Realfoodology - 55: How to Achieve a Magic Mind with James Beshara

Episode Date: September 8, 2021

I speak with James Beshara, founder of Magic Mind, the world’s first productivity drink. We talk about how coffee actually gets in the way of your productivity, the health scare that got him to stop drinking 5-6 cups of coffee a day, what nootropics are and how they improve cognitive function and how to improve your overall health and mental well being! EXCLUSIVE OFFER: Get 40% off your first order at http://www.magicmind.co with code COURTNEYFRIENDS

On today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. And so that's kind of where my side passion started, where I had to make a lot of healthier life choices and I had to make those 80 milligrams of caffeine last all day. And so I became fascinated with what nature and science had to offer beyond caffeine for energy. Turns out there's a lot. Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology podcast. I'm your host, Courtney Swan. I am the creator behind Real Foodology, which of course started

as a food blog 10 years ago, and it is now morphed into an Instagram page and more recently, this podcast. I'm so happy that you're here. If you are enjoying this podcast, I would ask if you could please rate and review. It helps me so much. It helps the show to get out to more ears, which is ultimately what my hope is so that we can spread more health and wellness information and hopefully just help more people to feel really good in their bodies. Because ultimately, that's my goal. I just want everyone to feel good, know how to nourish their bodies in ways that work the best for them. And like I said, the goal ultimately is just to feel really good in your body. So I'm so glad that you guys are here on today's episode. I speak with James Bechera. He is the founder of magic mind. If you have been listening to my podcast

for a little bit, you have probably heard me talk about magic mind. It is a nootropic or nootropic. We actually talk about this in the podcast to how to actually pronounce it. And apparently there's a lot of different ways to pronounce it, but it is a nootropic that I take every single morning alongside my coffee. And what it does is it really helps you. It helps boost your cognitive function, which means that it helps with memory. It helps with productivity, and just overall brain wellness. I really can't speak highly enough of Magic Mind. And I sound like an ad right now, and I'm so sorry for that. But it's truly a product that I love and I use every single day. And I've really seen

a difference in my own cognitive function, in my health. And now I'm a super fan after recording this episode with James. He is incredible. He's so knowledgeable in this area of nootropics and really all the science that's coming out right now around cognitive function, things that we can do in order to boost it. We go into great detail, many different things that you can do in order to improve your everyday life and more importantly, improve your cognitive function and just your overall health. I really, really enjoy this episode. I feel like I say this every week, but I'm very excited for you guys to hear this. Um, he's very knowledgeable and I feel like I left this episode with a grasp on a few things that now I should be, um, implementing into my everyday life to really help me with my overall productivity and

cognitive function. So I'm very excited about this episode and I can't wait for you guys to hear it. Let's just, let's get into it. Oh, before we get into the episode, I almost forgot to share with you guys. James actually gave me a code. If you want to try Magic Mind, your first purchase is actually going to be 40% off. So make sure that you use code Courtney friends at magic mind.co. So you can try magic mind today. Imagine having a metabolic coach in your pocket that you could access at any point, any time in the day, whenever you want. That's what Lumen is. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath. And on the app, it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs and gives you tailored

guidance to improve your nutrition, workout, sleep, and even stress management. I have so many podcast episodes about metabolic flexibility and why it is so incredibly important for your overall health and longevity. And now thanks to Lumen, you can actually see in real time your body's ability to efficiently switch between using different fuel sources like carbs and fats. There's preferred times to use each and how well you can switch places between burning carbs versus burning fats. We'll tell you a lot about what is going on in your metabolism and where you are in the metabolic flexibility spectrum. All you have to do is breathe into your lumen first thing in the morning, and you'll know what's going on with your metabolism, whether you're burning mostly

fats or carbs, then lumen gives you a personalized nutrition plan for that day based on your measurements. You can also breathe into it before and after workouts and meals. So you know exactly what's going on in your body in real time. And Lumen will give you tips to keep you on top of your health game. Why is this so important? Your metabolism is your body's engine. It's how your body turns the food you eat into the fuel that keeps you going because your metabolism is at the center of everything your body does. Optimal metabolic health translates to a bunch of benefits, including easier weight management, improved energy levels, better fitness results, better sleep, and more. Now this is a really cool feature too. It can actually track your cycle as well as the onset of menopause and adjust your recommendations to keep your

metabolism healthy through hormonal shifts. So if you want to take the next step in improving your health, go to lumen.me and use Real Foodology to get $100 off your Lumen. That is L-U-M-E-N dot M-E and use Real Foodology at checkout for $100 off. Thank you so much to Lumen for sponsoring this episode. This is really exciting. Organifi now has kid stuff. They just released two kid products. One is called Easy Greens, and it's a refreshing green apple juice where kids will never know that it's packed with veggies. And the other one is called Protect. It's a delicious wild berry punch like the Kool-Aid that we used to have as a kid, but without any sugar. This is really exciting. And if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you know that

I'm a huge fan of Organifi and most specifically because every single product that they make is glyphosate residue free. So you know that you're going to be able to give these powders to your kids and know that they will be able to consume them safely without any glyphosate in it. So let's break down each one. The Easy Greens is a nourishing and delicious blend of superfoods and veggies that provides essential nutrients, probiotics, and digestive enzymes to bring balance to kids' growing bodies without fillers, additives, or junk. It helps to fill in nutritional gaps, aids in growth and development, supports digestive health, has a rich micronutrient profile, and includes digestive enzymes. This would be a great way to sneak in greens for your little one without them actually knowing that it's

healthy for them. And the second one, which is the wild berry punch similar to Kool-Aid is called Protect. And it is to support your child's daily immune health with food derived nutrients that work to strengthen their body's first line of defense. I know just through girlfriends of mine that have children that when your kids are going to school, going to daycare, they're coming home sick a lot more often just because they're getting exposed to different kids and different viruses when they're out in the world playing with kids. So this would be a great way to help to support your little one's immune health. It's organic, and it's also made with real whole food ingredients. It has a delicious berry taste, and it's low sugar, and it's gentle enough for kids to take every single day. And I really love

the ingredients in this one. It's orange and acerol cherry, which is a powerful source of vitamin C and antioxidants, astragalus, elderberry, and propolis. These are all really great for overall immune health. If you want to try the products that I talked about today or any of the Organifi products, go to Organifi.com slash RealFoodology and use code RealFoodology for 20% off. Again, that's Organifi. It's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com slash Real Foodology. Okay, so James, I want to start out this conversation talking about, well, actually, okay, first of all, I need you to correct me on this because I don't know how to pronounce them properly. Is it nootropics or nootropics? It is so interchangeable. But yeah, there's, I say nootropics. Most of the

academic crowds say, they'll actually say nootropics. Oh, I've heard that too. And then you have somewhere in between that will try to sound smart, but get it wrong is nootropics. So I just go for nootropics. And that's the most, I think, I think the way that you would phonetically read it, it looks like nootropics. That's where I go with. Yeah. Okay. I like that. We'll go with nootropics then. So for people listening, what exactly is a nootropic? Or actually, let's back up. First of all, why don't you give everyone a little bit of background on you and Magic Mind and what you do? All right. The 30-second version is I am an entrepreneur. I've been an entrepreneur for 14 years or almost 15 and just building businesses,

failing a lot. My 20s were just failure after failure, but failing up and going bigger and more ambitious each time. And having my ass handed to me each time. But it was like a PhD in entrepreneurship. And then I also ended up developing a love. Well, I ended up with a heart condition, actually. So it started with heartbreak, but I had a heart condition from drinking six to seven cups of coffee every day, and way too much. Oh, I, yeah, it's spoken like a true addict. When I went to the ER with heart palpitations, the doctor said, with your condition, you really can't drink more than 80 milligrams of caffeine a day. And I was like, is that three

cups, four cups of coffee? And he was like, no, that's a half a cup of coffee. This is about eight years ago. And I was like, like a true addict. I was like, there is, I mean, after hearing I had a heart condition, after hearing I was going to have to go and within the hour have my heart shocked back into rhythm, after hearing that I was going to have to be on medication after that and probably need a surgeon. None of that mattered compared to him saying, you know, tomorrow you really can't have more than half a cup of coffee. And I was like, there is no freaking way I can get through 15 meetings a day. I was running a company of about 50, 60 employees at the time. And I was just like, there's no way.

And so that's kind of where my side passion started, where I had to make a lot of healthier life choices. And I had to make those 80 milligrams of caffeine last all day. And so I became fascinated with what nature and science had to offer beyond caffeine for energy. Turns out it offered, there's a lot. Wow, that's such a cool story. It's interesting.

A lot of companies start with stories like this where someone has a health scare or there's something that they want that they can't find and so they have to make it themselves. And I just, I love stories like this so much. It's so cool. So for everyone listening, what exactly is a nootropic? So yeah, in the term, you can pronounce it any which way that you want. And I say nootropic because it's just, you know, tropical. It's a little bit more fun. And I do think that's where most people are saying it. So I'm kind of just skating towards the puck.

But the, a nootropic is a compound that improves cognitive function. So that's the classical definition. And the, well, the true classical definition is improves cognitive function safely. Now it's been expanded and it's kind of ever expanding it to include all kinds of different compounds that can improve cognition, even some really harmful ones and some really dangerous ones that people will take and they'll have an 8, 10, 12 hour sprint and then recover from that for two days. But those things get lumped into this broader category of nootropics.

That was going to be one of my questions because when I have researched these in the past, I was really shocked to find that in the description of them that there are also prescription ones because I always thought, I always considered them as smart drugs that were natural, didn't have a lot of side effects, and really were just like boosting cognitive function and mental capacity and all that. And so I didn't even know. So there's prescription drugs now that you can, that are classified as that as well? Right. Yeah. Now there are. And again, classically, they probably wouldn't be, the term was coined in the 70s. Classically, they probably wouldn't be considered nootropics, But now it really is this catch-all for anything that can improve your cognition.

And sadly, including unsafe and I think wildly dangerous compounds, which happy to talk about, or prescriptions that oftentimes get abused. Things like Adderall. And I think anyone that's in the age range of 18 to 35 knows a handful of people that have sadly gone into abusive cycles with things like Adderall, or we all just know friends that have taken it from their roommate or their college friend or their work friend and just didn't think that it was worth getting a doctor's prescription for. And so yeah, those are often included as well. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and it's scary too, because I feel like Adderall is just, like you said, people don't even really think about it. They steal it from their friends,

they take it as a party drug, or they're just getting it from friends to study or whatever. And no one – well, a lot of people talk about it. But I feel like people don't really understand the effects of Adderall on the body. It's really scary. I also know friends, like not trying to call anyone out, but I have girlfriends that take it to maintain their weight, which is really sad and scary. Yeah, there is a better way. There's a more sustainable way. Um, amphetamine salts. So, you know, anyone taking Adderall that's amphetamines. And so that is very close to, um, chemically very close to methamphetamines and you're taking it from a

bottle and it's in a pill. And so you feel like, oh, this is, this isn't like methamphetamines. And it's not. But chemically speaking, it's in the area code, especially when people are abusing it. There's so many different things that we could talk about. I think the biggest one that I try to highlight for folks is when you are abusing. And again, this isn't under safe dosages or a responsible doctor. I do think we are just a sidebar. I do think after the opiate crisis, and now I think we're starting to become more familiar with the benzo crisis of overprescription of benzos and the incredible incredible addictive nature of benzodiazepines for anxiety, which also has a whole host of really safe, natural alternatives that people can start with first. Happy to talk about those as well.

Yeah, let's dive into those when you're done. Well, and then that third bucket, which is Adderall. I think there's this, we're going to wake up in five years and there's going to be so many headlines about Adderall abuse. And it's sad. The thing that I talk to people most about is just, there's a difference between feeling like you got it going on and actually have it to where you have it going on. Adderall makes you feel like you got it going on, you're going to write, spend an hour on that 12-line email that people are going to read for 30 seconds and be like, why wasn't this two sentences? But also, the worst that I see is, and people are starting to recognize this more and more, it's kind of like once you know what it looks like when your friends are drunk, you're like, oh, that person's drunk. And it's like second nature. Now I think people are waking up to, at least when I was working at a large tech

company, after we sold my last business, I could just recognize it where I'd be in a meeting with someone and the complete inability to listen and the desire to talk, talk, talk was, it was so evident, okay, this person's on something, this other person's on something, this person. And so it actually makes for a really terrible coworker because they just cannot listen during a meeting, during dialogue. Yeah. And like a not so great friend or partner because you're just like, they're just talking at you instead of having a dialogue, having a conversation. Right. And they're going to leave that in, they're going to leave the meeting and work, or they're going to leave the, the friend interaction and feel like, wow, that went

amazing. That's great. So great to see Courtney. And you're going to be like, whoa, Susie was a little too wired. And that was kind of a beating. Yeah. I was like, whoa, okay. Did not hear me at all. That was not a productive conversation. But yeah, they leave being like, man, I just killed it. You're like, well. Yeah.

There's one of my favorite podcasts that I love listening to, a comedian's podcast. He had someone on, a guest that was clearly on something and they had talked about actually, no, it was Adderall, because they had talked about being prescribed Adderall and it being game-changing the year before. And the podcast episode was just, I wish the sober version of that person could listen to it because it was not game-changing.

It was just like a train running over. The comment section was just filled with people being like, what is it? The host barely got a word in and it was just an onslaught instead of a conversation. Okay. So maybe Adderall is good for a solo podcast episode because then you can just let it run. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

But yeah, that other bucket that if you are interested, that other bucket of anxiolytic prescriptions or anti-anxiety prescriptions, I think benzodiazepines, they're worth talking about for a few reasons, one of which I think is just we're not talking enough about the downstream effects, the addictive properties, extreme withdrawal symptoms. But also, you've talked about adaptogens before. And for your audience, adaptogens being a natural alternative to their natural anxiolytics, things like ashwagandha, rhodiola, mosea, L-theanine, things that decrease stress naturally. Or something like ashwagandha, one of the, I think one of the coolest properties of any, I wrote a book called Beyond Coffee

a few years ago. This is before creating Magic Mind. And long story short, one of my favorite aspects of the research was finding this, it's early research, but research showing that something like ashwagandha, which is adaptogenic, which decreases anxiety, it has reverse tolerance where you need less of it over time. Oh, I haven't heard that. That's interesting. Right. So I wish more compounds had that profile where you need less of it over time. And certainly things like Xanax or Benzos don't have that. Did you know that most cookware and appliances are made with forever chemicals? Yes, that means your nonstick pans, your air fryers, your waffle makers, your blender could possibly have PFAS.

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they're trying to fix. And so that's what's so cool about it is it adapts to whatever your body's specific needs are, which is why I love adaptogens so much because it's like they're bio-individual. They're like tuned into your biology specifically and what you need. Right. And I would, you know, for in the caveat that with all of this is to consult your doctor if you're going to go down this path. And I'm certainly not advocating that people just add more to a morning or daily routine if it's unnecessary. But to your point, it was interesting. I got started in this path of figuring out how do I make this 80 milligrams of caffeine last all day? Because I thought

caffeine was... I thought the 27 emails that I need to reply to at 5 p.m. on a given day, I thought that was like one Red Bull away from getting done. Having no idea that it actually... The caffeine does have a dopaminergic effect. It does release a little dopamine. And so it can make you feel good. That dopamine release will only last like 30 to 40 minutes. So you're obviously going to be awake for much longer than that. It's going to have that alertness effect for much longer. But the thing that I realized two years, three years into all of this research of how do I make this caffeine last as long as possible? How do I get more energy out of the day?

I realized that it was actually one of the biggest inhibitors towards my productivity was this low grade pervasive anxiety that I had that you're touching on as well. And it was the anxiety that prevented me from wanting to jump into those 27 emails or the three big to-do list items that I needed to knock out that day or, God forbid, a 15 to-do list item day. Whenever those would pop up, I would just want to shut my computer and go take a nap. And it wasn't because I needed caffeine. It was this pervasive anxiousness. So when we designed, when I started to work on Magic Mind just out of my kitchen, and the formula really, it had no brand to it or anything. It was just these, ended up becoming these 12 compounds and synergistic dosages. But basically, I realized

that a few years in, that it wasn't about caffeine, it wasn't about increasing energy. Half the ingredients in my morning ritual are about decreasing stress naturally and sustainably. And that was such an eye-opener. Maybe you've seen that. It sounds like you've seen that, but it was such an eye-opener that procrastination, and now the science is bearing this out, is due more to anxiety than it is to energy or lethargy. You know, and the irony of all of this is that caffeine consumption just raises anxiety. I mean, for me, I can't have more than one cup a day because then my anxiety goes through the roof. And you're right. Then, you know, if my anxiety is through the roof and I'm jittering, I can't focus. And then the last thing I can do is like focus on

an email or do something productive because I'm like, my heart is beating out of my chest. That's right. Yeah. So caffeine spikes your cortisol. And the, yeah, that I think that relationship to stress compound relationship with in your morning routine or your daily routines, relationship to stress, and this relationship of stress and productivity, I'd say that is one of the biggest eye-opening aspects of this research. And that's why the book is called Beyond Coffee, A Sustainable Guide to Nootropics. Uh-oh, I went to the academic pronunciation. Nootropics, Adaptogens, and Mushrooms. And the reason that it is a book around nootropics, adaptogens, and mushrooms is because this sustainable approach to today's work environment, a knowledge worker, a creator, it's very different than it's 1943 and you're a factory worker and three cups, four cups of coffee is fine.

It's a repetitive manual task versus today. I'm sure your inbox, every email is in a different lateral direction. And so that creativity, not only does caffeine really limit lateral thinking versus some of the other compounds that are out there, but also it's spiking to exactly your point. It's spiking your cortisol, body stress hormone, and having that unintended consequence that nine out of 10 people have no idea that that extra cup of coffee or that single cup of coffee has this biological detriment when it spikes your cortisol. This is so interesting.

And you brought up such a great point because we've really, as a society, we've changed so much. Our needs have changed so much. It's not just, you know, we're not like on the farm now doing repetitive things. It's like we're constantly having, our brains are on, we're having to be more creative and more productive in different ways than we were before. So it's interesting that, you know, we've been relying on coffee for so long and we haven't really, we're starting to catch up now.

But it's interesting that it seems to have taken us a long time to get to this place. So I'm really curious. So you're okay. So you find out you have this heart issue and you have to go down to 80 milligrams of caffeine. What did you start doing? Like, how did you start finding these specific compounds? What was kind of your process and how did you ultimately land on Magic Mind? The process was kind of a complete audit of everything that I was doing to understand, well, why do I need six, seven cups of coffee a day? What are the underlying reasons of why I think that that's okay and good? I mean, at the time I was like, hey, every once in a while I read a study and whatever CNN money saying five cups of coffee is fine. And I was like, hey, every once in a while I read a study in whatever CNN Money saying five cups of coffee is fine. And I was scientifically illiterate. So I'm like, oh, CNN Money says

this and they're citing some study that is... Now I look back at these studies, it's like it's a six-week study and it's produced by the Coffee Farmers of America Association. Exactly. It's probably paid by... Exactly. Right. And so now I really look at these studies with much more scrutiny. But so the complete audit, it was like, okay, this is going to be so drastic that I can't just lean on this crutch, which is caffeine.

So everything that I kind of flipped on its head started with sleep. And really, this is core to any conversation I have around these things, that the key to productivity measured in weeks and months and years, not productivity measured in hours or, you know, a four-hour sprint, but productivity measured in months and years. It starts with, and it's in this prioritized order. If listeners are interested, they can Google mental wealth and see a post that I wrote on mental wealth. And it's sleep, diet, exercise, stress management, and then exogenous compounds like coffee, like your prescription of Adderall, like something like L-theanine, any of these, or a nootropic like Bacopa, Maneri, any of these weird or any of these really standard things,

they should be fifth on the list. And if you want, I can go through the quick pro tips that for me worked wonders. Yeah, for each. So in the bucket of sleep, when I saw a sleep doctor, this is probably the best professional personal advice I ever got in my life, because so many things start to just align and come together after she told me to wake up every morning at the exact same time. And so much about sleep we think is the night before, the afternoon before, turning off blue lights. And actually, so she said, wake up every morning at the exact same time for two reasons. Your circadian rhythm is 24 hours. Circadian rhythm isn't while you're asleep. It's not circadian for the eight hours that you are asleep, but it is your 24-hour circadian rhythm.

And the other thing was your biological hormonal clock of releasing melatonin at the same time and honestly release cortisol in the morning. So releasing cortisol in the morning to help wake you up. And so I thought it was going to be about a routine of going to bed. And so she just said the first thing was try it for eight days straight. And by the ninth day, you probably will be able to wake up without an alarm clock. And you'll be able to feel like you're in a groove within 15 minutes of waking up. That sounded like heaven to me, especially because I would wake up at 7am one day, 9am another day, 11am on the weekends. And it was just my body had no idea what

tune it should be in for waking me up. And then I would sleep in till 11. I'm sure you've seen this where you sleep in and then you're groggy instead of like feeling well rested, right? I do this sometimes now because I'm bouncing around so much that I, yeah. And your cortisol just has no idea, your natural biological alarm clock has no idea to release and wake you up naturally. So you sleep past, you kind of brute force past that alarm clock, and then you don't have that cortisol, that natural cortisol, when you are trying to wake up three hours later. So anyhow, she said, wake up every morning at the same time. And there's some mental calculus of what time works for you to where whoever's listening to

this can figure out what is the right time for both their workday routine and their weekend routine. But once I figured that out, oh my God, it was like religion to me. It's like, okay, I'm going to wake up every... By day nine, I just felt amazing. I was never a morning person. Courtney, I actually, in college, I never had a class before 11 a.m. because I hated... Yeah, I hated the morning. Now I wake up at 6 a.m. on the dot, 6.07 on the dot, for some reason it's just 6.07, feel amazing by 6.30, go to bed at... We have two kids, so now I indulge and go to bed at like... We're in bed at like 8.30, but I feel just... And we don't fall asleep for an hour or so, but I feel amazing when I'm waking up in the

morning at a time that would have been ungodly to me years prior. So that's pro tip on sleep. And you can read several books on sleep, but that's the pro tip that I tell people changed the game for me around energy management. Second thing is around diet. The biggest pro tip around diet, I actually, and I talk about this in the book, but the research is bearing this out more and more. It's not, there's so much, again, for all of these buckets that you could read 15 entire

books on it. But the biggest pro tip on diet is to not drink alcohol before bed. And that going to this kind of laddered up prioritization of sleep first, each, so for a male, three drinks before bed will decrease their quality of sleep on average by 39%. For females, it's two drinks will decrease your quality of sleep by 39%, which that's like, you think you got eight hours, but you got five, or you think you got six and you got three and a half. It's a pretty radical statistic. And so if you are going to drink before, if you're going out, drink at five and six and be in bed at 10 or 11, but don't have

anything the last few hours before going to bed. The third thing is exercise. Exercise is one of the most amazing mood boosters. It's one of the most amazing cognitively improving things that we can do. And it's free. And there's so many other downstream effects. But yeah, 20 minutes of extremely stressful aerobic exercise three times a week. So super, all of these things that I'll tell you about in all five buckets, they take up about, it's about an hour a week. So 200 plus hour week.

It's only an hour to really focus on these things. And you can, there's, we're going to start the study on this, implementing this over 15 days and about two months. But the study is aiming to prove the productivity benefits you get from these five things within 15 days. And I have a feeling the study is going to show that people are twice as productive. And there will be a few markers that are created for the study. But anyone listening can just try it and say, like, are you hitting inbox zero by 3.30 each day or things like that that you would notice subjectively. So then fourth is stress management. And the biggest stress management technique that there's so many and there's so many good ones. And I probably am

tinkering with a handful every once in a while and a given day. But the biggest one that I recommend is just gratitude journaling each morning. I don't know if you've tried. Have you ever tried? I imagine you've tried gratitude journaling. I have. Yeah, it's great. I got out of the habit of it recently and I need to get back into it, but it really does make a difference. Yeah, it's something that the reason that I found myself recommending it to people as the – and folks in Silicon Valley would see me as the nootropics guy, but I would be recommending these other things, in case of point in this conversation, even more than which pill or powder someone should take. But the reason gratitude journaling is so, I think it's so powerful is because it's so easy. Anyone listening to this can start it like right now for 30 seconds, jot down five things that

they're grateful for. And it starts to rewire the patterns that you make in your mind for observations towards the positive, towards the grateful. And anyone can do it. You don't have to take a class on it. You don't have to download an app, pen and paper. So simple. Versus things like breathwork, versus things like meditation, which as a software entrepreneur, the retention on meditation, even 10 minutes of daily meditation, 30 days in is probably 2%. You recommend it to someone and just very few people stick with it 30 days in. But I found 30 seconds, if you say 30 seconds of gratitude journaling, you end up spending two or three minutes.

You end up writing down six, seven, eight, 10 things. And it's such a great part of my morning routine. And it's just, like I said, it rewires the brain right in the beginning to start to notice the positive things. And then you see these lists day after day. You see, I'm sure you saw it. You see 10 things, like, oh, I'm worried about X, but I've got 10 things that I'm grateful for. This is a very cool contrast to thinking there's one big thing that is going wrong. Start to see the 10 things going right. And then fifth is the stuff that everyone wants to talk about, which is the pills, powders, the herbs, the compounds, things like that.

Yeah. Well, that was one of my questions. Let's talk about some of them. What are some of the popular nootropics that people like to take and that are effective? Sure. So there are a few buckets of why you take a certain compound. The most popular is caffeine. But I think one of the things that is surprising to most people is that caffeine doesn't actually give us any energy. It just blocks our adenosine receptors that tell us we're building fatigue, that you're building fatigue biologically. So you don't feel the fatigue building. Then those neuroreceptors, the actual adenosine receptors open back up, the caffeine wears away, and all of that fatigue that's been building up just rushes in. But again, it doesn't give us any energy. It's just like turning off the check engine

light on your car, thinking you fixed the engine. And I had no... I mean, eight years ago, that was... By the way, an overarching statement on this was, eight years ago, I thought if there's anything better than coffee, we'd know about it with seven and a half billion people on the planet. Everyone loves coffee. There's no chance there's anything better. Now, eight years later, 240 studies in our book, Beyond Coffee, and just eight years of looking at it. Now, I think the exact opposite is true. The chances that we're all still drinking coffee for our morning routine in 20 years, I put it at 0% because there's just too much science. There's too much understanding. There's too many alternatives that nature gives us for a better morning ritual. And anyone can

buy Magic Mind, try it out and tweet me and I'll give a full refund if it doesn't. I'm just so pumped about that formula because everyone's skeptical and I just know this stuff. It works. It works. I'm a big fan. Yeah. Oh, awesome. Awesome. Actually, I drink one before every podcast that I record. No way. Yeah. Awesome. It's like part of my podcast routine. Oh, that's killer. Well, I'll send you some free ones for mentioning that. But yeah, so that's the checking, you know, turning off the check engine light versus improving the engine. Then the next question is, well, what are the things that can improve the engine?

Well, the body's fuel currency is called ATP, and it's made in the mitochondrial parts of our cells and and to increase the production of atp it's two big things that i that i tell people the first would be actually exercise well it's not just like for losing weight it actually will improve your your body's production of the full current fuel currency it gives you energy so if you haven't been if you haven't had a strenuous workout for 20 straight minutes in the last three, four months and you're fatigued, then that's one of the simple... Again, all of those things that I mentioned add up to an hour out of a 260-hour week. So if you can't afford that to double your productivity, then, you know, something else going on.

But the things that can also improve production of increased ATP production would be things like cordyceps mushrooms. And cordyceps mushrooms will improve ATP production. And it's something that takes seven, eight days for it to start to kick into full effect. And so I think we had access, and certainly folks have been making cordyceps mushrooms teas for hundreds of years. But if you go back 400 years ago, when we in the mainstream West, when we started to drink coffee,

the subjective experience, the reason I think we're drinking it all today is the subjective experience without the science would tell you 30 minutes in, whoa, this stuff is giving me energy. And we wouldn't have the scientific understanding that no, actually, if you drink this other stuff, seven, eight days straight, then you'll actually have more energy. It's just not going to be as immediate. But you actually scientifically will be producing more energy versus blocking the signal that you're tired and then you have a crash. You don't have a crash with cordyceps.

It's so interesting. How do you feel about mixing these things with coffee? Because this is what I do. I generally have cordyceps and reishi in my coffee every morning. Do you feel like that is... Yeah, that's totally fine. Caffeine is one hell of a drug. So caffeine is helpful, and it is so powerful in how it operates and blocking the adenosine receptors. But one, there is the benefit

of taking things that actually build up the ATP. The other thing is you build up a tolerance to that coffee in about 30 days and so if you have like my parents for example they drink they've been drinking two cups of coffee every day for 50 years and a long time mathematically yeah for 49 years and 11 months they've just been in maintenance mode instead of actually getting more out of their day. But it's also a nice psychological crutch. It is a warm cup in the morning. It's something to look forward to when you're going to bed at night, especially right when you wake up. That's when your withdrawal of pretty addictive substance is the strongest. So there's some benefit to maintaining the addiction. I just think you moving towards reishi and cordyceps, in the same way you moved towards

that maybe in the last few years, maybe the last decade, a decade from now, you probably will have something to where caffeine's a part of it, but maybe it's 15% of the equation versus a third or 60% of your morning ritual equation. So yeah, cordyceps is a big one. I also think the type of caffeine is key. So I love matcha green tea because of two things. One, it has a lower caffeine count. So it's just not a massive jolt. And for me, actually, a full cup of matcha is about 80 milligrams of caffeine. But it's a lower caffeine count, first off, but it's higher than green tea. Green tea just wasn't strong enough for me. But matcha green tea, which is the whole green tea leaf, was stronger. It also has about 140 times the antioxidants of regular green tea or coffee because you're drinking the whole leaf. But the other really cool thing, two really cool things about matcha is, so it has a sufficient amount of caffeine where you feel it.

You feel a real buzz. But it also has L-theanine in it, naturally, to decrease your body's cortisol spike that happens with the caffeine consumption. The other cool thing, this is a really recent research in the last year and a half, is that we're starting to see that people have talked about caffeine and matcha as having a longer absorption rate, but we didn't really know how. And the science is starting to bear out that it's because the caffeine molecules bind to these catechins, these complex molecules called

catechins in the matcha, which means that they're harder to break down. And so it's basically nature's time release caffeine versus you have a spike from coffee. And then for many people, the caffeine is starting to wear off within 60 to 90 minutes versus matcha. Wow. I haven't heard that second piece. The L-theanine piece is something that really draws me to matcha because L-theanine really works. It really calms down the nervous system. As someone, like I said, who has struggled with anxiety, it really helps with anxiety. But that other piece is cool. I haven't heard that. Interesting. Yeah. The Nature's Time Release Caffeine, I think, is going to be one of the biggest

selling points of matcha over the next decade. You're starting to see it pop up more and more. But I think that that... And I highly recommend people try good matcha. You know, like Starbucks matcha sucks. And it does dry out like coffee would dry out. But it comes ground for most purveyors. It's going to come ground. And so for Starbucks, they're grinding the beans that day. For the matcha, it's been ground and it's been kind of, for many places, oxidizing and losing a lot of its value over the course of a week or two. So trying it at home, I think, is one of the best ways to try it. I agree. And the way that you know if it's good high quality matcha is you want it to be really, really bright green.

That's exactly right. Just looking at the color will tell you, okay, is this fresh or is it yellowish and oxidized? Yeah. Or like I've seen it look really dark, like swampy green. And that's when you know, it's not a good high quality matcha or it's old and it's oxidized. Right. Matcha, the ceremonial fresh matcha is my favorite color in the world. And I think for a lot of people, it's a really amazing color. And so if people, you know, just see it once, and then they instinctively think that something's off visually, the next time that they see it, then they're probably right. Yeah, exactly. So get the good high quality,

get the like almost highlighter green matcha. Yeah, that's how you know it's good. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So what are some other ones? Let's talk about, I'm not familiar at all with choline. And I know that's in Magic Mind. That's right. Can you talk about that? So in Magic Mind, so I write the book. I think, and it all comes, it stems from just the umpteenth, the millionth email that I'm

replying to with some friend that works at Airbnb or Google asking me about XYZ nootropic compound. I was just like, okay, I'm going to write everything that I know in one blog post. And then that became too long. I was like, okay, it's going to be a five-part blog post. And then that was so long. And I was like, okay, I'm going to do this right. I'm going to recruit my favorite doctor, the psychiatrist and neurologist, Dan Engel, and one of my favorite researchers that I collaborate with, or really that I would lean on, a friend of mine from high school. She's brilliant. I would

just lean on her for all of the second checking and confirmations on these studies. And I was like, could you all help make this into a really solid guide and we'll publish it as an ebook? Then a publisher ended up wanting to make it a physical book, but super simple read, super simple, like 45 minute read. But the, and so I published the book and think that that's going to be like the end of all of the emails and I'm going to be able to just get back to work. And then everyone just went to, okay, read the book. What do you take in the morning? I just going to be able to just get back to work. And then everyone just went to, okay, read the book. What do you take in the morning? I just want to know what you take.

So then I had an Amazon list of buy these 12 things. That's what I take. It's what I've trialed and aired for years now. And it works. And it was about $14 a day. So I knew it was cost prohibitive for most people. So then I decided to get a kitchen in the South Bay of San Francisco to make it for me at wholesale. And then for my group of 20, 30 friends that I know loved that formula, but just $114 a day was expensive, ended up getting it down to like $3 a day. And then that group of people ordering it with this funny name of James's Magic Potion, it's just what I called it, got to like 200 people on a subscription,

super simple, just Shopify subscription without like a real Shopify store. And in this kitchen shipping it out for me. So then I was like, okay, my entrepreneurial, I was very reluctant to build a company around this side of things. I didn't know much about beverages, but the antenna, entrepreneurial antenna was going off like, okay, there's something here. But the, so everything that's in Magic Mind are my favorite, my favorite things. And it's version 3.5 of the drink. So it's, it's every, you know, we're constantly tweaking things.

But CDP choline, choline in general, but we use a version called CDP choline. It increases blood flow to the brain is really great for this lateral thinking creativity that we're talking about. So there's, you have something like caffeine that is really great if you want to bust through a wall. If you're driving for six hours. Cool it, man. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But if you have a work schedule where you need to be able to jump from one context to another quickly, then you actually really don't want caffeine. You want more oxygen to the brain.

With caffeine, you have a vasoconstrictor. It's going to limit the amount of oxygen going to the brain. So choline is great for lateral thinking. And everything that I'm mentioning will sound strange, but choline is naturally found in eggs. It's found in all kinds of foods that we consume. But supplementing with it instead of eating eight eggs a day is what I've found has been one of my favorite additions to my morning routine for that creative lateral thinking. Cool. That's awesome. I mean, yeah, like I said earlier, I love Magic Mind. I really see the difference when I take it. Do you think that when I drink my coffee in the morning and then I drink that

side by side, am I not getting the full benefits because I'm drinking that coffee and I'm blocking some of this? No. No. And so that's what we recommend with Magic Mind is that you drink it alongside your current morning routine because it doesn't have much caffeine in it. So you still get that benefit from the love that people have for their warm cup of coffee, however they make it. You still get that. But no, you don't miss out on anything. If someone is drinking two or three cups of coffee, then they're just going to be spiking their cortisol. And half the ingredients in Magic Mind, like I said, are adaptogens and anxiolytics, so they'll be working against things like ashwagandha, rhodiola, bacopa, but... L-theanine. But yeah, for the most part, you're just... You're making it harder for...

When I talk to people about that car metaphor of the, you know, turning off the check engine light rather than improving the engine. I also talk about the fact that when we are chugging coffee and it's not giving us more energy, it's also kind of like pressing the pedal and the brake at the same time, because two hours in, three hours in, your cortisol, your stress is going to be there, but the caffeine won't be. And that's going to limit you from wanting to jump into your to-do list or jump into your inbox or tackle that big project. So one of the ways that you can make it to where it's more of a pedal, not a brake, and more of the ways that you can just take boulders off the road, to continue the metaphor,

and to where it's a smoother A to B wherever you want to go are things like removing stress with adaptogens, things like that, are things like citicoline or CDB-choline, different names for it. Yeah. So those things can help just smooth, give you a much more smooth paved road from where you want to be to where you are, where you want to be. Yeah, I love that. And what I love so much about this is, you know, something that I'm constantly striving for is ways that I can improve my cognitive function, my productivity, without having all these crazy side effects, you know, like what we were saying earlier with the Adderall, and even with the caffeine, if I have more than one cup of coffee a day, like I said, you know, I'm jumping out of my skin. And so that's what's so cool about the

discovery of all these nootropics is that now we're able to boost our cognitive function, boost our productivity without having all of these horrible side effects. Right. Yeah, that's, yeah, I think that that's, and that's back to that classical definition was safe and not just, I mean, there's the equivalent of you drinking six cups of coffee, which is what I'm in a place where it sounds ridiculous because back then it didn't. But you're drinking six cups of coffee and you're recommending that to people. Instead of this, and that's why the subtitle of the book is A Sustainable Approach. Instead of seeing where is this, because there's three buckets. There's the effective but potentially dangerous. There is the ineffective and it's just all hype and there's no scientific backing behind stuff that gets recommended. And then there is effective and safe. And out of

the 50 plus compounds that we cover in the book, it's really only 12 that we put in the bucket of it's right at the perfect intersection of effective and safe. So yeah, I think it's a good call out for just people that are going to see this word more and more. I think it's going to be, we're entering the mental health and the mental optimization decade. And I think we're going to see nootropics more and more. And I think having an understanding of, okay, what am I signing up for? And ultimately, I think what everyone really wants at the core is to feel better on day seven than day one and magic mind in the morning and feeling really good about the choices I've been making lately and slowly cutting down my to learn? And I know that you're super smart on this topic. What are some things that, like that sleep advice, that might be out of the box that you're like, whoa, this has really helped me? Something that's really helped me? Well, I mean, I have a similar experience that you were talking to earlier that really for me was bringing my anxiety and my stress down.

There was like a multitude of things going on. Some of that was literally addressing things that I needed to address in talk therapy. Some of that was finding more productive ways to get work done. And a lot of that also was cutting down on caffeine and bringing in more adaptogens and herbs that really helped me curb that anxiety. It was really like a multifaceted approach. And once I got to that place, I mean, it doesn't mean I don't ever have anxiety anymore, but I really there, I mean, I see a difference between like night and day difference of that. Um, so that's really been the biggest thing for me. And so, uh, the, the ones that have helped me the most are ashwagandha, L-theanine, like I said earlier, um, and holy basil has helped me a lot too.

And so it was a combination of just, yeah, bringing down my anxiety and also looking into more of this kind of stuff and trying to find alternatives to coffee to like boosting my cognitive function. There's another one that I take. I don't know if I could talk about it. I don't know if it's like a competition for you, but it's called Bee Lixer from Beekeepers Naturals. And what it is, is it's a royal jelly from bees and it might have ginkgo in it as well. I need to look at it, but that has really helped me a lot too. Well, and I think the world is, I think it's so funny because I think it was 2017, 2018, everybody would see the,

but first coffee. That was like a cultural hashtag. And I think that was peak coffee, because I think it was, you'd wake up and you'd see, okay, everybody's obsessed with this, but then everybody's underserved by it. I mean, imagine if you love something, but you need four and five dosages of it. It's more like an addiction than it actually doing its job of what it's promise of keeping you awake if you need four a day, if you need even three a day. It'd be like having a car and you're like, I love this car. Now you need three of them because they're always breaking down. Because one doesn't cut it. One doesn't cut it. And so, yeah, I think that the world's waking up to alternatives and also waking up to just the biological cost of the spike stress. And I think you, I love that you called out the anxiety being a part of that,

the blocker towards productivity, towards getting things done, because I think that that is still really new for people to hear that maybe it's not these things that you're currently doing and you need more of them, or you need a different version, maybe it's actually this completely different area you might not have been thinking about, which is, I think almost everyone would have low-grade pervasive anxiety in the modern world where you've got 45 different unread text messages, 38 emails that all require different decisions in different directions. And anyone can reach you at any moment and, you know, jump into whatever block of time you thought you were going to get work done. So I think it's that aspect. I think you really can do more and

stress less. And that sounds like too good to be true. But when you do stress less, the science is bearing it out that you end up being able to do more. Yeah, that's interesting. I'm really, I'm intrigued and curious to look more into that just because, you know, mine's all anecdotal. It's just what I've seen has worked in my own life. And, you know, another thing too, a lot of Americans don't understand one,

the importance of sleep and we're really not prioritizing it and also our diet. And that really helped me a lot too, is really learning how to prioritize my sleep more, which to be honest, that's what I'm still working on. Um, and then diet as well, because I didn't even realize eating a lot of processed foods, not really taking care and nourishing my body was also putting a stress on my body. And that's a different kind of stress, but it all kind of manifests in the same way. And I'm happy to see that slowly people are really starting to pay attention and realize like, okay, what I put in my body really affects the way that my brain functions, my stress levels, my energy levels. I mean, it's all connected. Yes, mood. Yeah. Yeah. By far the most read blog post I wrote was mental wealth. And it starts by saying that we

have conventionally thought of mental health as a synonym to mental illness. And I'm hoping that in this decade, we can accelerate towards a world that's more like physical health, where when you and I talk about it's kind of mental health is where physical health was 50 years ago, where you'd bring up health when something is going wrong, versus over the last decade or two, you'd bring up health as something you want to optimize to prevent something from going wrong. And I think mental health shouldn't be a synonym with mental illness, that we should be thinking about the investments we make in our mental health, just like we think about investing into a new hobby, investing into whatever financial portfolio. It's these incremental investments that make the difference. And around mental wealth, I think it's, yeah, there's that stress diet. I mean, there's a reason, yeah, diet is the

second bucket that I list. There's simple things like eating something that you're allergic to and not knowing it. I mean, I feel like everyone should do elimination diets just to see how they feel when they go through, if people want to Google elimination diet, it's super simple and you just go through a bucket of five things and you take them out of your diet. You just see how you feel for a week. That will tell you is something having a negative impact on you, soy or lactose or there's wheat. Eggs, wheat. Eggs, exactly. And so you go through the five most common allergens, food allergens, which means that there's a chance you could be allergic to one of them

if they're the most common in the world. Yeah, there's a pretty high chance, too, with the way we produce our food these days, unfortunately. Right. And so you take those out, and that's inflammation, 40% of – it was about four years ago. One thing that I also mentioned that's one of my favorite aspects of the research is that in 2013 and 2016, turmeric, which is in about 95% of Indian dishes, was shown to be as effective as Prozac as an antidepressant. I haven't heard this. Yeah.

Wow. It is remarkable. And turmeric is $3 a pound, Prozac's $1,300 a pound. And it's extremely safe. And it's been shown twice in peer-reviewed studies to be as effective. And obviously, there is no big pharmaceutical company behind turmeric that wants to publish, that wants to get that word out there, that wants to advertise that this is extremely effective. It's because they can't patent it. They can't patent it. They can't make money off of it. And exactly.

So you're just not going to have the billion-dollar ad budget to make sure everybody knows this. But hopefully the listeners know this now. And that's something within our diet that you can add to your diet that can have a really positive impact on your mood. And it's tied to inflammation. It's an anti-inflammatory. And it's one of these things you can add in your diet that um that is pro-anti-inflammatory so you have a pro-inflammatory response of eating something you're allergic to and you can counter that with a pro-anti-inflammatory response in food like turmeric or we could try to dial back the thing that's inflaming us to begin with and eating something that you're allergic to can really mess with our system, produce what's called a cytokine storm, and 40% of depressive cases

are tied to inflammation. And so in the last two years, if anything, within mental illness, I think the two most eye-opening trends are inflammation's role with mental illness, which we just thought, oh, it's biochemical, it's all dopamine, serotonin, it is going to be up in your head. And now let's focus on drugs that are dialing things up and down, SSRIs that are dialing things down up in your head. But a third of your serotonin receptors are in your stomach, first of all. And second of all, it's the inflammation that we have that is also going to trigger what's getting released when or what's getting dialed down or up. And that trend of inflammation being tied to... And you can imagine in nature why it would be helpful if you twist your ankle, a deer twists their leg, is hurt, they should have a neurosignal

and go sit quietly under a tree. Don't go out and about, don't socialize, don't go feeding, because you're not at 100% to run away from prey that might get you. And I think similarly, you do something that sends an anti-inflammatory response and storm in your body or a pro-inflammatory storm in your body, your body's going to tell you, hey, Courtney, hey, James, go into a quiet room and don't socialize right now. And then we wonder, what the hell's wrong with me? I feel so out of it. So inflammation and its role with mental illness, and then also psychedelics and their role with being effective, the data's off the charts for things like PTSD and anxiety. So those two trends, I think we're going to hear a lot more about when it comes to mental illness.

And I think, and I hope we hear more about, especially the inflammation aspect, when we start to consider mental health as being separate than mental illness. I, oh my God, you, I just love all those points you just made were so important for people to hear because I feel like these conversations are still kind of happening on the outskirts. Like it's not really known information yet. And it's so important for people to understand this because, you know, I don't want to vilify prescription drugs, but if there is something that we can treat with lifestyle and diet changes first, and you don't have to take on all those horrible side effects, like what kind of what I was saying earlier, I mean, it's life changing, you know, because I, there's no,

there's no disregarding the fact that a lot of people have been, have been helped by these pharmaceutical drugs, but what about a world in which we can just change up our diet and reduce inflammation in our body and then live free of all the side effects of these medications. And, um, it's just cool that we're, we're seeing the science to back this up now. And what you were saying with that inflammation and part of the reason why our diet is so connected to our mental health is we have something called the vagus nerve that goes directly from the gut to the brain, which is why the gut is now being called the second brain, which I'm sure you know all that. But for people listening, this is why it's so important that we pay attention to our diets. Right. Yeah. I wouldn't say I'm an advocate or

a fan, but I'm very interested in what's called the polyvagal theory that just talks about the vagus nerve being so key to everything we care about, motivation, mood. And it's a cognition. And there are really simple ways to activate the vagus nerve, like from the extreme cold plunges to literally humming and vibration. It's one of the reasons why we're so calm during a car ride or why a baby goes to sleep is that vibration. They think that vibration is positively impacting the vagus nerve and it's also exercise, which you get the heartbeat, you get your heart rate up, you're getting all your muscles moving, getting blood flow going through your body, but you're also getting a nice kind of vibration through your body that is somehow having a really positive impact on things like mood and cognition. And yeah, I think that for the prescription aspects, there are people that truly, that this is so peripheral to and they need access to that.

Absolutely, yeah. And that's critical and beautiful that we have, I think it's truly beautiful that we have systems in place where pharmaceutical companies are trying to develop therapies for people that truly need them. But then we have this other bucket that I think, that I know I have been in when I've been in 12-month, 18-month stints of depression, of waking up every morning feeling like, what am I living in? This is wrong and off. And having no idea that, well, the six cups of coffee, the lack of exercise, waking up at different times every day and drinking the night before, that's going to put almost anyone into a malaise. And then also having the stress of work. And so by doing these things in this bucket of mental wealth, I think you build up

this buffer, just like investing for when something goes wrong financially, you have that buffer. I think something similar can be a case, a similar case can be made for mental wealth. Yeah, I love that. I love these buckets that you keep referencing too. I think it's really helpful for people to hear that and applicable for everyday life. So before we go, I like to ask everyone this question. What are some of your health non-negotiables? So no matter how busy you are, how crazy your workday is, I feel like you might've mentioned one of these earlier, but what are things that you do every single day that you prioritize to help you with your health, whether that be mental, physical, whatever it is? The biggest one is waking up every morning at the same time and being religious about that. And it's still every two weeks, maybe something throws it off. Travel can throw it off, obviously.

But really sticking to that. And you really can, if you do it consistently, then you really can take a day off a week and you can recover pretty easily. But the other one is no meetings on Wednesdays and no meetings on Fridays. And that's probably ancillary to what you might be asking, but to the spirit of it, that those two days where I have no meetings whatsoever, allow me to get the big, you know, the, that allow me to have really big blocks of creative, deep work to get the big projects off the to-do list. So they're not just weighing on the back of my mind. And, oh my God, Courtney, I, it's like Tuesday night comes around and I'm, tonight I'm going to be giddy with the, I'll feel like an eighth grader on Friday because it's like Tuesday night comes around and tonight I'm going to be giddy with

the... I'll feel like an eighth grader on Friday because it's like, oh, tomorrow I'm going to actually get so much done. I can't wait. And Airbnb would do this. And it was so great that the organization, a lot of the teams would institute this of No Meanings Wednesdays. And it's so, so powerful for both getting big blocks of work done,

but also that random social interaction you want to have, or the sister you want to call, the friend that you just want to jump on a FaceTime with or go over by their house and get a coffee. It's like a Saturday in the middle of the week. And then it eventually evolved into Wednesday and Friday because they ended up being my most productive days by far. That's interesting. That's cool. Yeah. I have a similar thing where I only record podcasts on specific days so that I can have time to create and do other things on other days. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. So for everyone listening, where can they find you? Twitter at James Bechera. I'll send you a copy of the book for Beyond Coffee,

beyondcoffeebook.com for that or magicmind.co for Magic Mind. And people can use, we'll use promo code CourtneyFriends and people can use it for, I'm going to make this up and then I'm going to create the discount code right after this. But we'll give folks... Let's go with 40% off to try it just because I believe people will be excited about after they try it. But yeah, we'll do 40% off.

I'm going to write that down so I don't forget. Thank you so much. Well, this has been such a pleasure to have you on. This is such a great conversation. Of course, Courtney, thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Real Foodology Podcast. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a resident media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Chris McCone. The theme song is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie, spelled with a J. Love you guys so much. See you next week. Bye.