The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Gary Brecka On The Truth About Weight Loss, Longevity, Curing Disease, & Essential Nutrients They Don't Talk About

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

#802: Join us as we sit down with Gary Brecka – a human biologist, health expert, entrepreneur, & host of The Ultimate Human Podcast. Known for his groundbreaking work in optimizing human performance & wellness, Gary is devoted to helping people unlock their full potential through science-backed approaches to health – focused on optimizing human genetics, hormones, & longevity. In this episode, Gary gets real about the essential vitamins everyone needs for optimal health, uncovers how nutrient deficiencies often mimic other conditions, reveals the truth about stubborn fat loss, & shares all you need to know in order to live a healthier, more vibrant life!   To Watch the Show click HERE   For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM   To connect with Gary Brecka click HERE   To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE   To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE   Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE   To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697)   This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential   Head to the HIM & HER Show ShopMy page HERE and LTK page HERE to find all of Michael and Lauryn’s favorite products mentioned on their latest episodes.   Visit theultimatehuman.com to learn more about Gary Brecka & join his Rule Breckers Community!   This episode is sponsored by The Skinny Confidential    Optimize your daily beauty routine. Shop Beauty Water at ShopTheSkinnyConfidential.com.   This episode is sponsored by Just Thrive    Visit JustThriveHealth.com and use code SKINNY90 for 20% off your first 90 day bottle   This episode is sponsored by Oura   Visit ouraring.com.   This episode is sponsored by Seedlip   Start the New Year right by visiting seedlipdrinks.com and entering the code SKINNYCONFIDENTIAL to get 20% off your purchase.   This episode is sponsored by HGTV   Tune in to the premiere of “The Flip Off” Wednesday, 1/29 at 8/7c.   This episode is sponsored by Chomps   Get 15% off your order of Chomps meat sticks at Chomps.com with code SKINNY.   This episode is sponsored by Dreamland Baby   Go to dreamlandbabyco.com and enter my code SKINNY at checkout to receive 20% off sitewide + free shipping. This offer is for new and existing customers! Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. This episode is brought to you by my favorite morning concoction, the Skinny Confidentials Beauty Water, Colostrum, Electrolytes, and Pearl Powder. These are my top three specific supplements that I was mixing together for years. I would do this before I drank my coffee, and I finally was like, I'm gonna do this myself. I'm gonna do it in one packet. I'm gonna make it the best of the best, the highest quality, and I'm gonna make it unsavored

because I don't want all that sweetness in my morning water. So presenting the Beauty Water, it is absolutely the best. How I use it is I always froth it. So I put a scoop in my morning water, I squeeze a big lemon or grapefruit slice, and then I froth it up. You want to froth it up because it really gives it a nice consistency. Essentially what this is doing is hydrating you from within, and it's also so good to have electrolytes before you have coffee, which is why I designed it as a morning water. Our colostrum is the purest on the market. It's from the first

milking. The salt is Celtic salt, so it's nutrient rich, and the pearl powder helps stimulate the body's natural collagen. It strengthens hair, skin, and nails. It's a really great combo. You could literally add it to any drink. I prefer to add it though to my lemon water or an iced tea. Optimize your daily beauty routine. Shop Beauty Water at shopskinnyconfidential.com. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness.

Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential, him and her show. I could not be more excited to do this introduction today for the one and only Gary Brekho. This has been a long time coming on the Skinny Confidential, him and her show. We have been trying to get Gary locked down and in the studio for a couple of years now. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Gary Brekka, he's a human biologist, researcher, and expert in longevity and anti-aging. You may have heard of Gary. He works with all sorts of high profile clients. He's working with the Maha movement, and he has an

extremely unique approach when it comes to health wellness, longevity. We could not be more excited to share this episode over the years. We've done close to 800 episodes. And of course we've touched on the topic of health wellness, longevity. So many times I can confidently say that Gary's approach is unique. It's different. We talked about things on this show that we've never touched on before, which is

rare considering we've done so many episodes. So I think there's going to be something for everybody in this episode, whether you're trying to live healthier, longer, whether you've had issues that you've been working through and haven't found the answers. Gary's perspective is that any disease is curable, that we have nutrient deficiency. And in this episode, we talk about all of the ways we can figure this stuff out. We also talk about weight loss, why loneliness harms our health, essential vitamins that you need.

We cut right to the point and say, these are the essential ones that you need to not skip and that you need to get in. And we talk about thyroid issues, hormone issues, all sorts of things in this episode. We could have talked to Gary for hours and we will. Gary, you are definitely coming back on the show and we will get much more niche. But on this episode, we go broad and we cover a lot of stuff. So for those that are interested in health, wellness, biohacking, longevity, I give you the one and only Gary Brekka.

This is the skinny confidential, him and her. Gary Brekka, we have wanted you on this show for a while now. We've harassed pretty much everybody we know that knows you. Glad you're here. What was the turning point that made you realize our genetics hold the key to unlocking better health and longevity? You know, it was interesting.

It wasn't initially the genetics that I uncovered as the key to longevity. It was that I realized that nutrient deficiencies, I was watching in thousands and thousands of blood labs that I was seeing when we were doing these analyses for life expectancy, I would see the same nutrient deficiency lead to the same diseases and the same conditions. And initially my fascination was,

what if we just fix the nutrient deficiencies in these people? Like, you know, the number of people that were misdiagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, for example, just to, just to, you know, the number of people that were misdiagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, for example, just to, you know, use one as an example, I would say, you know, the physician didn't even do any sed rates or, you know, didn't look for rheumatoid factors, they actually just diagnosed them based

on their symptoms. And the symptoms that parallel rheumatoid arthritis also parallel chronic D3 deficiency. And sometimes when I would go into our model and I would say, this database I had access to had 371 million lives. And I would say, what if I fixed the D3 deficiency? You would see the life expectancy extend.

You would see that the joint pain would go away. You would see that they're on methotrexate or another pharmaceutical for a condition that they actually didn't have. Because if you parallel the symptoms of a lot of nutrient deficiencies, you will see that they are superimposable with so many diseases and pathologies that people get diagnosed with. And so initially my fascination was, wow, this woman has anemia,

chronic anemia, for example. And I would see it in her record for ten years and you would see they were applying the same treatment. They were applying folic acid, B12 and iron, folic acid, B12, iron, folic acid, B12, iron, which normally works. Now it's like, why isn't it working in this person? Why isn't it working in this person?

And then all of a sudden they would switch to a different nutrient like methylfolate and bang, the anemia would heal. So they had the gene that- And it turns out that it was the genetics that were underlying that. The most common gene mutation in the world is called MTHFR. It's affectionately called the motherfucker gene.

Can we say that on the show? Yeah, say it on the show. Okay, say motherfucker on the show, okay. It stands for methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase, but essentially this gene mutation is very common. 44% of the population has it. Caucasians, about 60% of Latino population has it. It's very prevalent in women.

And essentially what this gene does is it codes for the conversion of something called folic acid or folate into the form the body can use called methylfolate. Okay, so it takes a raw material we put into the body, folic acid or folate from vegetables, and it converts it into the form the body can use. And I think the most overlooked thing

in all of modern medicine truly is that everything that enters our body without a single exception, there's not a single compound known to mankind. There's no vitamin, mineral, amino acid, there's no protein, there's no nutrient of any kind that we put into our body that is used in the form that we put it in.

So without an exception, everything gets converted into the usable form. So I always use the example that we pull crude oil out of the ground, right? But you can't take crude oil and put it in your gas tank because the car doesn't understand that fuel source. So what happens is we take crude oil, we refine it into gasoline.

Now the car understands the fuel source. Human beings are no different. For example, if you take in folic acid, folic acid is useless. So first of all, folic acid is an entirely manmade chemical. It doesn't occur anywhere naturally in nature. You can't find it anywhere on the surface of the earth. We make it in a laboratory.

But aside from that, when you put folic acid into your body, it's useless. Until your body converts it to methylfolate, now the body understands the fuel source. So what if you can't make this conversion? Well, then you have a deficiency. And what does that deficiency lead to? It leads to some of the most common ailments that we suffer from as mankind.

If you're a woman and you are young woman and you're gonna get pregnant or you get pregnant, the very first thing your OB-GYN is gonna tell you to do is take high doses of folic acid. High doses of a synthetic manmade chemical that you cannot find anywhere on the surface of the earth that has not come from nature, that is the most prevalent nutrient in the human diet.

And they're gonna tell you to take high doses of this to prevent a neural tube defect in your infant. The truth is folic acid doesn't prevent anything. Why did they start prescribing that ingredient or that supplement? So what happened was we had a pandemic of neural tube defects in newborn infants. And so they did some research and they said, what's causing these neural tube defects in newborn infants. And so they did some research and they said, what's causing these neural tube defects? And it was efficiency in a nutrient called methylfolate.

So instead of giving methylfolate, there's a very cheap version of it called folic acid, which is an entirely manmade chemical. And again, it doesn't sound like a big deal until you realize folic acid in the United States is the most prevalent nutrient in the human diet. It is sprayed on all of our grains, all of our cereals, all of our pasta, all of our flour, all of our rice.

But we don't call it sprayed with folic acid. We call it fortified or enriched. If you see that on something yourself, do you avoid it like the plague? Like the plague. Okay. Like if you want to see behavioral changes in your kids, if you have anxiousness, anxiety, or any gut related issues at all,

and we should go into gut issues because I think the most overlooked thing in all of bariatric medicine- Oh, don't worry, we have about six pages of notes for you. Oh, you do? Okay, is the pace of the gut, right? I mean, we always think about the gut flora and the bacteria,

and we think about food sensitivities, we think about food allergies, but there's people listening to this podcast right now that are like, listen, I've done everything. I've done every food sensitivity test, I've done every food allergy test, I've gone on the carnivore, I've had my gut microbiome tested,

I take probiotics, I take prebiotics and I still have IBS or I still have these gut related issues. I either have gas or bloating or diarrhea or constipation or irritability or cramping. And it drives me crazy because I can eat the same thing on Monday and be fine and eat the exact same thing on Wednesday and I'll blow up like a tick. It's because it's not related to what you're eating. It's related to the pace of the gut. It's related to the pace of the gut. It's related to the speed of the gut.

You have to think of the intestinal tract as, we're like getting right into bowel movements. I love this, love this show. Bowel it up. Like, we've already said, motherfucker, and now we're talking about the bowel. So like. Nice to meet you, Gary.

Nice to meet you guys too. We're best friends now. You know, think of the intestinal tract, the human intestinal tract as a 30 foot long conveyor belt. Okay, so we put contents on it at one end, right? As they exit the stomach. And it's gonna travel 30 more feet before it exits the rectum.

Well, just like any factory that works on a conveyor belt system, if you went into that factory and you just doubled the speed of the conveyor belt, you would see the whole line break down. If you pause the conveyor belt, if you reverse the speed of it, if you cut the speed in half,

you'd have all kinds of problems in this assembly line because it's meant to run at a certain pace, right? So if you change the pace, you break down. So in other words, contents can putrefy, too much water can be resorbed, constipation, too much water can be added, diarrhea. You can have contents pause and putrefy, in which case you're gonna get bloating,

you're gonna get gas, and in some cases you can get a paralytic bowel and severe cramping, but it's not related to what you ate. It's not related to your gut microbiome. It's related to this deficiency in methylfolate because methylfolate has a very strong impact on the motility of the gut. Methylfolate is also involved

in the production of neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters, which are made in our gut, you guys probably know 90% of the serotonin in our bodies is right here, right? So it's in our gut. So if you don't have it here, you can't have it here, which is why in 150,000 genetic tested patients that came through our clinic system,

I didn't see a single client that reported suffering from anxiety that did not also have gut issues. Not once. Because the same nutrient deficiency that slows down and interrupts the pace of the gut is the same nutrient that converts tryptophan into serotonin. We make neurotransmitters, right? We make them from amino acids.

So for example, dopamine is made from tyrosine, phenylalanine, but if you don't have enough of the amino acid tryptophan, you don't have the raw material to make serotonin. If you do have enough of the amino acid tryptophan, but you're deficient in methylfolate, you won't convert that tryptophan into serotonin. And now guess what?

You're deficient in serotonin. So then guess what? You're deficient in serotonin. So then what happens? You don't have the serotonin in your gut. So you can't have it in your brain. And now any mood or any emotional state that requires serotonin, you now can't assemble. And you're told you have a mood disorder. You're told you have a personality disorder.

You're told you have a mental illness. You don't have any of those things. You have a nutrient deficiency. I mean, if I was able to just, you're told you have a mental illness, you don't have any of those things, you have a nutrient deficiency. I mean, if I was able to just stick a needle in your arm and magically suck out the serotonin from your body, theoretically, now that you don't have that neurotransmitter, if you went to assemble a mood that required that neurotransmitter,

you'd be unable to do it. So these are the people that go into environments and they're looking around and going, man, I'm on the vacation of a lifetime. I'm with someone I really love. I'm in a place I've always wanted to go to. Intellectually, I know that I should be really happy right now, but I'm not.

I just can't feel it. I can't feel, I'm not into my environment. Or they go into a phase where it's called mood numbness, where the peaks and the valleys of mood disappear. So they don't feel passion, elation, joy, arousal. I know someone like this. You do?

So you think that there's a, you think that they're, what they need to be. Nutrient deficiency. But here's where I'm a little confused and I'm gonna ask a stupid question. Yeah. Two prong question. So if they were to add methafolate,

is that how you say it? Methylfolate. To their diet, does that fix that? And then my other question is, can everyone just add it? Like, if I don't feel depressed, can I go and add it? Yes. And would you recommend that? You wanna see postpartum depression eviscerate or go down to single digit occurrence in pregnant women,

stop giving them folic acid and switch it to methylfolate. The leading cause of postpartum depression is the prenatal vitamin. You find me a peer-reviewed published clinical trial that links pregnancy hormones to depression. It doesn't exist, but we blame it on the pregnancy. And here's why, because a female with this gene mutation, the MTHFR gene mutation,

which doesn't allow her to convert folic acid, gets pregnant. Her OBGYN puts her on 1,400 to 1,800% of the daily allowance of folic acid. So now she's got a nutrient coming into her body that she can't process. So the amount of folic acid rises and the amount of methylfolate stays deficient.

And so then what happens? She goes nuts. First she gets anxious. By the way, postpartum depression does begin during the pregnancy, even though it's called postpartum depression. And so what happens is these women first get anxious, then they start to feel increasing levels of anxiety,

and then they go into full blown depression and they call it postpartum depression. And what happens is eventually they will stop taking the prenatal vitamin and the symptoms will go away. So they will blame it on the pregnancy, not on the vitamin. So, okay, let's unpack this for a second. If someone's pregnant, what vitamin are you recommending?

100%, if you are pregnant, you should take vitamin are you recommending? 100%. If you are pregnant, you should take a methylated prenatal vitamin. But what is there one you recommend? Thorn pure encapsulations. I'm actually formulating one now, but it's not, it's not out yet. So I have no, I know you like thorns prenatal. I like thorns prenatal. Is it fair to say that there's a high likelihood that women who suffer from postpartum depression

are likely to have that gene mutation? No question. No question, okay. I would say the vast majority of women, and look, if you don't believe me, just Google MTHFR, make sure you capitalize it, or you'll really find yourself on some colorful websites, but capital MTHFR and postpartum depression.

You can read the studies on your own. There's a very interesting study out of Israel. It's a multi-year study, double blind placebo study. It was peer reviewed and it was a controlled trial. And essentially what they did was they looked at the MTHFR gene mutation and its impact on people's ability to convert this folic acid into methylfolate.

And what they found out was that when they take folic acid into the body, they have zero capacity to convert it into methylfolate. And as soon as they supplemented with methylfolate, something called S-phase arrest, which is essentially where the DNA is replicating called S-phase arrest, which is essentially where the DNA is replicating and S-phase arrest is meant to stop DNA from replicating so that you don't pass on genetic mutations. But the same thing can happen with a nutrient deficiency. So essentially

what they did was they took these people that could not convert folic acid into methylfolate, they supplemented them with methylfolate and instantly the conversion started. And so now once this conversion starts, all of the downstream byproducts of this nutrient deficiency are suddenly fixed. So for example, they report that their gut symptoms go completely into remission or 85 or 90% into remission. So like the severe cramping, the gas, the bloating, the bloating for no reason.

You know how many women are walking around? Men too, but it seems to be mostly women that are affected. And they just bloat for no reason. And yes, this can be estrogen dominance, but estrogen dominance tends to not be cyclical. It tends to show up below the belly button, laterally around to the flanks and then around to the kidneys and it tends to be a consistent band of water that's trapped in that area. When you have the MTHFR gene mutation

and you are bloating, you generally bloat after meals. So anything you eat will randomly bloat you. And when I say random, I mean that you literally can eat it one day and be fine and eat it the next day and blow up like a tick. So these are the people that suffer the most because they're trying everything. If someone's listening and they're not pregnant

and they just wanna get on, I can't, this word is a little hard. Methylated. Methylated. Multivitamin. Multivitamin, what one are you recommending? So I shout out my competition all the time. I think Symbiot pure encapsulations do. I particularly like thorns, brenatavitamin. I have no association with thorn at all or any kind of affiliation with them.

But you're making your own. Can I be your first trier? 100%. Okay, can you guys send me some? That's like what I need. 100%. It's hard to find a manufacturer that will actually let you import ingredients from other manufacturers.

I mean, I'm not saying that you can't. I mean, I'm not saying that you can't. I mean, I'm not saying that%. It's hard to find a manufacturer that will actually let you import ingredients from other manufacturers because the problem with 99% of these supplement manufacturers I found is you use the components that they have sourced from the from the you know, the raw material Or it's white labeled. Yeah. Yeah, but most of the really good ingredients somebody's already done the studies on it and they've trademarked it. So I actually had to go to them and say, hey, I want to buy your raw powder, pyridoxal 5 phosphate, methylfolate, whatever it was. I want to buy your raw powder.

I will give you credit on my label because you deserve the credit because you've done the research. Will you sign a licensing agreement with me? And 100% of them said yes. And then I ship it to a manufacturer and I had just have it put into the capsule. I love. So is there any downside for somebody

that doesn't have the gene mutation or is not sure if they have it or not taking methylated? None at all. So everyone should take it. It's just like, if you have a body that can take in crude oil and convert it to gasoline, you have, it's fine for you to also take gasoline. You see what I mean?

Yeah, so it's not gonna like, you're not gonna get too much. No. Besides bloating, what are other signs that you see in people who are deficient in this? So this is the thing, like, right? So this was another observation that I made during, during, you know, my years of reading medical records

in the mortality space. Can you talk about that for a second? Cause I think for people that are, we're familiar with you, but I realized as you were talking, you referenced the data you were able to see. For people that are unfamiliar with you, talk about that wide data, because I think it's relevant to the work you do now. I was a mortality expert for large life insurance for almost 20 years. And so essentially my job was to read medical records and take those medical records and

put them into a model where we were attempting to predict mortality, predict death to the month. And it's a very accurate science, believe it or not. If you look at how many tens of billions of dollars every year of financial services instruments that are based on mortality, you'd be shocked. I mean, there's annuities, life insurance, reverse mortgages that are based solely

on how many more months does this person have left on earth. I mean, if a life insurance company is about to put $25 million, and I worked in the jumbo life division, if they're about to put $25 million worth of risk on your life, they really don't care where you are on a random actuarial curve. They wanna know your specific mortality.

So they'll pull 10 years of medical records and 10 years of demographic data. And they would give it to a team, like the one I was associated with. And they would report back to them and say, this person has 262 months. Oh, that creeps me out. That is so weird.

Did you ever pull your own data? No, I never. I was like, I was actually really good at it. And I didn't want to be like, you know. Well, you were like the guy, you know, putting like marks on the calendar, like little X's. So, okay. And this is just a tangent I know, but I'm just curious for myself. How often were you right? Do you know, did they ever give you that information or no? That's like such a tough subject for me because I was right a lot. Well, I think it's relevant because-

We really learned, it was just, you know, when I look back on it now, I don't know if ashamed is the right word, but I made a conscious decision to leave that industry and spend the balance of my lifetime trying to help people live healthier, happier, longer, more fulfilling lives because for years years I was just brainwashed into thinking it was data, right?

There weren't human beings really on the other side of these spreadsheets. It was just data. And very often people would walk into my office and be like, oh my God, do you remember Mrs. X, let's say Mrs. Smith, you predicted 182 months, she died in 184 and a half, dude, great job. Like, I'm like, oh yeah, great job.

So it was very accurate science. And if you wanna know how good life insurance companies are at predicting death, you just look at what happened during the 2008, 2009 financial services crisis. We had 364 banks fail. You didn't have a single life insurance company fail. There's some of the most solvent institutions in the world and they make only one bet.

How many more months does this person have left on earth? And they're very good at it. Well, it was going to bring me my follow-up question. After seeing that data for so long, were you able then to start stepping back and say, okay, with these kinds of changes, you could actually change your numbers that you were seeing. Yeah, I mean, here's the good news.

And I've read thousands and thousands and thousands of medical records, probably hundreds, if not thousands of times more than most physicians because they're busy practicing medicine. So I would just read the record. And the one thing that became glaringly apparent to me was that the reason why most people are not living healthier, happier, longer, more fulfilling lives

are for what we called modifiable risk factors, meaning things that they could actually change, diet and lifestyle changes, exercise, mobility, exposure to nature, communities, sense of purpose. You could see that the most negative effect on a human being was isolation, right? I mean, we knew that if you wanted to cut

somebody's life expectancy in half at any age, put them in isolation. And by isolation, I don't mean solitary confinement. So the COVID response was even worse for people. The COVID response was absolutely the worst thing we did to humanity. Atrocious. On so many levels. Literally atrocious. Oh, I'm so glad you guys,

because I usually will cut somebody's audience right in half, because I will go at that hard. I mean- Go for it. I mean- Let it rip. First of all, I mean, the worst thing we ever did was social distancing, residential quarantining, and masking. Taking people out of nature?

Taking people out of nature, taking people out of communities, taking people out of any kind of human contact. Not only that, but the human body responds very well to stressors, right? I mean, there's a process called hormesis where you stress the body and it responds and it strengthens.

You know, a hormetic stressor would be like sauna, cold plunging, right? Weight lifting. If you don't load a body, There's a process called hormesis where you stress the body and it responds and it strengthens. Hormetic stressor would be like sauna, cold plunging, right, weightlifting. If you don't load a bone, it will never strengthen. If you don't actually tear a muscle, it will never grow. If you don't challenge the immune system, it will weaken. So what happens when you put people in isolation for a prolonged period of time?

The immune system's not being challenged, so it weakens. So then you pop the top off the pandemic, and then what happens? Monkeypox. What the hell is monkeypox? Well, I never heard of monkeypox. Oh no, it's been around forever. It just was such a weak virus

that it never actually affected us. We're on our eighth version of Omnicron now, the Omnicron version of COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2. And so, you know, the skyrocketing rates of influenza, the skyrocketing rates now of Epstein-Barr virus, cytomegalovirus, the recurrence of shingles, all of these conditions that people think that they are catching, but what they are,

are viruses that we've always had that are coming back because the immune system can no longer silence them. Right, like if you had mono as a child in eighth grade, you know, the kissing disease or kissing virus, eventually, you know, if it comes back, it comes back as Epstein-Barr as an adult. Well, you didn't catch Epstein-Barr, you've always had it. It's just like, you don't catch shingles.

That's chickenpox that you had as a child, it comes back as shingles. So why does it manifest in some people and not manifest itself in others? Because every human that's chickenpox that you had as a child that comes back as shingles. So why does it manifest in some people and not manifest itself in others? Because every human that's listening to this podcast right now, 40% of your DNA is not human DNA.

It's viral. 40% of every DNA strand in our body is viral. So if 40% of our DNA is viral, how come we all don't have a bunch of viruses? Because it's a walk in the park for the immune system to silence those viruses. But what happens when our immune system gets weak? You have a massive proliferation of viruses.

These viruses didn't just come into the country and attack us, they were already in us, we just couldn't silence them. That's the difference. So you have this global weakening of the immune system and the real pandemic is what happened to humanity because we weakened everyone's immune system, right? And now there's really no such thing as long COVID, right?

It's not a prolonged COVID infection. What it is was a significant, serious weakening of the immune system. Some of it was contributed to by COVID, but the majority of it was isolation. And now nobody's immune system, some of it was contributed to by COVID, but the majority of it was isolation. And now nobody's immune system can defend themselves. So I know someone who just got shingles

and you would say that a huge part of that is because of the isolation that COVID caused, which weakened her immune system, which then caused her years later to get shingles. She had chickenpox as a child. Yeah. And now she has shingles. So why did she get, I had chickenpox as a child, I didn't get shingles. She had chickenpox as a child. Yeah. And now she has shingles. Yeah.

So why did she get, I had chickenpox as a child, but I didn't get shingles. So, and why does, you know, some of her girlfriends that had chickenpox did not get shingles? The reason is because her, their immune system was able to silence that virus. Their immune system was able to keep that virus

from being, going from being latent, dormant. So what nutrients are we missing if we have a weakened immune system? What nutrients would you have told her to take to strengthen that so she, or to eat, so she would avoid shingles? So I think everyone needs to be on the same three things, the basics, right?

Because there's no getting around the basics, right? Like they say, you can't exercise your way out of a bad diet, right? You can't eat your way around poor sleep, right? Like they say, you can't exercise your way out of a bad diet, right? You can't eat your way around poor sleep, right? So there's some absolute basics that we all need. I think everyone should be on a methylated multivitamin. By methylated, all that means is that these, we don't assume that your body can convert anything.

We assume that we need to convert it all for you. So you're gonna get the already converted version of certain nutrients. You're still going to get the B complex of vitamins, but you're going to get a version of B12 called methylcobalamin. You're going to get a version of folate called methylfolate. So when you-

So you like the multi, not like a methylated B, you like the full- Methylated B, yeah, I like a full multi. Okay, sorry, just to clarify. It should have methylfolate, it should have the complex of B vitamins, it should definitely have a form of B12 called methylcobalamin.

We should avoid the most common form of B12, which is called cyanocobalamin. If you look at, you know, the word essential means necessary for life, right? So what is essential for human beings? There are eight essential amino acids. If you're deficient in any one of these amino acids, there are consequences and I can explain what those are.

There are two essential fatty acids, right? BPA and DHA, fatty acids. If you're deficient in these fatty acids, there are consequences. There is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. So if you let that settle in for a second, there is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. They if you let that settle in for a second, there is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. They are not necessary for life.

What's necessary for life are fats and amino acids. So if someone's listening, methylated multivitamin. Methylated multivitamin. An EPA that has a DHA. Either a fish oil or a plant-based oil, omega-3 fatty acid that has an EPA and a DHA fatty acid in it. We take momentous, you like momentous? Yeah, momentous is great.

And you can take these from plant or from animal sources, right? So if you're vegan or vegetarian and you don't want to take a fish oil, you can take a black seed oil. So there you get the fatty acids. And I think everyone should be, I mean, with very few exceptions, should be on vitamin D3 with K2. I mean, D3 is probably the most- What's your favorite?

Again, I'm making one, but there are lots of good D3s that are out there. There's some liquid forms. Again, somebody who likes to make a good one. I do like- Chirvin's a good friend. Oh, really? Shahab's a good friend of mine.

Oh. Yeah. Maybe we should all go to Miami. I shout them out all the time. If you're listening, I need an affiliate link or a deal with you guys. He needs a deal. Shahab, Sherbine, Dorana, what are you guys doing?

I actually was gonna text them on the way here and tell me to send them some creatine and vitamin C. You also said amino acid. Yes, and an amino acid. What's an amino acid that comes with all eight? The best that I have found is one by Body Health and it is called Perfect Aminos. The thing about this amino acid is it's all eight

of the essential amino acids. It has a single calorie. So if you work out in a fasted state, it will not even break a fast. Interesting. And it's all eight of the essential amino acids. It will not break a fast and it's 99% absorbable. So it has the equivalent of 29 grams of whey protein.

So you'd have to have almost 30 grams of whey protein to get to these eight essential amino acids. See, I think amino acids are really poorly understood because most people think that proteins are amino acids. I mean, amino acids are proteins, they're not. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, right? So amino acids build all of the different proteins, collagen, elastin, fibrin, muscle, natural killer cells.

We cannot target direct protein. Like, so for example, we don't need our nails to grow our nails and we don't need our hair to grow our hair. But marketing has led us to believe that we can eat nails to grow our nails and we don't need our hair to grow our hair. But marketing has led us to believe that we can eat collagen to grow collagen. Collagen, like steak or eggs or whey or any other protein will become the exact same thing when you put it in the human body.

It will become amino acids. Collagen is actually not even a complete protein. It can't build muscle because it's missing a lot of amino acid. So if you wanna build collagen, elastin, fibrin, you wanna have healthy, vibrant skin, you also wanna build muscle. You wanna have the raw materials

to build natural killer cells that defend the defenders in your immune system. You take essential amino acids and then your body can build everything from that. So we take protein to get to the amino acids. You can sort of skip the middle man and go right to amino acids. So if you took an amino acid,

full spectrum amino acid like body health, perfect aminos, you took an EPA DHEA, DHA, sorry, fish oil or plant-based omega-3, a methylated multivitamin and vitamin D3 with K2, you would be sitting on such a solid foundation. Quick break to talk about just thrive. Here is a shocking truth about New Year's resolutions. Whether you wanna lose weight, improve your energy,

or beat the embarrassing post-meal bloat, nothing works if your gut isn't healthy first. Lauren and I have talked about gut health on this podcast for years and the importance of making sure that your gut microbiome is healthy. This is why just like every other year, we are starting the new year with Just Thrive probiotics. See, here's the thing. Most probiotics die in your harsh stomach acid before they can do much good.

What we love about Just Thrive probiotics is that they're the only probiotic clinically proven to arrive in your gut 100% alive. We have had the founder of Just Thrive, Tina, on this show so many times talking about the benefits of their products, overall gut health, and what you can do to improve your overall immune system, your energy, your body function, everything. If you take care of the gut first for you, that means better digestion, healthy immunity, great energy and easy weight management. It comes in capsules or berry flavored gummies. I

take the capsules, Lauren sometimes takes the gummies, but we switch back and take both. But the long and short of it is there's an option for everyone in the family. So maybe you're thinking of getting yourself started, you can give it to your boyfriend, your husband, your kids, whatever it may be, there's something for everyone. Plus it's backed by an an industry leading 100% money back guarantee. Love the way you feel or get a full product refund, no questions asked, ready to transform your health in 2025. Just Thrive can help you do so.

All you have to do is visit JustThriveHealth.com and use code SKINNY90 for 20% off your first 90-day bottle. That's like getting a month for free. Again, that's JustThriveHealth.com promo code skinny90. Here's to your Beth Health with Just Thrive. Guys, let's talk about the Aura Ring. Lauren and I were some of the very first users of Aura Ring's first version of their ring. And since then, they've improved it drastically.

We've talked about it in the past how we love tracking our sleep, our fitness scores, all of the different things that give us better insight into our overall health. Now the product can do even more with women's health. Our ring is the revolutionary smart ring that delivers personalized health data, insights and daily guidance. I personally like using the aura ring for my sleep. So I started really refining my sleep about two years ago. I make our bedroom dark. I use an air filter and I also have used the Aura ring to give me data on sleep.

And what that's done for me is I've noticed that I'm less stressed during the day because I prioritize my sleep. Unlike other wearables, it's not clunky. It looks good, it feels good. It doesn't get in the way. You kind of forget that it's even there. You can see the ring on my finger right now.

It comes in black, comes in silver, maybe comes in another color, but I wear the silver one obviously here. And like I said, it's not this clunky device that's constantly banging around and stressing you out. You honestly just completely forget you're wearing it. You should also know that Auraring empowers women to better understand their bodies so they can be their own health advocate. So I used mine for sleep, but you could also use yours to take control of your fertility effortlessly. You can use Auraring with the Natural Cycles app. This is so amazing and I feel like it's

so avant-garde what they're doing. So it's the world's first birth control app that's now powered by Aura. You can prevent or plan pregnancies with Natural Cycles, which is powered powered by aura, like I said. Another cool thing about Auraring is it automatically measures your temperature overnight. Why I like aura is I've committed to my body, myself and my health. You can use this in a multitude of ways. It really is whatever you want to focus on. You got to try it for sleep though.

It's absolutely changed my sleep. I feel like I finally got it dialed out. So if you're someone that wants more insights around your health and want to optimize your health and well-being, check out the Oura Ring. We love it. We've used it for years and could not say better things. I also have to say I really like the way it looks. It's aesthetically pleasing. You can visit oura-ring.com to learn more. That's oura-ring.com to learn more. Quick break to talk about seed lip. I hope you guys are kicking off the new year the healthiest, most productive way possible. I know that we are.

We're doing a dry January and Seedlip makes this even more enjoyable. So for those of you that are unfamiliar with Seedlip, Seedlip is a non-alcoholic spirit carefully crafted from a unique blend of botanicals and spices. It's made to be used as a base in your favorite non-alcoholic cocktail. What we love about Seedlip is a Seedlip allows you to enjoy a refined and delicious cocktail while watching what you're actually drinking. Three in 10 Americans make New Year's resolutions. Maybe one of yours is to start the year out with less alcohol. With the new year and new goals, live with balance and embrace different ways to enjoy a cocktail with Seedlip. Seedlip is crafted in four delicious

flavors with no added sugar or calories and Seedlip. Seedlip is crafted in four delicious flavors with no added sugar or calories and Seedlip has a very different proposition. They are not non-alcoholic gin, vodka, or tequila, but actually a whole new way of drinking with original and distinct flavors. I love that there's options like this. So many of us are revisiting our relationship with alcohol, but still want to enjoy a tasty beverage, a night out, and we still want the social aspects of being able to enjoy a cocktail with friends, but maybe without the alcohol. So check Seedlip out, Lauren and I are absolutely loving this product.

Start the new year right by visiting seedlipdrinks.com and entering the code SKINNYCONFIDENTIAL to get 20% off your purchase. That's S-E-E-D-L-I-P-D-R-I-N-K-S.COM, code SKINNYCONFIDENTI confidential for 20% off your next purchase. Again, visit seedlipdrinks.com to learn more. We've interviewed so many different people on so many different supplements and everyone always asks us that question.

It's like, okay. The essentials. We've learned about all these different things. What are the essentials? And we've never had someone come on and spell it out in a scientific, I don't even know if that's the right word. Yeah. So, like, if you took those essentials,

then you could potentially, like, once you have the basis cover, then you can jump into creatine in a way. Yeah, then you can go to NMN and creatine and resveratrol and ashwagandha. The problem is that the majority of people are supplementing for the sake of supplementing. They're not supplementing for deficiency. Right, we believe this in plant physiology, right?

So if you had a leaf rotting in a palm tree at your house and you called a true arborist or a true botanist out to your house, they wouldn't touch the leaf, right? They would court test the soil and they would say, you know what, there's no nitrogen in this soil. And then they would add nitrogen to the soil and the leaf would heal. Human beings are no different.

If you deprive the body of certain raw material, you get the expression of disease. And one of the things that we found or that I found in the mortality space was that usually what happens is one thing goes wrong that causes everything instead of multiple things going wrong. So if you think of the hub of a wheel with all of these different spokes, right?

And like I will have clients that come in and they appear to be really complicated cases because they'll say, I have rampant anxiety. I have severe gut issues, right? I have my doctors diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome. I've got anxiousness and anxiety. I've been taking SSRIs and I've been taking anti-anxiety medication. They don't work. It just makes me feel like a zombie.

I can't sleep. My sleep is terrible. I've got brain fog. I gain weight when I just look at food. I have a really poor response to exercise. You know, I really don't get the benefits of exercise. And I have an autoimmune condition. I either have Crohn's or I have chagrins

or I have hypothyroid or maybe even Hashimoto's. And so it looks like all of these things have gone wrong. Right? Like everything's gone to hell in a hand basket because I have an autoimmune disease and I have a mental issue and I have a gut issue. And so now I'm seeing a bariatric specialist and I have a psychiatrist and I have a therapist

and I have all of these different specialties that I'm working with. The truth is, if you ask them enough questions and you look at enough data, you will see that they will all meet at one place. One thing goes wrong, usually, which causes everything. And so when looking at a lot of these complicated cases, and for the record, I'm not a physician.

So I'm not licensed to practice medicine. I'm a human biologist, but I get imported into some very complicated cases. And the first thing I do is wipe out the lens that they're looking at this case through. So for example, if you got diagnosed with Crohn's disease, which is where your immune system's manufacturing antibodies to your colon, your doctor wants you to believe

that you woke up one day and your immune system went haywire and it just started to attack your colon. Or you woke up one day and now your immune system is attacking your thyroid, so you have Hashimoto's, right? Or it's attacking your blood, you got lupus, it's attacking your lacrimal gland in your eye, you have chagrins, but that's not what happens. What happens is if you just took a step back and said,

what if we assume that God didn't make a mistake? Meaning, what if we assume the immune system is acting properly? We just need to figure out why it's there. It didn't wake up one. Meaning, what if we assume the immune system is acting properly? We just need to figure out why it's there. It didn't wake up one day and attack the colon. Something made it attack the colon. Well, so what could cause the immune system to go after the cells in the luminal wall of the colon?

Well, if you have a leaky gut, right? So there's only a, we know that there's only a single cell layer that separates your outside environment from your inside environment, one cell layer, and it lines your entire intestinal tract. And if you get disruption in that cell layer, you get what's called leaky gut. Now, contents from your gut, which are not supposed to be in your bloodstream, start to leak through the wall of your gut, and they start to enter the blood. Well, where is 70% of your immune system? It's right here. 70% of our immune system is right outside the gut.

And the reason why the immune system is there is because that's where all the action is. So you get leaky gut and now you have bacteria, parasites, viruses, many cases, heavy metals. They're starting to leak out of the gut, mold spores, mycotoxins and other things. And the immune system is properly attacking them. And we are gonna go after the immune system

because you see, can I have that bar right there? Can you do that for a second? I'm gonna show you. So let's say that this is a mold spore or a mycotoxin or a viral pathogen. And this is a healthy cell, right? It doesn't hide like this, right? It hides like this.

So now let's say that you have a heavy metal, right? The heavy metal just doesn't float around the bloodstream and sit right outside the cell, goes into the cell. So how do you get rid of it? Well, what happens is the immune system mal-manufactures an antibody to that cell, not to kill the cell, but to get to this. And so what we need to do is we need to find out

why is the immune system attacking that tissue. And what you'll find out, for example, in Hashimoto's, in the majority of cases that I've looked at, it's heavy metals. I want you to talk about this specifically. It's come up on this show, thyroid issues, and I saw a clip that I sent to so many people that they have thyroid issue.

Well, I'll actually eat this. So. It is so good. It's so good. I believe in the clip, you were saying something along the lines of many people are misdiagnosed with a thyroid issue and then put on thyroid meds that they actually don't need and which actually

then compromises the proper function of their thyroid for the rest of their life. And you were cautioning people to maybe think about getting off that medication because it's ultimately going to destroy the function of a proper thyroid. I was told though, you can't just get off and you can speak out.

You can't, you need to titrate off of it over a prolonged period of time. Yeah, that's true. Especially if you've been on it for a long time. It's like taking somebody off of Adderall. Like you can't just, a true alcoholic, they just can't stop drinking, right? But this topic I think is relevant here because- So many women struggle with this that are listening. like you can't just, a true alcoholic, they just can't stop drinking, right? So-

But this topic I think is relevant here because- So many women struggle with this that are listening. Okay, so then I'll teach you a little something about the thyroid that for whatever reason does not get a lot of press and it's astounding to me. So the thyroid in an oversimplified way is controlled by the pituitary, right? The pituitary sends a signal down to the thyroid.

It's called thyroid stimulating hormone. So the pituitary is regulating the volume of the thyroid. So the pituitary is literally like the master puppeteer. It is sitting up here, it's regulating a female's menstrual cycle, how she goes from ovulation to follicular to luteal. It's regulating the production of testosterone in men through luteinizing and follicle stimulating hormone.

It's also regulating your metabolism, it's regulating your body temperature. So with regard to the thyroid, the pituitary sends a signal down and it's a volume knob. All right, it's just like if you walked into a room and you couldn't really hear the music, you wouldn't start messing with the speaker. You would go find the tuner

and you would turn the volume up on the tuner because the speaker doesn't determine how loud it plays. Tuner does. Okay, so thyroid is controlled by the pituitary. So now this signal hits the pituitary and the pituitary, again, I'm simplifying it a little bit, produces two hormones. It produces T4 and it produces T3, okay?

The majority of hypothyroid, low thyroid, it a little bit produces two hormones. It produces T4 and it produces T3. Okay. The majority of hypothyroid, low thyroid is diagnosed because of low T3. But the little known fact about the thyroid is it only produces 20% of the T3 in your blood. So you mean to tell me that if T3 is low, there's an 80% chance that it's not my thyroid? The math doesn't work.

It's exactly what I'm saying. Is an 80% chance that it's not my thyroid. The math doesn't work. It's exactly what I'm saying. Is an 80% chance it's not the thyroid, but in a hundred percent of the cases, they will put you on thyroid medication. They will either put you on levothyroxine, Synthroid, an NDT like Armothyroid. But the question is, where does the other 80% of that hormone come from?

Where's the 80% of T hormone come from? Where's the 80% of T3 come from? It is converted from T4 into T3, and this happens outside of the thyroid. It happens in three places. It happens in the liver, it happens in the gut, it happens in the periphery, majority of which is deiodinized in the liver. The reason why that's important is,

when you have low T3, your first instinct should be look at the nutrients, thiamine, niacin, selenium, and in some cases iodine, look at the nutrients that your body needs to convert T4 into T3 before you assume that the thyroid is dysfunctional. But they don't want to tell you that because that's too easy and there's no money in it and there's not thyroid medicine that you're taking every single day.

Is there a supplement that you- So is that a B complex then? Yeah, what's the supplement for that? Is there a couple different ones? Is there one that has it all? Yes, so methylated multivitamin will get you a long way there. And then a thyroid support with selenium and thiamine.

Which brand do you like? Again, Thorne, you can go to Thorne. Thorne has a great thyroid supplement. So what will happen- Thorne better send me a check too. Yeah. Thorne, oh my God. I actually just like their brand, you know.

What will happen to somebody who decides to stay on thyroid medication as a general practice for the rest of their life? He's asking for his wife. I'm asking for not just my wife, but a lot of women I know that are on thyroid. So you think about what's happening. First of all, you're holding the thyroid responsible

for a crime it's not committing. I can't even tell you how many hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of clients that have come through our clinic system that were on thyroid medication or qualified for thyroid medication, were told they need to be on thyroid medication, and we fixed their conversion of T4 into T3 outside of the thyroid, just with basic supplementation.

They're like, oh my God, Carrie, you fixed my thyroid. I'm like, just to be clear, I didn't fix your thyroid. There was nothing wrong with your thyroid. When I got on the thyroid medicine, I all of a sudden started losing the weight that I couldn't get off from postpartum. Because they replaced the thyroid hormone. They took over the thyroid's function.

So I'm scared that if I stop taking it, then all of a sudden I'm gonna gain the weight back. You will. So that's why you need to titrate down on the thyroid medication and titrate up on the nutrients to have your, that conversion start to happen. Explain the downside of staying on thyroid medicine for a long, long period of time.

Well, so there's something called tachyphylaxis, which is the medical term for desensitization, right? It's like, if you have perfume on and you sit next to me, I'm going to go, wow, you smell really nice, but 30 minutes later, I'm not going to be able to smell the perfume. Your perfume didn't go away, I've just desensitized to the signal.

So the one thing about pharmaceuticals and synthetics and chemicals, because they are not metabolites, the body does not recognize these, we build the tolerance to these over time. So the one certainty about thyroid medication is that your dosage will go up over time. It's the same with amphetamines like Adderall, Vyvan's,

Ritalin, it's the same with pain medication. If you're on prolonged pain medication, like narcotic painkillers, your dosage is gonna go up for you to have the same response. Alcohol, everything. And we don't build a tolerance to metabolites, right? You could eat a 1500 calorie a day diet for the rest of your life.

It's not like 10 years from now, you're on 2500 calories and 20 years from now, you have to eat 5,000 calories because your body's desensitizing to food. The reason why it doesn't desensitize to it is because it recognizes it, it breaks it completely down and it can get rid of the waste. When it doesn't recognize it, it doesn't completely metabolize it.

These are non-metabolites, it doesn't completely metabolize it. These are non metabolites, chemicals, synthetics and pharmaceuticals. So if you were on thyroid medication and you actually had a nutrient deficiency, the thyroid medication would mask the nutrient deficiency because I can give you the hormone that you're missing, right, Armour thyroid or a natural dissected thyroid just replaces T3.

So it does what the thyroid would normally do. We have to understand that there's probably nothing wrong with your thyroid. So when you titrate down off the medication and titrate up on the nutrients, what's gonna happen is this conversion, T4 to T3, T4 to T3, this is gonna start to occur naturally

because there was never anything wrong with you. You were just nutrient deficient. And once you turn that metabolism back on, your body starts to convert thyroid hormone T4 into T3 and it rises even while you're titrating off the medication because it's not the thyroid that's the issue, it's the deficiency outside the thyroid. Does that make sense?

Totally, I've already cut mine in half. I just didn't know that I had to also do a thyroid support. So I did that intuitively. I cut it in half. That's so good. And I just, I don't know why. I've been subliminally sending her your clips. But I think I'm going to add the thyroid support. Yeah, thyroid support.

I want to know why people can't lose weight. What's the nutrient they're missing? So there's three reasons why the know why people can't lose weight. What's the nutrient they're missing? So there's three reasons why the majority of people can't lose weight. The primary reason is because of insulin resistance. Right, which is why I love strength training so much. It's changed my life.

Yeah, I mean, because- It's changed my life. Muscle is our metabolic currency, right? I mean, we don't think about muscle as being an organ, but it truly is. We don't think of it that way. I mean, it releases endorphins. as being an organ, but it truly is. We don't think of it that way. I mean, it releases endorphins. It's an absolute sponge for glucose too.

I mean, you want to soak glucose out of the body, add more muscle. So the number one reason is for, because of insulin resistance. And the majority of popular opinion is that, insulin is primarily responsible for lowering blood sugar. That's actually not true. It is responsible for lowering blood sugar, but's actually not true. It is responsible for lowering blood sugar,

but it's not the primary role of insulin. The primary role of insulin is to block any other form of energy use in the body. The reason why that's important is because when your insulin is high, you cannot burn fat. So you can't metabolize fat because insulin is high. What insulin does is, yes, it helps sugar move into the cell, but it also blocks your

body from using other energy sources. You can't be in ketosis with high insulin, right? Because your body cannot use fatty acids. Which is why before I started lifting weights, it was like an uphill battle. It was like so, so hard to lose weight. I couldn't believe how hard it was. I mean, I would like an uphill battle. It was like so, so hard to lose weight. I couldn't believe how hard it was. I mean, I would like cut my calories. I would up my exercise, but I wasn't lifting weights.

And the second I did that was like a game changer. And I totally, I completely agree with you. I can tell you lift, Gary. You can, thank you. Under your parka, I can see those guns. Thank you. Well, can we cut that clip and throw that on TikTok, please? I can see those Miami guns in my eye.

Timestamp that, comment. Well, I mean, you gotta live the brand, you know? I wear a weighted vest. Like, this thing is cool, because it adds 10 pounds. Is that weighted, really? Oh my God, it's so cool. It adds 10 pounds, and so I burn an extra 680 calories just wearing this for is cool because it adds 10 pounds. Is that weighted really? Oh my God, it's so cool. It adds 10 pounds and so I burn an extra 680 calories

just wearing this for like the day. That's amazing. And I don't even notice it anymore. You should sell those. I would buy one in one second. I know I should sell these. What brand is that? I want to get one of those.

It's called Aion. They better be paying you. Aion, you should be paying me too. Yeah. And this one actually looks kind of stylish. Nobody notices that it's a weighted vest. I had no idea. I was like, wow, it's a weighted vest. I had no idea. I was like, wow, that's a cool vest.

Yeah, yeah, you should feel it here. I'm gonna feel it. I'm gonna feel Gary's vest. Now that I know that it's weighted, I'm gonna. Yeah, you should. That is so cool. It looks like Laurel Keonig. It looks reversible.

But then when you grab it, you're like, okay. Oh yeah, it's heavy. Wow. Yeah. Holy shit. You won't notice it when it's on. I like this. Oh. Yeah. It's reversible too.

Go on YouTube and take a look at the figure too, guys. Get a full shot. You get a full body shot here. Double your pleasure. So, okay. So we need to be lifting weights to help with the insulin. What are the other reasons we can't lose weight? We'll get into the more obscure ones.

So number one is insulin resistance. So if you're insulin resistant or you spend a lot of time in a high glycemic environment, there's zero chance that you'll lose weight. There's not only zero chance that you'll lose weight, but people that eat the most sugar and that are the most insulin resistant have the highest blood fat.

So it sends your triglycerides through the roof. People think that fat makes you fat, but that's patently false. Sugar makes you fat. Like we really have to stop blaming the butter for what the bread did. So the second reason, and this is especially true in women, is estrogen dominance. But estrogen dominance is very prevalent in men too.

And estrogen dominance doesn't mean that you have too much estrogen. What it means is you have too much estrogen relative to your other hormones. In both men and women, the ratio of hormones to one another is way more important than your hormone level. Like so for example, in a normal female menstrual cycle,

depending on whether you're in follicular ovulation or luteal, it's perfectly normal to have estrogen in the teens, it's perfectly normal to have estrogen in the teens, it's perfectly normal to have estrogen in the 400s. So, you're not insulin, I'm sorry, you're not estrogen dominant when it's in the 400s and not dominant when it's in the teens because the ratio of estrogen to other hormones is in a certain ratio. So, in other words, it's not the level of the hormone, it's the ratio of the hormone.

It's the level compared to the other. The reason why I say. It's compared to the other hormones in the body. Compared to the other hormones. So if you have low testosterone, high estrogen, the ratio is too far off. Exactly. Or reverse.

So let's say your estrogen is 60 for a male, which is very high, but your testosterone is 950. No problem. Let's say your estrogen is 60, but your testosterone is 250. Too much soy milk. Major 250. Too much soy milk. Major, way too much soy milk. Thank you, Gary Brekka said it. Everyone thinks I'm crazy on TikTok.

Too much soy milk. Oh my God, yeah. The guys are drinking too much soy milk. Yeah, it's an estrogen mimicking. Yeah, it mimics estrogen. No, we get it, we get it. I don't drink soy milk ever. I know, but I've been saying this about soy milk guys are drinking and eating too much

She's got a lot of shit because there's a clip of her saying the guys are drinking too much soy milk and they're turning It's it's they're turning into little bitches. Yes True I said I'm a dating show I said guys need to stop drinking so much soy milk. Yeah, like sorry Yeah, like we I don't ever I mean I drink raw milk. Yeah. Like, sorry. Yeah, like we, I don't ever, I mean, I drink raw milk. And I don't know why like, you know, like, yeah. Oh, you do? I'm coming to Miami. I love raw milk.

I was really happy that it says make raw milk again. Yeah, well, I'm a part of that Maha committee in the Maha movement too. I mean, that's, I'm a big proponent of it and I plan to be a major, you know, major influence there. And, and you know, what's just so interesting is, you know, we could talk about all of these, you know, exotic stem cells and exosomes

and all of these, you know, really cool, fancy treatments, NED drips and all of which I believe in, but red light therapy beds and, and hydrogen water and all of these things. But the truth is that we just need to get back to the basics and your raw milk is one of those. And raw milk is not only good for you, it's excellent for you.

And if you actually look at the studies on raw milk. I was talking to, of all people, we were talking to Gwyneth Paltrow and I said, you know, at one point it was not called raw milk, it was just called milk. Yeah, I know. We should actually call pasteurized milk, pasteurized milk. At one point you went into a grocery store

and they didn't have a health food section. Yeah. What does that say about the rest of the store? I used my one year old son raw milk and I said it on this podcast. You would have thought I murdered a family. Well, Gary, you'll like this. People thought I was like out of control.

By the way, he drinks raw chocolate milk. He drinks raw milk. And guess what? He's not gonna have asthma, allergies. He's doing great. He's a beefcake. You know what's funny? He's a beefcake.

Is he like the little miscellan? Yeah, he's built, he looks like you, but little. He looks like you, but little. We've done different things over the years, and I was like, you know, my dad, like if we ever made the Wall Street Journal, like of all the things, that's the thing that would get him excited.

And sure enough we did, but it was a hit piece about people drinking raw milk. And I'm like, shit. I'm so happy you just said that. So I wanna get back to the weight loss. I wanna go back to the estrogen thing because I wanna know what people can do to help fix that and support that.

Okay, so let's go back to estrogen. So remember that when a woman gets pregnant, for example, so normal cyclical estrogen could go up in the 400s and it would be perfectly normal. And she's still not estrogen dominant. Three weeks later, her estrogen can be 25 and she's still not estrogen dominant. Okay, so the point is it's not the level, it's the ratio.

As soon as a woman gets pregnant, her estrogen will shoot into the 4,000s. So the question is why does estrogen go up by 10 fold when you get pregnant? Because one of the primary roles of estrogen is to bind water in the interstitial space. Estrogen is very good at retaining water. It will hold water.

So I can't tell you how many women are like, Gary, I do not get it. Like I eat so clean, I exercise. I'm watching my husband like wolf down pizza, like his life depends on it. If I even glance at pizza, I gain weight. Why am I so fat? And I'm like, well, first of all, you're not fat.

You're just retaining water. And you're retaining water in what's called the interstitial space, the space between cells. Nothing that you do will get rid of that water until you bring the estrogen back down into the right ratio. So a lot of women that are listening to this podcast,

especially really fit younger women will be really fit and they'll have a nice stomach and it will stop right at their belly button. And then they'll have a bubble below their belly button and it will move laterally around to their flanks and back behind like behind their kidneys. So if they put their hands in their back pockets and pull their hands out,

their palms would cover another area where they are holding water. They think they're fat, they're just retaining water. So now how do we get the estrogen back into ratio? There's three things that you can do. First of all, I would get a hormone panel done. Secondly, you can take something called DIM, D-I-M, diandolomethane.

Can you take it even if you don't know if you're estrogen dominant or no? Yes, yes, it's a cruciferous vegetable extract. I think it's- What's your favorite brand? Synthesize from- Get him a DIMM supplement too. Synthesize from three indole carbonyl, which is a plant compound,

but it's a cruciferous vegetable extract. Which brand do you like? That one I would take DIMM Pro from Pure Encapsulations. And so what DIMM will do is it will bind the bad girls, what's called the phytoestrogens, and it will bind the bad girls, what's called the phytoestrogens, and it will bind the bad girls that are holding onto the water and it will get rid of the water, but nothing they do.

They're gonna diet, they're gonna exercise, even they're gonna have good sleep and they're just gonna be estrogen dominant. So they're gonna be holding this water and retaining it in the interstitial space. Very often it's diffuse. So they'll have like puffy face, puffy neck, puffy breasts, puffy flanks.

Like everything's kind of puffed up. And they know they're actually not eating, you know, badly. They're exercising semi-regularly, but they can't lose this water retention. So that's generally estrogen dominance. And the third is underfeeding. Tim Ferriss wrote a book called The Four Hour Body. He talked about something called 30, 30, 30, 30 minute,

30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking followed by 30 minutes steady state cardio. So if somebody wants to lose weight, 99% of the time men and women, when they say, I wanna lose weight, what they really mean is I wanna lose fat. So they're exercising to be cardiovascularly conditioned. They're not exercising to lose fat.

So, and these two don't go to the same parties, right? They don't even like each other. So if your intention is to lose fat, then you should eat to lose fat, you should exercise to lose fat. And the way that you do that, believe it or not, is you feed yourself because exercising in a fasted state, I can't tell you how many,

this seems to be like a vast majority of women versus men, but I can't tell you how many times I've had women come to see me and they're like, Gary, I just don't get it. I wake up in the morning fasted, I have a cup of black coffee, I go to Orange Theory, I go hammer down for 50, you know what Orange Theory is. I have a cup of black coffee. I go to Orange Theory. I go hammer down for 50, you know what Orange Theory is?

I go hammer down for 50 minutes. I do that five days a week. I've been doing that for three months and I haven't lost a single pound. Like I'm not even eating. What's going on? And I go, well, you're not eating, but your body is, right? It's just eating you.

And what it's eating is your lean muscle. It's not touching your fat. It's eating your lean muscle. We're actually meant to metabolize lean muscle like an accordion. We can burn lean muscle during the day for energy and we can build it back and we can burn it and we can build it back without ever touching our fat reserve.

It's a very normal process for us. So when you wake up in the morning, if you look at energy priority in the body, there are no exceptions to this rule. If you have glucose in your bloodstream, your body will always use that as a primary source of energy. So if you have sugar in your blood, it's gonna use the sugar in your blood.

So when you wake up in the morning, you haven't the longest period since you've eaten, right? So your blood sugar is low. So if you go to the gym, let's say you have black coffee and water and you go to the gym, your's say you have black coffee and water and you go to the gym, your glucose level is gonna go down

when it gets to a certain level, your liver is gonna take the glycogen and turn it into glucose, right? It's actually gonna feed your bloodstream sugar by taking the stored sugar and feeding it into the bloodstream. The question is, what happens when you're out of glycogen, when that backup reserve-

Which is a muscle then, huh? It's gonna metabolize, it can metabolize lean muscle. You know, when I was a triathlete, I was a competitive triathlete, not professional, but amateur years ago. I just remember looking around at all the guys that I was racing with and we were all skinny fat, including myself.

I mean, but we could do centuries on a bike. We could do half marathons, you know, twice a week. We would spend, you know, seven, eight, nine hours a week in the pool. I mean, we were cardiovascularly conditioned, but none of us had any muscle definition. And we actually had high percentages of body fat. Is it because the body thinks that it needs the fat

to survive more than the muscle? So it would rather take- Fats are an efficient resource. And it's actually burned at low heart rates. It's burned at rest. What do you recommend that women eat before they work out? So wake up in the morning. I would suggest that you take a mineral salt

like a Baja Gold sea salt. So you get all of the essential minerals. I would recommend that you take a perfect aminos like a body health perfect aminos. So now you have the essential amino acids, you're hydrated and you have the essential minerals, right? Baja gold is probably my favorite biohack in the world because a little, like a $15 bag of the salt

will literally last you five years. And lots of us are mineral deficient. So if you woke up in the morning, you took perfect aminos, which is the equivalent of 30 grams of protein, now you're not gonna tap your muscle reserve. And you take a serving of that before your workout, a serving of it after your workout,

you still haven't broken your fast, but you've given your body all eight of the essential amino acids. You're not gonna metabolize lean muscle, you're actually gonna build lean muscle and you don't have the excess calories. Or find a way to get 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking and then exercise.

The idea of feeding and exercising is contrary to people that think we should exercise intensely in a fasted state. When you exercise intensely in a fasted state. When you exercise intensely in a fasted state, you're less likely to burn fat and more likely to burn lean muscle. So like Michael made me three eggs today with grass-fed butter, but that's not 30. He should have made me four.

Yeah, but that's still getting you there. I mean, unless you're really getting after it in the gym. I mean, but if you took a serving of perfect aminos with that, you'd be absolutely perfect. By the way, that is the perfect meal. I mean, three eggs, hopefully with the yolks. Yep. And some grass-fed butter. I mean-

Little raw milk in my coffee. Dude, love it. Coffee's mold-free, don't need to brag. You know what's so funny is I watched- Coffee's mold-free. Yeah. By the way, have you ever tried Keeon? Which brand of coffee do you like?

Have you ever tried Keeon Aminos? Keeon. Oh, Keeon. I love Keeon. That's at Greenfields, right? He's a partner, but Yeah. By the way, have you ever tried Keon? What's your brand of coffee? Keon. Keon? Keon. Oh, Keon. I love Keon. That's Greenfield's, right? He's a partner, but the guy that owns it's Angelo,

and that's the Aminos I take. You should try his Aminos too. We like those ones. Yeah, I talked to Angelo, the guy, smart. Very smart. Very smart guy. Yeah, he's been on here a couple times. He's the one that told me to mix the creatine

with the Aminos. Yeah. So I just have it stack it. Oh, okay. Oh, we bought Body Health. Oh, we bought Perfect aminos. So I just have it stack it. Oh, okay. So we bought body health. Oh, we bought body health, perfect aminos. All right. Well, the team's really on their good.

You gotta try these. Like every athlete that I have is on these, every professional athlete I work with. What you just said about weight loss, those three things are so, so important. But to summarize though, the people that think they're just gonna go to the gym and a fast as eight and run, run, run and burn, burn, burn,

it's not gonna do a thing to you. Absolutely not. I mean, I would not recommend intense exercise in a fasted state if your goal is to burn lean muscle. What do all your high profile- If your goal is to build lean muscle, sorry. What do all your high profile clients come to you for? What's the common denominator?

So- Burn out? Usually, no, usually, yeah, burn out and they've just hit a wall. So it's usually, they're like, Gary, I'm exhausted. I've got brain fog. I can't sleep. You know, my sleep is just all screwed up. I can't lose this weight.

And I'm just mood numbed. What's your vibe on GLP-1s? So I have two opinions on GLP-1s. The evidence now coming out on low dose glucose-like polypeptides is very good. Uh-huh. Right, and low dose is like- I've noticed that.

For inflammation, for cognitive function. I think that, so GLP-1, first of all, for the folks that don't know what GLP-1 is, it's a hormone that we make in our gut, right? I mean, but we make GLP-1, glucose-like polypeptide. We make it in response to satiation. So when you eat a nutrient-dense meal, you secrete GLP-1. That's why you can't overeat avocados.

You can't overeat a ribeye, right? You couldn't sit down and just gorge yourself on ribeyes. You try to line up five avocados and just start chewing your way through them and see if you even make it to the second one, right? Because your satiation, and your stomach is not full content wise, you are, they're nutrient dense.

So you will- You got all you needed from it. A lot of GLP-1s. So first of all, I think we should first, when people are heavy or they wanna lose weight, the first question they should ask themselves is, not to sound harsh, but why am I fat? Because if you don't ask yourself why you're fat,

and you just go straight to the GLP-1, you might not stop bathing your cellular biology in the toxic soup that got you there, right? So I'm not against GLP-1s. I prefer terzapotide over semaglutide. So semaglutide is the ozempic. What's a low dosage of trisapid? So, low dosage of trisapid would be 15 to 25 IUs.

So, 15 to 25 IUs would be low dose trisapid. Again, I'm not a physician, so I wanna be careful giving medical recommendations. Neither are we. I know you guys think I'm a doctor, but I'm not. But so far, everything you're doing is like, you're super spot on. I mean, I'm really proud of you guys.

We get to talk to people like yourself and we've done about 900 of these. So if we didn't pick up, it's taken us about 900 episodes to start doing two or three things right. Go ahead, Gary. So, if you want to start releasing more GLP-1, eat more nutrient dense foods. I mean, the reason why nearly every study that looks at calorically identical diets,

one being highly processed and one being whole foods, you'll see that people that eat whole food diets eat less. It's because they are satiated. It's not that they're eating more calories, that they're more nutrient-dense, so they release more GLP-1 because they're more satiated. I am a sucker for a good TV show. It's like a way for me to zone out, relax. Just like watch a good show that's kind of buzzy, and I've got one for you.

And that is the premieres of HDTV's buzzy new series, The Flip Off. Trust me, you guys don't want to miss this one. So here's the deal. Christina Haack and Tarek Al Moussa were married. And they're kind of like the king and queen of flipping shows. And then out of nowhere, boom, a divorce.

Ten years later, a history and drama and new marriages, these exes are ready to face off to prove who's the best flipper around in the flip-off. So, in this show, not only is it Christina and Tarek, it's also his new wife, Heather Rae Al Moussa. Tarek and Heather have been on the show. They're fabulous. They've been on our podcast.

We loved interviewing them. And this series really delivers, especially adding Christina to the dynamic. So what the goal is, is to flip a house with the biggest payoff. This is HDTV at its absolute best. And also this show isn't just about flips, it's about transformations, competitive banner.

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Christina is just the cherry on top. Tune into the premiere Wednesday, January 29th at eight seven central and see who wins in the first of its kind competition. You won't want to miss it. Last week, Lauren and I did an episode with the founders of Chomps, one of the leading food brands in the country, talking all about how they bootstrapped this incredible brand to be one of the leading food brands in the country. There is something for every entrepreneur in that episode or aspiring entrepreneur to

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Okay. It is giving the gift of a nice sleep to the mother and father. And how I do that is very detailed. Okay. I like no light in my baby's room. I've done this since both of them were born, not even a diaper light. Okay. room. I've done this since both of them were born, not even a diaper light, okay? I also like 528 Hertz, which people can just download. And then I have this sleep sack. It's a gently weighted

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When I started eating a ton of my meatballs every day, I was so satisfied that it's essentially kind of doing the same thing as a GLP-1. Yeah, if you eat a bowl of meat every day, then you're going to be very satisfied. First of all, the meat's very nutrient dense. It has all the essential amino acids. It has all the essential fatty acids. You know, it's solid, has a solid amount of calories. So when you eat meat, you're very satiated, you release a lot of GLP-1.

You're not only satiated, you're satiated longer. Yep. Right? Whereas, so it's not just calories in, calories out, because if you eat a highly processed meal with the same exact calories as that bowl of meat, you're very quickly gonna be hungry again because you didn't get the nutrient density, right?

That there's, you know, when you lack nutrients, you lack very quickly gonna be hungry again because you didn't get the nutrient density, right? That there's, you know, when you lack nutrients, you lack the production of GLP-1, which tells you that you're satiated. You mentioned though, there's another side of GLP-1 that you don't like. So the side that I don't like is because, is the side where we got fat,

we don't stop bathing our cellular biology in the toxic soup. So we don't eliminate seed oils, We don't eliminate the processed foods. We don't eliminate basically the fake foods. We just eat less of them because we're taking this injection. So my beef is not necessarily with the GLP-1s. My beef is with,

we should be talking to these clients or patients or, you know, heavy-set people. And we should say, this is what got you there. Let's use the GLP-1, but at the same time, let's make these dietary and lifestyle changes. Let's try to migrate you to a whole foods diet. You know, and what's so fascinating is,

you know, dieting shouldn't necessarily be dogmatic. If you actually look at the longevity research, like what Dr. Volter Longo's doing out of USC. We literally just had him on the show. Oh, did you? This episode is gonna come out in about a couple of weeks. Okay, he's amazing. I mean, he's a big fan of not just fasting,

but fast mimicking, right? So lower caloric, and he's got the research to prove it. And I think I've read his book, The Longevity Diet, you know, he's done a lot of Blue Zone research. He's fascinating. I've had him on the podcast too. And in fact, we flew out to USC just to have him on because I'm really a big fan of his work.

Very intelligent guy. But if you look at the Blue Zone research, you won't find any continuity between diets, right? So it's not keto, carnivore, paleo, pescatarian, vegan, vegetarian, you know, raw food. It's whole foods, right? I mean, if you go to Sardinia, one of the highest vegan, vegetarian, you know, raw food, it's whole foods, right? I mean, if you go to Sardinia, one of the highest carbohydrate consumptions in the world,

one of the longest life expectancies. If you go to Singapore, they have one of the highest meat consumptions per capita, one of the longest life expectancies. In the Mediterranean, very high fat consumption, very high fatty oils, lots of olive oils, lots of fatty fish. Everything satisfying. Everything satisfying.

So the point is they're all whole foods, is what I'm saying. Everything satisfying. The point is they're all whole foods is what I'm saying. Interesting. The continuity was that they were all whole foods. There's not one blue zone with highly processed diets. So my issue with the GLP-1s is not with the GLP-1 itself. It's like, why are we, why, why did we become morbidly obese and type two diabetic? Probably because we're eating a very highly processed diet.

We probably have a lot of seed oils. So if we address that and use the GLP-1s, I'm a huge fan. And I also think that these drugs were meant to stay on for prolonged periods of time. In the very high dosages, you see things like paralytic bowel, you see gastric emptying and contents putrefying. So when you get to very, very high doses of GLP-1, you start to also have an effect, again, back onto the motility of the gut.

So if we can keep satiation within a range where people don't have cravings and not have such an intense effect on intestinal motility, then in low doses, there's starting to be some evidence for inflammation, for the accumulation of amyloid plaques, even in the brain, for circulation, for hormone balance in women. And some very good indications in low dosages

that these GLP-1s have positive effects. But to recap a bit of this conversation, because we've talked about a lot, if you were to cover the bases with the four supplements that you discussed. The four supplements. If you were to cover the bases with the four supplements that you discussed. The four supplements. If you were to incorporate some weight training in some cardio in a state where you have a little bit

of protein in the morning with some minos. With your salt. If you were to. Don't forget the Baja Gold salt. If you were to eat whole foods and eliminate processed foods, you could probably. You're 90% of the way there. Do you drink alcohol?

Like literally, no. You don't like it? I mean, I drank on New Year's Eve and I drank one out of the time last year. But you're not a of the way there. Do you drink alcohol? Like literally, no. You don't like it? I mean, I drank on New Year's Eve and I drank one out of the time last year. But you're not a big alcohol drinker. No. Okay, what's a Gary Brekka morning? So I have a pretty specific morning routine.

Can't wait, this is the show. And I get a lot of flack for this, but I have a pretty specific morning routine. Give us the exact detail. Okay, I'll give you the exact. This is gonna go crazy on TikTok. All right, I'll give you the exact detail. End us off with this,

because I need you to come back on the podcast because I have a hundred other questions, but give you the exact- This is gonna go crazy on TikTok. All right, I'll give you the exact detail. End us off with this, because I need you to come back on the podcast because I have a hundred other questions, but give us the morning routine, the Gary Brek a morning. I'm actually hosting a challenge in February. It's completely free. And I'm taking everybody through three days, three consecutive days of my morning routine. And I'm gonna structure in a way

that's not gonna cost them any money. I expect to have a hundred thousand or so people on this challenge. So if you wanna sign up for the challenge, you can go to theultimatehuman.com, it's absolutely free. Sign up for my morning routine challenge. It's all based on science and I'll go deep into the science behind each thing that I do.

So let me just begin by saying, I think that most people lack routine in general. And I think that we lack good sleep hygiene, meaning a good sleep routine and we lack a morning routine. And the think that we lack good sleep hygiene, meaning a good sleep routine, and we lack a morning routine. And the reason why those bookends are so important is because you're bookending the most important superpower that we have, which is sleep. And when I talk to most people about their sleep

and I say, what's your sleep routine? They'll just like, well, what do you mean? I just get in bed, you know, and I go to sleep. I'll hang out with you in Miami and we can talk about mine. Okay, the very first thing that I fix in any client that I work with, the very first, and I go to sleep. I'll hang out with you in Miami and we can talk about mine. Okay, the very first thing that I fix and any client that I work with, the very first thing I fix is their sleep. So I schedule meetings and exercise.

I mean, I scheduled travel and meetings around sleep and exercise. So in the morning, when I wake up, I have this little path in my house. So I get out of bed, I go into the bathroom, I brush my teeth, floss, splash water on my face. I immediately get into a cold plunge and it's between 50 and 52 degrees Fahrenheit.

I haven't seen any evidence that colder is better or longer is better. And I'm in there for three minutes and that's it. Six minutes maximum. I rarely ever even do six minutes. Which brand do you like right now? Cold Life. I like Cold Life's vertical cold plunges.

And I like them for three reasons. I have a recumbent cold plunge. I also think plunge makes a great cold plunge and that's a recumbent one. But the stand up vertical one, I really like. You just feel more in control. You can breathe easier. I keep my fingers out.

I sink down to my shoulders, I dunk, and then I get back out. Remember, you're trying to do three things, four things when you cold plunge. We're trying to cold shock the body, not trying to cold adapt the body. So making it 37 degrees or staying in for 12 minutes is completely-

That's where she's absolutely- Okay. Three days. Not necessary. So you want to do four things. You want to cause a peripheral vaginal constriction. But then you don't want to adapt really, right? You don't want to adapt. You want to shock the body, right?

It's like, if every once in a while I hit around the corner in the house and I scared you, you know, every time I said, boo, you would have a reaction. But if you knew I was hiding around that corner every day when you approached that corner, you'd be like, I know you're there. Okay, so you're getting in the cold plunge. So I'll go through it and then I'll give you the signs.

But so I do a cold plunge. I get out of the cold plunge, I dry off. I walk to the end of my hallway and I lay in a red light therapy bed for 20 minutes. And I warm back up in a red light therapy bed. Smart. I think that red light therapy, either a hydrogen bath or a red light therapy bed,

if you said I could only have one thing in my life, like one modality, I'd be hard pressed to decide whether or not it would be a hydrogen bath or a red light therapy bed. But I probably would like to wear it. Michael, I think I have changed your life. You just got a light stem bed. Oh, you got a light stem.

Okay, so that's a single sided bed. So you have to flip over on that. So this is just a dual sided bed. But you like it after the cold plunge, cause I'm gonna- I like it after the cold plunge. Okay, so cold plunge, then this. Yep, I go cold plunge, I go in into there going to- I like it after the cold plunge. Yeah. Then this. Yeah. I go cold plunge.

I go in and into there. And then I call it earning my way to the coffee maker. And then I go straight outside and I take my shirt off and I I'm usually in my underwear, my boxers. I'm on a balcony in a condo. So my neighbors looking at me like I'm crazy. I just let the sunlight hit my skin and I do three rounds of breath work.

And the one thing about breath work is it's the part of my routine that's portable. And I never, ever, ever, ever miss doing breath work within 30 minutes of waking. Is there a person you follow or you do it yourself? I do a Wim Hof style of breath work. Like you can get paralysis of analysis and breath work too, right?

I mean, I have people say, you should always be breathing through your nose. You should always be breathing through your mouth. You should do single nostril breathing. You should hold for prolonged. It's just breathing. If you want to go down the Pranayama path. It's like lifting weights.

I wonder what, how much, do you just lift weights? So let go, let go move. Let me promise you this. If you're not doing breath work and you do three rounds of five breaths and then work your way to three rounds of 10, three rounds of 15, and work your way up to three rounds of 20 breaths,

it will change your life. Like literally change your life. And again, I'll give you the science behind why, but so it's a Wim Hof method. I didn't invent it, he invented it. I went through his, it was like a 10 week or a couple months certification course. Still have to go to the Pyrenees mountains with him.

And what I do is, first of all, I breathe obnoxiously deep and I breathe through my nose. Pshh, pshh, and then I I breathe through my nose. Pfft. And then I breathe out through a straw. Pfft. Feels good. Like an actual physical straw? No, Michael. No, like a pretend straw.

Come on, Michael. Okay, well, you know, I'm a track here. I mean, I pick a straw. Listen, Gary, would you- I can picture a straw, my ex-boyfriend. Gary, with you anything's possible, so I have to ask. Yeah, that's true. But you need to breathe obnoxiously, right?

You wanna engage your auxiliary muscles of respiration. These are the ones that atrophy. Most of us after the age of 30, I read a stat, I don't know if there's a study behind it, I got in trouble for quoting it on social media, like Lane Norton and other people call me out, but it was an article that said that after the age of 30, 90% of people will never sprint again

for the rest of their life. I don't know where the stack came from. I don't know if it's 90% or if it's 70%, but when you start to think about that stat, the majority of people after their 30th birthday will never sprint again. So this means what's happening. We're not using our auxiliary muscles of respiration,

our inner costals. So you gotta use them. So use them, right? If you don't get technical on the internet, they'll tell you, don't worry. Yeah, so I probably shouldn't have quoted it because I didn't look to see if there was a peer-reviewed double-blind study behind it, but I read it

and I said it on Instagram and then they were like, ah, he's a charlatan. But the, so I get out every day and I just. The, so I get out every day and I just. Now I work my way to three rounds of 30 breaths. I would suggest starting with three rounds of five breaths. When you get to your fifth breath, hold your breath as long as you can. So try to distract yourself, get outside of your head,

listen to a bird flying by, find that, you know, you know, EMS going by on the, listen to a motorcycle in the background. Just try to get outside of your head to not pay attention to the fact that you want to breathe. Because if you build up carbon dioxide, remember carbon dioxide is the main vasodilator in the human body.

People think it's nitric oxide, it's not. Nitric oxide is actually a caustic gas. The reason why we get vascular during exercise is because of the CO2 headed back to the heart. So if you build up carbon dioxide, you will vasodilate your system. So you do five breaths, get to the fifth breath, exhale,

and hold as long as you can. You can hold your breath much longer than you think. Your body will override you and make you breathe in before you pass out. But do this sitting, don't do it driving, don't do it in the shower, don't do it while you're walking around. And then when you can't hold your breath anymore,

breathe in, hold that breath as long as you can, let it out. And start again. This is good for high-strung people, huh? Super good. And there is a method that I use. I do a similar breathing technique at night that they call natural Xanax, which is a slow, we can talk about sleep routine if you'd like, but a long, slow inhale through the nose.

And then you hold your breath for a three second pause. And then you go out through a straw, really tight straw. What you can do is you can imagine, this sounds crazy, but it works. Imagine taking all the thoughts from your head and breathing them into your lungs like this. Pfft. And hold those thoughts in your lungs for three seconds and then breathe those thoughts out.

Because the majority of people that are listening to this podcast that have sleep issues have the same sleep issue. As their environment quiets, their mind wakes up. So they're not, they're body tired, but their mind awake, right? And they will ruminate on all of the thoughts that things that happened during the day.

And if you actually ask them what they're thinking about, they'll tell you they're thinking about, they'll tell you, I'm thinking about the most innocuous little nonsense. Right? I'm thinking, did I get everything on my grocery list? Did my belt match my shoes today? You know, should I have returned that Instagram post?

You know, what if we had a Thanksgiving party? What color dishes would I use? You know, it's just a kind of ruminating thoughts, right? So this type of breathing will get rid of that. So anyway, morning routine, cold plunge, I get into a red light therapy bed, I do a round of breath work outside in the sunlight, I look as far out onto the horizon as I can.

That takes six or eight minutes. And then I walk in and I hydrate, mineralize with Perfect Aminos and I have a coffee. And that's kind of my reward. You gotta try the mold-free. I mean, I'm gonna try them. I use Pure and then one of them. Oh, Pure is good.

Pure is Mold Free. Okay, is it Mold Free? Well, you know, I mean, you know better than I do. Yeah, so. Give me some Kion, we have some in the office. I have some in the office, I'll give you some. Okay, that's good too. So I didn't know Kion was Mold Free.

I would expect that from them. He's crazy about that. And he like goes and inspect the bags and all this stuff. I definitely want to try them. You also have this incredible brownie protein bar that you brought me. And I'm noticing there's a lot of bars popping up on the markets and I always look at the ingredients

and your ingredients are superior. Thank you. Which is really exciting. I'm really, really proud of that. I partnered with Perfect Aminos to get the amino acids in there. Really exciting. It tastes so good.

I'm gonna eat one of these after this? I'm gonna actually trick my kids. I already have a whole plan. I'm gonna cut so good. I'm gonna eat one of these after this? I'm gonna actually trick my kids. I already have a whole plan. I'm gonna cut these up. I'm gonna roll them into balls and I'm gonna call them chocolate balls. They will love them. Yeah.

They literally will. That's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do a trick. They're gonna love them. Or put stuff them in a raspberry chocolate. There's a million things you can do with this with kids. Where can everyone shop everything you're doing? Maybe there's a code.

You guys wanna do code skinny? They can go to, yeah, code skinny. In fact, I have a community called the Rural Brackets, which is like a community where I do like coaching and I do lives and I do actually a private podcast for this community every month. And if they go to theultimatehuman.com and they wanna sign up to be one of our Rural Brackets, I'll make it free for your community every month. And if they go to theultimatehuman.com

and they wanna sign up to be one of our rollbacks, I'll make it free for your community if they just use the code skinny, S-K-I-N-N-Y. And they can shop your protein bars and vitamins with code skinny? Yep, they can shop our protein bars. Okay, what do you wanna give off? I wanna make sure.

Let's give them 20% off of everything. We've had a lot of people on this podcast and after an hour we're like, okay, we talked about everything. I could do a-part series with you. I could niche down on so many different topics. I mean I could do a whole one on evening routine. You're welcome to come back anytime you want. You're great on a mic. We are going on your podcast now. What's your podcast? Pimp yourself out. podcast now, what's your podcast? Pimp yourself out.

Tell us where to find you on Instagram. My podcast is The Ultimate Human. You can see that at anywhere you watch your podcasts or listen to your podcast. Just Google The Ultimate Human or you can go to theultimatehuman.com. And on Instagram? My first and last name at Gary Brekka. These protein bars are fucking good. They're good.

They really are. Thank you for doing this, making the trip. Appreciate you, man. Love you guys. This episode was brought to you by the Skinny Confidentials Beauty Water. Make sure you go grab your newest addition to your morning routine before your coffee,

electrolytes, colostrum, and pearl powder. Go to shopskinnyconfidential.com.