to be doing is this like eating all this stuff and then, and then not doing anything with it. That's where your body, that's where your body just gets very confused. It's like, okay, I have just constant elevated blood glucose. Like my human ancestral body

has no idea what to do with this. So I'm just like, you're just frying your metabolism. So that's what I think a lot of the experts have come to, like the Peter Atias and the Dom D'Agostino. That's what we advise to our community is do this like modified cyclical keto. It's really interesting on, when we zoom in on the ketones per se, is that ketones themselves are a substrate. So they provide energy. Ketone has calories in it and it makes them actually

pretty special because the only other things that have calories are carbohydrates, proteins, and fat. When you look at the nutrition facts on any food, those are the macronutrients. That's where your calories come from. Ketones are this fourth door, this fourth macronutrient, where there's calories in it, but they're not one of the other three. And it's really interesting because it essentially stacks with anything else that you're doing from nootropics or coffee or people might be microdosing on certain things. Everything I just described, it increases brain activity and that increases brain energy demand and ketones as a source of energy to fuel that energy need stack really well. Because ketones cross the blood-brain barrier. They're super efficient. They feel really good. So it's like whatever your nootropic or microdose or whatever of choice, you're creating an increase

in brain energy requirement. And when you have ketones on top of that, it's super interesting. And that's why people like to fast or they like to do the keto diet because they'll feel really sharp. And all they need is a cup of black coffee. And then for some reason, that cup of black coffee just hits different. And that is something I've been wrapping my head around with a ketone. A lot of drugs have a very specific outcome, like even caffeine, like a lot of drugs, they, they like are targeting one specific thing.

Whereas a substrate, it's kind of like wherever your body needs it to be, the substrate gets pulled into it. It's almost like an adaptogen, right? It's like, where do you need it? Where do you want it to go? It'll go. Yeah. Yeah. That's brilliant. It's funny. You're talking to microdosing. because i've been thinking about that like that most of the the the biggest journeys that i've had with plant medicine have been from a fasted state yeah right and those were like wow you know like uh i i'm i'm a fan i mean i love microdosing and i've done different protocols from stamets to um dr jim fadiman who was also on ferris's back in 2014. Great book, Psychedelic Explorers Guide, great book on microdosing. But something like the, I am a fan

of the heroic dose, where it's like, buckle up, I'm not in control, and I'm just going to fucking see what happens. And when I fasted leading up to that, even from a fasting mimicking standpoint, I've done two fasting mimicking diets and two five-day water fasts. And then for some other journeys, I just do like a 24 hour fast. But in any one of those circumstances, those are the ones that stand out to me the most about anything I've done. And I think there is something to it beyond physiology. Obviously, the physiology is potentiating the medicine, but at the same point in time, you know, even on a fasting mimicking diet, you're peeling layers back. Like it's, it's a something that's squeezing you in a way. Right. And you begin to think

outside the box, you begin to see things a little differently. So it's almost, um, doing the work with the medicine in advance of that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Like you're getting off the monkey brain hamster wheel too, because so much of food, like you've done some five-day fasts. I've done extended fasts. The longest I did was seven days. And what do you learn when you're doing these fasts is that so much of our relationship with food is emotional. It's tied to boredom or wanting that dopamine hit. Food is not just food. It's not just sustenance for us. And fasting helps reset that expectation where it's like, okay, my monkey brain wants to nibble on something, but I'm not going to let it. And I'm going to not die. I'm just going to sit and not eat and think about things and reset my brain. And then if you're having a plant-based journey

on top of that, it seems to fit together like a puzzle piece where you're gaining this mastery over your own willpower and mind and body. And the plant-based journey is helping you to introspect on top of that. Like it just feel, would feel weird to have that plant journey with like a hamburger, right?

It's like, it's like you're, you're like your brain is like you're crossing wires in your brain. Like the whole point I think is to get outside of your body to see yourself as a person in a vessel, but like also zoom way, way out and see, okay, everyone's a person in a vessel, but like also zoom way, way out and see, okay, everyone's a person in a vessel. And like, I am just the universe experiencing itself inside of this vessel.

And it's like, if you're eating a hamburger while you do, there's something about that. It just doesn't feel right. Right. It's like, it's like you're, you're like, it takes you back into like, oh, I'm, I am me and I am hungry right now and I need to go eat. It's like the whole point. It's like zoom way, way, way out. Yeah. am hungry right now and I need to go eat. It's like the whole point, it's like zoom way, way, way out. Yeah, beyond primal function for sure. And then you can engage in the primal function after that with a deeper appreciation and a yes and a why behind it.

Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like, and a lot of people clean up their diet from journeys with ayahuasca and different things like that. I've been put through the ringer a couple of times from not being on dieta perfectly, you know? And that's a. Because like so much of the reason that we're chasing candy and everything is, is your body doesn't need that. Like we'd never evolved with that. Your body doesn't need that. You, you like addicted monkey brain thinks you need

a pack of Starburst, but you don't actually need it. You, you think that that's going to make you happy. You're on the dopamine machine and you're addicted and putting that aside and having that plant-based journey and ability to detach and like, what do I really want? Like, who am I really? What do I actually want? You feel like a child. It's like the thing you, oh wow, let me go eat.

Let me go grab some candy. It's like the thing you, Oh wow. Let me go eat. Let me go grab some candy. It's like, why the whole point is that you've, you've gotten enlightened to some like larger meaning. And in my experience, at least that you've let go of the, like the short term need for the quick hits And you've tapped into something way bigger. It's like, I don't know, candy. It's like this, it's too cheap. It's like this cheap hit. Like I want to build a farm.

I want to self-actualize. Like why would I distract myself with Skittles? I'm trying to become the best version of myself here. And I think that's powerful. And I think that if we're talking about, you know, ancient human evolutionary context, I mean, I think a lot of people by now know about that stoned ape theory, where is that very short period of human evolution where there's anthropological evidence where we were doing endurance hunting and we were eating a lot of mushrooms all within a very short amount of time. So we were fasting slash in ketosis, chasing down wild game, and we were eating a lot of mushrooms. And in that short period of time, that's when our brain size expanded massively and Homo sapien became Homo sapien in a very short evolutionary window.

And it's interesting to think about in that context, because I think the first human experience was a monkey that was high on mushrooms. And they had that like, whoa, like that monkey over there, like what if I was them? And like, are they experiencing this like I am? And like they had that first like sentience. Self-awareness. Self-awareness. And then they start, wow, like what if I could communicate?

And then like language and symbols and coordination and community and empathy and like the basic axioms of humanity and society and civilization started to emerge. And then I don't know exactly where you want to draw the line of like, when did it become a human versus a monkey? Like what, what was that exact line? But there was this very rapid period of human evolution. And it's interesting in that context that we've always been guided by plants. We've always been this like participants in our own evolution. That's part of what makes humans special is that we're not just getting kicked around by nature. It's like we are participating in our own evolution. We are applying fire to meat so that the meat is easier to digest and we can spend less time and energy digesting and more time and energy building civilization. And then we progress to the next level and the next level and the next level. And there's this participant evolution where we're creating technology, we're becoming the best versions of ourselves, we're reaching for the stars.

So I think it's an exciting period that we're in and seeing what we're going to build next with what we currently have and current technology and nutrition tools that we have. I think it's going to be wild to see how things evolve in the next, even just the next decade. I think there's going to be a lot of shifting changes.

No doubt, no doubt. Technologically on all the ways. Yeah, yeah. there's going to be a lot of, a lot of shifting changes. No doubt. No doubt. Technologically on all the ways. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, we were talking about before like pathologizing everything. It's interesting how like we saw with like medical marijuana, like humans were probably had access to cannabis forever. And then it got like made illegal and now we're like unmaking it illegal, but like we have to pathologize a reason to make it unillegal or to make it legal.

Like we have to, oh, well you are diagnosed with stress and the treatment for that stress is medical marijuana, but only because the doctor says so. And only if you buy it from this one spot, it's like we're like trying to pathologize our way out and systematically make it available right only available through a system yeah and i i think medical marijuana set the pattern and my my stance on it is that everything's going to fast follow it i think psilocybin ketamine treatment it's all treatments it's like you go to the the there's a uh group called field trip they do like ketamine treatments and It's all treatments. It's like you go to the, there's a group called Field

Trip. They do like ketamine treatments and there's like doctor assisted. Cause there's gotta be a doctor there. Cause there's gotta be a doctor there to officially make it legit. But I think the rate of adoption of everything I just said, like psilocybin, ketamine, all MDMA, like that's going to go really quickly because I think medical marijuana has taken decades to legalize and there's still people doing jail time, which is terrible.

But I think that the fact that medical marijuana kind of broke the seal on like, hey, there's this whole world of plants and other things that can help us to reach for the stars and take human progress to the next level, I think that's going to happen really quickly. I think medical marijuana broke the seal and now it's like, we're off to the races and it's like, hey, society didn't crumble now that people can go buy weed at the store. There's no reefer madness. Yeah.

Yeah. Propaganda films. Yeah. Let's talk, let's talk a bit. We're at the hour mark, but I want to, I wanted to pick your brain a little bit on the performance side of things because I'd remember, you know, one of the things that got Dom into it was we're working with rebreathers and, and a lot of the SEAL teams. And just in general, like, could they stay underwater longer? Could they perform better under stress?

And could they do things that other people couldn't because much more was required of them? You know, in working with the Department of Defense and working with different elite level athletes and all functions of society, what are some of the ways in which you see the potentials of these ketones going? Yeah. One of the big areas that we investigate is hypoxia. So low oxygen. So if you're on top of a mountain or fighter jet or deep water, there's different contexts where operators are in low oxygen, outer space, where you might have lower oxygen than normal atmosphere level. And your body does a lot of weird things when you're in low oxygen outer space where you might have lower oxygen than like normal atmosphere level.

And your body does a lot of weird things when you're in low oxygen. And there's this thing called mountain sickness where if you're at 20,000 feet of altitude, if you're not used to it, your body won't act right. You'll start feeling terrible. And the current standard of care on mountain sickness is you take this drug and it basically knocks you out.

Like you get reduced cognitive function. You basically go to sleep. It cures the mountain sickness, but you can't do that much off of it. Well, we're seeing with ketones is the opposite where ketones solve for mountain sickness, but they actually increase cognitive ability. So we do things like hypoxia.

Operators will put on a hypoxic mask that's simulating 20,000 feet of altitude and they will rock on a treadmill wearing weights for an extended period of time and then do target practice and different cognitive drills. And cognitive efficiency when you have ketones goes up compared to when you don't. And it's this amazing finding where people are not just

not getting mountain sick, but they're getting enhanced cognitive ability. Again, it's that substrate effect where when your body needs to do something, when you need to act, having the availability of this ketone substrate helps you to do that. So it's really exciting. And one of the areas where I'm most curious about, I think a lot of people in the performance space are curious about is what exactly is driving, you know, we're saying like tour de France cyclists do better. Like they all love ketones. And there's an open debate on like, is that a body thing? Is it like ketones that's directly helping your muscles with substrate energy? Or is it this mental thing where it's like,

if you're more confident going into a sporting event, like mentally, you're going to perform better. And calmer too, right? Right. So if you go in, so it's like, is it ketones that are like supplying the muscle with substrate that's like making soldiers perform better, that's making Tour de France riders perform better?

Or is it a cognitive effect where just your brain, your central governor is stronger and you're able to exert more willpower and you're just able to crank it harder on the bike? And it might not be that, that might be more dominant, that cognitive effect might be more dominant than the fact that there's ketones also going to your quadricep muscles, it might be mainly the mental aspect that's driving the physical performance of it. So that's one of the open areas that we're looking at is like we're doing a lot of work on cognition in particular and seeing how cognition is driving

all these different outcomes. So- That's phenomenal. And how about with, it's been a minute since I've looked at it, but how about as far as like healing from TBI, CTE, concussions, things like that? Yeah, that's a great one. So TBI, we just submitted a seven-figure contract with the Navy Health Research Center.

TBI is massive in the U.S. DOD, in the military population and veteran population, as well as the other group that it's really big in is NFL. It's probably also big in like MMA. And so, okay, what happens when you have a TBI, when you have a concussion or even a subconcussive injury is that there is damage that takes place on the moment of impact. And then there's this swelling that occurs that causes a starvation of energy for the following 72 hours plus. And that swelling causes further damage because less brain activity is going on during that period. So you have the initial damage and then you have like this ongoing starvation of energy on the brain. So one current standard of care is like, okay, immediately fast,

immediately do the ketogenic diet because you want to elevate ketones as quickly as possible. And that's a great application of an exogenous ketone where ketones go through a different pathway. They're not metabolized by the same enzyme. So they're not gated on the same things as glucose. They're also way more, they're much smaller.

And they're also, they require less oxygen than glucose in order to metabolize. So in this context where you have this TBI and there's reduction in brain energy activation, ketones recover that. So I'm at a spot where if like, if I got hit on the head, like I bike a lot, I ski a lot. Like if I got hit in the head, I would immediately take ketones. Or I would even have it in my system already as a prophylactic. So I just have elevated ketones just in case. Because I think that the sports leagues and the military, I think, are going to have to reckon with this fact.

I think if you're an NFL commissioner, it's like, oh man, a lot of people are getting this chronic brain damage. And if there's a solution out there that can possibly protect against that or prevent against that, it's irresponsible not to. So we're still in early innings of this.

There's a lot of strong hypothesis. A lot of people think this can really work. There's some interesting findings around like ketogenic diet. So we're driving research with the Navy Health Research Center on like exogenous ketones specifically being able to improve outcomes after a TBI.

So really interesting. And it's one of the most, and it's interesting too, because the similar principle can also actually apply to Alzheimer's where Alzheimer's is this, a lot of people consider it type three diabetes, where your brain has this inability to metabolize glucose. There's huge correlation between Alzheimer's and type two diabetes that basically if you have insulin resistance anywhere, you have it everywhere. So if you have type 2 diabetes in your body, you also have it in your brain, you have dementia, Alzheimer's. And so ketones are this substrate that don't require

insulin whatsoever to turn into ATP, cellular energy, and they're able to reduce seizures. They're able to increase cognitive ability. So it's this really interesting molecule for people that are experiencing all these neurological issues. It's also interesting just for like everyday people because the same principle holds true. Like if you're just you and you're gaming or you're, I don't know if you, I don't really game.

I used to game. You're just doing work, right? You're jamming on spreadsheets, editing a podcast, whatever. The same principle holds true where it's having more substrate availability in your brain just takes you to this other level that you wouldn't have been on otherwise. Yeah, one of the first talks I gave at paleo FX back in 2018 was around cognitive

optimization and, you know, coming out of fighting endocutosis and diving into human performance. I was director of human optimization on it. Yep. I had a lot to speak on with that. Obviously alpha brain nootropics, I would get any pig,

all that shit. The largest portion of that talk that landed with people, because most of them had experienced nootropics and things like that, was around cognitive energy. We think like, what is the thing I can take that's going to create more acetylcholine in the brain or nicotine and things like that. And they're all great, but what ultimately gives me the energy to do that? And that's where the conversation of ketogenic diets, movement, ketones, that actually makes sense because ultimately it is that thing, right? If you have a good working brain to begin with, nootropics don't inherently make you smarter. It's just like, I want to be able to max out and sustained max out effort, whether that is a long podcast or grinding through a book that I need to study through for finals, whatever the case is, you know, like there are, there are peaks and valleys in life where we need to be our best and that we don't necessarily get to fit that perfectly into our schedule. It's all systems go for a short period of time. A lot of times we put intelligence up on this pedestal, but it's made out of these building bricks of if your short-term memory is just working better,

they say that there's this idea of chunking where you can keep, you've heard this, you've talked about it, that you have five plus or minus two items that you can keep in your short-term memory at a given time. There's a big study done on it. And what a good nootropic will do is it will give you one or two more slots of chunking, which sounds small, but it's like if you're reading a book and you can better remember what happened three chapters ago, or you can connect some dot to some other things that are

going on, it's like you have more, like intelligence is all about dot connecting, but you can only connect the dots that are in front of you. So if you're able to keep like one or two more dots in front of you, it's like, that's huge actually. And it's, it's like the, this higher knowledge is higher intelligence. It's just, you know, hour by hour throughout your day that you have higher cognitive drive and you're able to do more in that hour, do more in that day, do more in that week, do more in that year, and you're able to achieve these great things. You're not putting together this whole farm operation

by being a dum-dum. When you're spending an hour working, it's a high output hour. You're connecting a lot of dots in there. So I've always been excited by nootropics. I think, yeah, well, you guys did it on it. Amazing. Like you guys, just massive.

And I think what I would say is like, people should take their favorite on it, take their favorite nootropic, whatever it is, and try stacking it with ketones. See how that accelerates things. Because if you take like nicotine, say, okay, you're like stimulating your brain, but there's no calories inside of nicotine. So you're stimulating your brain. Your brain's going to want to go and do more and it's going to do so, but it's also going to be pulling more energy.

And where's that energy going to come from? What I've seen in the community and what a lot of people are enjoying is like, okay, if you have some ketones on top of basically your nootropic of choice, like whatever your stack, I don't want to be like prescriptive on this nootropic or that. I think a lot of people are smart to know, to like test around and see what works for them. Like take what works for you and try ketones on top of it. And I think that's where you can just hit some next level shit. I'm running it right now and it's phenomenal. Yeah, yeah. Well, hell yeah.

Where can people find you? Where can people get ahold of this stuff? Yeah, you can check us out. We're Ketone IQ. The company is called Health Via Modern Nutrition. So hvmn.com. You can Google us, find us on Amazon. I'm personally out there. My handle is at BDM underscore runner.

Love connecting with people. Love connecting with people. Love chatting with people. Hit me up on Twitter, Instagram. I'd love to hear from people. Love to chat back. So let me know what you're doing, what you're trying out there, what you're testing. And yeah, let's keep the combo going. Beautiful brother. Thank you so much, Michael. It was a lot of fun time. Bye.