the bossbabe podcast - 158. The Secrets Behind The Energy Formula With Shawn Wells

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

Join BossBabe Co-Founders Natalie Ellis & Danielle Canty and special guest Shawn Wells as they dive into biohacking and how you can use it to achieve peak performance in your life. Use code “BOSSBABE20” to save 20% on Soul CBD: https://www.mysoulcbd.com/ Use code “BOSSBABE” to save 15% on Organifi: https://www.organifishop.com/ “The Energy Formula” by Shawn Wells: https://amzn.to/3fxZzeR GlucoVantage (dihydroberberine): https://amzn.to/3sXZbu5 MitoBurn (L-BAIBA): https://amzn.to/2PkyAsx MitoPrime (L-Ergothioneine): https://amzn.to/3ueJgaO CaloriBurn GP (Grains of Paradise): https://amzn.to/3rPwXzX Follow:  BossBabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie: @iamnatalie Danielle: @daniellecanty Shawn: @shawnwells

okay i couldn't be more excited to share this episode sponsor with you because it's a brand that i've been using and sharing organically for a really really long time so this episode is sponsored by soul cbd i've been using soul cbd consistently for over 18 months now and please do not take it lightly when I tell you that it has been a game changer for me and so many people that I know. I've noticed a really big difference in a lot of ways so I'll just dive into a couple specifically but firstly my deep sleep. You know I track absolutely everything I do in regards to my sleep with my aura ring so when I take sleep supplements I do them individually so I can see which ones actually make a difference. I'm all

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one bottle, I know you're going to be hooked because it really, really changes the game for your sleep. And then the second thing, you know I'm all about reducing stress in every shape and form but like you know entrepreneurship is not always the easiest career option so if I feel like I'm having an overly challenging day and notice any anxiety creeping in I take some CBD I have it in my desk drawer both at home and in the office and I just take a dropper of it under the tongue and within half an hour I also I feel so different so much lighter so much less anxious and stressed I love this product I know you'll love this product and that's why I'm so excited to genuinely continue sharing it with you so listeners of this podcast can actually get 20% off on sole CBD products using

code boss babe their top products are the tincture that i mentioned gummies which taste so good bath bombs and sleep capsules their products are 100 organic zero thc and third party tested and you can get them at my soul cbd.com and whilst i can speak to my personal experiences using soul cbd our bodies are all different so please consult a doctor or other medical professional prior to deciding if cbd is right for. Also worth noting that I live in California where it is legal to purchase and use CBD so just give it a little check to see if it's legal where you are. Challenge yourself with new tasks all the time. The worst thing we can do is just get set in our ways, set in our box and it wasn't until I moved into the plant medicine space that I learned to just love myself. And it's not an achievement. It's a state of being that I can

be sexy now. I can be happy now. I can be successful now. Welcome back to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. I'm Natalie Ellis, co-founder and CEO of Boss Babe. And I'm Danielle Canty, president of Boss Babe. And we together are your co-hosts for this episode. So if you spend literally any time around me, then you'll know how obsessed, like truly obsessed I am with understanding how my body works, what my deficiencies are, and how I can have more energy. I really think energy is the number one thing that we get to

focus on. So I'm really, really excited about today's episode because we've got Sean Wells joining us to talk all about biohacking. Yeah, and I feel like if biohacking is new to you, I really, really want you to listen to this episode because Sean is breaking it all the way down and sharing the science behind biohacking and also why it actually works. And it's a perfect episode if you are kind of interested in any health, wellness, supplements. We literally do a whole deep dive on supplements, which you are going to absolutely love. And I feel like you're just going to take so many things away from this episode, whereas sometimes biohacking can be really confusing. This is just going to break it down. So as always, take a screenshot and share your biggest takeaways on Instagram stories,

tagging myself at danialkanti, tag Natalie at IamNatalie and tag at bossbabe.inc. A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself, confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Okay, so Sean, one thing that I always say as an entrepreneur and just generally as an ambitious person, your energy is everything. It's the thing behind how you show up. And if I look back at what I think's made me successful,

it's having the energy to show up every day and actually get shit done, not procrastinating. And when you have a terrible night's sleep and you wake up and you're tired, you don't feel your best, you're just really unable to perform. And I know that your zone of genius is energy and performance. So I want to grill you on how we can really equip all the ambitious women listening to this with the

best energy possible. So can we start with what are the signs that someone maybe isn't performing at their best? Maybe they've been performing like this for years, but there's a few things off. What are the signs that they could be optimizing even more? So first off, that's a great point about showing up. I believe that we're in the right place, right time, all the time, except we're heads down. We're just not aware. There's so many opportunities. There's so many right people that we're next to, people that we could meet that could change our lives. There's like a great event that's happening. There's something around us all the time, but we're just heads down and we're not aware because we're surviving and not thriving. And that's a massive

difference. You're waiting for like this right time to come along. You're waiting for this manifestation, but it's there all day, every day. But as far as the signs, I would say feeling like you're exhausted, feeling like you can't make new decisions. There's actually data that shows that new decisions are harder ones to make and it takes more brain energy. So when we're tired, our neurons are actually firing slower. That's why we wake up and we need the coffee, the caffeine, the sugar, whatever, because our neurons are actually firing slower. We're in a brain fog. And so we're more likely to make bad food choices, to not go to the gym, to do things that are less energy intensive, and that will be counterproductive.

I totally agree with that, the whole decision fatigue. And we can come to that later down the line, how we can install like habits, because I think they're really, really powerful to like, you know, help you guide you along the way. So I want to come back to that. So that's a really good point. That's amazing. Yes, that's the actual term. That's great. But insulin resistance happens when you don't get enough sleep. When you get six and a half hours or less sleep, you become acutely insulin resistant. And so you can't get energy into those neurons as well. So that's why we want that sugar. And again, that caffeine, we feel that fatigue and it can actually lead to insulin resistance chronically when we don't get enough sleep. And that can lead to diabetes, coronary heart disease, and pro-aging, pro-disease. So we need to get our sleep. And that's definitely one way that

we need to show up as well-rested. That's so interesting. I always wondered what it was about when you have a bad night's sleep, you're just craving sugar and you're craving that rush. And I'm insulin resistant. I have PCOS. The foundation of that is insulin resistance. And every single time we talk about hormone imbalances, insulin resistance comes up. And I get so many DMs personally from women saying, I relate to all of those symptoms. So whether it's acute, it's just from a bad night's sleep, or whether it's something that someone might have more chronically, what are the signs and symptoms of insulin resistance?

It leads to practically everything. And the primary one is going to be mitochondrial dysfunction. Mitochondria are those little energy powerhouses in the cell that make the ATP, the energy currency in the body, right? And in the body, there's a term known as insufficient cellular energy. It's an acronym called ICE. And then in the brain, with a lot of neurological conditions, it's known as brain energy gap. Basically, it's a shortfall in energy not being made that your body needs. And so that's a problem that we will show up, like you're saying, with less energy than

we should have. And then on top of that, you're heading down that road towards what's called inflammation, glycation, and oxidation. These three things are happening more rapidly because we're not making enough energy. The mitochondria start dysfunctioning because they're working too hard, and there's not enough of them. When you do things that are healthy for you, like fasting, the ketogenic diet, exercise, you actually get something called mitochondrial biogenesis where you make more mitochondria. So you have more powerhouses in the body and you can produce

more energy and you won't have that shortfall. But when you're insulin resistant, you're not getting enough glucose in the cell to produce enough energy. And so you're in this consistent state of not having enough cellular energy and feeling tired and your body trying to compensate. And then you're running into, like I was saying, inflammation, glycation, oxidation. You're in a state of pro-aging. Your telomeres, which is a term for basically on the DNA, like how quickly you're aging. They look like shoelaces and they unravel. And the shorter they get, the more aged you are. And then also you're getting disease at a higher rate too. Almost all diseases, about 99% of diseases are

not genetic. They're metabolic. So almost all the diseases that we have, like cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, PCOS, all these things are as a result of metabolic dysfunction with things like insulin resistance, with things like mitochondrial dysfunction. I think as well, just for the listeners, that'd be really powerful just to break down what you mean by metabolic versus genetics. I think that's something that is really powerful to understand. It's something that happens as a result of what we're doing to our bodies. Metabolism is what's going on all the time in our bodies. We're metabolic. It's not just weight loss, like I think people think with metabolism.

It's just things happening in the body, the chemistry happening in the body. And the main one is energy production and energy utilization. So that's where we get into that mitochondrial dysfunction, that energy shortfall, that insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is really almost correlated to all these things like pro-aging, pro-disease, inflammation, glycation, oxidation. So when we have a poor diet, when we don't get enough exercise, when we have too much stress, when we're not getting enough sleep, insulin gets elevated and energy is lower.

And so all these diseases, sorry, like come from that. And there's very few that are inborn genetic errors that we're born with. Obviously, like if you have disease where you don't have a spinal cord or something like that's like, okay, that's a disease that you don't have a spinal cord or something like that's like okay that's a disease that's that you're born with but these things are the result of what we're doing to our bodies throughout our lives i always like to kind of think about it like a car right so it's not that the car has been built without an engine or it's not been built missing stuff it's like it's the fuel that you put into it i think that's why natty and I are so, like I've always said,

obviously my background is in healthcare. You're only going to be as successful as you're physically and mentally capable of being. And what I mean by that is like you say, what is the fuel that you're putting into ourselves? And what are we running off? And I think that's like what you're saying as well. It's like, you know what? Like there's, yes, there are some things

and diseases and stuff that unfortunately are caused by genetics, but there is an awful lot of them which are metabolic, I would describe it. describing and that's you can be influencing those metabolic diseases by the fuel that you're putting into your body which is why i'm so excited in this podcast we're going to talk about some of those things that we can make sure that we're doing and some of those basics of biohacking or actually just like what are the basics of good fuel for our bodies which means that we do have good energy and our outputs are really

strong and we don't run into more metabolic diseases. So what are some of those things that someone's just starting at ground zero? Because I think a lot of conversations happen in this space where they're like so high level, like, yeah, take all of these supplements, add all these things on. But like some people are not even doing the basics. What are some of the key things that everyone should make sure that they're doing to ensure that they have good energy? Like maybe like your top five. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite

all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know, I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year.

So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business you know. Get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. Can I go back before we get into that? Because did I hear you say ATP is energy currency? Yeah. So as a businesswoman, I'm like, okay, I want more currency. I want to address whatever the problem is and I want to

throw currency at it. So when we're talking about something like insulin resistance and when we're talking about performance, which is exactly what Danielle's talking about, are we talking about at a cellular level, we do the work to give ourselves more currency? Is that step one?

Or do we address something like insulin resistance as the root cause, which gives ourselves more energy? Like which comes first? That's a great question. That's a really interesting philosophical question. I think like both are true that we can work on things like taking NAD IVs or NAD supplements or doing the ketogenic diet and extended fasting, intermittent fasting, cold plunges, and hot saunas, things that may help our mitochondria function better,

but also having less stress in your life, doing gratitude journaling and doing affirmations and getting your sleep. These things will help dramatically. I feel even more. I feel like those things, answering your question too, Daniel, like those things are foundational. To me, I was biohacking most of my life to survive what I was doing to myself. As an entrepreneur, I was more of the wounded entrepreneur that was constantly trying to prove myself, to level up through achievement that I could be sexy, happy, successful through achievement. When I got to this certain level, then they would love me and then I would love myself. And I was always trying to level up and I did. I leveled up 10,

20 times. I was in the biggest rooms making the most amount of money with the nicest cars and all the things and accolades and credentials after my letters letters after my name, all that stuff. But meanwhile, I never loved myself. And meanwhile, I was having severe depression, suicidal thoughts, having autoimmune issues with chronic fatigue syndrome, Epstein-Barr, fibromyalgia, Hashimoto's. I was going through chronic pain, not getting enough sleep on a chronic basis because of stress. And then I wasn't sleeping. So I was getting more stress, like all this stuff. And that led to me being low energy, but trying to find all these cool hacks to survive what I was doing to my body. And it wasn't until I moved into the plant medicine space that I learned to just love

myself. And it's not an achievement. It's a state of being. That I can be sexy now. I can be happy now. I can be successful now. And that changed my life pretty dramatically. That I made that my foundation. And my body relaxed. I moved into a parasympathetic state far more often.

Which is a much lower state of energy. It's like putting your phone on battery saver where you can recover and rest and repair. I think I was always in what's called a sympathetic nervous system state. That's like fight, flight or freeze. And I probably had two modes, sympathetic, which is hustle. And then I was in grind mode, which is ultra sympathetic. I was always hypervigilant. And you can just imagine what that's doing to my body and the energy demands of that. When I'm in self-loathing, when I'm always go, go, go, when I'm getting four hours

of sleep a night, when I'm pushing, pushing, pushing. So I had all the biohacks, so I wasn't dead. But that's where like, if I have the foundation where I love myself and I take care of my body and I get into parasympathetic modes and I do the affirmations the gratitude the yoga the breath work then I can add all these cool optimizations on top of that and be healthier yeah and I think that's where my problem with all of these top fives and quick hacks, because we talk about them a lot on the podcast. And if anyone wants to listen to those, we have so many episodes on it. But at the end of the day, you could be like you say, foot on the gas from 8am till 10pm. Then you get the sleep, then you're doing the red light, you're drinking enough

water, you're taking your supplements, but you're still not feeling good, then like you say, there's something else that needs to be addressed. Because doing all the biohacks, it's like, great, but are you really addressing what's at the root, which sometimes it is trauma, you were talking about plant medicine work and therapy, all of those things can help you address the root, which I think sometimes takes away that barrier to consistency. So many of us can relate to getting on the exercise wagon and we're like, yeah, I'm going to work out five times this week. And in a month, you look back and you've barely worked out. And it's not because you're a bad person. It's not because you're lazy. It's because there's something fundamentally not

clicking there for you. So you were saying as kind of like a foundational set, plant medicine was a really interesting way for you to start getting over that? It was massively transformative for me, like, to be in a cuddle puddle with people on the floor, just feeling love in a way that I think I'd spent most of my life trying to achieve and impress people. And I was certainly always loving and giving. I think you guys have figured that out about me, but I didn't leave a whole lot of energy for myself. I feel like I was always giving it away, giving every little bit like that I had. And to be in this space and not have to impress anyone and just be there, just laying with people that were loving me and I was loving them.

And to be all the vigilance, all the proving myself, like just go to zero and just be in this almost like childlike innocence, just a real joy. It's to allow your body to feel that allows your nervous system to reset, allows your brain to be more neuroplastic and accept. If I tell someone, hey, you just need to love yourself, they'd be like, oh, cool. Thanks. All right. I'll talk to you later. It's not something that you just take on and accept. But when you're in that space and you feel it in your heart and in your brain, it's so different. And it's an imprint that you can accept. And then, you know, that's a guidepost that I can go back to because now I know how it feels.

And that's so different. And I had never really felt that open love before for myself, certainly. And the other thing I got from it was that I didn't need to just keep grinding, keep going straight forward on the path I'm already on. I had this epiphany that if something's exciting to me, something lights me up, I can just go chase that. And that's amazing that freedom and it literally felt like freedom. I can just go chase things. And that's what I'm doing now. I'm like, I was just purely in supplements before, but now I'm branching out and I'm doing a lot of branding work. I'm doing speaking engagements and I'm doing masterminds and building them out and just stuff that excites me, helping companies go to sale and bringing all my creativity and passion to the table and just finding the things that light me up with the people that light me up. And that's so exciting. I don't have to be one thing. What about for the person listening to this? That's like, okay, what's plant medicine? It sounds to me like you just took a bunch of drugs and you're sitting loving on everyone. This sounds a bit strange. Like, what is it? What would you say

to that person? Yeah, that's a great question. So they can also get called power plants or it's things like psilocybin, like the magic mushrooms. It's MDMA, which is also called ecstasy. Although sometimes that gets combined with stimulants, so that can be counterproductive to health. But pure MDMA can be like a bliss experience. There's things like ayahuasca that you're probably hearing about, DMT, which is the spirit molecule, if you will. There's all of these things that can lead to an awakening, tapping into higher self, maybe joy or bliss and a shedding, at least temporarily, of the stress and the sympathetic nervous system. That's where these compounds are pretty amazing. And I've done many journeys now, and I'm in a state where it's been so helpful for me to tap into, I think primarily tap into higher self. like the stuff I know that is true that I'm

denying all the time in like day-to-day life, the things that you know you should get to, or the decision you know you should make, or the relationship you know you should leave, or whatever it is, you're denying your truth. And when you step into the state, that's no longer an option. You know what your truth is so clearly that you can fully step into it and shed that lack of alignment. I think the plant medicine space is so interesting right now. There's so much research going on now. And people who listen to this podcast know I love an analogy. I've heard it kind of being particularly like psilocybin, like if you think about your brain and when it's snowed and there's all these tracks like so you drive a car and so what happens is

like you look at these tracks on a daily basis and your brain will go into the tracks that were already marked and just like you're talking about that rewiring pattern and I've heard it described as it's almost like it snows again you know that fresh covering and the plant medicine helps you make those new tracks and allows you to kind of grain new pathways out but then you can rewire slightly so i just think yeah it's such an interesting space right now and i've heard so many people have good benefits of it so i'm excited for us to talk more about that on the podcast actually but i really appreciate you sharing your experience and i know like you say it's been massive for you like say and allowing you to harness the energy into different areas of your life.

Neurons that fire together wire together. Over time, these things anchor and become like set, like you're talking about. As we get older, there's ways that we get smarter and less smart. Like for new tasks, we get less smart. When we're younger, we're able to have more fluid intelligence, which is the ability to take on new tasks, which is related to a protein in the brain called BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, that's associated with more neuroplasticity, the ability to rewire and take on those new tasks. But as we get older, we get better at crystallized intelligence of those things getting finer

and finer and finer together, like that wiring together. So we make faster and faster shortcuts. And so we get better at taking that same way to work all the time. We learned all the shortcuts. We can almost do it in our sleep. And one thing that you can do besides plant medicine to enhance neuroplasticity is challenge yourself with new tasks all the time. The worst thing we can do is just get set in our ways, set in our box. One of the best things is going to be going to new places like restaurants or traveling to new places as a tourist, like learning new languages, listening to new music that isn't your usual, trying new food, putting

your belt on a different way, like brushing your teeth with the opposite hand. All of that stuff helps neuroplasticity. There's also supplements that you can take that help with that too. And polyphenols are helpful, like things like resveratrol and red wine or EGCG and green tea. Polyphenols are amazing. Cacao, so eating your chocolate helps with that. So that's, I'm sure, exciting to hear. Any excuse. The boss babe family. But yeah, there's actually a green coffee berry. It's high in chlorogenic acid and it has data on increasing BDNF. And so does lion's mane, the mushroom that enhances neuroplasticity as well. And after a few journeys, one thing that was really important to me was to be able to get a reference point so that I didn't have to take plant medicine to feel a certain way or to get

to a certain mindset and so I think that's been one of the interesting things is getting that reference point so that every morning when I do my morning routine I can get to that place and I can access that place or when I do meditation breathwork things like that and that's been really powerful. And so I'm really curious, how can we biohack that reference point? Because you've just mentioned a bunch of supplements and different things that we can do. So how can someone listening start to get into that place? Maybe they have done plant medicine or they're totally not interested in doing it, but they do want to deepen their rituals or deepen where they're at.

Yeah. So NLP, there's a technique which I've taken and I'm now certified as a practitioner in. There's a technique called anchoring. So things that your senses can connect to that thing, like when you're feeling really good, for example, if you want to anchor a feeling of joy or happiness, you can actually touch like they teach this in NLP, like touch, let's say your pinky knuckle. And you continually do that. Every time you're feeling good, you're feeling happy, there's a great song on which is chaining anchors. You can actually have multiple senses.

You can smell a certain smell, like maybe you spray Palo Santo or lavender or whatever. And then you put on that certain song that is the song that makes you feel a certain way. It will transform your mood. It will anchor these things. So it'll bring you right back. And I'm sure people have experienced that.

And they've heard a song that brings them right back. And you almost have all the senses. So you can chain these anchors physically, like I said, or with different senses. And you can put yourself in that space. That's something that you can do. It could be feeling safe. It could be feeling relaxed. It could be feeling joyful. It could be feeling creative. You can actually choose different anchors. You can actually choose different knuckles. They actually teach you this in NLP. You can press them all if you get good

enough at repeating it and you can get a series of emotions so it's very cool that would be something i would suggest i love that that's so interesting so going back to what we were talking about at the beginning we were touching on insulin resistance and talking about addressing it at the root but for the women listening that perhaps do have those health issues showing up whether it's insulin resistance or it's hormone imbalances, maybe it's chronic fatigue, where could they start from a diet perspective or lifestyle perspective? What could they start incorporating into their days that might support them in moving through this? That's a really great question. And I feel like the most important part, like in the book,

I talk about keto and carnivore and vegan and Mediterranean and all these different diets and paleo. But the most important thing, I believe, is getting whole food first and foremost. And that's what's changed over the last hundred years when we've moved from processed food to even now it's called ultra processed food. And then we have engineered food for bliss point, which triggers dopamine release in the brain. That's what the sugar and the fat and the different senses that you have in terms of gustatory experience from your tongue. You have crunchy and you have gooey and you have sweet and salty and like a food in nature might

have one or two of those things. Now these foods that we're buying have five of those things. And so your brain is literally having a foodgasm and it overrides satiety. You're not feeling full because it's just addicted. And ultra processed food, I mean, we have the high glycemic carbohydrate with the corn syrup and the maltodextrin. We have the GMOs, the antibiotics, the artificial flavors, colors, and sweeteners, the hormones, all these things that are going on the glyphosate. Obviously, if we can get to whole food, that's ideal. I know people that are incredibly healthy on vegan and incredibly healthy on carnivore and anything in between. And the common thread is whole food. It's what we've gotten away from. And it's why animals don't get sick eating one or the other or anything in

between. It's the change that we've had in our world over the last hundred years with being ultra-processed in our food. So that's what's most important. I would say if you were insulin resistant or you're heading into metabolic dysfunction, if you have some obesity in particular, that keto is going to be the most effective way to hack that insulin resistance and lose weight the fastest, along with pairing it with the holy trinity, if you will, is keto, paleo, and intermittent fasting. That's going to be the best way to execute, but I'd like to probably add just one thing at a time so that you're not overwhelming yourself and getting too stressed out. And you know what each one feels like, especially with keto, because you're

switching from that insulin resistance where you're trying to only use glucose for fuel to an alternate fuel source of ketones where you don't have that insulin resistance. So for people that are insulin resistant, it can be you're turning the lights on. Not only does it help with weight loss, but you're getting energy that you haven't had in a long time. That can be super helpful. And just on the keto piece as well, I also think it's really important to just remember you started off by talking about the whole foods piece. Because I know that some people do keto. It's like the same with like vegans as well.

There's like the healthy version, the unhealthy version i know people who do keto and they literally have like sachets all the time or like they'll do really really like high animal fat foods that maybe are not like the best forms of fats and i think just like you say coming back to the whole food coming back to okay what can i cook what can i make is also just really important when doing any of these quote-unquote diets like for me home-cooked food you know what's going in it you can control that environment is really important and i just have a quick question out of curiosity do you as well believe that you should try where possible to do organic foods when you're doing these pieces as well oh a thousand percent i mean one you're avoiding like things like glyphosate and gmos and things like that glyphosate is roundup which is a carcinogen. I assume most of your

listeners probably heard about that, but it's all over all of our foods. But beyond that, when they're grown in a biodynamic way, in a sustainable way, in a way where the soil is rich with these organisms like the probiotics, it's rich with the minerals, that soil is going to nourish that fruit or that vegetable in a much better way than getting something that's not from organic sources for sure. I mean, there's so many ways that like you're saying, you can have lazy or dirty keto and it'll work for weight loss, but it's not necessarily making you healthier or the best option. And same with carnivore, you could eat hot dogs and spam and do carnivore or you could have Coca Cola and gummy bears with vegan, it's not a healthy way.

And that's where like, that's what I'm saying. The most important part is that whole food piece and certainly getting the best quality whole food like you can with organic like you're saying. Okay, so I want to interrupt this episode quickly to tell you about a brand that I am completely obsessed with. So if you watch my my stories you'll know that every single morning I make a smoothie with organifi protein it is the best tasting protein I have ever found I am completely obsessed with it and I don't just use it in smoothies I use the vanilla protein to make protein pancakes and I use the chocolate protein to make brownies. So it kind of takes the guilt out of it and you get tons of protein in say brownies or anything else you're baking. It's such a good addition

because it tastes so so good. So I've already talked about protein. I talk about it every single day. I want to tell you about something else. So I'm all about focus, productivity, all the things. Obviously the way you look after your brain is really important but they also say that your second brain is in important but they also say that your second brain is in your gut and I haven't actually found another product that does this but Organifi Pure actually works with both brains so it's focused on gut and brain health so it hydrates it detoxifies it provides digestive support it's focused and memory enhancing it increases brain divide derived neurotropic factor.

It is absolutely incredible. And it's got so much good stuff in there. Lion's Mane, you know that I'm a massive fan of including mushrooms every single day in smoothies. We even had Lifecycle on here to talk about their mushroom blends. I absolutely love them. It actually Lion's Mane inside this. It also has organic apple cider vinegar probiotics digestive enzymes aloe vera it's really really amazing and i typically have it every single day around two or three whenever i kind of get that energy focus slump if i've had a really crazy day i have a glass of that and it really really boosts my brain and just makes me feel way more awake without the caffeine so i'm a big fan so if you want to check out, as well as tons of other products that I really, really love at Organifi, get the proteins, get the Organifi Pure

and also get the chocolate gold. It's amazing. You can use the code BOSSBABE and save 15% on everything. So that's BOSSBABE at Organifi. So use the code BOSSBABE, 15% off at Organifi.com. And I'll let us dive back into the episode. So here's one of my challenges with something that you said, when you were talking about obesity and insulin resistance and keto, because I know there's probably a lot of women in my situation where I can't afford to lose any weight. Like the minute I do, I notice a big impact on my periods. It's just not good for me. But when I cut out carbs and I go keto, weight just drops off me very quickly. And I find it hard to get my calories up on a keto diet. So what about women like that

who really aren't trying to lose weight in some instances might just be trying to keep their weight at a healthy level. Some might even need to gain weight. How do you manage that? Yeah, that's a great question, too. I love these questions. It's really individualized. Some people have that anorectic effect, like the high satiety signaling, which means they're just not as hungry on keto. And usually the higher fat you go, the more that's the case. So I would say I would trend towards a higher protein version of keto or just a low carb diet and not necessarily like keto tends to be very high fat. And when you eat high fat, it just, for me, same thing, especially if I go zero carb and high fat, like carnivore

or something like that, like my appetite just gets crushed. So I would say just experiment with a lower glycemic diet, a lower sugar diet and do low carb and start there and see how that goes for you. You can do higher protein and not necessarily higher fat. And then what about if you're in the situation where so I use continuous blood glucose monitor. And I know that so many of you listening do because so many of you have used my code. I use one of those to track my blood sugar. And I know that if I have a heavy carb meal, my blood sugar spikes, it's very obvious, I've got the data. But if I pair it with something like if I pair carbs with high protein, my blood sugar might not spike. So in that situation, would you still take carbs away?

Or would you say, oh, if you're actually learning the food pairings, then you can be more flexible. That's a great point to one, when you have the carbs, you can look for lower glycemic carbs, higher fiber, higher resistant starch, like lower sugar kind of things if you're going to have carbs, but certainly pairing it with protein or pairing it with fat can lower the glycemic impact that's having on your blood glucose. But another factor I would throw in here is that having a spike in blood sugar and as a result, insulin isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's how long blood glucose and insulin stay elevated. And ultimately, in science, it's called area under the curve, the AUC, like that matters.

So you actually like look at a graph, how big that curve is, how long it's taking to come back down. That's the issue. It's fine if it spikes way up and comes back down to baseline pretty quickly, but it's when it stays elevated that it's a problem and you start running into insulin resistance. So one thing I was going to tell you about one of my hacks, something that I've patented and worked heavily on, and I think is literally the most important ingredient people should be taking, and it's a great point about PCOS or if you're insulin resistant or people that are working on improving their glycemic response like you're talking about with the CGM, is taking berberine, which is the

herbal equivalent of metformin. And berberine was shown head-to-head to be superior to metformin. And metformin got actually pulled off the market last year for being tainted. It lowers B12. So there's some issues there and it has some GI distress. But I've patented a form of berberine that at the gut level, berberine converts to dihydroberberine. So there isn't the GI distress that sometimes some people get with berberine. Plus it's about five to 10 times more bioavailable and lasts about two times as long in the plasma. So you can literally use this with your CGM and see a dramatic difference. I love that you're mentioning that and especially

around the biohacking conversation because in the biohacking space right now, metformin is getting so many reviews from men that are taking it from an anti-aging perspective. So how do you feel about that? Because it does have a lot of GI side effects, but they're still doing it because they're thinking it's going to help them live longer. So it's pretty powerful. That's why I'm saying I would say this is the number one thing you should be taking. There was a study that they took it for 90 days, metformin, along with a couple other things like DHEA, GH, growth hormone, and something else, maybe zinc, I'm thinking. But in that study, the 90 days, according to biomarkers, they were going to live two years

longer. And so that's pretty dramatic. And there's a study going on right now with metformin with 3,000 participants. It's so powerful. Like that's a massive study. But like I said, I mean, berberine head to head is superior to it. And then dihydroberberine is five to 10 times better than that. So to me, the reason that metformin works that way, going back to what we were talking about, is that it's helping with insulin resistance. It's a glucose disposal agent. So it's lowering blood glucose levels, like fasting blood glucose levels, and improving your insulin sensitivity. So your blood glucose is lower, your ketones are higher, and you're getting back to baseline faster with that insulin

sensitivity. And you're lowering what's called advanced glycation end products that are literally aptly named as ages that age you. And you're also lowering that glycation, the blood sugar damage, the inflammation, and the dyslipidemia. There's basically nothing that I know of that's more powerful as an anti-aging agent to help with blood sugar, to help with weight loss, etc. This is one of the most powerful compounds you can take for your health. So a lot of the most powerful compounds you can take for your health. So a lot of people might be listening and be like, well, I might not have blood sugar issues. But if this thing is going to make me live longer, should I be taking anyway? So is there

like, any considerations that someone listening should have, they should not be taking this supplement? Or they should if what what should they look for? I think this has been shown with the anti aging crowds of people taking metformin. Most of them are lean and thin and still taking metformin. So I believe that everyone should be taking this. The amount that they're taking and the timing they take it may be different based on maybe some of those factors that you're talking about. I think it's worth experimenting with. Some people, I'd say one out of 10, respond intensely where they do go hypoglycemic.

So for those people, I would definitely take it around a meal, take it with a small amount of carbs if that's needed. But typically, that doesn't happen. So it's just going to take a little bit of experimentation. And I believe it's something that blood glucose and insulin response is fairly adaptive. So I think also within a week or two, you may have a more tempered response to it, but it'll be effective and you can see the data with the CGM. It's very clear. I love this. And I feel like lots of people are listening going, okay, then how do i get this where i get it from i want to just ask this question because i actually think this like catches a lot of people when it comes to buying supplements or you know considering things like metformin like how do you know which are good quality ones like what should

you be looking out for and avoiding if you're looking on the backs of labels and things like that can you just give us some guidance on that? Because I feel like lots of people can end up buying a lot of things that they think are going to actually end up helping and they don't. Yeah. The ingredient for dihydro berberine, by the way, is called GlucoVantage is the branded name. And one of my friend's companies that has it, there's several products that do, but there's a company called Genius as a product called Blood Sugar that you can buy. I'm a big fan of his company and he only uses branded ingredients when available, which is what I'm about to address, is that he has full disclosure and branded ingredients when possible. So what's really cool is I do not like proprietary blends. If a supplement has proprietary blends, I typically

avoid that because it doesn't have clarity in what the dose of those ingredients are. There isn't that full transparency to the consumer where I can go to, there's a site called examine.com that you can go look up the data on that ingredient and you can see, okay, I'm supposed to take this ingredient based on the study that was done three times a day at 500 milligrams. And it's supposed to be standardized for this compound. And so it's all very clear, like it would be on the bottle. But when you get a proprietary blend, it might have 15 ingredients in a 500 milligram blend. And while it's listing a bunch of ingredients that all sound good, they're not in efficacious

doses. Sometimes it's not listing the plant part. So you can't like, it should be ginseng. It should be the root, not the whole plant. The whole plant would be much cheaper. There's so many like scammy things that you can do with a proprietary blend that I just avoid those fully. And I try and get products that are less ingredients so that they do have that full transparency, that clarity, but also each ingredient is there for a reason that they do have that full transparency, that clarity, but also each ingredient is there for a reason that they're stacking complementary mechanisms of action. They're not just, here's 10 ingredients that affect blood sugar. It's like, well, what are they doing to the body to affect blood sugar? And are any of these repeating what the other one is doing?

Then that's a waste of time. We should just have a couple ingredients working on a couple different mechanisms of action. So those are some things to look for. I also look for if they have any crazy claims on them, I dump them too. Like if it's 880% more such and such increased testosterone or weight loss or whatever it is, then it's just ridiculous. Like that stuff is dumb. And typically it's like manipulated data, like where someone got in the placebo group, there is like 0.1% difference. And in the experimental group, there's a 0.3% difference. So they say that there is this massive difference, but it's like basically neither group is getting results.

And so you can manipulate data like that. So those are some things that I would look out for. And it's certainly trusted brands like some of my top ones would be Thorne, Pure Encapsulation, Standard Process, Designs for Health, and maybe a little cheaper, but still great products would be Doctors Best, Now, Gero. Those are all great companies. Nordic Naturals, Carlson's. Those are all great brands that you can trust. Danielle, I'm so glad that you brought this up because you guys are not going to believe this. So I had take this B vitamin that I absolutely love. And I make a cocktail, I Instagram it all the time. And one of my friends messaged me and said, Hey, there's a fake version of this being

sold on Amazon. And I took a look. Yeah. And it's a whole space where people are making fake supplements and they're just making the same looking label, but you could see the font was slightly different. So it's also something to be aware of that's popping up, which is not fun. I want to ask one more question on blood sugar, because when we're talking about the energy formula, you know, live and breathe and have energy from our blood sugar really dictates so much. It dictates how we show up. What's the difference between, well, firstly, I've heard you can only take berberine for a couple of months and you have to take a break. Firstly, is that true? And secondly, how would a berberine, because I imagine lots of people are going to rush out and buy it, how would that compare to something like myo-inositol or inositol? Am I pronouncing that

right? Yeah, inositol is a B vitamin that's a little bit different than certainly something like berberine. What you're suggesting, I think I suggest with actually everything I take to cycle on and off them. I think the idea of taking something, it's called exogenously, like outside of the body. For too long, your body will stop having the ability to take care of those things itself as well. It's just like if I was to take testosterone, my body would stop making testosterone because like it doesn't need to anymore. So like there's a fine line of taking some of these things, but not always taking them all the time consistently forever. I like cycling on and off these things and just switching out things that may be similar. Like I use adaptogens like one month, I may be using rhodiola the next month and maybe ashwagandha. So I like cycling through things like that. So I would agree with that. And inositol, again, B vitamins are coenzymes for energy production. So throughout the body.

So I'm a big fan of the B vitamins, definitely getting them in their active form. You're talking about the active isomer, that inositol, but the active forms are typically the methylated B vitamins like methylcobalamin is the active form of B12, not cyanocobalamin or P5P instead of pyridoxine or 5-methyltetrahydrofolate, which is the active form of folic acid because our body has to go through several enzymatic steps to convert folic acid to the active form to be used. So we may be getting enough folic acid in our diet or from a supplement, but we may not be able to use it because it's not in that active form.

So that's what makes the difference with getting a really good B vitamin. Thorne makes a great one. Again, some of these premier companies like I'm talking about have those active, it's called active or coenzymated or methylated B vitamins. And that's good advice. They're just generally around, it's really good to have routines and really build into those. And then it's also good to have these shocks to the system. People sometimes use like the cheat days or whatever. And I'm not saying I think the cheat days, if you do them, shouldn't necessarily go out to get in McDonald's, et cetera.

But just sometimes like breaking a cycle that you're in so that your body can stay adaptive. And the same goes with exercise, right? What kind of exercise are you doing? How can you mix it up sometimes so your body doesn't become so used to doing one thing and still can maintain that adaptability. And I think that applies to lots of areas of your life. The idea of resilience is that you have a greater capacity for stress that we typically should seek out, like periods of ease. Otherwise, we can fall into states of disease when we're in chronic

stress, like we're in states of dis-ease and we get disease. But you want to challenge the body with hormetic stressors at times so that we grow and we adapt both mentally and physically. That's the stoic mindset. The obstacle is the way mentally, but it also is true in terms of exercise. Having, like you're saying, Danielle, different types of exercise help with that adaptation. If we do the same workout the same way for years, we're not going

to get the benefits anymore. We have to mix it up with tempo and reps and intensity and do high intensity interval training and do super slow reps and do all these different things so that we keep challenging our body. And it's the same with fasting, for example. That's a hormetic stress. Our body needs to figure out how to be tougher, more resilient with what's called the sirtuin genes. And it will activate those genes and help us live longer, be more resilient, be more tough, be harder to kill if we don't do these things. If we don't have the hormetic stressors, we're easier to kill. There's actually in our body, there's a figurative stress bucket. It's called allostatic load. And it's our capacity for stress. And right now, most people, it's a very small one. So we can be overflowing and have a breakdown and it feels overwhelming with our stress.

But when we do exercise, when we do fasting, red light, cold plunges, all these different things, it increases our capacity for that stress and we're more resilient as a result. you most excited about that kind of apply to most people that want to perform at their best? What even if it's a handful, what can we be incorporating daily to just turbocharge our energy? So the most important things are, well, let me go into the ones that I think that are most exciting. Definitely that dihydroberberine, the glucovantage that I talked about. There's also an ingredient I've worked on called BEBA, beta amino isobutyric acid, and it's an exercise mimetic. It literally mimics exercise. So this is exercise. Wait, what? So I don't need to exercise? I don't want to say that per the FDA, but it does mimic exercise. So what I would say is that it augments your existing exercise and good diet.

So it's going to give you more reps and more steps out of each workout. So it's definitely going to enhance your adaptation to exercise. So it's literally the signal that your body puts out when you're intensely exercising. And all these things are associated with BABA levels being elevated in the plasma, like increased bone mineral density, increased muscle mass and strength, reduced fat mass, better fuel utilization, improved neuroplasticity in the brain, better endurance, VO2 max. All these things are enhanced when BABA levels are higher. So taking the supplement is going to enhance your

adaptation to all of those things. So that should be pretty exciting. And it's very exciting. I'm like, I need links for these. I want to get these. Okay, don't worry, I'm gonna link everything below because I feel like everyone on this podcast wants them. So if you're listening, guys, just scroll down. I'll make sure everything's linked for you. Don't worry. Yeah, so that ingredient is called Mito Burn is the branded name. And then there's a cool one that I like called Grains of Paradise. And that is in its branded name is Calora Burn or looks like calorie burn almost. And it enhances brown adipose tissue activation. So I don't know if you guys know about brown adipose tissue, but it's different than white adipose tissue.

Most of the fat on our body is white adipose tissue. But there's a fat-burning fat, a highly thermogenic fat that's mitochondrial dense. That's why it's brown. That's around your collarbone. You have about six to seven ounces on your body. And this is a thermogenic fat. And it could be the reason that some people can eat whatever they want and not gain weight. And so science and certainly pharmaceutical companies have been exploring how to beige white fat and or increase the activity of existing brown adipose tissue so that we're

more metabolically dynamic. And so this grains of paradise, which is known as Caloraburn in the branded name, that enhances your brown adipose tissue activity. And probably if you paired it with cold thermogenesis, like jumping in a cold plunge or taking cold shower, they'd have a synergistic effect, if you will. Yeah, I'd heard the same about the cold plunders and the cryotherapy helping with the brown tissue. So I'm glad to hear there's something else I could do because I don't particularly enjoy that. So good to know.

I didn't know what the brown thing was, but I think I have it. I think you have it too. I'm very lucky about the weight gain thing. I look at a cupcake and I put a pound on. Those are probably some of my most exciting ones. There's also one that's called L-ergothionine. That's a trace amino acid. This is really cool. It's actually being looked at for vitamin status because we do not make it in our body. And there is a transport system and storage system in our body. And it actually protects the mitochondria that I've been talking about this whole time,

the source of energy, the source of the energy currency, ATP in particular. And so it actually protects those mitochondria. And there's literally its own system, its own transportation system in the body and its own storage system. And so we were meant to use this compound. It's like fundamental to human life, but no one's ever really known about it until recently. So it's called L-ergothionine and the brand name for that is Mito Prime. So those are- Okay. I'm going to link, I'm writing them all down and I'm going to link them all. But- Yeah. I love that you said ATP-

All of these things in my book. Yeah. And I love that you said ATP wallet because I always think about what are the currencies I have available to me. So I'm going to add ATP to my wallet and make sure I'm making bank. Tell us a bit about your book, because I know we've gone completely in so many different directions. But your book is called the energy formula. What is it about? What are we going to learn? Yeah, so it is the energy formula. It's all about living more vibrantly with these six ingredients, which is the acronym for energy of experiment, nutrition, exercise, routines, growth, and your tribe. And so I do a deep dive into all of those things. And this book is about 400 pages,

but it's not just boring reading front to back. Like this is full color, literally start to finish, full color diagrams. There's over 60 diagrams. You have surveys in each chapter to assess your performance, like where your baseline is and how you're improving. There's chapter summaries if you don't want to read. There's just bullet points at the end of each chapter. There's formulators corners that go into each of these supplements that I'm talking about, the doses, the forms, the brands in each chapter, resource hacks that cover all the devices and apps and techniques and box breathing and how to do all that stuff in there. And so this thing is just chock full. It's got over 100 scientific citations. And if you go to energyformula.com, you also get a fasting for energy guide that explains how to do fasting properly. It's

about 25 pages and it even covers fasting for women and how that's different and what you should do to protect your hormones, all of that stuff. And then there's a hidden chapter on natural ancestral movement, like crawling and getting movement in throughout the day, because we're actually it takes about 45 minutes of exercise to undo the seven and a half to eight hours of sitting that we do a day. So actually doing what's called exercise snacks throughout the day is one of the most effective techniques where every hour you're finding ways to move, to crawl, to do air squats, to get up and move your body. And that's something that I discussed in this hidden chapter.

I'm going to link it below for anyone that wants to buy it. Danielle, you might not feel this way because you're a doctor, even though you keep that secret. But sometimes I get really overwhelmed by like all the long words when it comes to biohacking. There's so many long words and complications. Even when you talk about certain supplements, I'm like, oh my God, feels like there's so much to learn. It can be really overwhelming. What level do we need to be at to get a lot out of your book? Do you go into beginner status? It's totally beginner status. It totally is. And especially with the summaries and all the, like I said, these pages that have the

resource hacks and the formulators corners. And I have quotes throughout the book that are in little boxes. I've made it very easy to follow to do. And then I'm available to, I answer all my DMS. I'm here to help by any means. So it's a hundred percent followable and easy. I did this in such a way that I didn't want it to be about Dave Asprey and Ben Greenfield are good friends of mine, but they're doing three hour morning routines with coffee ground enemas on the bathroom floor and sticking needles in themselves with peptides. It's super complicated. All of this is simple and most of it's free. So that's definitely something that I tried to execute on here for sure.

So where can everyone find you then? Speaking of DMs, what are all your links? I'm going to link the book to what is your website. Give us all the things. Yes. So I'm at Sean Wells, S-H-A-W-N-W-E-L-O-S on Instagram. And then you can go to seanwells.com to follow me. And I have newsletters every week that have really cool scientific guides and like the best supplements for immunity, how to do keto right, all that stuff I send out every week. I'm on Clubhouse at biohacking. I've been doing a lot of Clubhouse and that's been really fun. And then Energy Formula is probably the biggest one to go to right now. It's either 99 cents or $1.99. I had it at 99, but Amazon is saying I need to raise my price. So I'm literally making

this as cheap as possible so people can buy it. I've probably spent a couple hundred grand working on this, but the hardcover is $39.99, but it cost me $39.80 to make it because it's all color front to back. So I'm literally just giving this stuff away because I want people to have it and to change their lives. I am coming out with an audible version that I read, and it should be out in the next month or two. We'll see about that. But this comes out. It'll be out when everyone's listening to this April 1st. So I appreciate all the support and sharing this book, and hopefully it will change many lives. And I'm excited to hear all the thoughts to get reviews from everyone here. That would be massive. And I so appreciate your support. Natalie, Danielle, you guys are amazing. I love your brand. I'm a huge fan of you.

So thank you so much. Well, we've loved having you on here. So thank you so much for being on here. And I just got to clarify, you got at biohacking on Clubhouse. That's amazing. Yeah, thank you. Early adopter. Yeah, you're the clubhouse that's amazing yeah thank you early adopter yeah you're the first person that's actually pimped themselves out with a clubhouse handle

which is really really interesting yes yes and if anyone wants me back on here i have way more that i can talk about today so if you want sean back on what we need you to do is take a screenshot of the podcast tag sean tag me tag danielle and if we get enough of them we'll bring them on for part two and send us your questions so we can make sure we keep it on track because we could go anywhere with this like i'm just like a dog with a bone i'm like give me all the things thank you so much sean thank you for having me. Thanks, guys. If you loved this episode, please subscribe, download a few more, and please leave us a review. I really want to hear what you enjoyed, what your main takeaways were, and I also want to know what you want to hear us talk about next.

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