The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 132: Triple Your Life Expectancy With These 3 Health Hacks! (Verified By Dana White): Gary Brecka

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

In this moment, Human Biologist and Biohacker, Gary Brecka discusses how he tripled Dana White’s life expectancy, and how you can increase yours. Gary describes the President of the UFC, Dana White, as just one more example of someone who had given up on their ability to thrive. This included carrying too much weight, waking up sore and being over medicated. Starting from a life threatening alert on Dana’s blood work, in 10 weeks Gary was able to change Dana’s life around, and by the end of 5 months he was off every medication, lost 40 pounds and said that he had no idea that he could feel as good as he did. Gary says that you can copy these amazing results with 3 simple steps: breath work, connecting to the surface of the earth, and become comfortable with being uncomfortable. Listen to the full episode here - https://g2ul0.app.link/pneohSrZZDb Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Gary: https://www.garybrecka.com https://www.instagram.com/garybrecka/

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. The reason why I came across your work is because of a clip that, you know, involved Dana White. And I'm sure you, I know you get this a lot because I've seen you be asked about this in interviews. But for context, for anybody listening, I don't know where I was or, ah, now I know what happened. My friend sent into a WhatsApp group a clip of Dana White talking about you.

And that's the clip that made me go down the rabbit hole. I watched that clip. I then did some research. I then watched a series of videos of you online talking about health. And I watched you asking audience members to stand up and name the health issue they were suffering. And you on the spot told them what was missing

from their their life their diet whatever it might have been you kind of diagnosed them in a way of um and then i reached out to you on instagram and that's why you're here but if we go back to the start of that it was that story that dana white told that had me so compelled to reach out to you for anybody that doesn't know and there will be some people that don't know dana white is the president of the ufc which, which is the big fighting tournament where everybody kicks each other's heads in. So what's your take on the Dana White story? So Dana White is an example. I mean, he's just a celebrity example, but he is a shining

example of the vast number of people, you know, men and women in his age category that have given up on the capacity to thrive. They've accepted that they have hypothyroid, hypertension. They wake up sore and achy in the mornings that they don't have a response to exercise. They have a little bit of spare tire. They're brain foggy. They're on three or four medications. In his case, he was on seven medications at the time, three of which were for blood pressure. He was on, I think a thyroid medication was also on. He's been very public about this, by the way. And again, I have to say,

I'm not licensed to practice medicine. So it was my clinical team that came up with the diagnosis and I communicated it to Dana. I do train physicians to read blood work and genetic testing, but I can't practice medicine. But the point is that when I met Dana, all he wanted to do was for me to predict his life expectancy. And I hadn't done that in almost seven years. I left that industry for a reason. I don't do it anymore. The test that I do does not predict life expectancy. The genetic test

and the blood work that I do will not tell you how long you're going to live. I have no interest in predicting death anymore. I only have an interest in extending life. And when Dana was only interested in me predicting his death, so I said, okay, for Dana White, I'll come out, I'll meet with you. I'll do a blood test on you, a gene test on you. I'll pull all your medical records and I'll give you your life expectancy. But what I did was went out and got his blood work and his gene test. And I was actually in bed at 1.30 in the morning when the lab was running his blood work. And I've had seven life-threatening alert calls in the middle of the night, because when you drop blood work off at the lab, the lab runs it through the the night if they find a life-threatening alert they call the account holder right so um i owned a company i was on the account so lab core calls us at one o'clock 130 in the morning says

hey we have a life-threatening alert on a patient i was like whoa um what's the patient's name they said last name is white i said dana white they said yeah and i go wow what's the life's name? They said, last name's White. I said, Dana White? They said, yeah. And I go, well, what's the life-threatening alert? They said, triglycerides are almost 800. Now, triglycerides are a measure of blood fat. It shouldn't be above 149. At 200 or 300, this is a cataclysmic level in the blood, especially in a fasted state. We pulled his blood in a fasted state. They weren't 400. They weren't 500. We pulled his blood in a fasted state. They weren't 400. They weren't 500. They weren't 600. They weren't 700. They were like 768. So they were, I mean, this is an enormous number. And so I said, okay, I need to get the blood work over to the doctor. And when they sent the blood work into the portal. I then saw that he was

insulin resistant. He was hyperinsulinemic. He was pre-diabetic. He had skyrocketing levels of cholesterol. He was hypertriglyceridemic. He was hyperhomocystinemic. This homocysteine that I told you elevates and causes the blood vessels to constrict. I mean, he had all of these conditions. I literally at that moment, booked a flight for 7.30 or 8.30 in the morning to head out and see him. And because I said, I need to go see him in person. And I remember, I think his assistant called me and I was at the airport and she said, Hey, Dana wants to know if he's life expectancy's in. I go, well, I'm on my way to see him. And she goes, oh God, is it like that?

I said, yeah, it's like that. And so I flew out to see him and I sat down with Dana. And when we talked about the blood work, I didn't even explain the levels. I explained the symptom. I did not know that he was on a c-pap machine but i said i am surprised that you can actually sleep through the night because he was so hypoxic um red blood cell count hemoglobin levels i'm surprised you can even sleep through the night

without like just waking up choking gagging he's like dude i'm on a c-pap machine i wake up every night i throw up in the middle of the night i I throw up so much, I'm losing my voice. And I said, this level of caudication, triglycerides in the bloodstream, I'm surprised you can even bend down and tie your shoes. That's not painful to tie your shoes. Not that it's not restrictive to tie your shoes. It's not painful. Like, it doesn't feel like the skin's going to peel off your legs.

And he went, what the fuck? I mean, he slammed his hand down. He was like, how did you, you know, how did you know that? And I said, Dana, your level of brain fog and fatigue right now has got to be at a crushing level of fatigue. I don't know how the only thing getting you through the day is your own stubborn willpower. And I'm surprised you can remember anything from one minute to the next. And his whole staff was like, dude, he's so forgetful. He passes out in meetings. He's sleeping in the planes. He's gagging, snoring um these were not things i necessarily knew about him so i began to describe all the outcomes of these kinds of conditions and i said look um

if if you don't do what we're going to ask you to do for the next 10 weeks you know based on this blood work and the medical records that we pulled for the previous 10 years and the demographic data we pulled for 10 years, you have a life expectancy of 10.4 years. For a 52 year old man to realize that he's not gonna make it out of his 60s, a big realization. And he flicked a switch, a level of discipline that I haven't seen in a patient in a long time.

He goes, dude, I'll do whatever you tell me to do. So we wrote a prescription ketogenic diet. I'm a fan of the keto diet. I don't think everybody needs to be on the keto diet, but by prescription ketogenic diet, we wrote a keto diet right down to the grocery list, keto reset diet. And I said, if it's literally, if it's not on here, you can't eat it, Dana. This is your grocery list. You go to the store, you buy this, you send your chef to the store to buy this, you make if it's not this recipe if it's not on here you literally can't eat it your only leeway is water and the supplements and um and we started a process of balancing hormones controlling his glycemic index of using amino acids to bring down his

level of homocysteine to actually try to fix the insulin resistance to reduce his triglycerides. And in 10 weeks, he had such a material change in his blood work. I forget how much weight he'd lost. I think he had lost almost 28 or 30 pounds. He's over 40 pounds now. By the end of the fifth month, he was completely off of every prescription medication

he was on. He's down 44 pounds. He's no longer using the CPAP machine. He no longer is pre-diabetic. He no longer has insulin resistance. He no longer has life-threatening levels of triglyceride. In fact, they're normal. His kidney function improved.

His liver function improved. His immune system strengthened. He feels like a 35-year-old man again. His skin tone all improved. His blood pressure returned to normal. He's not on any blood pressure medication. So his blood pressure returned to normal. And he was like, dude, I had no idea I could feel this good.

I feel fricking amazing. And his life expectancy? Almost tripled. Almost tripled? Almost tripled, just under 30 years. when i heard the story about dana white and i saw he had gone from respectfully being a man that had a little bit of weight to having this these six-pack abs on instagram of course the six-pack isn't the the outcome it's as you've said it's the stuff going on inside right that's really the transformation it left me with the

question like okay i heard the keto bit, but what can someone who's just heard that at home, where do they start with getting, extending their life by triple and getting the... So, you know, he also started something called the superhuman protocol. And superhuman protocol is using magnetism, oxygen, and light, right? So the only things that we really get from mother Nature, the big benefit we get from Mother Nature is we get magnetism from the earth, we get oxygen from the air, we get light from the sun. The truth is most of us are not contacting the surface of the earth that much anymore. So he bought $150,000 worth of equipment, a PMF mat, an oxygen, what's called a hypermax

oxygen to do exercise with oxygen therapy, and a red light therapy bed. And I had him use that equipment every single day, seven days a week. But if your listeners want to do it for free, you can take off your shoes and contact the surface of the earth. And I'm talking about bare feet on soil, dirt, grass, sand, because earthing and grounding is a very real thing. We actually discharge into the earth. We actually, human beings build up a charge. Do you know that pH, the acid alkaline scale, pH stands for potential hydrogen. It's a charge. It's a complete fallacy that you can get alkaline by drinking alkaline water. That's the biggest marketing myth ever sold to the public.

But you can get alkaline by contacting the surface of the earth so if you don't have 150 grand which i don't expect anybody listening to this podcast to spend 150 grand but he did i said you need a magnet you need a pmf mat so you can be alkaline you need to spend 10 minutes a day breathing um 95 02 under mild exercise and you need to lay in a red light therapy bed so in the absence of the superhuman protocol, you can become superhuman by contacting the earth and by learning to do breath work. Let's talk about breath work. I spend eight minutes every day doing a very specific series of breath work and I'll

teach it to you now. You said your wife has certified him? Yeah, my partner, she's a breath work practitioner. Oh, your partner. I've done breath work with her. I've done breathwork with a few people, but no one's ever had the profound impact on me through breathwork that she has. I've never shouted her out before, so I probably should. Her Instagram is at M-E-L-O-A-I

for anybody that's interested in breathwork. People do not realize the power of something that is so accessible, so free, and so easy to do, right? They want things to be more complicated, but it's not. And when I said the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease, it's absolutely true. Remember that every elevated emotional state that a human being can experience actually has, in its molecular structure, oxygen is a component of that emotion. So if you look at the difference between passion, elation, joy, arousal,

libido, and anger, for example, it's usually only one neurotransmitter and the presence of oxygen. The reason why no human being has ever woken up laughing is because you don't have the oxidative state to experience laughter right out of deep sleep. But can you wake up angry? Yes, because anger doesn't require oxygen.

So every morning, contact the surface of the earth and then spend eight minutes doing i do a wim hof style breath work i give credit where credit's due he's the father of breath work as far as i'm concerned so i do three rounds of 30 deep breaths like obnoxiously deep breaths and i start by trying to take my belly button and pull my belly button out towards the wall. Imagine there's a string pulling your belly button towards the wall. And then you fill from the lobes of the lung to the apex of the lung. And then you exhale and just relax.

God knows what they think we're doing out there. Right outside this podcast. They're like a bunch of freaker. I knew it was a cult. I knew he was a cult leader. But so you do three rounds of 30 breaths. On the 30th breath, you exhale and you hold. Allow the carbohydrate receptor to reset.

When you don't feel you can hold anymore, you take a deep breath in. You hold again and you let it out slow. And you don't feel you can hold it anymore, you take a deep breath in, you hold again, and then you let it out slow. And you start again. I would suggest that you start with three rounds of five breaths, then work to 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30. If you get lightheaded, this is a good sign that the oxygen tension is changing in your brain. If your fingers and toes get tingly, this is a good sign that you're changing the oxygen tension. If you feel some kind of heat, temperature change in your neck, these are all great signs. You will get to the point where you can actually hold your breath for two or three minutes, sometimes four minutes between rounds of breath work. And then the last thing is to expose

yourself to natural sunlight. First thing in the morning, the first 45 minutes of the day, God gives us a very, very special type of light. It's called first light. There's no UVA. There's no UVB rays in this light. So it's not the damaging rays from the sun. It still generates vitamin D3. It has a positive effect on cortisol, on vitamin D3. First light is the best way to reset your circadian rhythm. So by contacting the surface of the earth, doing breath work and getting first light, you can get to the same place that Dana White did with 150 grand in equipment. What about oxygen masks? Because I'll be honest, when I read about the Dana story, I went on Amazon soon after and I was like, I'm just going to buy an oxygen canister. Good idea, bad idea. So what you want to do is, you know, you get an oxygen concentrator,

which takes 21% oxygen from, which is the concentration at sea level. It turns it into 95% O2 and it fills this bag. And it can refill this bag over and over and over again. Okay. I use one called the Hypermax. You can see it on my Instagram. And you plug it in, you turn it on, it fills this bag. And then you go in, you put an oxygen mask on and you exercise for 10 minutes, only 10 minutes, cycle for three minutes, sprint for 30 seconds, cycle

for three minutes, sprint for 30 seconds, cycle three minutes, sprint 30 seconds, and you're done. And what this does is it raises something called the partial pressure, the storage of oxygen in your blood. The only two-time Nobel laureate prize winner in medicine, Dr. Otto Warburg, won both of his Nobel prizes for his work in medicine, Dr. Otto Warburg, won both of his Nobel prizes for his work in exercise with oxygen therapy. You want to be a superhuman, do mild exercise every day while breathing 95% O2. It's important that you're exercising. And then after that, you move into a red light therapy bed, photobiomodulation.

So if you don't have access to a hypermax oxygen machine, just do the breath work, get the breath in, you know, exchange the oxygen tension in the tissues and expose yourself to first light. What about cold, cold water plunging? So I'm a huge fan of cold water plunging, but probably not for the reasons why you think, you know, um, I also sit on the board of the NFL, um, uh, alumni association, athletica as a health service director. You know, there, there was a time when we used to think that putting athletes in cold water after exercise was good because of its anti-inflammatory effects. We know now that that's only about 15% of the benefit. The majority of the benefit comes from something

called a cold shock protein. If you really want to be fascinated, Google cold shock proteins. These are reserve proteins that are in your liver. They're dumped into the bloodstream in an effort to save your life when you put yourself in cold water they scour the body of free radical oxidation they increase the rate of protein synthesis muscle repair they are free you get them when you put yourself in cold water um i don't know what the celsius conversion is but i

use 50 degrees for three minutes minimum six minutes maximum cold yes it's it's actually not that cold i mean you know i see people getting in 37. Yes. It's actually not that cold. I mean, you know, I see people getting in 37, 38 degree water. There's no evidence that I've read that shows that colder is better. You get a peripheral vasoconstriction. So it forces all the oxygen into the core and up to the brain. And you ask, you get an activation of something called brown fat, right? Thermogenesis comes from brown fat. And for the women that are listening, for some reason, I seem to ensnare the women when I say this. Remember that the definition of a calorie is a measure of heat, right? I mean, the definition of a calorie is the amount of

energy it takes to raise one cubic centimeter of water, one degree centigrade. So if a calorie is a measure of heat, then this means that when heat's leaving your body, calories are leaving your body. So if there is nothing, nothing, no amount of exercise hits cardio, no type of cardiovascular or weight training that comes anywhere close to immersing yourself in cold water in terms of what will strip fat off your body fast. If you want to strip fat off your body, get in cold water three to six minutes a day. That's fascinating because the oxygen rushes to my head. That's why it has a really profound impact on mood. That's why it has a very profound impact on mood. Because if you think about it,

what's the reason why we need deep sleep? What happens in deep sleep that's so special? There's a secondary oxygen transfer. We transfer oxygen from the periphery, from the extremities to the brain. Remember the brain's a non-metabolic organ. So in other words, it's unlike a muscle. If I pick up a weight and start to work out my muscle, my arm, my body will send more blood, more amino acids, more oxygen to that muscle because it's working. Well, if I'm sitting at my computer and I'm watching reruns of The Simpsons, or I'm sitting in my computer and I'm solving the most complex joint venture agreement, partnership agreement with all kinds of mathematical equations, my brain gets the same amount of nutrients,

same amount of blood flow, same amount of oxygen. So it eats the same meal, whether or not it's in a dead sprint or whether or not it's just chilling on the couch, except in deep sleep and when you're in cold water because it's forcing the oxygen up to the brain.

You said earlier about comfort. Yes. I was speaking to someone yesterday about this thing called, he referred to it as the comfort crisis and how, you know, as we've become more, I would say civilized, but I don't know if that's the right terminology. As we've become more advanced technologically as humans, we can make our lives increasingly more comfortable. Correct.

Sounds like a good thing. Terrible. It acceler Sounds like a good thing. Terrible. It accelerates aging in every form. I mean, aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort. We have got to stop telling grandma not to go outside. It's too hot. Not to go outside. It's too cold.

Just to lay down, just to relax, to eat at the very first pang of hunger. This is collapsing all of our own natural defense mechanisms. You know, if we don't load our bones, they don't strengthen. If you don't tear a muscle, it doesn't grow. If you don't challenge the immune system, it weakens. And so stress is very often very good for the body. Thermal stress, weight bearing exercise, breath work,

these things put stressors into the body that have a very positive effect at strengthening you. We want to regulate everything now. We regulate our temperature. We go from a temperature-controlled office to a temperature-controlled car to a temperature-controlled home. We don't thermoregulate anymore. I mean, usually when I ask people to start taking cold showers, they take their first cold shower, they never do it again. Why? Because they don't want to be uncomfortable. And so when you learn to deal and become comfortable with being uncomfortable,

this is like a metaphor for life. It's almost like yoga. If you've ever done really intense yoga and you're holding a yoga pose and you're trying to remain calm and focus on your breath while your body's in intense pain. Now you're not in any risk, but your ass feels like it's going to peel off your legs and your hamstrings are firing and you're sweating

and you're shaking and you're doing this thing that's called the candlestick, but it's really painful. And if you can maintain calm and breathe through a situation like that, what happens four hours later when you get a nasty Instagram message. Nothing. It doesn't shift your mood. And if we don't learn to control our emotional state, we will never control our future. You know, MIT did an incredible clinical study that showed that the amygdala of the brain, which is where we experience emotion, is the sole gateway to an area of the brain

called the hippocampus, which is where we hold our memories. So just imagine that the emotional center of the brain called the hippocampus, which is where we hold our memories. So just imagine that the emotional center of the brain is the sole gateway to the memory of the brain. This is why if you've ever had an argument with your spouse, you can always recall with incredible accuracy every other time they've made you feel this way. You know, you did this on September 21st. You did this when we were on the boat with my boys. You did this at, you know, our Christmas holiday party four Christmases ago. Because that emotion is linked to that memory.

So you can recall that memory very accurately. Well, our memory, our hippocampus is what projects into the prefrontal cortex. It determines our future. It's our conscience. So this means if emotion is the only gateway to memory and memory projects to our conscience, which is our future, this means that your current emotional state determines your future. That's a biophysiologic fact. So like, for example, if you had an argument with your spouse on the way to work and you

get out of the car and you slam the door and you walk into the office, when you break the plane of the door of that office, the only memories you can recall about the office at that moment are negative you're going to walk through the door of the office you can be like they don't respect me around here i'm going to have a stern talk into management today you know my office better not you know you know nobody better be my desk and you know what mary better not run into me today because she doesn't respect me you can just start going through all the negative things about the office office didn't do anything to you how do you change your you learn to control your emotion how well first you start by putting the right nutrients into the body that allows you to achieve elevated emotional states and you learn to do things like when you feel like you are

beginning to lose control of your emotional state you you you actually break that cycle. I usually do it with breath work. And so, you know, first it begins by having the right raw materials, but this is just taking you back to the cold punch. If you can start your day in an elevated emotional state, if anybody listening to this has ever really done a cold punch, tell me if you were ever in a bad mood getting out of a cold punch. Just try to be in a bad mood getting out of a cold punch. They say, if you want to cure depression, push somebody in cold water, you know? And it's so true. You're in such an elevated emotional state. You're like, wow. Now you go cruising into the day and get a little negative, you know, Instagram message. And your spouse calls you and tells you she forgot what you wanted to get at the grocery store. And you get to work and you got a little problem at the office.

Things roll off your back instead of shifting your state, which now shifts your memory, which now changes the trajectory of your prefrontal cortex, which affects your future.