Living The Red Life - Inflammation is Draining Your Energy : Secrets to Boost Productivity w/Victoria and Oksana

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

In this episode, Victoria and Oksana, health-focused entrepreneurs, share insights on achieving peak performance and enhancing energy levels for busy professionals. They discuss practical strategies for boosting vitality, emphasizing the importance of adequate hydration, stress management, and consistent exercise. Victoria and Oksana highlight the significance of individualized nutrition, particularly the role of minerals like magnesium, in combating fatigue and supporting overall well-being. They point out that common issues such as brain fog and persistent tiredness may often be linked to underlying inflammation and nutrient deficiencies.Victoria and Oksana provide actionable tips for optimizing health and productivity, focusing on the unique challenges faced by entrepreneurs, such as managing stress and maintaining a balanced lifestyle amidst demanding schedules. They advocate for personalized health approaches, including regular assessments of hydration, diet, and mental wellness, to prevent chronic inflammation and ensure sustained energy and focus.CHAPTERS1:00 - Welcome to Living The Red Life1:22 - Meet the Guests2:10 - From Scientist to Entrepreneur3:21 - Power Duo: Dividing Roles in Business4:19 - Transitioning to Marketing and Business Growth5:18 - Key Tips for Entrepreneurial Energy and Focus5:56 - Importance of Hydration7:16 - Dehydration and Its Impact9:20 - Managing Anxiety and Stress10:50 - Structuring Self-Care into Your Day12:06 - The Vital Role of Exercise13:38 - Optimizing Nutrition for Energy14:16 - Common Nutritional Deficiencies16:30 - Understanding and Managing Inflammation18:55 - Testing and Addressing InflammationConnect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter

Can you explain to the audience like inflammation, its role in the body? Because it's not always bad too, right? We do need to have some inflammation in the body because when we get an injury, your immune system comes in to create that inflammation to heal from an injury. However, when somebody has an autoimmune disease, they're in a state of chronic inflammation. How do people test this and know if they have it? And how do they fix it if they do have inflammation?

The early signs of symptoms usually just having fatigue, muscle weakness, or you have no energy even though you sleep for 10 hours a day. And you can reverse that before it becomes chronic. And that's a big cause of poor energy, right? Any other quick tips or tricks to become superhuman or have super energy? There's four main ways and actions that people can take

to improve their energy levels and their health. So the first way is... My name is Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. I'm here with two of my great, amazing clients that are all about health, focus and energy, Victoria and

Asana. And today we're going to talk about how to become a superhuman entrepreneur, how to have more energy, better health, more productivity, so you can impact more lives and get more stuff done. Welcome to the show guys. Good to have you here. Thanks for having us, Rudy. Thank you. So just for the audience, let's do a one-minute intro. Firstly, who's who, right? And what do you guys do? And how do you guys divide your business? Because I know you're a powerful couple duo,

but you clearly divide what you do in a business sense too. Hi, my name is Oksana. I'm an immunology scientist and I'm here with my twin sister. My name is Victoria. So, you guys obviously have been working with me a long time. And one thing that, you know, we share in common is we both came from the health space and, you know, both scientists, right? And I got a master's degree and did research and so did you. And, you know, I'm excited for you to be here today because we've not had a great episode on optimizing human performance.

And I know a lot of what you do is helping with disease and people with chronic disease. And then obviously what some of you're doing around nutrition, supplementation and human performance optimization for entrepreneurship, too. So how did you get here and what's your one minute journey to becoming becoming entrepreneurs in the health space I think I worked as a research scientist for ten years and when I started working a lot of people who were like PhD scientists they moved on to other careers so I ended up actually owning the lab and became an entrepreneur and figuring things out on my own just felt felt like it was in a blood. And then what led you to like, you know, learning marketing and joining our programs and kind

of starting to scale the business online? I think it's my sister and I have different skills. She's very logical and very creative. And that's how we started doing things together because I'm all about just thinking outside of box and coming up with ideas. And my sister is really good at taking action and making it happen Okay, and you get you guys obviously I know audience if you're listening or watching, you know These guys are a power power pair right and you guys divide and conquer in the business space

So how do you kind of delegate between each other and build that collaboration because you you live together you work together I you know, you finish each other sentences sentences so let's talk a little about that yeah so i think we we have strength in different areas and when we started a business we i was constantly going to tell her what to do and then she would tell me what to do and then we realized that she's good at marketing and video and creative because she's very creative and i'm more good at taking action, sales, as well as doing everything behind the scenes and client fulfillment. So we decided to divide our roles based on the strengths that we have. Great and then you guys came into you know our program a while ago and you

know I assume you like a lot of health professionals that I know and the reason I got into this is, passionate about helping people, but hadn't figured out the marketing, how to reach people, how to get more clients. So can you talk a little about like that and kind of your journey and what led you to focus on marketing and business versus just the health side? Yes, because we always want to have bigger impact

and reach more people. And as you know, marketing is always changing. And we saw that you are doing things that others were not doing. We want to grow and innovate, but we don't know how to do it ourselves. And also, I think the biggest issue that you have to stand out, there's a lot of competitions in every industry. And what we like about your program, that you stood out. You do things differently.

And that's what we wanted to do with our branding as well, with our offers. Just how do we stand out from everyone else? Sure. And I think you're not there yet, just like I'm not. There's always work to be done. But I think you're starting to understand how to separate yourself and what you stand for and your unique selling point

and all of those things. So talking of what you guys do and your unique selling point and all of those things. So talking of, you know, what you guys do and the reason you're here today is to talk about entrepreneurship and how to maximize your own productivity, your own focus, energy levels, and hopefully become superhuman in the process. So what would you say to, you know, people listening as we know as entrepreneurs, we work hard, right? We're always go, go, go. We're taking energy drinks or caffeine or coffee or whatever. What are some really key, important, base, overall tips for, like, increasing productivity and focus and energy?

Yeah, absolutely. We worked with several entrepreneurs. We saw that their business was affected, but the way that they were feeling, whether they got sick with Lyme disease or they started experiencing fatigue. And we found that there's four main ways and actions that people can take to improve their energy levels and their health. So the first way is drinking enough water. And most people recommend just to drink eight ounces of water per day or maybe 64 ounces but what we found when working with clients is that's barely enough to be able to maintain optimal health so based on our research and the results we

see with people is that when they increase their water intake to at least a hundred ounces a day they see that their energy improves. And one thing we want to add about water is that one of the main symptoms of dehydration is fatigue and migraines and digestive issues. And also lack of thirst. So the first sign of dehydration, you're not thirsty. Yeah, we used to teach, you know, I came more from the sports science space, but there was a famous saying in our industry, by the time you're thirsty, it's too late because you're already dehydrated at that point.

And yeah, I mean, I've drank about double the recommended intake of water for the last 10 years, especially when you live in hot climates, you exercise a lot. You know, just a couple of percent levels of dehydration can impact sport performance, cognitive function, everything like that. And water is an interesting one because it's easy for me, but like my wife, she struggles to drink enough, you know, like she tries buying the bottles and then she tries something else and then setting reminders and then getting the app. She's tried everything to try and figure it out. Do you have any tips for clients or anyone listening that struggles with water? I think other thing that people can do,

like make a smoothie. So if the water you add to your smoothie I think includes as your total water intake. Yes. If it tastes good or you can make flavored type of water if you add fruit to your water, so it tastes, it adds flavor. So that's some of the reasons people can enjoy

actually the taste of it. Totally. And what about, you know, I think we're talking a lot about energy performance and that side, but what about disease? Like water has a big role in overall health, right? And you know, it helps transport nutrients around the body and all of those things.

So do you see that a lot of your clients that come to you with diseases, you know the helps transport nutrients around the body and all of those things so do you see that a lot of your clients that come to you with diseases you know their their water intake and stuff's bad as well or dehydration actually leads to destruction of your cells so the compression comes from not drinking water and also the food they consume so if the food is really dehydrating they can get sick and as well as water helps you hydrate your whole body and hydrate the food you're eating. Yeah, and I think a good example of that is most, you know, most people on a bad diet have way too much sodium intake and sodium is not a bad nutrient by any means, but it has to balance out with water, right? And if you're

having a lot more sodium than most people, you need to make sure your water intake matches that right so water easy one to start out with guys hopefully you can all achieve that and I'm sure some of you are listening going yep that's me I don't drink enough water and it's like it's one of the biggest swings it's one of the most easiest things to do and just build a system around it right like whether it's a big bottle on your desk where it tracks it whether it's an app whether it's a system around it, right? Like whether it's a big bottle on your desk where it tracks it, whether it's an app, whether it's a reminder, whether it's, you know, I do flavored water

because it just helps me stay hydrated. So whatever it takes, it's very important. Okay, good. What about, what else for, anything else for optimal performance that you found in energy for entrepreneurs? Yes, absolutely. The second part is important

that people don't think about is how your anxiety and stress can affect your energy. Because most people who are chronically stressed out either due to business, they feel fatigued. So that's another reason that's really affect the energy. It's important to, as an entrepreneur or business owner, to schedule time for either self-care or have breaks when you work

because sometimes you get in the rut where you're constantly working on stuff and you can burn out and you get anxiety and stress and you're gonna feel fatigued yeah i think the anxiety and stress like i've done podcasts on this like i think one of the the blessings of building a strong mindset is you can work through that anxiety and stress much better and if you can't it's going to eat away as an entrepreneur it's going to eat away at you so is there anything you see with clients that you coach them on on how to lower stress and anxiety do you have any tips or tricks for that yeah absolutely so we focus more on self-care and scheduling the activities that help them with the anxiety and stress and having good recovery periods if they're working long hours and also we focus more on getting that dopamine other than from eating junk food because it increases dopamine levels in your body focusing on activities that

bring you joy and happiness that's what do you have any uh any go-to's for clients you recommend or is it just as simple as personalizing it to you what do you know that TV's people can do exercise or they can go to picnic or they can spend time in nature yeah this also helps you release your stress and just do activities with people then reason happiness like you know their friends not not to stay at home too much and just be more spend time in nature and i think yeah with covid and everything it's probably increased a lot of people spent more time at home they stopped going out they stopped doing things they loved and you know maybe they were working harder too because business was all over the place

during covid so you know i'm sure stress levels went up, anxiety went up and, you know, we're fortunate here in Florida. We, you know, pretty free during COVID and we can go out into beautiful nature. But, you know, I know in England and, you know, many Northern European countries, there's much higher depression levels because they don't get the sun as much and they don't get outdoors as much. Right. So I like that about, yeah, really structuring, you know, I like that about, yeah, really structuring, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, I think, structure their day. Hey, I'm doing this meeting, then this, then I'm filming here, then I'm going to review this sales page, then I'm going to work with these clients, but they don't structure in maybe the gym time or, you know,

taking a 30-minute walk or doing other things that can help outside of work. I think that's great. Good. What else? Yeah, so that brings us back to the next point is oftentimes when people are tired, they want to preserve their energy, so they exercise less. And actually a lack of exercise leads to more fatigue over time. So exercise is also very important to keep your energy high. And it also, when people are exercising, we notice that they recover faster from illness and you're able to absorb more nutrients into your cells when your blood is pumping harder yeah so I think that's always a you know I see as a

challenging one especially like I travel a lot for business right and I try and stay in a regime and work out even when traveling but it's sometimes hard when you're jet lagged or you didn't sleep well the night before or you were busy it's easy to say i'm gonna skip today uh but one thing i've always done is i i kind of have this like five minute workout rule that if i just go to the gym for five minutes it's fine but then whenever you go to work out for five minutes you end up spending 20 30 minutes because now you're already there so i've always that's always done me well is like just trying to go for five minutes because i know i'll stay if i can just go for five minutes um and yeah i think even walking right like traveling jet

lag um i think just even if you can walk for 30 60 minutes get the fresh air and the sun and uh you know if you're on the beach the grounding effect can be super beneficial what about uh you know we talked a lot about you know hydration environment walking exercise activity um and scheduling your day to balance work and and obviously managing stress uh what about uh nutrition yeah that's a that's a really big part because a lot of people who come to us for help, they feel like they're eating healthy, but there's healthy food that are causing inflammation in the body, they're not realizing it. And then when we tested our clients for deficiencies, we found that most

people were not deficient in vitamins, but they were deficient in minerals. And minerals like antioxidants and phytonutrients are very important for our organ function, our brain function. And that's what we're focusing on the clients, how they can improve the nutrients that they're getting from the food that they're eating. So their cells and their whole body can function better. Yeah. And what would you say, you know, obviously everyone's different and that's why you do blood work and different tests, right? But in general, have you seen like most people are deficient in certain areas is there any key areas you kind of can most people actually deficient in magnesium okay it's important mineral that's responsible for different biochemicals in your

body like for your heart for your muscles and for your brain function so that's the most important one that people deficient in that they're just not consuming enough from, they're not getting enough from the food. What about zinc? Zinc as well or just magnesium? We haven't seen zinc in the blood work as much as the magnesium. But also, if people are low in magnesium, they also have difficulty sleeping, which we also see a lot with our clients. But yeah, zinc is also an important important mineral but we make sure our clients are getting enough of everything that they need not only perform basic functions but also be able

to heal from a disease yeah so magnesium is a big one uh what about vitamin d levels yeah so vitamin d is important one we do talk a lot about that with with our clients or other podcasts that we have done and because it's a hormone and even if people are on the Sun they still not getting enough vitamin D and people who tend to be dark-skinned actually tend to be more deficient in vitamin D so that's very important vitamin that we recommend to everyone supplement with regardless where they live and also people your body uses a vitamin D if you have inflammation. Sure. A lot of our clients who come to us,

they do have inflammation in the body and they tend to have low in vitamin D. Yeah, when I was in the UK, I took vitamin D for years, right? 5,000 IU for many years. And then I got out here and I think one thing that people don't know too is depending on the time of the year

and your location, relation to the sun, you absorb it differently too. So to me that's like an easy no-brainer, super cheap, the tablets are small. If you don't like tablets they're easy to swallow and especially if you live in northern states and states that don't get much sun if you're English listening to this you probably should take vitamin D. It's like a no-brainer. Tons of health benefits and one thing we skip past that I think so important is inflammation right because inflammation when I was a sports scientist it became

you know I think I was around in the time where inflammation became the big thing the big enemy right and a lot of people don't understand what inflammation is and they don't really understand its impact. So can you explain to the audience like inflammation, its role in the body? Because it's not always bad too, right? Inflammation is needed to actually recover in acute doses. It's when it's chronic and elevated that it becomes bad. So what's causing inflammation?

What's the impact of inflammation? Yes. what's causing inflammation, what's the impact of inflammation? Yes, so we do need to have some inflammation in the body because when we get an injury, your immune system comes in to create that inflammation to heal from an injury. However, when somebody has an autoimmune disease, they're in a state of chronic inflammation when it causes health symptoms and problems in the body. So it's a chronic inflammation over time that leads to diseases and triggers genes for diseases. Yep. So that's the difference between just having inflammation that's important versus acute inflammation, which is chronic inflammation. Yes.

Where? And I think most people, you know, you talked about inflammation for disease but what about inflammation you know because I think a lot of normal quote-unquote healthy people that look healthy they also have inflammation they just don't know so what are some signs and symptoms and what could cause inflammation to a normal healthy entrepreneur I think some signs could be just brain fog fatigue that's the main symptoms people People might have just achiness. They have either joint pain. And the labs could still look normal for five to 10 years

before they get diagnosed and they have a disease. So the early signs of symptoms usually just having fatigue, muscle weakness, or you have no energy, even though you sleep for 10 hours a day. And then you start having memory problems, either brain fog, or you start forgetting things. And often doctors tell you just your age, or maybe you're stressed out, or you have some trauma, but it could be just something else going on in your body that you actually

have a disease that's early stages of developing. And you can reverse that before it becomes chronic, if you change your diet early on, or start addressing your symptoms. And that's a big cause of poor energy, right? Poor recovery and poor energy is often, you know, there's might be some underlying inflammation. So how do people test this and know if they have it and how do they fix it if they do have inflammation? Yeah. So again, looking at the symptoms, like my sister mentioned, fatigue, hair loss, skin problems,

joint pain, but there's tests that people can do. They can test for inflammation markers. They can be high in the body to help them address, but there's also immune markers that people can run to see how the immune system is functioning. So for example, if people have been deficient in vitamin D, also the immune system is not able to function optimally. So there's different tests people can do

for inflammation markers, immune markers, immune system is not able to function optimally. So there's a different test people can do for inflammation markers, immune markers to see if they have inflammation levels in the body. And if they do have inflammation, like any supplements, antioxidants, you know, what are you recommending to lower inflammation? Yes. So again, we're very big on helping people reverse the diseases with nutrition. So we're focusing on eliminating foods that are still keeping the inflammation levels high. So again, lots of processed foods, sugar, but adding things to their body to help them recover. Foods that are very nutrient dense and high in minerals such as vegetables, dark leafy greens that people not eat enough of or they don't know which ones are good for them.

Yeah, you know, during my nutrition years, I, you know, learn a lot of this and one thing that I try and eat every day is berries. Like to me, they're, you know, one of the best, I think, fruits and foods out there because of their antioxidant level and glycemic load is so low and packed full of nutrients and fiber. So I think having a good understanding of how food can impact your energy as an entrepreneur is such a big deal. Like and then building a routine for you, you know, like I do really well on protein all day and then I have bigger meals in the evening when I actually want my energy levels to start slowly coming down I want to lower adrenaline you know and I think a lot of people in the last 10-15 years or I mean I guess the last 30-40 years have switched to lower carbohydrate breakfasts for example

right where they see better stable energy where you know they're having more healthy fats and proteins in the day and then maybe more carbohydrates around the workout or at night time so do you have any overall tips for energy around macronutrients and how to structure you know carbs proteins and fats yeah we definitely see issues with processed carbs but even vegetables have carbohydrates so when we work with clients we do focus more on getting more nutrients and vitamins rather than focusing on macronutrients but if they're eating enough of the right

things they're getting enough of carbs fat and protein but generally we do see that if people getting more vitamins minerals healthy fats that are important for our brain as brain is mostly made of water and fat. So making sure that they get enough healthy fats as well as vitamins and minerals from the food that they're eating. Great. So just as we come towards the end of today, any other quick tips or tricks to become super human or have super energy? Victoria, what do you think?

The quick tips? I think make sure you schedule time for self-care. Make sure you surround yourself with positive people because negative people can drain your energy and stress. And also make sure you take care of your nutrition before you get sick, before it's too late. Great. Anything from yourself? Any other tips?

I do agree with her. Just focusing on surrounding yourself with people who have high vibes that's another reason we join your program because we love your energy and all the people who work with you and it gives us energy to do the work we want to do and focusing on your nutrition and identifying when you start feeling symptoms that there's something you need to change in your lifestyle sure yeah i think for me you, the big ones that I would always give and have implemented myself is exercise daily, right? Even if on rest days, I still try and walk, you know, a few miles. So sunlight, I think it's a massive one. Like my morning, I don't have

a big morning routine. I don't do journaling and all this stuff, but I get 20 minutes of sunlight right away. Like that has a big impact on your circadian rhythm and telling your body to release hormones to actually wake you up which you don't get in England and a lot of but also you know it actually helps release key hormones so in England I actually had lamp a lamp that you know gave you the same effect because you don't get you know some weeks you don't get any stuff and then and then playing around with calorie and and food consumption throughout the day like I think general America and the world has grown up where people have crazy big breakfast hundreds thousands

of calories hundred plus grams of carbohydrates. And I believe that that's great if you're an athlete and you're about to go work out for an hour, an hour and a half, but if you're about to sit at a desk for nine hours, I think playing around with, try fasting and see if it works for you. Some people love it, some people hate it. I love it, right?

It's given me the best energy. I have really high energy all day. Or it might be try reducing carbohydrates in the morning or, you know, having a lighter breakfast or skipping breakfast for the first couple of hours. So, yeah. Yeah, we definitely agree with that because we see also with people we worked with is that if they're eating really high calorie foods for morning or it's a lot of processed carbohydrates the energy is very lost because it takes a lot of energy to digest that type of well and then insulin spikes with glucose spikes and then it crashes down and then they you know so and what about caffeine that's obviously you know from a research science standpoint it has one of the biggest impacts on energy um but obviously over time you can become chronically dependent

on it, so it's a double-edged sword. Do you take caffeine? Do you not like caffeine? How do you see caffeine's effect on energy? I think if you don't drink too much of it, because it influences your adrenal, and it can affect your sleep as well. So over time you can feel fatigued, but I think caffeine is fine as long as you don't overdo it, because then it can affect your...

Dehydration too because it causes more urination. And oftentimes people just drink a lot of caffeine instead of water. So they become chronically dehydrated and then they lose that symptom of thirst. So we always just see what kind of, how much caffeine you can tolerate without having it affect you negatively yeah i've always i've kind of had a caffeine protocol for many years as an entrepreneur to so i do two caffeine doses morning i try and wait 30 60 minutes because it's better for your circadian rhythm so it doesn't impact it and then i do it lunchtime caffeine if you're listening it has a six to eight hour

half-life which means after eight hours it is kind of gone from the bloodstream and i think so i i cut caffeine by 2 p.m anytime after that it impacts sleep and also i mean it's very important based on energy levels and your adrenal function thyroid health right if you have really high stress you're like you you know, someone that's like always on edge, caffeine is probably going to ruin your adrenal glands or not help, um, and thyroid function. But I'm very, I'm pretty calm. I rest really well. I sleep eight hours, uh, have really good, like stable energy. And I think my adrenals and thyroid are pretty healthy. So I think you can get away with it more if you are, you know, an athlete and in a healthy healthy. So I think you can get away with it more if you are an athlete and in a healthy place.

So guys, great session. Hopefully you guys all enjoyed learning a little around health optimization and energy and stress management as an entrepreneur. Something we've not talked a lot about, but something that I've been passionate about for many years from my health days. If anyone's listening and they have a chronic disease,

maybe a family member with a chronic disease, maybe a family member with a chronic disease, or they're an entrepreneur and they want to learn how to maximize more of this and dial in their diet and their body, how do they find you guys? Well, we have a main website, which is victoriaandoxana.com. But if they want easier spelling, then they can just type autoimmunecellularehealing.com. Autoimmunecellularehealing.com. Cellular healing. Cellulimmune cellular healing.com autoimmune center healing cellular healing cellular healing yes yeah or they can text our number which is 586-588-1040 and we have a whatsapp as well so great one more time for the number for people so they can reach out to us through using our number 586-588-1040 and it's a US number. And that's just for business purposes, right?

Yes. No dating. Business purposes. Business purposes. Okay, there you go guys. Thank you for coming on YouTube. It's been awesome time. I really enjoyed talking about optimizing health

and I think it's something entrepreneurs don't think about enough that like optimizing, as an entrepreneur and a CEO as arrogant as it sounds you are the Kobe Bryant you are the Tom Brady right you all like the MVP of the show so if you're miserable if your energy's down if you're unhealthy the whole company will fail and be impacted so you have to stay ahead of the game like last yesterday in the office I had blood work right every six months I have someone come in and takes my blood and i check all my biomarkers so and you know i try and

exercise every day and i'll change my flight and pay double the price just to not take a flight that will impact my sleep because for me and we haven't really talked about that but sleep is probably the number one energy creator that we didn't mention but if you sleep bad everything else we said kind of comes secondary to sleep definitely uh so yeah do what you can as an entrepreneur because you are the mvp and if you function like a high performing athlete your business will follow so guys thank you and we'll see you guys soon keep living the red light thank you Thank you.