Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #311 Neurohacking Longevity w/ James Schmachtenberger

Episode Date: July 12, 2023

James Schmachtenberger, CEO and Co-founder of Neurohacker Collective Like many of us, James has noticed that the world is in trouble. Our challenges are big and getting bigger – and we are going to need a lot of help if we want to be able to face up to those challenges. Unlike most of us, however, he didn’t shy away from the magnitude of the challenge. Instead, he started the Neurohacker Collective. The idea is simple: build a global movement that is capable of a comprehensive upgrade of human capacity in the next five years. In this convo, we get into the weeds on Neurohacker’s latest work in the realm of longevity. They have worked up a number of things, most notably is their Qualia Senolytic, a two-day/month cellular cleans.    ORGANIFI GIVEAWAY Keep those reviews coming in! Please drop a dope review and include your IG/Twitter handle and we’ll get together for some Organifi even faster moving forward.   Connect with James: Website: Neurohacker.com  Instagram: @neurohacker    Sponsors: 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! 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. Bioptimizers To get the ’Magnesium Breakthrough‘ deal exclusively for fans of the podcast, click the link below and use code word “KINGSBU10” for an additional 10% off. magbreakthrough.com/kingsbu  PaleoValley Some of the best and highest quality goodies I personally get into are available at paleovalley.com, punch in code “KYLE” at checkout and get 15% off everything! To Work With Kyle Kingsbury Podcast   Connect with Kyle: Fit For Service Academy App: Fit For Service App  Instagram: @livingwiththekingsburys - @gardenersofeden.earth  Odysee: odysee.com/@KyleKingsburypod  Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyles website: www.kingsbu.com - Gardeners of Eden site    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.

Welcome back to the podcast, everybody. We have a good one with the return of James Schmachtenberger. James was the founder of Neurohacker Collective. You may recognize that name from Qualia, his product Qualia. He has a wealth of knowledge in all sorts of shit, but he really has a wealth of knowledge in nootropics, optimization of the brain and body. And we take a deeper dive into this podcast today on longevity and a number of things

that can go with that. They have a new product that's phenomenal. But in addition to that, there's obviously so much that we can do for longevity from a lifestyle standpoint and just from a daily choice standpoint that we really dive into and hammer home. So this is an excellent podcast. It's been a minute since I've really just stuck to health in an entire episode. And this is that, if you've been waiting for it, this is that episode and I'm pumped to have James on. He's a guy that I will have on anytime he wants to come on. So hopefully we can get an annual podcast to catch up. We do save one little tidbit on the

world at large at the very end, which is awesome. Just a bit of inspiration there. So very excited to help get James's word out to you guys and share it with y'all. There's a number of ways that you can support this podcast. First and foremost, just share it with a friend. Anybody that wants to know or learn about longevity, nootropics, any of these things, share it with them. There's a lot of info in this podcast from James, who has a wealth of knowledge on these topics. Secondly, leave us a five-star review with one or two ways the show has helped you out in life.

Organifi all year long. The homies at Organifi are going to be giving away my favorite product to one lucky winner. Where it really isn't luck, it's just who leaves the best review. So on iTunes or Spotify who leaves the best review. So on iTunes or Spotify, you leave a review. Also leave your social media handle, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and that'll allow us for the team to reach out to you guys and get you my favorite product from Organifi. And last but not least, support our show sponsors. They make this show possible for me to continue to do this work and take the amount of time and energy that I put into here. I love these guys. I've hand-selected

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Paleo valley.com. And then you're going to use code Kyle at checkout for 15% off. That's P-A-L-E-O-V-A-L-L-E-Y.com. Discount code K-Y-L-E for 15% off everything in the store. Without further ado, my brother, James Schmachtenberger. James Schmachtenberger, welcome back to the show, brother. Thank you. So good to be back. back to the show, brother. Thank you. So good to be back. Good to see you, my friend. It's good to see you as well, brother.

Well, I wanted to talk, you know, there's been a lot of people, you know, that have been blowing up the scene in terms of the longevity discussion. You got guys like David Sinclair, Peter Attia just wrote a book. And so, you know, it's been a hot topic for a lot of people i think even for myself you know moving from fighting uh post-fighting it was like all right how do i extend the thing it was all performance go go go now it's what does what does longevity look like how do i heal the brain and um you know you've been rabbit holing that as well and uh and have surrounded yourself you know with some of the best that I've come across.

You've got buddies like Dr. Dan Stuckler and Jamie Wheel and, of course, your brother. And so there's so many people you get to spitball ideas with and learn from and grow with that I think this is going to be a good conversation. Yeah, I am wildly fortunate that way. I get to spend time with some of the top researchers in that field, and it's so fascinating to get to hear what's at the forefront of some of the top researchers in that field. And it's so fascinating to get to hear what's at the forefront of it all the time. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. You're in a hell of a think tank. Well, let's talk about the hallmarks of aging. What are the hallmarks of

aging? And we'll dive in a little bit on senescent cells and things like that, because I think it's stuff that some people hear about here and there. You know, you might hear like a blip from Dr. Rhonda Patrick on Rogans or something like that. But really like getting into the nitty gritty of that and what that looks like for us. Yeah. Yeah. The whole Martian invasion is a really interesting topic that I'm excited to see. It's finally starting to gain some kind of broader understanding and popularity. I mean, basically what it is, is, you know, kind of the categories within human physiology that are most directly correlated to longevity. Um, and it's kind of an

on like constantly evolving thing, right? There was considered to be nine hallmarks of aging up until just a handful of months ago. And now there's 12. And there isn't like a specific number that all scientists agree on. It's, you know, it's definitely an evolving domain of science, but the kind of standard understanding was that there was nine, now there's 12. And, you know, so like for instance, mitochondrial function would be one of the hallmarks of aging, um, right.

Mitochondria are the part of the cells that are predominantly responsible for energy production, gross oversimplification, right. But as we age, that starts to decline and, you know, that then kind of speeds up the aging process. Um, you've got things like, um, stem cells would kind of speeds up the aging process. You've got things like stem cells would be another hallmark of aging. Dysbiosis, right? What's happening, again, oversimplification, but what's happening in the gut, right?

Because what's happening in terms of the whole longevity anti-aging space right now is what's known as senescent cells and this is like one of the newer domains of research because a lot of things like we've been studying mitochondria for many many decades right senescent cells we've known like the scientific community has known that they have existed for probably about 30 years, but we had very little understanding of them. We didn't actually know what caused the development of senescent cells. We didn't know that anything could be done about it. That research is like brand new, right? Like most of that only started in 2015, and a lot of that was done out of the Mayo Clinic and out of Scripps, where they started testing different kinds of substances to be able to figure out what could have an impact on reducing the amount of senescent cells. And I guess before we get too far into that, let's just give a maybe high level on what senescent cells are, because it's a term that most people aren't familiar with. They're often referred to as zombie cells and it's kind of a good visual to think of them that way. So a healthy cell is supposed to be able to continue to divide and replicate

and along with that serve the functions that that cell is supposed to do. Once it gets past the point that it's able to divide and replicate, it's supposed to go through a process known as apoptosis, where the cell dies off. Apoptosis basically means scheduled die off. And that tends to happen in younger people that are healthy. As we age, and particularly as our immune function gets a little bit less, you get these cells that get past the point of being able to divide and replicate, get past the point of being able to serve their kind of core functions, but they don't die off. And that's where they become senescent or zombie. And there's kind of two key problems with this. One is, as you've got these sort of zombie cells sitting there,

they're still sucking up resources, but they're not providing any value. And so that in and of itself is a problem. But where it becomes an even bigger issue is that those senescent cells then emit a series of chemicals that cause the cells around them to also become senescent. And so as you have more senescent cells, everything else starts to become more senescent more quickly. And you see this like kind of rapid acceleration in the aging process. And so being able to address them,

being able to minimize the amount of senescent cell buildup is really key. And, you know, there's all kinds of things that can be done just in terms of diet, lifestyle, et cetera, to support this because the key of senescent processes mostly relates to immune function there's now this whole field which is known as senolytics senolytic being any kind of compound that will remove senescent cells from the body and so this is an area that we've been diving really deeply into for the last probably four five years um from an r&d perspective at neurohacker and then just year, we developed and launched a product called Qualiocenolytic that is a combination of nine different ingredients. Each one targets the sort of die-off

or removal of senescent cells in different types of body tissue. And that part's also key because like most of the research that's been done in that space right now is only focused on removing senescent cells from certain tissues and so like you know most of the kind of traditional research that's been done out of like mayo clinic um is using either one or two compounds and

there's been able to you know be identified that you can remove you know huge numbers of senescent cells but only in particular areas. And of course, when we're talking about the concept of longevity, you don't want to have really healthy muscles and messed up bones. Yeah, my liver's 20 years old, but my kidneys are 80. Right, right. It's not going to work. And so it's interesting because like the thing that we're doing surprisingly is actually really novel right it shouldn't be you know the basic understanding would be yeah you know if we're wanting to support longevity we're wanting to get rid of

senescent cells you want to do that comprehensively for whatever reason most of the research world most of the kind of product development world hasn't kind of caught on to that concept fully yet. Do you think that's an oversimplification from like a science standpoint? Like I know, I remember talking to Rick Doblin about their protocols with maps for MDMA recovery. And we know like 5-HTP and vitamin C and there's a number of other things that can help on that back end. And their whole thing is just take the day to rest. They couldn't include that in the science because it would have been too much to have to figure out dosing of vitamin C, dosing of 5-HTP, how that interacts with different people. And so they just left that off the table for simplicity standpoint from the science perspective.

Is that something that you think is happening as they study some of these things? Like, look, we're going to stick to one compound. We know it works on the liver. We're only going to look at the liver and we're going to see how much, how much it does here. Yeah. I mean, part of it's kind of just a general oversimplification and part of it has a lot to do with how research is traditionally done, right? The majority of research that we do in the world, kind of regardless of topic is a sort of reductionist approach right and particularly when we talk about medicine there's almost like a well not almost there is a formal mandate to do it that way right when you're

trying to study something for the purposes of let's say fda approval you have to control every possible variable. And so as a result, the nature of most clinical studies is that they're really only looking at one or two things at a time. Because as soon as you start to go more complex than that, and you're trying to track many different variables, now all of the different things that you have to control for just become so cumbersome and so costly that most people either can't or just aren't willing to do it. And there's not really an economic incentive to, right? Because based on kind of the traditional processes of medicine, if you're studying something, you want it to be a novel molecule that you have the ability to patent and make a fairly obscene amount of money on, makes sense right like when you're talking

about the kind of drug discovery path it costs companies hundreds of millions sometimes over a billion dollars to be able to bring a drug to market and so you can't reasonably afford to do all of that research put all that money in if you then don't kind of control that market for a period of time i'm not saying it should be that way that's actually quite detrimental to you know human well-being psychology humanity but that is kind of the the traditional structure um and that's the thing that we've really set out to do differently. And we're not the only group, but we've definitely been kind of pioneering some of this research that's based on, you know, what we refer to as complex systems modeling, right? We're not trying to study one or two variables because you just can't in a

bigger picture sense, right? If you change something in physiology, it's not like that's the only thing that changes. There's all of these cascading sense, right? If you change something in physiology, it's not like that's the only thing that changes. There's all of these cascading effects, right? And so to really understand the broader impact, to understand the complexity of how human physiology works and how different interventions affect that, you have to be willing to kind of zoom out and take a much bigger approach. But it's super costly. It's really difficult. It requires scientists from many different disciplines that can all come together in one kind of our unique value is we were willing to make the investments and go through the hardship of figuring out how to do that kind of complex research. And it's super worthwhile, right? It's insanely hard and it's really pricey, but when we're able to

do that and then actually apply that to product development, the results are just incredible because we're not taking this really simplified approach and saying, well, yeah, we're going to change this one thing and hopefully it's going to do what we want it to do and not do anything else. Right. It just, it doesn't work that way. We're then able to say, Hey, we want to upgrade an entire system, an entire way of being. And what is everything that's required to actually do that? And then how do we make that doable and accessible for a broad number of people? benefits um you know some of which we've gotten to see in pretty wonderful ways so far with this senolytic product um we're we're gearing up right now to do a much bigger study but we've already done two studies on that product um not full clinical trials yet uh we're doing kind of smaller pilot studies which is like a few dozen people um but you know like one of the one of the main

places in the body that senescent cells tend to build up is in joint tissue and so as a result of that you see that expressed as all kinds of joint issues right stiffness discomfort pain etc stiffness, discomfort, pain, et cetera. So we did a study looking at the effects on people's joint health with, you know, taking senolytic versus not. And I mean, I was actually really surprised to see how kind of amazing benefits were. We had people do so that this particular product isn't something people take every day. It's basically a two day cellular detox, and that's something that you do once a month. So in this study, we had people do three cycles of this two-day cellular detox, and we did all the baseline testing before they started and then tested again at the end.

And we ended up seeing, I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think it was a 43% reduction in joint stiffness, soreness, pain, etc. And something like a 50% increase in this regard, what is referred to as ease of doing daily tasks, right? So have joint issues when you're picking up your kid, when you're taking out the garbage, right? These kinds of things. And so, I mean, to see a change like that in such a short duration with such a simple intervention is just amazing. And so it's been really,

really cool to see the effects of that product's happening and then how well it's actually taking off because the implications of that on people's overall health. And then by turn how much longevity they're likely to have is, is a really exciting new area in scientific development. Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. I mean, oftentimes the conversation gets pitted one or the other, performance or longevity.

You know, like you can't, you're not focusing on both of those typically at the same time. But looking at things holistically like you guys do, like I would never think like let's look at the joints. Obviously I don't know enough about it to know that that's a probably a, probably a great place to start. Um, but something that is going to help with longevity and also something very practical right now for former athletes, current athletes, or even if you just never were an athlete and you've got joint pain from being in the modern world. Um, I just love the fact that in a three month span, you could shift that far. That's pretty remarkable.

Right. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's so cool. Cause I mean, yeah, most of the time when you're looking at things related to longevity, unless you're actually doing the blood labs and you're seeing what's happening underneath to an extent, it's almost like you're doing some of it on faith, right?

Because you don't feel the effects right away right you usually like it will have the net benefit over time but it's not changing your current experience your current state so to be able to dive into domains of longevity that not only support you know longer lifespan health span, but actually make you feel better, like almost in real time is, is pretty new. And it's pretty exceptional. And like, of course, I get excited about, you know, the ability to improve quality of life and people's experience in the moment.

But then when I start to think about the implications of longevity, bigger picture, that's where I get the most excited. Because I know for me, I'd say every, call it five years, I kind of do a deep assessment and sort of look at myself, my life, my understanding of universe, of psychology, et cetera. And then I kind of do this reflection on where i was previously and you know like every time i do this i'm like wow i was there was so much i didn't know right you know and then the next five years happens and it's like oh my god right so now i start to think about the implications of getting more of those five-year cycles and like how much more intelligent we have the opportunity to be, how much wiser, how much more comprehensive, how much more capacity we have to actually make sense of ourselves and of the world around us. And then, you know, what are the implications of

that on humanity, right? As people can live longer and more intentionally and be able to develop deeper and deeper understandings of themselves, of the world, like that's going to have massive impact on the choices that we collectively make, the types of technologies that we invest in, the things that we deploy for improving the state of the world. So it's, you know, at the individual level of the quality of life, it's spectacular. And then you zoom out even a little bit more and you think about the broader implications of longevity. That's a game changer. Yeah, it's massive. I just think of it like from a mental emotional point of view, if I'm in pain pain I'm not my best self you know like something's

weighing on me I'm kind of can get to be a curmudgeon you know if I'm not able to move freely and express through my physical body the way that I know that I can and um if I found myself as an old man just beat up from from being a knucklehead as a kid and having a long sports career I I wouldn't I wouldn't want to finish that way. I'd want to finish in a way where even if I die at 80, I'm the very best version of myself. And I could bring all of my joy and all of the acquired knowledge that I've taken with me and the wisdom with me in a way where I'm not under the constraints of being in pain or not having the fullness of my body in the way that I know that I can. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I mean, obviously as a pro athlete,

like you've experienced pain plenty of times and it's such a huge impact on not just your own quality of life, but the quality of life of everyone around you. Cause like you said, you're more prone to being aggravated to being short with people, being sharp with people. So it's not just your experience, it's the experience of everyone around you. And obviously there are types of pain that are kind of structural, fundamental enough that they can't necessarily be gotten rid of. But if there are areas that can

be addressed, then let's do it. Because you want to be able to have a much richer experience of life. And it's not just about not being crabby. It's like when you're in pain, it sucks up so much of your attention, so much of your total presence. Then that's time that's not going into learning. That's time that's not going into loving the you know life that you have the people around you it's you know time that's not going into deep reflection and introspection into innovation

right it's such a resource drain and so wherever we have the ability to address pain and not just like acute pain where you're hurting but just anything that kind of makes life a little blah it's like the goal to of life should be to be fully alive and where can we use research where can we use the cutting edge of science to support that because when we have the opportunity to be deeply alive to be engaged, the quality of that experience is phenomenal. And the impact that that has on everyone around you and ultimately the world at large is phenomenal. To me, that's the goal, right? How do we use research? How do we use science not to make more money, not to make new, faster widgets, but to actually fundamentally upgrade the experience of being human? Yeah, I love how you worded that because that's where foot with the miracle of modern science and not move into some kind of weird dystopian transhumanist thing but use it to advance our our beingness

right like we have a pretty fucking cool instrument a pretty cool vehicle that we get to inhabit while we're here you know like i want to i want that to peak i don't need to merge you know we're close enough to the merger already just with the fact that we've got such access of you know within our hands um i don't think it needs to go further than that but can we improve upon that using science like absolutely we should be right yeah i mean i think for a long time a lot of the science in the world has been developed in a way that has kind of minimized our humanity. And to me, that's the opposite of what the intent should be. The intent should be, like, how do we dive into the right domains of research to support and enhance humanity, not to become more efficient, right? Not to be able to do things that don't actually, you know,

we have so much creation of technology and processes and innovation that are all around being able to do things faster and easier, but very seldom are we asking the question, is the thing that we're't worth doing why let's make sure that the resources that we're allocating to research are starting with the question of you know is it worth doing is it going to really up level the experience of humankind and if so then yeah let's go hardcore hell yeah we got a couple questions on senescent cells. Are there, are there any like, like you talked about the joints being a place where there seems to be some buildup. Are there any other organs or places within the body where you guys find that you want to look at next scientifically? Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, because senescent cells show up in every kind of tissue, right? Skin, muscle, bone, eyes, organs, et cetera. One of the most acute places that people experience it is

in joints, but there's buildup almost everywhere. The reason I say almost is there are some areas that just haven't been fully studied. Like we don't, scientifically, there's not a lot of understanding of how much senescent buildup there is in eye tissue. Whether that's a thing or not, whether it has an impact on vision, we just don't know. But in most kinds of tissue, there has been sufficient research at this point to know that senescent cells do build up and then cause the cascade of problems. And that's where this approach of trying to address the topic comprehensively becomes really important part of why we've done research so far on joints then we did another study called the sf36 study it's sort of a general quality of life study

like these are both kind of more subjective approaches of seeing like what are the impact of senescent cells. To actually study senescent cells directly and see like how many were there before and how many are there after requires biopsying tissue. And so it's a thing I really want to do. And we're working both internally and with outside research organizations to try to figure out the best way to do something along those lines but that's a very invasive kind of study yeah right i'm still curious i was just going to say i'm still curious along the thinking of where you guys are at with the joints right like if you know um if you know hrv is important and you know lower resting heart rate and then you find that there's

a ton of senescent cells within the heart and the cardiovascular system and in that reduction does then that improve hrv and improve your your lowest resting heart rate at night like that that would improve quality of life as well you know you'd seem to just be everything's a little easier when you're in good shape you know absolutely? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I, I don't actually personally know a huge amount about the amount of senescent buildup in heart tissue or, um, you know, how readily that shifts. Cause that's just an area that hasn't had substantial research as much as some other areas. Um, you know, like on the topic of HRV, we have another product we've developed that seems to have

notable impact on that. We haven't actually done a formal HRV study yet, but informally, we've had tons of people both inside the company and out that have written in. We developed a product called Resilience. It's a stress resilience product, being able to basically help us navigate the stressors of life more effectively and become more adaptive, right? Because to try to not have... What's that?

I was just going to say, did you launch it in March of 2020? We should have. Sadly, we weren't done with the R&D quite yet. No, I mean, that one one we launched give or take a year ago um and you know it's it's it's a bunch of different adaptogens um and then you know a number of other ingredients kind of paired with the adaptogens to maximize their effect um and you know in some ways it's a subtle product. You don't feel like this huge instantaneous difference. But as you take it for a little while, you do find that you're just way more capable of handling what life throws at you.

Because you can't design a life that doesn't have stress. That's not realistic. Unless you're going to become a monk and go sit in a cave by yourself and meditate all day. The reality of current modern life is that we're always under time pressure. There's money pressures, there's relational stress, right? You're going to have a lot of stress. So one of the key things about living an exceptional life is how do we become more adaptive to our environment? How do we handle stress more effectively? Not how do we get away from it? How do we become progressively more capable? And, you know, that was really the goal in the

development of resilience. And, you know, with that, we suspected that we would see changes in HRV because there's a correlation there, but we didn't specifically design for that. So it's been really cool then to see a bunch of people write in that are using Fora rings or Whoop or other kinds of biometric tracking devices that are kind of consistently saying something like, hey, I started taking the product and my HRV went up 10 points.

That's a big deal. I'm sure you've spent time tracking HRV and testing all kinds of variables. There's not a lot of things that move that needle 10 points. And, you know, like I said, we haven't done a formal study there yet,

so we can't say definitively that happens, but anecdotally I've now seen that across a decent number of people, including myself, right. Cause I've been doing biometric tracking for five years now. Cool. Yeah. Super cool.

Well, one more question on senescent cells. Are there any diet and lifestyle behaviors, lifestyle choices that you could do that are going to help with that? Some people have talked about fasting. I'm not sure how sauna and cold or temperature affects that. Can you talk about some of these things that people could potentially get in with and, and how does that pair then, you know, would you, would you, if we were going to do like something where I'm all in for three months and I

wanted to take this, you know, and take my two day dose at the beginning of each month for the first three months of the year, is there some lifestyle changes we can add to that? That would be beneficial and work synergistically. Oh yeah, absolutely. So you kind of nailed, you know, hit it right on the head, which is the number one thing lifestyle wise is fasting or really intermittent fasting. Right. You don't necessarily need to go do a long fast. Like I've done a 40 day juice fast before.

That's unnecessary for this purpose. But when you go at least 16 hours without any caloric intake, there's a process that kicks in in the body known as autophagy. Autophagy essentially translates to self-eating, right? And it's where the body then starts to sort of devour old parts that are no longer useful and be able to process them out. There's a huge correlation between autophagy and the removal of senescent cells. And so anytime you're doing intermittent fasting, you're going to, with or without our product, you're going to support a reduction in senescent cells.

When you do that and then you add in senescent cells when you do that and then you add in senolytics on top of that then that's going to accelerate dramatically and like we don't include that in like the standard product recommendation because not everyone's willing to do intermittent fasting but if you are that's going to be a really key area and And obviously, intermittent fasting started to gain huge amounts of popularity in the last few years. And you have kind of the standard version of it, which is, you know, you only eat within an eight hour window each day. And then the remaining 16 hours, you don't take anything else in other than basically water. And for many people that's a pretty hard version so another thing that works really well in that same regard is what's known as fasting mimicking um and there's a bunch of

different programs out there the most popular one by far is a company called prolon um i have no involvement but um you know they make they make a product for fast mimicking where you actually do get to eat and drink a little bit throughout the day. You don't have to take a full 16 hours away, but the nature of what's in their product being very low calorie, very high fiber content, etc. Basically causes your body to think that it's fasting. And so you get a lot of that benefit of autophagy. You get the support for removing senescent cells, but in a way that's a little bit more user-friendly because you're not sitting there starving quite as much. So, you know, straight up fasting,

intermittent fasting or fast mimicking would be some of like the core lifestyle pieces. Exercise is actually an interesting one. intermittent fasting or fast mimicking would be some of like the core lifestyle pieces exercise is actually an interesting one because when you do intense exercise it actually increases the amount of senescent cells immediately following exercise but it also supports better immune function and so net net it will actually reduce the number of senescent cells but it's gonna it's not a totally consistent thing it's gonna basically go up and down um because the amount of stress that you're putting your body under doing hard exercise will basically cause some of the healthy cells to move

into senescence but relatively shortly after that they'll then start to clear out um so exercise is key and then good quality sleep right because again removing senescent cells is largely a function of the immune system one of the absolute best things that someone can do to support healthy immune function or improve immune function is get really good sleep and it's one of the things that as a society, we suck at the most, right? We tend to overvalue the grind and undervalue the necessity of rest and restoration. And so, you know, for many people, we don't sleep enough. We sleep with really inconsistent hours. We are staring at our phones right up until we go to sleep which is you know causing all kinds of issues from the flickering lights the blue lights right so like lifestyle

wise you've got fasting you've got exercise and then sleep and most people know how to get better sleep but they don't choose to do the necessary steps right Put the screens away at least an hour before bed, have a pretty consistent schedule, spend that last 30 or 60 minutes before bed actually doing practices to wind down, right? Spend that time meditating, journaling, having a kind of reflective experience on your own or with your partner.

Those would be kind of the core elements the one other thing that's key is um you know the amount of the amount of polyphenols that you get in your diet are going to have a huge impact on senescence so basically what that means is eat more fresh fruits and vegetables particularly colored. The brighter the colors and the fresher they are, the higher the polyphenol content and the more benefit you're going to get, not just on senescent cells, but kind of across everything. And again, all stuff we know, right? It's just how much do we choose to apply to our lives?

We all know we should eat a lot more fresh food, a lot more fruits and veggies. Sometimes it's not quite as attractive as the ice cream. The more that we can make choices in the moment that align with our deeper goals and intent for life, the better quality of life that we're going to have. Yeah. Yeah. I've had a weird shift for me recently this year was prioritizing sleep because when parenting, I put the kids down. It's like my time to be intimate with my wife or I'm going to deep dive a book that I've been dying to read because it's the first time I have the opportunity to read all day long or listen to audible before I go to bed. And now I'm trying to time it that I go to sleep right when the kids go to sleep. So no audible, no nothing. I'll close my eyes and meditate for a bit around 830 and I'm out by nine o'clock. And just that reframe is adding hours to my sleep. Like I wake up completely refreshed. And it's interesting because I, you know, we've got like amber bulbs and red block you know blue light blocking glasses and stuff like that if we're going to read um even audible is like i can put

that on and i have no lights on so it's like a really easy way for me to consume information and that's me time but to switch like sleep's actually me time too if i can handle if i can substitute that and see how it works and it's been a really cool experiment um because i'd stay up I'd stay up for two, three hours listening to the book that's really good. That's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to chew it up. And I'm like, holy shit, it's 11 o'clock. I missed my nice window of getting to bed on time. Well, that's the tricky part, right?

Because audio books are actually a pretty good thing to do generally before sleep right because staring at a screen is problematic but um you know allowing kind of you know passively to take in insights to take in information it is still somewhat stimulating but compared to many of the things that people do it's actually pretty good um i wouldn't listen to the real real anthony fauci before bed that might keep you awake yeah i mean what you listen to definitely matters right if it's something that's getting you all riled up well that's not going to be super helpful um whereas if it's like a book of poetry or philosophy and you're just like in a reflective state well that's probably actually going to work pretty well.

So, I mean, you know, it's interesting because, like, I often tell people to start doing more audiobooks because it's a better alternative than doom scrolling on Facebook or watching TV, right? And so if, you know, like, because, you know, there's always, like, what is the ideal? And for most people, the ideal is not realistic, or even if it is, it's not realistic right now. And so then it's like, what are, what are the progressive steps that you can take? And, uh, you know, audio books are a pretty good progressive step for most people. I will also say on the, you know, the intimacy part, um, there are things that provide a lot of the same benefit that sleep does um and sometimes even more that in my personal opinion are at times worth giving up a little bit of sleep for right like for instance there's tons of studies showing the effects of meditation

and there's so much restoration that happens both you and emotionally, but as well as physiologically when you meditate, that if you were to meditate for 30 minutes and you had to give up an hour of sleep to do that, net net, that's actually probably good. And though there's less research on it, personally, my view is that intimacy is also one of those areas that you know if you can maybe give up something else you know give up some work time give up some distraction time but if the only option is give up a little bit of sleep time to have intimacy the amount of deep fulfillment that comes from that. You know, like the amount of really good, fun, exciting neurotransmitter production, endorphin production, but also, you know, just like the deeper kind of spiritual aspects of intimacy and how much that brings us closer to who we are. I am personally pretty routinely willing to give up a little bit of sleep to

have more intimacy. Yeah. Well, I love, you know, when Mark Gaffney talks about that, he's like at the, at the moment of climax, nobody's sitting there asking themselves, what, why am I here? What is the meaning of all this? What is my purpose in life? Like it's understood. It's understood. There's no questions like that. like that there's no there's no there's no wondering about you know the doom of the future any of that shit like it all makes sense in that moment yeah it certainly makes sense to me as he describes that yeah well it kind of like what we were talking about earlier right like that's

that's one of the most acute experiences being fully alive right and when you're fully alive yeah there's no questions right you're not an existential breakdown you're not wondering you know am i doing the right things with my life am i you know making the right choices am i where i'm supposed to be no you're fully fucking engaged and you know there's a bunch of things that can bring us to that sexual intimacy happens to be one of the best and one of my personal favorites yeah absolutely absolutely well let's let's dive into i mean i i think we talked about it a bit in the first podcast but it has been a couple years so i'd love for you to talk about your personal stories surrounding experiences with healing the brain and burnout um

and uh obviously that that can bridge us the gap to nootropics and you guys you know i think i think neurohacker collective is best known for qualia but but obviously you guys are still in the game creating awesome stuff and haven't stopped there but i'd love to to rehash some of that and talk a bit about your own personal journey yeah yeah absolutely um yeah so i Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I, you know, most of my life has been kind of dedicated to the domain of sort of alternative medicine and for lack of a better way of saying it, let's say personal development, right. Psychology, alternative approaches to psychology. And, and, you know, so working on some of these things is not new for me, but some of

the experiences I had along the way drove kind of where we are today. When I was, when I was 18, I was a student at a vocational college studying alternative medicine and alternative psychology and i absolutely loved it like it was i had already dropped out of college three times prior to that was very bored with like traditional forms of academics but as soon as i got like directly into the healing field and i saw the impact it was having on me the impact it was having on other people i was just like i was in my dharma i was totally on purpose and um so right right around the time that i was getting ready to graduate the man that had founded the college that i was going to had said that he wanted to kind of semi-retire he still wanted to teach he still wanted to have private practice

but he no longer wanted to own run business and in my excited naivete of being an 18 year old, I'm like, Oh, I should do that. Now I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. I had no money. So I, you know, I gave him a $1,500 advance on my credit card, which was the extent of the money that I had in the world to like hold it. So I had time to go raise money. And then, you know, I went around and begged everyone I had ever met for money and ended up actually buying the school.

And it was this really interesting experience because I so loved what I was doing. I couldn't have been more on purpose, but I was so profoundly overwhelmed, right? Like at 18, I didn't know how to balance a checkbook. I didn't know how to manage employees. And like, you know, all of a sudden I have like dozens of employees, hundreds of students, no idea what the hell I'm doing. And so I basically made up for my lack of knowledge with just work hours. And for the first like three years, I worked basically 20 hours a day, seven days a week. Most of the time I didn't go home because it didn't make sense to add the commute time on.

I would like lay down under my desk, nap, get back up and start working again. And when I wasn't directly working on the business, I was taking a business class. I was studying marketing. And by the time I was 21, even though at that age, you're built to be able to handle a lot, but no one's supposed to go three years without sleeping. And so I ended up in just terrible shape. I was depressed. I had no no energy my memory was so messed up particularly my working memory like working memory is sort of how much information you can hold in a given moment and like i ended up having this problem where when i would try to read anything by the time i would get to the end of a sentence i couldn't remember where the sentence started so i couldn't make

sense of any of it right that was the problem with working memory and you know then like being depressed and being low energy while feeling like i'm doing the thing i'm supposed to be doing in the world you know then that caused an existential breakdown i'm like what the fuck's wrong with me um and i ended up um going to a doctor at the time and got diagnosed with stage three adrenal exhaustion right when you go past that you get into basically what's known as addison's disease where the adrenals just kind of fundamentally give out and you have to take cortisol exogenously for the rest of your life luckily i wasn't quite there but i wasn't far from it um and so that was kind of where I dove originally into like the biggest part of my healing journey. And I did all kinds of things, but there was one thing that really made the most profound difference.

I ended up going to this clinic in Mexico and met with this research physician who had developed this new kind of cutting edge IV therapy for rapidly healing neurotransmitter damage. And, you know, I ended up doing three days in a row of this IV for like nine hours a day. And it was a massive game changer. Like it was, you know, most things that you do to improve your health are kind of like slow and subtle. And this just wasn't, it was like the lights came back on my, you know, my memory started working again.

The depression totally went away. I ended up not only feeling like I got all of my brain function back to where I had previously experienced it, but actually had significantly more cognitive ability than I ever had before. Like all the depression kind of left and got replaced with a sense of like excitement and passion for life, more capacity. And then the piece that really stood out to me

was that as I became healthier with that, as I became more resourced and I had more ability to kind of hold a bigger picture, my empathy went through the roof. And just like as an almost automatic function, I could no longer think about anything I wanted to do in the world and not just automatically be aware of how it was going to affect everyone around me and what effects it would have on the world. And as I was just reflecting on that experience, I was like, God, this is like, personally, this is incredible. And if I think about this collectively, if I think about the opportunity for everyone

to have that kind of experience of becoming dramatically more intelligent, much more capable, more confident, having a better experience of life and becoming more empathetic so that their intelligence and their competency start to be used for progressively better things, right? Not just for personal gain, not just for competition, but how do I impact my family, my community, and ultimately the world? I was like, that's a game changer. And so that ended up becoming the thing that I wanted to devote my life to. Um, and originally I actually tried to partner with that doctor and I was going to open IV clinics all over the world, um, doing this therapy, having a nonprofit arm that would fund a four or sorry, having a

for-profit arm that would fund a nonprofit arm to give it to the people who couldn't afford it. Um, and we actually started on that process and just a few weeks into it, he ended up getting ill and passed away and most of his research went with him and so there was this beautiful vision and no longer a path and then you know that's kind of where you know while i was building other companies and doing other things like in the background i was researching this stuff i was like interviewing all the top neuroscientists neurobiologists chemists formulators and telling them of this grand vision and everyone was like yeah it's beautiful it's not possible and it wasn't we were able to

find the right people and bring this complex system science concept together in a really tangible fashion, where from that scientific model, we could actually understand how the brain and the nervous system worked in a deep enough way to have that kind of meaningful benefit. And that ended up being essentially the creation of neurohacker. The first product that we made was a product called quality of mind it's this broad spectrum nootropic i designed to support and enhance all different types of brain function not just make you more focused that's helpful but in addition to focus like you need to have better critical thinking skills better discernment better capacity to make sense of the world better reasoning um and then along with being able to

support better brain function we tried to take this approach to formulate in a way that would also tap into and support the parts of the brain and nervous system responsible for things like compassion and empathy and to you know sort of upgrade our subjective experience of life how do we feel about ourselves how do we feel about the world how do we feel about the way that we interface with that um and you know you know and then the goal there was how do we make it really accessible right because most people aren't going to do the thing that I did. You're not going to go to some random clinic in another country and have people shove stuff in your veins. That's really expensive and super uncomfortable and do that for days on end. As much as I want everyone to have that experience,

like it's just not realistic at scale. So, you know, the approach that we took was how do we give as much of that type of experience as is possibly doable in the capsule? Because that's now fairly simple. And, you know, the reality is you can't do as much going through the digestive tract as you can IV. Just the way physiology works, it's nearing on impossible so you know what we created isn't necessarily going to do everything that i experienced in that iv but it's the closest thing that i've ever seen to what that experience was that's actually available to people in a fairly straightforward simple and actually doable way and that was the creation of narrow hacker

since then we've obviously expanded um you know we've developed more products in the cognitive sector really tried to like develop those abilities more and more but also recognize that the kind of science that it took to make something that could dramatically improve people's thinking, their subjective experience, that same type of science could also be applied to many other areas of life with longevity being one of the key areas of importance. And so now we've developed products across a number of different areas, but it's brain function and longevity have become kind of our two primary wheelhouses that we've invested the most research in that we've kind of

built a whole team around yeah i remember the first time i was at paleo effects you guys had a table there and uh i wasn't at on it yet no i was just looking over somebody had given me some on on day one and I was like, holy shit, what is this stuff? Running back there right when Paleo FX opened up day two. And I remember reading the label and I was like, I mean, I had dabbled in various nootropics from the Russian stuff to, you know, to Alpha Brain and everything in between. And I remember looking at the label and I was like, this is like the kitchen sink. It's like, I knew enough about it to understand too,

that it wasn't just things that were going to give me a spark or help me in the now there was, there was long-term benefit to it. There was things that were actually healing for the brain and it was a whole systems approach, which I found absolutely incredible. Like you guys left nothing out from that. You know, it was really like the one nootropic to rule them that. You know, it was really like the one nootropic to rule them all. You know, it was pretty cool to see that. It was kind of the goal, you know, and it has its pluses and minuses, right? Like the downside

of the approach that we take is it's more capsules than almost any other product on the market, right? Because to try to get as significant of an effect as we are across as many things as we are, there's a lot of different active ingredients that have to go in. And then when you're using full therapeutic doses of each of them, you end up needing to take, depending on the product, four to maybe eight capsules. And so it's like, yeah, that's a bit of an inconvenience but when you put that up against how dramatic of a difference you can experience in your quality of life your thinking your overall health your vitality it's worth the hardship hopefully over time we'll figure out ways of making things progressively more concentrated but you know right now it's like there there's a trade-off between capsule count and uh and total impact yeah i don't know i mean i i get it like some people complain about shit like that i've had

especially when i was guinea pig and everything had on it my wife and i got two shot glasses and we don't drink alcohol but the shot glasses were just just to fill up the capsules we're going to take in the morning in the evening yep you know it's like a little bit of this a little bit of that um but the juice is worth the squeeze it's one of the things we're going to take in the morning and the evening. It's like, all right, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. But the juice is worth the squeeze. It's one of the things where three days in, you're like, I don't give a fuck if it's eight capsules. This is working for me in ways that nothing else does.

And I think that's the proof's in the pudding there. That just becomes a minor, minor side effect to get the results that you want. I mean, that's how I feel about it too. And most people do once they get there, right? Sometimes the idea initially is a little daunting, but it's like a lot of things that make life better take some effort, right? Exercise takes effort. But everyone who's done exercise consistently

is really clear that the amount of effort and soreness and everything that goes into it is so incredibly worth it based on how much more energy you have how much more powerful capable happier right so it's it's a similar concept here yeah even going without food takes a lot of effort right you're doing 16-8 like that right surprising surprisingly takes quite a bit of effort to withhold and just keep drinking water. So I get that. What are three to five go-tos for upgrading mental energy, lifting brain fog that our listeners could put into practice today?

Well, so, I mean, one of the obvious ones would be take a really great nootropic product. I happen to be, you know, and partial to to some of the stuff that we make particularly quality of mind um and in many ways like that's that will in and of itself have a huge impact and you'll get more impact from it if you're doing some of the other things that also support better brain function and i mean it's funny because almost everything comes back to the same stuff, right? Good sleep, good diet, good exercise. There's way more than that, but like get the fundamentals in place, right? In terms of brain function, I would say, you know, sleep is probably the single biggest thing, at least for most people, right? Because

most people are really struggling there. When you really spend the effort to dial in good sleep quality, we've all had the experience, right? You wake up the next day and you're just more clear. You're refreshed. You're like ready to take on the day. And rather than feeling scared and overwhelmed by it, you're like, oh, I get to do all of this, right? So really dialing that in, um, obviously, you know, eating in a way that is supportive of energy production, supportive of brain, um, you know, so less sugary shit, less fried foods, more live foods, um, you know, healthy balances of proteins and carbs and all that. Um, some of the other other biohacks that are really awesome that are gaining a lot more popularity now,

like Cold Plunge, spectacular. Cold Plunge does so many things that have effects across all kinds of stuff, right? Better recovery time, better immune function, but very specifically and very directly going to positively impact brain function, both in the sense of increased cognitive performance,

but also in the sense of increased resilience. Like one of my favorite things about doing cold plunge is that when I make the conscious choice every day to go torture myself in freezing cold water, everything else feels less difficult. Yeah. That like that hard meeting that I have to go to, I'm like, dude, I just got out of 32 degree water, like bring it on. So cold plunge is a really spectacular one.

And then within the realm of exercise, like all exercise is going to be good. High intensity exercise typically is going to have the most impact on brain function, even if it's really short. And that's why you see things like a lot of public speakers and such will like backstage, you know, five minutes before they go on, they'll do a bunch of jumping jacks, like run in place really intensely for a minute. It doesn't necessarily take a long duration, but just like going full out, letting your heart rate really elevate, getting your respiration going, um, has a pretty immediate effect on brain function, but also when you do it consistently, then has long-term positive impacts. Yeah. It seems like the, the, the closer you are to like a real life threat, you know, like if you're going for a jog at 12 mile per hour pace, it's not the same as trying to outrun a bear,

you know, like if you're sprinting full go, like that's a different, your body adapts differently. If you're in a 32 degree or 35 degree ice bath, that's different on the physiology than taking a cold shower, you know, that's 50 on the physiology than taking a cold shower, you know, that's 50 degrees or 60 degrees. It's just the results come quicker, it seems. And yeah, that's kind of been my rule of thumb. Like typically volume is going to come down when the intensity goes up. You know, you could stay in a 55 degree ice bath for an hour. I don't have an hour, you know, give me three minutes to three minutes in a really cold one and then and then you feel it i mean it's it goes beyond uh what we're talking about it becomes a visceral experience oh yeah yeah yeah i mean you know i don't we don't have time for it now but like when you really get into sort of how our biology developed over duration it start like you start

to see really clearly why high intensity brings a lot more mental clarity right because when you're being chased by a bear you better be really clear you can't have a complicated brain at that time you can't be thinking about your shopping list or what you got to do tomorrow you got to be able to be wholly and entirely present to and addressing the thing in front of you that kind of intensity you know has been something that has sort of biologically evolutionarily developed and you know now for the most part we're not being chased by bears but we can mimic some of the experiences through leaning into physical intensity i like that well we're coming up here in an hour but i'd love to leave you with a question since we talked a bit of briefly about it um obviously i don't leave a loaded question for you at the end of it

we don't have tons of time to get into it but a lot has changed in the last two years uh since we spoke last and one of the things that i love in following you and dan stickler and your brother daniel is that you guys are often thinking about the big picture. You're often thinking about the world at large. Everything changed, you know, in 2020. And obviously, there's been stints before that there were big landmarks across recent history. But how do you how do you come into a place of alchemy when you're thinking about existential risk and different things going on? Or, you know, even something that may not be existential, but it's like, you know, the employment of centralized bank digital currency and, you know, cameras on every streetlight, things like that. You know, what are the things that allow you to process that, continue to move forward

and not let it weigh on you? I mean, mostly I just curl up in fetal position and cry a lot. No, I mean, it's a really good question. And like, that's obviously a whole podcast in and of itself, but to try to do a short version, I focus on building more capacity. Right. The world that we live in today is, you know,

spectacular in so many ways. And the amount of opportunities, the amount of technology insight accessible to us is incredible. And the amount of risks are higher than they've ever been. And in progressively more and more existential ways, I would say we're a lot closer now than we were two years ago to the reasonable probability that human life will end. That's a hard thing to actually deal with.

Right. And most people have very little understanding of it, partly because it's not yet a popular enough conversation, but also because most people don't feel like they have the wherewithal to be able to actually lean into that understanding and then start to look at what can I do to affect the outcomes, not only for myself, but for civilization at large. And, you know, there's so many individual things that need done. But ultimately, what I think a lot of it comes down to at the individual level is how do we develop more resilience how do we develop more capacity how do we get to a place in our mind and our bodies and our life to feel like we have the willingness and the ability to actually face reality to not just want to put our head in the sand and pretend that it's all

going to be okay but to recognize and acknowledge there's a really good chance it's not. And within that frame, how do I show up bigger and bigger and bigger? And then within that capacity of showing up bigger, what is it that is uniquely mine to do in the world, right? Because there's work that needs done on infrastructure. There's work that needs done on technology. There's work that needs done on technology. There's work that needs done on psychology, on education, right? There's not a should in terms of like what some specific person should do.

When you start to really focus on building individual capacity and broadening your understanding of life, the world, then for most people, there's sort of this naturally emergent process that starts to then self-identify what it is that's yours to do. And, you know, for some people, it's as simple as what's mine to do is to make the lives of the other people around me better, Right. And then you just invest in making everyone smile. Right. You become more humorous. You become appreciative. You, you show your love for people. Right. And for some people it's like, Oh,

I'm going to develop an entirely new technology. That's going to revolutionize an industry that is destroying the planet. Right. All of them are needed. But it starts with the willingness to actually understand and face reality and the fundamental necessity to increase capacity so that you can do that. And then most of the rest of it does tend to just sort of naturally unfold. I love that. That was brilliant.

For a short answer, I couldn't have asked for one better. So I appreciate it, brother. And I appreciate your time. Anytime you want to come on, you're welcome. I love the conversations we get to have. And let us know where people can find your amazing products and where people can see you online. Absolutely. Well, yeah, first, you know, thanks for having me. Super fun super fun last time. Really fun to see you this time. I look forward to when we get to do it again. Yeah, if people want to learn more about me, about the research that we're doing, go to neurohacker.com and you can see about all the products, the analytics that we talked about. But also, you know, even if you're not interested in product,

we have such a tremendous amount of research and information available now. And so, you know, whether you're going to take the products or not, like a lot of the R&D that we've made available to understanding human physiology, understanding how to improve quality of life, just tons and tons of articles, podcasts, everything there. So, yeah, check out MerrillHacker.com. Cool. Thank you so much, brother. We'll do it again. Thank you.