Realfoodology - The Future of Healthcare: MAHA, Longevity & Circadian Rhythm Hacks | Gary Brecka

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

245: In today’s episode, I sit down with longevity expert Gary Brecka to explore how early detection, nutrient science, and personalized protocols are reshaping the future of health. We dive into his journey from working in the insurance world to leading the charge in longevity and wellness. We cover how diet and lifestyle are finally gaining recognition in mainstream medicine, why U.S. health is a national security issue, and how the MAHA movement is both criticized and celebrated. You’ll also hear insights on anxiety, postpartum depression, ADHD, migraines, and the powerful role of cellular health plays in your overall well-being. This episode is packed with practical tips, research-backed insights, and inspiring takeaways. Topics Covered: What the MAHA movement is and why it matters How to naturally fix your circadian rhythm and improve sleep The link between anxiety, gut health, and hormones Nutrient deficiencies, especially B12 and folate Gary Brecka’s path from longevity insurance to biohacking Timestamps:  00:00:00 – Intro 00:05:27 – Insurance & Longevity Science 00:10:03 – Diet, Lifestyle & Mainstream Medicine 00:14:18 – Criticism of the MAHA Movement 00:18:41 – Health Policy Awareness Gaps 00:20:32 – U.S. Health as a National Security Risk 00:22:58 – Cellular Health & Nutrient Deficiency 00:25:19 – Healthspan vs Lifespan 00:29:26 – MAHA’s Positive Contributions 00:32:26 – Allopathic Medicine & Missed Symptoms 00:35:37 – Anxiety, Gut Health & Catecholamines 00:42:03 – Postpartum Depression & Folic Acid 00:47:06 – ADHD, Rumination & Circadian Rhythm 00:54:32 – Catecholamines: Warriors vs Worriers 00:57:01 – Lowering Catecholamine Levels 00:59:19 – B12 Levels Explained 01:00:58 – Hydrogen Tablets: Worth It? 01:05:52 – Migraine Causes & Relief Tips 01:07:39 – Top Healthy Habits to Start Now Show Links: Severe Headache or Migraine History Is Inversely Correlated With Dietary Sodium Sponsored By: LMNT | Get your free Sample Pack with any LMNT drink mix purchase at drinklmnt.com/realfoodology BIOptimizers | For an exclusive offer go to bioptimizers.com/realfoodology and use promo code REALFOODOLOGY  Paleovalley | Save at 15% at paleovalley.com/realfoodology and use code REALFOODOLOGY MANUKORA | Go to Manukora.com/REALFOODOLOGY to get $25 off the Starter Kit, which comes with an MGO 850+ Manuka Honey jar, 5 honey travel sticks, a wooden spoon, and a guidebook!  Ollie | Head to Ollie.com/REALFOODOLOGY, tell them all about your dog, and use code REALFOODOLOGY to get 60% off your Welcome Kit when you subscribe today!  Cozy Earth | Go to cozyearth.com and Use code REALFOODOLOGY for 40% off best-selling sheets, pajamas, and more. Check out Gary Brecka:  Instagram  The Ultimate Human Check Out Courtney  LEAVE US A VOICE MESSAGE Check Out My new FREE Grocery Guide! @realfoodology www.realfoodology.com My Immune Supplement by 2x4 Air Dr Air Purifier AquaTru Water Filter EWG Tap Water Database  Produced By: Drake Peterson

on today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. You have, for the first time, the convergence of big data, artificial intelligence, and early detection. And this is going to circumvent the entire system, and it will absolutely revolutionize modern medicine and modern healthcare in the next five years, I think in a way that's going to be catastrophic for some, but it's going to be so beneficial for humanity.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology Podcast. Today was a pinch me moment. I sat down with Gary Brekka and this was such an incredible episode. This man, you can just really tell that he cares and that he wants to help people. He was so kind. He invited me to his place. And this is where we recorded because he also invited me to be on his podcast. So we did a little swap. So look out for my episode coming out on his podcast. Before we started recording, he took me around his place and he was showing me all of his biohacking tools and toys. And he also fed me grass-fed burgers and root vegetables. and it was so delicious. I just enjoyed it

so much. He was such a kind person and I just love to connect with people that I look up to and Gary Brekka is definitely one of those. I saw him speak a couple years ago. He was working in the longevity insurance space and I'll let you listen to how he tells the story, but I just thought it was such an interesting story. And this was how he got started in this world of biohacking. We talked a lot about the Maha movement. And then we also talked a lot about circadian rhythm and how you can address if you're having a hard time falling asleep. And this one was actually a personal one to me that I shared

that I've really been struggling with. And he gave me some incredible advice. This man is just a wealth of knowledge. And we dove into women's hormones a little bit. So it just, it was such a great episode. You're definitely not going to want to miss it. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I just hope that you love it as much as I did. So if you want to take a moment to rate and review the podcast, it would mean so much to me. It really does help this show a lot. And if you're loving the episode with me and Gary Brekka, please make sure that you not only go follow him right now on Instagram at Gary Brekka, you want to go and tag both me at Real Foodology and

of course, Gary Brekka on Instagram. I can speak personally that I always love seeing your shares. I try to see as many of them as possible and repost as many as I can. So thank you so much for the support. And I'm so excited for you to listen to this episode. Let's get real. Luxury shouldn't be out of reach. Cozy Earth makes it easy to upgrade your home into a sanctuary, offering the softest sheets, pajamas, and more.

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I love it. We're like little kids. I love it too. Yeah. My team had to come grab us out of biohacking. They're like, you guys need to start podcasts. We were, yeah, Gary was taking me a tour around his amazing place and was showing me all these really cool biohacking tools that he has in his place. And I didn't want to be pulled out of it. I was like, tell me more. What is this crazy gadget he has?

You're definitely coming back. You and your fiance come back and we'll spend an afternoon biohacking. It'll be so fun. I am so fascinated by all this stuff. And we're going to talk about it. I want to ask you a lot about a lot of different biohacking stuff. But I first of all want to address, so we met, I think it was two years ago at your event, maybe a year and a half ago.

Yeah, for Air One. Yes. I was still living in LA at that point. And I was so just taken back by your talk that you gave because I didn't actually know a lot about your background. And I didn't know that you had come from the insurance space, like longevity insurance space, and I was so fascinated by that.

Can you tell people a little bit about what you were doing? It was basically the study of mortality. And there's so many financial services instruments that are based on how many more months you have left on Earth. I mean, annuities, reverse mortgages, life insurance, obviously. And I think what a lot of people don't realize that when an insurance company, a life insurance company,

is getting ready to take 25 million or $50 million, what we call jumbo life, dollars worth of risk on your life, they really don't care where you are on an actuarial curve. They wanna know your specific mortality. How many months does this man or this woman have left on earth? Because once that policy is enforced, that's all that really matters to the insurance company. And so they developed a model to predict mortality to the month. And the variable basic table is based on this,

which is the foundational table for predicting mortality. It's how life insurance policies are rated. You can get super preferred, preferred standard table rated. It's not just related to your blood work, although that's a component of it. They look at demographic data on you, you know, your job history, trying to estimate your stress levels. And then we look at true big data

on why people are not living longer lives. And what was really astounding about this field was that the reason why the majority of people, and I think you would agree with this, but I mean, scientifically speaking, big data speaking, the reason why the majority of humanity is not living longer, healthier, happier, more fulfilling lives, are for what we called modifiable risk factors.

These would have been diet and lifestyle, supplement changes that you could have made that would dramatically have extended your lifespan. The issue is that the majority of people don't do it. And the statistical chance that somebody who is in a habitual pattern, food pattern, exercise pattern, or lack thereof, or the pattern of seeking comfort,

I say that aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort. The chances of them coming to a full stop and even attempting a 180 are virtually zero. And when you look at it from a statistical perspective, most of us are, you know, we know that sedentary lifestyle is a leading cause of all cause mortality. Now sitting is the new smoking. Yeah. And the research now is absolutely clear on things like mobility, whole foods, sense of purpose, sense of community, those things that don't show up on a balance sheet and they don't show up in a clinical trial. And so because they don't show up in what we would consider to be the gold standard

of research, we don't really believe that they have any impact on our life. Which is so insane. And it's doing us such a disservice. And the data really proves otherwise. And a lot of what came out of these large pools of data flew directly in the face of mainstream medicine. You know, that 85% of all hypertension is idiopathic meaning of unknown origin.

So if it's of unknown origin, we should still medicate the heart. That the majority of our thyroid hormone T3 is not even made in our thyroid, it's actually made outside of the thyroid, liver, gut, periphery. And yet the liver, the gut, and the periphery have nothing to do with our low thyroid levels or that cholesterol is our leading risk factor

for cardiovascular disease, LDL cholesterol on its own. And I could go on and on but the big data is proving otherwise. And that's why I think this is such an interesting time that we're living in now because you have for the first time the convergence of big data, artificial intelligence, and early detection. And this is going to circumvent the entire system, and it will absolutely revolutionize modern medicine and modern healthcare in the next five years, I think in a way that's gonna be catastrophic for some, but it's gonna be so beneficial for humanity.

Wow. What do you think are some of the main changes that we're gonna see? Do you think we're finally gonna really in mainstream medicine admit that diet and lifestyle plays a huge role in our health? Well, I think for the first time you've got political figures now that are pushing from the top down.

I mean, people like yourself, myself, and lots of others have been banging their head against the wall trying to push from the ground up. But the possibility that we could affect public policy, this is where you can see dramatic shifts push from the ground up, but the possibility that we could affect public policy. This is where you can see dramatic shifts in the population. The United States, we all know, is the leading spender of healthcare worldwide. We lead the world in six things.

We lead the world in infant mortality. A lot of people aren't aware of that. Maternal mortality, the lowest life expectancy of the next 66 civilized nations at birth. So we're ranked 66th in the world in life expectancy. We lead the world in morbid obesity. We also lead the world in multiple chronic disease in the same bio. Most people by the age of 65 don't have a single chronic disease. They have metabolic syndrome. They'll have a cardiovascular component, an autoimmune component, and then another major organ component like a thyroid condition. The majority of

us throughout our adult lifetime will be diagnosed, whether temporarily or indefinitely with some form of mental illness or mental disorder. I don't like either of those terms, but they'll be diagnosed with that. And you know, the, I just read a statistic and I don't like you to those terms but yeah, they'll be diagnosed with that and you know the I just read a statistic and I don't have the supporting data for this I probably shouldn't even say it but I'll put it out there that the number of diagnoses in the physicians desk reference has gone now from From being in the 30,000 32, 32,000s to approaching 70,000. So you got to ask yourself, are we doubling the rate of known diseases?

Or are we just trying to categorize? Are we trying to categorize so we can once we categorize something, we can manage those symptoms and we can maintain the disease state. And so I guess the answer to your question is, yes, I think you're going to see real change. I think that this term lifestyle medicine, which I love that term, because it sort of wakes people up to saying, you know, maybe my lifestyle can actually be a part of the cure.

I mean, how intentional am I about my sleep? Am I intentional about my morning routine? Do I think of my body as a temple? Do I do things that serve my temple? Or do I actually do things, do I let thieves into the temple that steal from me? Am I bathing my cellular biology in a toxic soup and then wondering why I feel so awful and

why I seem to be having all of these chronic conditions and all these chronic conditions ran in my family and we're realizing now that it's not disease that's passed from generation to generation. In very rare cases did you inherit your cardiovascular condition or your thyroid condition or your autoimmune condition or your diabetic condition from your ancestor? In fact, barely a physician alive today could tell you what gene carries any of those conditions. And if they were genetic or familial, we would be treating them that way. But we don't because those genes in most cases don't exist.

And you bring in things like Ozempic and GLP-1s, which I'm not necessarily fully opposed to, but instead of saying, I really want to lose weight, maybe asking yourself, not to sound too harsh, but why am I so fat? We got to be honest with people. Yeah. And the answer to that question will lead you in the right direction. Yeah. Well, and this is why I want to hear from you in your own words,

but I'm assuming this is why you have been so outspoken about the Maha movement. So you and I have been connected through making America healthy again and through a lot of our friends that are all in this movement. And so many of us for so long have all been working in different facets of health and wellness and lifestyle medicine, like you said, trying to wake up the public to all of this. And we're all so excited because we finally feel

like we have a real chance for change. I've been shocked to see a lot of criticism though. There's a lot of criticism. And I think unfounded, I mean, a lot of the criticism that I see is that the maha movement, the people that are supported want to take away freedom of choice, which I don't believe in. You know, if you want to drink soda, drink soda. If you want to eat at McDonald's, you should be able to eat at McDonald's. If you want to smoke a cigarette

or vape or, you know, drink whiskey, you should be able to do all of those things. You obviously know the risks. What I believe the movement is about is about truth and transparency in our food supply because very often it's not the food, it's the distance from the food to the table that matters. And what we've done to the food too. And what we've done to the food. Yeah. So, you know, if I want to eat a yogurt and it's colored red, well, do I really care if that red color comes from beet juice and is safe for me or if it comes from red dye 3, which is now banned, but is not safe for me? That's what we call forever chemical. But it has no alteration

in the taste and doesn't take away my freedom of choice. I mean, and that's what the maha movement is about. It's about getting the corruption, I believe, out of our food supply. I mean, when you look at the fact that 77% of our military age men and women don't qualify for military service because of poor health, or that the vast majority of our public policy and nutritional research is funded by private industry. Yeah. Our public policy should be set by independent institutions

funded by the taxpayer for the benefit of humanity. And it should be truly independent. And if there are negative outcomes, that research should be known, and if there are positive outcomes, it should be known. And this way you put things through the proper rigor of scientific testing and you let it be truly outcomes based. You don't allow it to be influenced by lobbyists and pharma, food, chemicals,

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favorite, a wooden spoon and a guidebook. That's Manu Korra, M-A-N-U-K-O-R-A.com slash real foodology to save 31% plus $25 worth of free gifts. Well, the Fox is guarding the hen house right now. And I think a lot of people are not truly making that connection. I just had a conversation with my Uber driver a couple of days ago and he was explaining to me that like the general public does not actually truly understand how bad it's gotten with

our food and with our pharmaceutical companies, the corruption that's happening. There's a general understanding with most Americans that, oh, they wouldn't allow that. Like, it wouldn't be on the shelf if it was that bad for us. You know, they kind of think like, oh, I'm being a little naughty when I'm having some fast food. They don't realize the real implications of it. And I don't mean to infantilize them. That's not my point.

I just mean that like we are not truly understanding the real implications of what's happening right now. I couldn't agree with you more. And I think that's the genesis of the of the Maha movement is when we have this level of influence over our public policy. I mean, this is how we got a food pyramid that says that Lucky Charms is more nutritious

than grass-fed steak. I met the guy that wrote that, by the way, at the Maha brunch. Oh, I'd love to have him on the podcast. I'll connect you, because I think I'm going to have him on mine too. But we were having a conversation and I was connected through a friend of mine

and I didn't realize until halfway through and he hands me his card and he's like, it says, you know, from Tufts University. And I was like, oh, the same Tufts that did the pyramid, it wasn't a pyramid, but what did they call it? The food compass. Yeah, yeah, food compass. Lucky charms are healthier than ground beef

and he was defending it. And I was like, okay, this isumbus. Where Lucky Charms were healthier than ground beef and he was defending it and I was like, okay, this is a little wild to me. And I think that when we look at pure macros, for example, fats, carbohydrates, proteins, saturated fat, and then, but then you look at the chemical component of it and that's where we're really sending our cellular biology into a tailspin.

And at some point you have to realize that, number one, it's multifactorial, but number two, that this has gotten to a crisis point. If you don't think that three quarters of our men and women not being able to enter the military for health reasons is not a national security crisis, or that the highest rates of childhood cancer in recorded history is not a national security crisis, or that the highest rates of childhood cancer in recorded history is not a health crisis,

or that our public policy is allowing us to just constantly bathe our bodies in this toxic soup, then you're really missing the point, and I think the essence of this movement. And it's not just an anti-chemical movement or anti-big government movement, it's a pro-humanity movement. And it's not just an anti-chemical movement or, you know, anti-big government movement. It's a pro-humanity movement. Yeah.

You know, we should have access to clean water, clean food, clean air. You know, we should have the ability to trust our food supply. And, you know, when you look at how deep this runs, you know, call it the deep state, whatever you want to call it, and you look at how deep this runs, call it the deep state, whatever you wanna call it, and you look at how we take the seed oils and we de-gum them with hexane and we deodorize them with sodium hydroxide and we heat them to 405 degrees and we turn them rancid and then we bleach them, we bottle them,

we put them on the shelf, and then some of our other institutions come along, like the American Heart Association comes along and slaps a heart healthy label on it. So you realize that there's an intentional level to some of this corruption. And as a young mother or father, you're walking down the cereal aisle, let's say,

and two or three boxes of cereal are fortified or enriched and some are not. And you go, oh, I'll grab the fortified or enriched one. You don't realize, well, that just means it's sprayed with folic acid. We don't realize that natural fruit flavors or natural sweeteners can be completely chemical additives. Natural fruit flavor is kind of a code word for

ain't got no fruit. Right? Exactly. And so let's just say that. That's what they should call it. Ain't got no fruit. You know what's funny? I wanted to do a skit one time.

Maybe I'll still do it. I was gonna put the family around the table and we were gonna do like a mock restaurant. And I was gonna order everything on the menu based on the consequences in your body. So you'd have to order like the gas, the bloating, the diarrhea, the constipation. All of the gas please.

The irritability of the cramping. All of the bloating, constipation and bad behavior. And no, you had the bad behavior last week. Yeah. Because we would start to realize like, okay, kids, it's time for your bad behavior. And as an intentional way, sort of a funny way of highlighting that our emotions, our mood, our sleep, our circadian cycle, our focus, our concentration, our energy, our waking energy, are all related to our cellular biology

and what kind of frequency it's receiving and what kind of nutrients it's receiving. One of the things that emerged very clearly from my time in that industry was that the majority of, I would read these lab reports and read these blood labs and these life expectancy summaries and over and over and over again, you can see in the record that these people

could have made simple changes in their life, vitamin D3 levels, B12 levels. You could actually see it in their history in their life, vitamin D3 levels, B12 levels. You could actually see it in their history in their medical reports, consistently low levels of vitamin D3 or consistently low levels of B vitamins. You knew that the consequences that were emerging in their record were the consequences of deficiency. You look at how depleted our soil is.

If you looked at a soil lineage study from 1945 and you compared it to a soil lineage study from today, it would be horrifying. Which is why very often you're not required to update the nutritional content. You're only required to update the macros in food labeling, because you could borrow the content of iron or calcium in a bag of spinach from this old 1945 study, or if it were to update it, it would all say zero. Wow. Right?

And I believe, and we're gonna talk about this on your podcast, but I believe a lot of this begins at the soil. Yeah. Right? And so you deplete the soil. We so believe this at the soil. Yeah. Right? It does. So you deplete the soil. We so believe this in plant physiology. Yeah.

Right, if you had a leaf rotting in a palm tree and you called a true arborist, like a true botanist out to your house, they wouldn't even touch your leaf, right? They would cortest the soil. And they would say, you know, there's no nitrogen or no sulfur, no phosphorus in the soil. They would add that to the soil and the leaf would heal.

Human beings, I promise you, are no different. So many of us are mineral, amino acid, nutrient, fatty acid deficient. If we would just cover the basics, it would have such a dramatic change in our life. Yeah, and we're not talking about this enough. And this is why I brought up in the very beginning, when we met and you gave that talk,

I was so taken back by what you had said, because I will never forget this. You said that part of the reason that you left that industry is because you were looking at all these people's numbers and going, if I could just get in touch with this individual and tell them, like, get on some minerals and vitamins and let's change your diet a little bit,

that you could extend their life by not just, we're not talking about small numbers here by- Yeah, seven years. On average, the ones that I did, and I didn't run a clinical study on it, but that's not just lifespan, that's health span. Because- Quality of life. If you die at 82, if you leave this earth at 82 years old,

most people started dying in the early 70s, right? So you know, you have a compression of health span and you also have a compression of lifespan. When we're ranked 66 in the world in life expectancy, by the way, life expectancy in the United States is going backwards now for the first time in 100 years. And so that means that we're dying earlier. But what really is the travesty is we stopped living decades before that. We're alive, but we're really not living. We're surviving.

Yeah, we're surviving. And then you look at the statistics on the number of multiple diseases that are in the same biome, the number of pharmaceuticals that most people are on. And rarely do you see clinical trials run on the multifactorial impact of combining different synthetics, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals.

Like, they will study thyroid medication in a silo, cardiac medication in a silo, autoimmune medication in a silo, psychiatric medication in a silo. But what if somebody has ADD, ADHD, OCD, has Crohn's, has hypertension, and has type 2 diabetes? Where are the clinical studies that show that this combination of pharmaceuticals

is not creating worse of an issue than if you were to remove one or two or all of them. And we noticed this in the big data because you could see things like someone would have slightly elevated LDL cholesterol, for example, they would be put on a high dose of statins. And then months later in the record, there comes the joint pain, there comes the brain fog,

because you can see it in their history. Now they're going to their primary care physician and I can't sleep. So they put them on solar, pedium nitrate, diazepam, Linesta, ambient, whatever it is, because now you're on something for sleep. And now you're not really sleeping, you're just not conscious.

So then the brain fog starts, and then the mood collapse starts, and now they're in therapy for a mood disorder, and now they're on medication for their mood. So now comes the SSRI and then the joint pain continues and now the anti-inflammatory, the corticosteroid start. And I read so many records and saw this happen over and over and over so many times. It became so predictive because I would start to read the history and go,

oh, there's the corticosteroid. I'm going to read the history a few years later and they're going to have had a joint replacement and bang, there was the joint replacement. And then the joint replacement would begin to reduce their, we called it ambulatory profile, how well they ambulated, how well you move. And as you reduce mobility, then you would bring in all of these diseases that exacerbate with reduced mobility. And it was just this vicious cycle.

And never would you see counseling for diet, exercise, spiritual well-being. No one would talk about their sense of purpose, their sense of community, their faith. You know, like what really made this person tick? What kind of relationship are you in? What kind of career do you have? What kind of food do you eat? What kind of exercise do you get? You know, when you take a vacation,

are you really relaxing or is a vacation to you, you know, a nightclub and a casino and lots of drinks and five-star dining, right? Yeah. So I believe that the message coming from Maha and from the majority of our community is really a positive one. Like, it's really an uplifting one.

It's like, hey, you can take control over this, right? And let's start with some small incremental changes because life's not a combination of our goals, it's a combination of our habits. And let's start with some small incremental changes because life's not a combination of our goals It's a combination of our habits and let's start developing the kinds of habits that you need to walk yourself right out of this Electrolyte imbalances are no joke and many popular sports drinks out there are packed with sugar and artificial ingredients And that's why I'm excited to introduce to you Element a zero sugar electrolyte drink mix designed to tackle these issues head-on and it tastes so good that I actually want to drink more water throughout the day. It's based on cutting edge research showing that optimal hydration requires sodium levels

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Hypothyroid. The thing is, is that if we were to address the gut and the metabolism, all of that would go away. But no one's actually, I shouldn't say no one, but in the allopathic model, these doctors are not sitting down with people and going, well, okay, so what's happening here? What is your diet? What is your lifestyle?

How can we improve some of that? Because largely all of that is coming from the same, like one or two issues, which is generally the gut and then some sort of metabolism issue. No question. I mean, metabolic syndrome now, which is a combination of things, abdominal obesity, high triglyceride, elevated insulin

or hemoglobin A1C, fasting glucose and low HDL, high density lipoprotein, the healthy cholesterol. This is happening in younger and younger and younger and younger ages. And so what is happening here is just like we saw very often in modern medicine, we know for example, that medical error is the third leading cause of death. Yeah.

We know that cardiovascular disease, number one killer, we know that. Cancer is number two. Cancer is the second one and then medical error. And what does the medical error mean? It does not mean that your doctor's intentionally trying to kill you or the medical system is intentionally trying to kill you.

What it means is that we are making an error when we view what is happening in human beings. And to give you an example, as soon as you get told that you have an autoimmune disease, you're led to believe that you woke up one day and your immune system has decided to attack your thyroid. So you have Hashimoto's or it's decided to attack your colon. You have Crohn's disease or a lacrimal gland in your eye.

You have chagrin's or your blood, you have lupus. So the, you know, we assume out of the gate the immune system has made a mistake. Instead of taking a step back and saying, hey, before we make this diagnosis, what if we said maybe the immune system hasn't made a mistake? Maybe it's here for a reason. We just naturally assume that some kind of disease or pathology has happened to us. And very often it's happened within us. You know, There's probably a lot of your listeners right now, especially women, who are cursed with the majority of autoimmune disease,

about 82% of all autoimmune disease we find in females, and I could give you my theory on that. But they're suffering from anxiety or attention deficit disorder or poor sleep or poor hormonal regulation, and no one's really told them what it is. Yeah, you know, like if you ask a hundred people what anxiety is, they'll tell you the characteristics of anxiety.

They'll say, oh, it's a fear of the future. It's a sensation of being anxious. It's the feeling of impending doom or the presence of a fear without the presence of a fear, but what is it? Like what causes it? If we would very specifically define these things, like anxiety for example, is very specifically a rise in a category of neurotransmitters called catecholamines,

there are four of them, norepinephrine, epinephrine, fedroin, dopamine. I need to get tested for that. I have a lot of them. Norepinephrine, epinephrine, fed your own dopamine. I need to get tested for that. I have a lot of anxiety. You have a lot of anxiety? Yeah. Okay, we're gonna go down this road right now. Okay. Can we?

Yes, let's talk about it. Okay, can we just put you on the stand? Yeah, put me on the seat, hot seat. So first of all, I've never met in the 150,000 or so clients that came through my clinic system before I exited that, I never saw a single anxiety sufferer, not once, especially severe anxiety that did not also have gut issues. And so what is that connection?

Well, we know that our neurotransmitters are made in our gut, right? 90% of the serotonin in our bodies is right here. So if you don't have it here, you can't have it here. We make dopamine also outside of the brain. We take phenylalanine and tyrosine, we methylate it into dopamine. So very specifically, if anxiety is a rise in these fear-based neurotransmitters,

these four neurotransmitters, the first thing that I think it's important to understand, and if you suffered from anxiety, or if any of your listeners have, they'll understand this, is that what's really difficult for anyone else who's never suffered from anxiety to understand is that this person does not need the presence of a fear to feel fear.

Yep. So I always use the analogy that if you walked out of this door and somebody was standing in front of you with a knife, very real fear, right? Your pupils would dilate, your heart rate would increase, your extremities would flood with blood, you would start having this fight or flight response. Why did you have that fight or flight response? You had that fight or flight response because catecholamines got dumped into your brain. So let's just say that, you know, tonight you're laying in your hotel room and you begin

to think about getting eaten by a shark. You can reason to yourself that the chances are zero of a shark getting out of the ocean coming up the elevator, right? But you could have the exact same response. So it's important to understand you can have the same response, a fight or flight response. You can go from being calm to being anxious to having anxiety to having a panic attack to being in a full blown paranoia without the presence of any fear. So what is causing you to move through this cascade of emotions?

What's causing it is a steady rise, an unchecked rise in catecholamines, flight or flight neurotransmitters. So we identify anxiety, and I'm not saying 100% of it is, but I believe the majority of it is. If we identify anxiety as a rise in catecholamines, then why don't we treat or address the rise in catecholamines? So in other words, what breaks down catecholamines? Well catecholamines, there's a specific gene called COMPT, C-O-M-T, and if you're a woman and you've ever had a hormone test on like a, it's called a Dutch test.

So COMPT is right on the Dutch test. So COMT is right on the Dutch test. So and because COMT, catecholomethyltransferase, will actually not only down regulate catecholamines, calm you down, but it also sends estrogen down a pathway to help be eliminated. So generally women that have this COMTG mutation suffer from anxiety. They also suffer from poor gut motility. It's not their diet. It's not their gut microbiome. It's not the food sensitivities or the food allergies,

and they go way down that path. It's the intestinal motility, because all of these things are related to the same thing. When you have poor catecholamine regulation, we have a deficiency in something called methylfolate which is the methylated form of folic acid. When you have this deficiency, your gut does not move at the right pace and so you have intermittent gas or bloating or diarrhea, constipation or

irritability or cramping and you're always trying to tie it to what you last ate. But it has nothing to do with what you last ate very often. Well and what's interesting is I have MTHFR gene. That's a very common one. Yeah, especially with women. I feel like and I have something with COMTI. I had that tested but I can't remember right now what. So COMTI has two variants. what so comp t has two variants So mthfr has two variants as well one's called c6 77 t if you have that version, you're highly prone to anxiety

One is called a 12 98 C and that one is highly tied to anxiousness and the difference is Anxiousness is a very present value emotion, right? I've got to get out of this restaurant. I feel uncomfortable in here. I've got to get to the next task. It's a very present value emotion, meaning you're very much, it's with the present circumstance that you're in. Anxiety is usually a fear of the future. The sensation of impending doom, something bad is gonna happen.

If I get on that plane, it's gonna crash. If I get on that elevator, it's gonna fall. If I go to this meeting, they're not gonna like me. You know, it's a fear of the future. And the reason for this is the way that MTHFR metabolizes folic acid into methylfolate and some of its other derivatives has a lot to do with not just your intestinal motility,

but it has a lot to do with how you down regulate these neurotransmitters. It's also linked to poor homocysteine metabolism. And homocysteine is an amino acid that all of us have in our blood. You have it, I've got it, all your listeners have it. And if this amino acid rises and we don't break this amino acid down,

usually with something called trimethylglycine, and we don't break this amino acid down, what it can do is it can build up. It causes a lot of inflammation in the body and it causes a vascular constriction. And when you constrict the vascular system, we've got 63,000 miles of blood vessel in our body. When you constrict the vascular system, the pressure rises.

So now your blood pressure is rising and they examine your heart and there's nothing wrong with your heart. You have a normal EKG, you have a normal EEG, you have normal heart sounds, normal lung sounds. Maybe you had advanced studies done, di-contrast study, cardiac catheterization. You've had these advanced studies done and they're all normal. But your pressure's high.

So they still medicate the heart, even though they can't prove that it's committing a crime. Instead of looking outside the heart and saying, I wonder if a nutrient deficiency could possibly be causing this condition. And if you look at the skyrocketing rates of postpartum depression in pregnant women, which by the way, does begin during pregnancy.

They call it postpartum depression, but it does begin during pregnancy. If you look at the skyrocketing rates of postpartum depression in pregnant women, you'll see that they are concomitant with the introduction of folic acid into their diet or their OBGYN will say, well, now that you're pregnant,

you need to take high doses of folic acid. Let's talk about this, by the way. Sorry to interrupt you, but, because there's a misconception about the folic acid, what we need to be taking is folate, right? Yes, specifically methylfolate. Yes. Or something called folinic acid. Those two are amazing.

So if you, without getting too complicated, if you look at the, what's called the methylation cycle, how something goes from being in the non-usable form and gets converted into the form the body can use. If you look at how these nutrients are converted, folate and folic acid go down the same pathway. When they enter the cell and essentially are involved in DNA methylation, if you cannot convert them into methylfolate, the cell goes into something called S phase arrest, which is where the DNA stops replicating. If you add methylfolate back to the cycle or back to the diet, you stop the S phase arrest.

And so why is that important? And that's important because pregnant women, for example, as soon as you get pregnant, your doctor tells you to take high doses of folic acid. You'll never convince me that an entirely synthetic, manmade chemical that didn't even exist before, I think about 1993, is somehow critical to healthy pregnancy.

And I know the intention was good. They wanted to try to reduce neural tube defects, but they didn't understand the full chain of cellular biology. If you gave women methylfolate, and if you are pregnant or thinking of getting pregnant, just switch your multivitamin, your prenatal vitamin, to one that is a methylated prenatal,

and specifically look for methylcobalamin and methylfolate, and your likelihood of developing postpartum depression will go down dramatically. Because what happens is these women, especially ones with MTHFR, will take high doses of folic acid, and then they start to get anxious, they have anxiety. Eventually it gives way to depressive symptoms.

And the pregnancy eventually ends and they stop taking the prenatal vitamin, and then the symptoms go away. So they bring it on the pregnancy, not on the vitamin. Of course. Yeah. Well, and what's crazy is that a lot of our food, you'd mentioned this earlier for cereals,

cereals are a perfect example. They're adding folic acid in there. So a lot of people are, I mean, it sounds dramatic, but they're kind of getting folic acid poisoning. Yeah, no, they're getting folic acid poisoning. If you look at, in the United States, by law, all of our grains supply, all grains, all flour, all breads, all cereals, and again, grains of any kind, are sprayed by law with

chemical folic acid. And so unless you are eating the organic version of those or the non-fortified, non-enriched version of those, you're getting high doses of folic acid. It's the most prevalent nutrient in the human diet. 44% of the population cannot methylate folic acid. That's huge. If you have kids that have, if you're a young parent and you're listening to this and you have kids that have behavioral issues, so you get them up in the morning, everything's

fine, then you feed them breakfast. And then it's a full contact sport to get them in the car, to go to school in the morning. And you get them to school and then the phone call comes home and they're like, hey, little Johnny can't pay attention. He doesn't follow directions. He's disruptive, he's not completing his assignments. You know, before you bring in the Rilwin to solve that issue,

try for one week getting all of the folic acid out of their diet. And it's simple to do. Just get the white bagels, the cereals, the flowers, or switch to the organic version of those. You know, a lot of us know this because... Wait, sorry, get just the white bread because that doesn't have folic acid? No, you'll see even wheat breads have it too. So look for the words fortified or enriched. It will say fortified whole wheat flour, enriched bleached white flour. And that means it has folic acid in it.

Those are code words for folic acid. Okay. So get fortified or enriched foods out of their diet, which are generally found in flours, breads, pasta, cereal, cereal and grains. So I'm not saying you have to eliminate all of those things. What I'm saying is either get the organic or the non-fortified, non-enriched version,

just for one week. Try it for one week. I would get the artificial food dyes out too, because those are also linked. I would get those out too, yeah. Those are also linked to behavioral issues. I will tell you, you will see a completely different child in the house.

Completely different child. Because modern medicine will tell you that attention deficit disorder is an inability to pay attention, which it's not. It's an inability to pay attention to so many things. People that have ADD or ADHD, they don't lack the ability to pay attention. They lack the ability to pay attention

to so many different things. And the reason why this occurs is because attention deficit disorder is not really a deficit of attention at all. It's an attention overload disorder. Because in the human mind, we don't just create thought. We also break thought down. We actually dismantle thought. We have a neurotransmitter cascade that creates a thought.

We have a neurotransmitter breakdown process that degrades that thought. Otherwise, we would always think the same thing. We'd always be in the same mood. So if you create thought at a faster rate than you break it down, the mind becomes clouded. You're thinking about a job you're working on and your friend walks up. So you're thinking about a job, you start talking to your friend. And while you're talking to your friend, you notice a logo on her jacket. And that reminds you of a vacation you're working on and your friend walks up. So you're thinking about a job, you start talking to your friend. And while you're talking to your friend,

you notice the logo on her jacket. And that reminds you of a vacation you wanna take. It's like you have all these tabs open in your brain. Honestly, I have that a little bit where I have so many tabs open that I like referencing back to them. Yeah, so that makes you a night owl. And it also makes you somebody that ruminates at night.

Yes. So when you lay down to go to sleep, your mind, you know, as your environment quiets, your mind will wake up. That's me too a tea. Oh, we're going to fix this. Okay, we talked about this, but I want to share this so that I want to get the audience up to speed. So a lot of my audience already knows this, but I worked on the road for bands for 10

years. And that meant that my schedule was all over the place. Like there would be nights where we wouldn't even get back to our hotel room until one, two a.m. And then I had essentially trained my body to get sleep whenever I could. And now I will say there is a part of me that almost feels like I just was born

with this kind of more like night owl circadian rhythm. And some people are. Yeah, because even when I was in high school, it was the same kind of thing. I was always just kind of more like night owl circadian rhythm. And some people are. Yeah, because even when I was in high school, it was the same kind of thing. I was always just kind of up later and it was harder for me to wake up in the morning. And when I finally got off the road and I was doing real foodology full time

and I'm managing a business, like I wanna be up by six, seven a.m. and be more productive. And I have struggled so much with changing my circadian rhythm. I mean, I have changed all the light bulbs in my house. I don't go on screens past a certain time. I turn my screen red half the time.

And I get sunlight in the morning and I cannot, for the life of me, change my circadian rhythm around. So let's zero in on that. So why would, when you're meeting in environment quiet, why would your mind wake up? And when I mean your mind wakes up, I don't mean like you wanna jump out of bed and play tennis. I mean that you are awake, ruminating on thoughts, right?

And- Oh yeah, and I'm planning my podcast for the next morning or whatever it is, you know? It's like I'm like thinking about everything I have to do. You're like thinking about your grocery list or did I return that post on Instagram or, you know, and the majority of what you're thinking about and your audience that suffers from the same thing,

the majority of what you think about are like the most innoc suffers from the same thing, the majority of what you think about are like the most innocuous little thoughts. They're not things that couldn't wait till the next day. They're rarely like life-changing or shattering moments. It's not like divorce or loss of a loved one, things that should keep you up at night. These are ruminating thoughts. And it happens to you over and over again.

And the majority of people have had this all of their life because they have a genetic predisposition to be poor at down regulating catecholamines, which are waking hormones. They are fight or flight hormones. This is why some people can go into a full blown panic attack at night when there is no presence of fear. Just by ruminating thoughts. And so why is this occurring? This is occurring because, or maybe occurring because, the rise in catecholamines is creating a awakened state.

So when we talk about what are the kinds of things that break down catecholamines, or the four things that you might want to seriously consider. One is methylfolate, taking the right dosages of methylfolate, usually around 1000 milligrams of methylfolate twice a day. Making sure that you're daily taking the complex of B vitamins and including something called methylcobalamin. Magnesium actually, a suite of magnesium 3 and 8 is excellent for this. Methylfolate is excellent for this.

Trimethylglycine is excellent for this. And very often, the next morning, trying something called Sam-E, S-adenosyl methionine. Someone's told me about this before. Yeah, it's one of the most prevalent methylated nutrients in the human body. And all of these you can get off the shelf on Amazon, lots of great brands out there you can get these from, not expensive. And you may notice rather immediate,

dramatic changes in your sleep, because you're not sleeping because your mind is awake, not because you're not tired. And so shutting off your mind is awake, not because you're not tired. And so shutting off your mind with a tranquilitic, like azolipidum nitrate or a Xanax or diazepam or Lunesta, is not the way to go, because then you're just not conscious,

but you're not sleeping. So that's why you wake up really tired in the morning. You think that the drug is still in your system, it's actually not. You're actually feeling the effects of having suffocated most of that. Wow. You're feeling the effects of hypoxia. So, if you can take the complex of B vitamins, methylcobalamin, methylfolate,

also trimethylglycine, and in the mornings, if you're still not sleeping, you feel like your mood is a little off, trying something called salami, esodentosyl methionine. Very often what happens is, these are the missing raw materials that are causing the methylation cycle to not operate efficiently. And by putting the right methylated nutrients

back into the human body, you begin to down-regulate catecholamines, and all of a sudden you start sleeping very well. I know this because my wife has both of these gene mutations and if she doesn't have methylfolate, she won't sleep. She takes five methylfolate at night every night. And she takes it at night. Interesting. Or else the squirrels just start running.

I mean, that's me. And she's Chad and Kathy too. And I'm like, so this it's so funny because this literally drives my fiance nuts. Oh, yeah. She's she'll pull things up on her phone and I'm like, oh. So this, it's so funny, because this literally drives my fiance nuts. Oh yeah, she'll pull things up on her phone, and be like, babe, do you think we should put this stone sink in the cabin? I'm like, I am literally barely conscious over here. She's like, this is a stone sink,

or we could go with the wood, or we could have my. Oh, this is literally me. This is me to a T, and it drives Hector insane. Because I also have like a 12 step skincare routine and he's been in bed for 30 minutes already and I'm doing my skincare. And then you want to come in and chat, right? Yeah, oh yeah.

Exactly, so from the bathroom I'm like telling him, I'm like, I found this really cool thing online today and he's like, I'm sleeping. I'm like. But then I'm like a morning person. I like, I'm up and out of bed, I go to the gym, then I come home, I'm on fire. I have a whole series on Instagram called good morning, babe where I wake her up

I always bring her coffee and a gift though That's so she gets one little gift and and she gets and she gets her coffee Just the way she can you teach Hector that please because he needs to do she gets her coffee just the way she likes it. Can you teach Hector that please? Cause he needs to do that. Yeah. I would love that. That's my love language is coffee for Sage every morning.

That's so cute, I love that. Okay, so I'm definitely gonna try that. I need to go back through, I've gotten a lot of genetic testing done, and we're not gonna have enough time to go through all that, but I wanna definitely bring you on again, because I wanna talk more about gene mutations and stuff like that. Oh yeah.

CompT is definitely one you wanna to look at, especially women. So CompT just super fast has two variants. We call them warriors or warriors. And the reason for this is if you metabolize catecholamines quickly, which are fear-based neurotransmitters, that means these neurotransmitters are very, very low. You have no fear. And I don't mean you don't have any fear. What I mean is you're not anxious,

you never experience anxiety, you never ruminate on things turning out, you know, worst case scenario. Yeah. Or you don't down-regulate catecholamines, which means you're walking around in an elevated catecholamine state, which means you're walking around in an elevated catecholamine state.

These fight or flight neurotransmitters are elevated. Well, because they are fight or flight, fear based neurotransmitters, you walk around anxious with anxiety. Very often when you ruminate at night, every scenario you consider, you will take to the worst case scenario. Oh yeah. Oh, I jumped to conclusions real fast. Real fast. Yeah. So, you know, this can be a game changer to just take the pressure off

of people overthinking. They will overthink something. They will ruminate something into the mud. You know, sometimes it makes it very hard to make a decision. So this is the difference between warriors and warriors. In women, particularly, because this also affects estrogen metabolism, it very often leads to poor cycling of estrogen, which means that very often estrogen can become the dominant hormone and express its characteristics, mainly water retention and flattening of a mood. So a lot of these women feel like they just can't get out of first gear, right? Like they're on the vacation of a lifetime

with someone they love the most and a place they've always wanted to go, but they just don't feel it. Or maybe they're deeply in love with and very attracted to their spouse, but they don't have any libido. Or they find that they ruminate and consider constantly worst case scenario,

or they overthink things and have a hard time making a decision. These are not mental issues. They're not OCD, ADHD, manic depression, bipolar. They're none of those things. It is an elevation in catecholamines. How can I bring those down? Because a lot of what you're saying

is very much resonating with me right now. And you said those couple of supplements, will those help to bring those catecholamines down and maybe help your body absorb them more? Or what does it dissolve? No doubt. No, it's what they're, so these vitamins and nutrients are involved in the methylation cycle.

So if you look at how nutrients are converted in the human body, there's not a single compound known to mankind, not one, that we put in the human body. There's not a single compound known to mankind, not one, that we put into the human body that is used in the format that we put it in. So without a single exception, everything that enters our body gets broken down and converted into the usable form.

Okay. A lot of this conversion is called methylation. So think of pulling crude oil out of the ground. You can pull crude oil out of the ground, but you can't put crude oil into your gas tank, right? Because the car doesn't understand that fuel source. Crude oil has to be converted to gasoline. Now the car can run.

So you put vitamins, minerals, amino acids, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, all of these things into the human body. When you can't convert them into the usable form, it causes a deficiency. And it is this deficiency that leads to the expression of these conditions. And now we're chasing this mood disorder, or this mental illness, or anxiety, or ADD, or ADHD, or OCD, or any number of other conditions,

when really we haven't looked at the nutrient deficiency. And most of these nutrient deficiencies are very, very common B complexes, methylfolate, trimethylglycine, methylcobalamin, the methylated form of B12, esadenosyl methionine. Things that if we had really nutrient-dense soil and we were eating or drinking mineral-rich water, which is all that used to be bioavailable, and we had all of the right ratios of fatty acids and everything in our food supply, we

would barely be facing these consequences. But because our soil is so depleted, because our food is so non nutrient dense, because we're missing a lot of these methylated nutrients, very often supplementation is the key to just changing the entire trajectory of your life and it's very simple. Yeah, you know what's interesting? I just got some blood work back and my B12 is actually really hot. It was like on the higher end where my doctor was like, I think maybe you only should take your B12 a couple of times a week, not every day.

Well what's interesting is very often high levels of B12 indicate a B12 deficiency in the cell. Oh. Because remember that you're measuring B12 in the serum of the blood unless it was what's called the cellular nutrition assay or a micronutrient assay, where they actually measured intracellular concentration, which it's probably not if you had it done

on a regular panel. It wasn't, I should go back. I'll look through them later and I might reach out to you, if that's okay, and show you. Yeah, because very often what happens is B12 rises in the blood because it's not being metabolized by the cell. So if you're taking a form of B12 called cyanocobalamin, that is classic for not being well metabolized by the cell.

Oh, so I need to be taking which one? You need to be taking methyl, M-E-T-H-Y-L, cobalamin. I think that's the one I take. Or hydroxy, hydroxy cobalamin. So just by switching your form of B12, you see the serum levels in the blood drop because the cell is now using it for fuel. It's just like if you filled up your gas tank, but you never started your engine, the fuel level would never drop. Right?

So if you measure the fuel level and it's high, it can mean that the engine's not running. It's not using it for fuel. As soon as you have an increase in cellular metabolism of B12, then the B12 level returns to normal. Okay. This is really fascinating. I'll check back in with you in a couple months after I take those. Awesome. Yeah, we'll go over a whole supplement protocol before you... Yes. I would love that. Okay. I want to ask you a couple more things before we go. Okay. First of all, we're drinking these little hydrogen tabs right now. And I've heard you talk a lot about hydrogen water. What is the deal with it? Is it actually worth the hype?

It is so worth the hype. I think there truly is, in my opinion, this is top three biohacks, I believe, in the world. There are the people that drink hydrogen water because they're aware of the studies and the people that have just not read the studies. And the studies are absolutely conclusive. These are called H2 tabs. These will cost you less than a dollar a day. And essentially what it is, it's an elemental magnesium that has been pressed into a tablet. When you drop it in water, it effervesces into pure hydrogen gas. Hydrogen gas is the, it's the lightest element in the universe. It's also the most prevalent element in the universe. It's the lightest on the periodic table.

And so it goes everywhere. It can cross the blood-brain barrier very easy. There are some astounding studies on hydrogen. You can go to hydrogenstudies.com, and you can actually, there are 1,335 studies published on there. On the website for DRINK H2 tab, you can go there and go to the clinical study section and see the actual studies on that specific tablet. And what you'll see is a reduction in inflammation, an improvement in telomere lengths. In fact, there's a study on there that was published in the Journal of Experimental Gerontology. It was published in November of 2021.

And this is a particularly interesting study because they took groups of men and women age 70 and older. A lot of times they'll do these trials on younger, healthier people. And they had, it was a six-month study, and they had one group drinking hydrogen rich water, and they had one group just drinking regular water. And in the hydrogen rich water group, sit-stand ratio improved, focus and concentration improved. They used something called Tet-2, which was a marker of methylation. Their methylation cycle improved. Their inflammatory markers dropped. TNF-alpha,

creatine phosphokinase, the C-reactive protein, serious markers of inflammation, even homocysteine. They nearly universally reported better sleep. Their cognitive scores improved and they had an increase in telomeres, which in older ages is very, very hard to do. And I used to be a big fan of these hydrogen water bottles, and I promoted them pretty heavily.

But I realized that you have to be cautious because a lot of people will put tap water into those bottles. I was wondering about that, yeah. And they have a proton exchange membrane. It makes hydrogen gas through electrolysis. So if you put chlorinated water in there, you have the chance of creating chlorine gas. Ooh. And also these proton exchange membranes in these bottles break down over time.

So if you... Initially, they make high part per million hydrogen water, but five or six months later, they're making virtually no hydrogen water. There's tons of Chinese fakes out there you have to be cautious of. But elemental magnesium, pressed into a tablet, will give you 12 parts-per-million hydrogen every time you drink it. And you'll notice it immediately. Like, you'll notice an immediate improvement in, like,

your focus, concentration concentration your alertness There's another interesting study that was comparing hydrogen water to caffeine side-by-side study They've they've done studies comparing soaking injured limbs in hydrogen rich water and comparing it to the rice protocol the you know rest ice compress elevate protocol they they've put hydrogen tablets in the buccal fold for athletes immediately after receiving a concussion and looked at how it downgraded the concussive cascade. I mean, I think it'll be as common as a multivitamin in five years.

Wow, that's fascinating. And this is also, I like the tablet form better because I have one of those bottles actually that I got at your event. And for me, I travel so much that it would be so much easier for me to just bring the tablet. Oh, it's so easy. And have to bring another bottle with me because I'm already traveling with so much stuff.

If you fly, I mean, you have to be drinking hydrogen water because you can just take that tablet and drop it in a bottle of water because at altitude you've got increased radiation, you've got, you definitely have, you know, static electricity, you've got dry air, and you have loss of barometric pressure. And so if you really want to negate the effects of travel, like the next time you either have a headache or you have a poor night's sleep, drop two of those H2 tabs into a glass of water and just drink it back.

And instantly you will feel... Wow. Will that help with migraines? My brother-in-law gets really bad migraines. Two things I find, you know, are really good with migraines. You know, there was a really interesting study published in the Wiley Journal of Headaches looking at the inverse relationship between sodium and migraine headaches. I think we've been lied to a lot about sodium. Oh, for sure.

I totally agree. You know, I tell people if you were so dehydrated right this moment that you landed in the emergency room, the first thing they would give you is saline IV. If your blood pressure were so elevated that you called 911, you know, the first thing that paramedics would do when they got on site is they would bag saline were so elevated that you called 911. You know, the first thing that paramedics would do

when they got on site is they would bag saline to lower your blood pressure. And so when you talk about headaches, you know, it's important to understand that even though we believe headaches are coming from our brain, we feel like they're coming from our brain, that's not possible.

Because the brain doesn't have pain receptors. It doesn't generate pain signal. So your brain is not capable of't have pain receptors. It doesn't it doesn't generate pain signal So your brain is not capable of generating a pain signal it can receive a pain signal from somewhere else in the body, but it cannot create one and So where is the pain coming from? It's generally coming from the covering of the brain called the dura So imagine a piece of saran wrap kind of stretched over the brain the dura really hates two things It hates being stretched and it hates being contracted. So what's causing it to stretch or contract?

Sodium. So I can't even tell you, and I'm not a physician, so I can't get medical advice, but I cannot tell you how many hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of migraine sufferers have put migraine headaches into permanent remission by adding mineral salt to their water in the morning. So I just texted him two days ago and I said, get these electrolytes, you need to be adding them

to every time you drink water. That's amazing. Okay, well this actually kind of correlates with the last question I was gonna ask you. What is maybe one to three things that people could start doing tomorrow that they will really start to dramatically see a shift in their health?

So I would say of all the things that you could do, be intentional about your sleep because I believe that sleep is our human superpower. And it's probably the most bullied thing in our schedule. It's kind of like the stepchild in our day. If you ask most people about their sleep routine, they'll just say I just go to sleep When do you go to sleep whenever I'm done with stuff for my day? Drive for a week Just doing some simple exercises if you're a ruminator

I Actually, it's not my product, but I take something called magnesium breakthrough from bio-optimizers. It's all seven forms of magnesium. A lot of people don't do well with melatonin or magnesium 3 and 8. Methylfolate is also excellent and very safe to take at night for people that ruminate. Try a contrast shower before bed because if you get into a shower, you run the water very hot on your spine,

step out of that stream of water, and you step back into a very cold stream of water, just for 30 seconds, you can break that catecholamine cycle. And then before you get in bed, darken your room, invest in a $10 soft cotton sleep mask, probably one of the best investments you'll ever make. You'd be so surprised how little candle wattage

coming through your eyelids can raise your cortisol level. Blue light is particularly terrible at that. And when you tell people not to be on their phone at night, it's a hard thing, so you can wear red light glasses or you can change the settings in your phone so it's red light, because most people are going to be on their phones at night. I do a breathwork technique in addition to that, where when I lay down

in bed, I just do, they call it, uh, natural Xanax it's, it's a long, slow inhale through the nose, followed by about a three to five second pause. And then you breathe out through a straw. And when you do that, it sounds crazy, but it really works. Think about taking all the thoughts in your head and breathing them down into your lungs, and then hold those thoughts in your lungs and breathe them out through the straw.

And continue to do that. As they enter, just grab them and breathe them into your lungs and breathe them out through a straw. I would say for free, those are, or next to nothing, those are some of the things that you can do to start to tell your body that it's time to go to sleep. The other thing you can try is setting an alarm to go to bed.

Most people don't think about that. But all of the data is in, whoop data, sleep data, eight sleep data, consistency in bedtime. We're such circadian creatures. We're really tied. Our bodies crave routine. And so let's say that you wanna go to bed at 10 o'clock.

Set an alarm for 9.45, start your sleep routine, and just put yourself in bed at 10 o'clock. Keep that alarm for 9.45, start your sleep routine, and just put yourself in bed at 10 o'clock. Keep that little promise that you make to yourself. And the second thing I would say is, in the morning, my favorite cocktail to start the day is eight to 10 ounces of filtered water with a hydrogen tablet, so that you've infused the water with hydrogen gas.

A quarter to a half a teaspoon of a mineral salt. I add something called Perfect Amino, which is also not my product, but I add something called Perfect Amino because it has all nine of the essential amino acids. None of that will break a fast. You will hydrate and mineralize the body.

You would be shocked how many people are mineral and fluid deficient. Dehydration and mineral deficiency has all kinds of consequences that we don't link to the kinds of symptoms that we're suffering from. And minerals are one of the things that we don't put a lot of focus on. We focus on macros, protein, carbohydrates, fats,

but we don't really think about the minerals. And a mineral salt is a super cheap biohack. Yeah, and it tastes great in the morning. I love to add a little bit of lemon too, and it's great. We've so demonized salt. I love drinking salt in my water. It's so good. It is so good.

It's so good. Well, I have so many more questions that I wanna address with you, so I wanna bring you back, because I'm like, I got it. Oh really, oh, we address with you. So I want to bring you back. Oh, really? Oh, we got all those. I would love to come back on. I would love to have you back on.

This is so fascinating. You're such a wealth of knowledge and it's just amazing what you're doing. I literally have witnessed since I've been here today, how many people you've been helping. I mean, you got a call right before the podcast with someone that you've been helping and I just, I'm so grateful for all the work that you're doing and just thank you so much for, you're just putting out amazing help for people in the world and it's truly incredible to witness.

And I just wanna say thank you and honor you for- That's really kind of you. For what you're doing. That's really kind of you. And I'll put links to any of the studies I referred to. I'll give you those, you can put them in the show notes. Links to any of the suggestions that I made on the podcast so your listeners can find it. Yeah.

Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. Amazing. Thank you so much for listening to the Real Foodology podcast. This is a Wellness Loud production produced by Drake Peterson and mixed by Mike Fry. Theme song is by Georgie. You can watch the full video version of this podcast inside the Spotify app or on YouTube.

As always, you can leave us a voicemail by clicking the link in our bio. And if you like this episode, please rate and review on your podcast app. For more shows by my team, go to WellnessLoud.com. See you next time. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and doesn't constitute a provider-patient relationship. I am a nutritionist, but I am not your nutritionist.

As always, talk to your doctor or your health team first.