The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 199. Debunking Health Myths with Sage Workinger-Brecka & Gary Brecka

Starting point is 00:00:00 We took all of the most frequently asked questions, and we've consolidated those into a Q&A with the love of my life, my partner, my wife, Sage Breca. Thank you. That was very sweet. So the first question, if starting from scratch on a health journey, what's the number one thing you would do first? There's a lot of packaged food out there that actually is decent and has five or less ingredients. But if it's got a long list and it's so small, you can barely read it. know if your normal fatigue is actually a sign of something deeper, like hormone imbalance or mitochondrial burnout. This is a super interesting question because I think the same thing, because sometimes the symptoms for things. What are the three worst daily habits that quietly destroy

Starting point is 00:00:45 your energy, focus, and mood? One of the things that I really admit is what is the most overlooked thing that couples can do together to improve their health and relationship at the same time. What we do is really try to... How do we best support young boys with ADHD symptoms without medications? For ADHD, I think what has really, really helped is... Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human podcast. I am your host Human Biologist Gary Breck. And today's episode is really, really unique and special.

Starting point is 00:01:29 It's been a long time in the making. We took all of the most frequently asked questions that have been submitted through all of our social channels that have come to me or come to my wife or come to our team. And we've consolidated those into a Q&A with the love of my life, my partner, my soulmate, my wife, Sage Breca. Thank you. That was very sweet. Notice I admitted your maiden name. Yes. I'm working on it.

Starting point is 00:01:57 She hyphenates it working or Breka, but we just drop the workinger and make things simple. So here we go. I know a lot of you have questions on relationships, building the business, hormones, couples working together, all kinds of things. So we're just going to be as authentic, transparent as we possibly can. And the staff is laughing and loving putting this together. So I'm a little afraid of what we might find on this page. What are we about to admit here? I know.

Starting point is 00:02:27 What are we about to admit here? This might be a heavily edited podcast. Oh, Lord. So the first question is, what is the most overlooked thing that couples can do together to improve their health and relationship at the same time? I think that's a good one. Most overlooked thing. I mean, I don't know what's overlooked, but what we do is really try to, it sounds so silly.

Starting point is 00:02:52 but when you have a schedule like yours where you're just ping ponging around all day from call to call, from appointment to appointment, and because our work happens in our home, it's not like you go to an office from nine to five and then come home and, you know, just be with me and the family. So we have to schedule our time together. And as unromantic as that sounds, it works. I am an old school calendar person. She does it months in advance. Yes. Not that anything ever stays the same, but we try. And I am also very visual, so I like to take a highlighter and schedule things out. So if we're in Miami, that might be purple. And if we're in, you know, Nashville, that might be pink. But the goal is to, especially in the summer months, get as much green on the calendar as possible because that means our time in Colorado together. And that's where we, I feel like you and I spend the most time together. one-on-one at least. I agree.

Starting point is 00:03:54 When we're in Colorado, and that's our happy place. And it's a place where we can go hiking together, and our phones don't work. So I recommend that. If your phone does work, then just leave it at home or turn it off. But we have a lot of good conversations walking around, hiking, exploring new places, jumping on the razor, the ATV, and just cruising around the dirt roads. Yeah, I like that we've also kind of switched our vacation stock. from going to places that entertain us to just allowing ourselves to be the entertainment. And,

Starting point is 00:04:27 you know, it used to be that when we went out, even when we were drinking, you know, we would do things that revolved around drinking or we'd go to a show, or we'd go to Vegas, or we'd go to a concert, or we'd go to a game. And it was always going somewhere to be entertained, but it wasn't really about true connection. And the more I really began to explore the necessity for connection, that connection is medicine, that even the blue zones tell us that the people that live the longest have a sense of community and a sense of purpose. And that connection is something that we are intentional about now. And so, whereas vacations used to be going places that would entertain us, now we actually try to have the absence of distractions so that we entertain

Starting point is 00:05:14 each other. And it's actually worked out really well. I found out what a great sense of humor Sage has with one caveat Sage thinks that she is a lot funnier than she is She will start a story And she will be in such a fit of giggle So she can't even get the story out

Starting point is 00:05:33 So that like I'm begging for the punchline And she's like, you'll never believe what happened today My girlfriend called me And then she can't get it out And nine minutes later We get to the end of this very anti-climatic story but she has had such a laugh that now I'm laughing at her

Starting point is 00:05:50 laughing at myself so much fun laughing thinking about how funny she is yeah one of my best friends Aaron from back of the day used to always be like I guess she had to be there

Starting point is 00:06:02 because apparently I have a history of that so I think I'm hilarious but that's okay the second part of this question was things we can do to improve our health and our relationship probably laugh a lot so I feel like good abs

Starting point is 00:06:15 from laughing a lot. You have great. But yeah, we hike. We go in the sauna. As soon as my dad says sauna is hot, then we run right down there because it's a wood-fired sauna. So you've got a short period of time

Starting point is 00:06:26 where you've got to fire it up again. We both like a lot of the same things. We both like to be active. We love hiking. We love being outdoors. We love shooting guns. We love driving these razors raging all over the mountain.

Starting point is 00:06:40 They're not really expensive trips. They're not expensive things. But there's an absence of entertainment and just the presence of each other. And I think that's really the point. And health-wise, we're very much on the same page. We don't need exactly the same foods. We don't do exactly the same protocol. But we're very intentional about our routines. Morning sunlight, grounding, breathwork, whole food dieting. I think in general, it's just like raising kids. You know, you have a framework that you agree on. And, uh, For us, one of the big things that I think we intentionally did about two and a half years ago was we began to schedule meetings and travel around sleep and exercise. So we don't let our travel schedule dictate when we sleep and exercise. We let our sleep and exercise dictate when we travel and take meetings. So I get offers sometimes for state talks or podcasts or lectures.

Starting point is 00:07:39 I don't take them early in the morning. I only do them later in the mornings now. especially because I like to sleep in. I'm not a morning person. If you've seen the Good Morning Babe series. I'm just not so good early in the morning. I'm not good with time. Nope.

Starting point is 00:07:55 But it gives you a chance to, it gives me a chance to sleep in because I do prioritize my sleep, but it gives you a chance to work out in the morning. So you get all your wiggles out before the day starts. So you're just... She calls it to wiggles. Yeah, it's the Zumbis.

Starting point is 00:08:10 The zumbies. Yeah. Whatever it is. But you wakes up. I have a plethora of energy. in the morning. I want to talk to everybody and I have so much to say and I'm, I want to talk to nobody, nobody until I've had my coffee and it's like at least give me an hour to get going. I have noticed on some of our travel recently, you have booked this in first class in

Starting point is 00:08:31 different seats. Do you want to explain? Oh my God, she's so, did you guys see this? Like the guilt? That's why she says it happened by accident or she blames it on my assistant. Or it's right. It's totally Mariah's fault. No, you enjoy peaceful flying. Okay, I do because I get so much more done when you're not talking to me every two seconds. But I do love you. And sometimes people will switch seats with us, so that's nice. But a lot of times we book our flights last minute, and so there's not a whole lot of seat options. But you can always ask the person next to you to switch. Usually somebody knows who you are, and so you get to sit down and tell your whole life story, and you love it. And I am totally okay, reading my book in the corner.

Starting point is 00:09:14 So number two, it says, how do you know if your normal fatigue is actually a sign of something deeper like hormone imbalance or mitochondrial burnout? This is a super interesting question because I think the same thing. Because sometimes the symptoms for things could be hormonal.

Starting point is 00:09:30 They could be like I had mold poisoning. So there's all of this long list of issues with mold poisoning. There's, you know, I feel like there's just, so many people have autoimmune issues, all sorts of things. Or was it, you just didn't get enough sleep or was it something you ate? I just, how do you figure out what's what? So I think the starting point needs to be a basic blood panel. I think everybody needs to start with a basic

Starting point is 00:10:01 genetic test and start supplementing for deficiency. But assuming you've done that, if you're feeling overly fatigued, and it's something that's recently onset, I would always start with a basic blood panel, complete blood count, comprehensive metabolic panel, hormone panel, and nutrient deficiencies. And this is a basic panel that you can get from LabCorp, not very expensive. A lot of it's covered by health insurance, because you want to look for the glaringly obvious things first, and those will jump out on a hormone panel. Lots of reasons why people are fatigued is because they're hormones have began to decline. They may not necessarily need hormone therapy. They may need the nutrients that support hormone therapy, like DHEA, vitamin D3, looking at something called sex hormone

Starting point is 00:10:51 binding globulent, a protein that actually binds to your sex hormones and carries them out of the bloodstream like testosterone. Because as your hormones decline, very often the number of red blood cells that carry oxygen also declines. And this can hide in plain sight. you're essentially having anemia like symptoms without having anemia. A good physician can look at that and say, hey, we need to do something about your hormones. And once your hormones are balanced, we need to do something about your deficiency in D3, DHEA. You have high SHBG. And we can address these things rather simply that a lot of pharmaceutical intervention and you feel amazing.

Starting point is 00:11:30 I think a lot of times people just don't get data. And the worst thing to do is start talking to the people around you. about what to do because they're going to say Ashwaganda, St. John's work, Kuketriot, they're going to just throw ideas that maybe work for them, but no data. And the best place to get the data is inside your own body. And the majority of people, if you are younger and not menopausal age or, you know, over 50, the majority of people just have simple nutrient deficiencies that can be addressed in their blood work. And this is leading to fatigue. Once you've done that,

Starting point is 00:12:07 I would say before you progress to really worrying that something terrible is going on and thinking that something really sinister is happening, I would do the big four. Test for the big four. Mold Mycotoxin, heavy metal, parasite virus. Lots of tests that you can do for this. A lot of you can get them covered by your primary care doctor. One that I do is called a vibrant wellness test. I have no affiliation with them at all. I like this test because as we get older, We are slowly kind of micropoising ourselves to death. And not to death, but we're micropoising ourselves into a place where we start accepting consequences of aging, consequences of aging that are not consequences of aging.

Starting point is 00:12:50 Consequences of mold, micro toxins, other things that can be in our blood. And they can start to detox those. We both actually got mold poisoning. Terrible. You got it from our, we had two houses flooded in the hurricane. Hurricane Ian. Hurricane Ian. washed two houses in one afternoon, gone.

Starting point is 00:13:10 We had a primary residence we lived on that was on a canal, and then we had a rental home two blocks away. They were both wiped out, six foot. Between five and nine feet of water in each one. Yeah, between five and nine feet of water in each of these. So Sage went in for weeks and was helping to intentionally clean the house, and then she was meeting with contractors, and they were cutting out the drywall.

Starting point is 00:13:30 And you don't realize how fast it happens. And I think we were both shocked at how fast something called Aflaton. oxen, ochre toxins, all these fungicides, these fungi showed up in her bloodstream and it literally just sucked the life out of her. It really did. But it took, I would say the worst of it hit about a year later. Yeah. When I had just the worst case of brain fog I think I've ever had. Now, of course, this is part of the question that I had. Like, how do I know that that brain fog was mold versus, you know, I'm in perimenopause? We tested for it. Yeah. The hormones. So I'm kind of messed up on both sides.

Starting point is 00:14:08 Extra brain fog. Your word's not mine, not my word. I know. We're figuring it out. So I would say that I would start basic blood panel and then I would move to more specific testing. Okay. What are the three most daily habits that quietly destroy your energy, focus, and mood? Okay.

Starting point is 00:14:27 I'm going to take the first go at this. So one of the things that I've really made, you know, I've really tried this last year, year and a half, to focus on, is stop focusing on the negative because I admit that I was kind of a Debbie Downer sometimes and would find the, you know, I've got anxiety. So I'd find the worst case scenario and everything. And I, I don't know. I just, I had to learn to stop focusing on the negative and start focusing on the positive. And holy cow, the affirmations that I started doing positive affirmations and just looking at things and shifting my mindset to the positive has made a world of difference. And it sounded like hocus pocus to me in the beginning. And I was

Starting point is 00:15:14 like, I'll give anything a shot, you know, to feel better and feel happier. And that has made a huge difference. I also found, I think I've talked about this on the podcast before, but a four-minute video, positive affirmations video that I do when I'm doing my cold punch. That I don't love to do my cold plunge, but that four minutes in there changes my whole day. Maybe we'll link that in the show now. Okay. So that was a good one. So I do four minute positive affirmation. And I think that poor sleep habits, which I am trying to get better at. I got an aura ring. So I'm trying to track my sleep there and learn, you know, what I'm doing right, what I'm doing wrong. It does make me laugh that sometimes it just tells me, yeah, you probably feel like crap today. I'm like, yeah, I sure do.

Starting point is 00:16:01 Thanks for letting me know. I think the three worst daily habits are... Wait, I have one more. Oh, sorry, go ahead. And phone habits. I think that that is something I still need to probably work on is... You've been a lot better. I feel like I've been better, but yeah, putting the phone down.

Starting point is 00:16:16 Yeah, you're off the phone earlier. Sleep has improved dramatically. In fact, looking at your sleep scores now, it's not at all uncommon that you have an entire week and the high 80s to mid-90s sleep scores on a consistent. consistent basis. You actually become a very good sleeper. But, you know, I think the worst three daily habits, the primary worst habit is to not have daily habits. That's the first one, is if you don't have a morning routine, which we do, and I'll tell you exactly what it is, very simple, if you don't have a morning routine, your routine will be chaotic. And, you know,

Starting point is 00:16:53 we are such circadian beings. We have a biarrhythm and we have a circadian rhythm. And the more out of sync we are with that, the more disconnected we feel from ourselves. And by that, I mean, if you do the same thing with the first 30 minutes of your day, every day, I get up before Sage. So my duty is, first of all, I'm going to write a manual on how to wake up Sage. And it's like 32 pages long. It will have a table of contents. But it's very specific because she likes the noise machine on when she goes to sleep. But the second she wakes up, the noise machine, has to go off. I can't stand it when it's on. It's been on for eight hours. So at first, it used to freak me out too bad because she would wake up and she'd be like, can you turn

Starting point is 00:17:38 the noise machine off? I'm like it. I can't hear it anymore because it's been running for eight hours. I think that's my methylation for sure. So now I know that as soon as we wake up, I turn the noise machine off, stage one. Thank you. Secondly, we sleep with the room very cold, but she doesn't like to wake up in a cold room. So I actually turn the temperature up when I get up in the morning. And then she likes coffee right out of bed. So no words, just coffee. Just coffee. And then there's a little. And some kisses. And some kisses. And I say nice things to her. And so my role is to do that. And a little knee calf and foot rub works wonders. I like that's learned to do it. But one of my favorite biohacks outside of breathwork by far is mineral salts. Baja gold

Starting point is 00:18:22 sea salt. It's got all of the trace minerals that the body needs. You know, Most of us are not just protein deficient, meaning amino acid deficient or fatty acid deficient. We are mineral deficient. So a quarter teaspoon of this in water, first thing in the morning will make sure that you get all of the essential minerals that you need. It tastes amazing. In fact, I made a steak today. I actually made a grass fed steak with grass fed butter, and I put just mushrooms and a little bit of rosemary, and I sprinkled Baja Gold Sea Salt all over the top.

Starting point is 00:18:48 Try it. It'll be your new favorite for cooking, too. It's the cheapest and one of my favorite biohacks. I don't know. A $15 or $20 bag of this will probably last you five years. And it's literally the world's best biohacking secret. Now, let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. Not having a morning routine is the worst thing you can do to disrupt your day.

Starting point is 00:19:06 So a morning routine can be very, very simple. You know, you wake up, I think within first 30 minutes of waking, try to get some natural light into your eyes. Very simple, inexpensive. I know a lot of you live in overcast climates, and you think, well, it's overcast. I'm not getting good light in my eyes. You're absolutely still getting the light coming through the clouds.

Starting point is 00:19:24 we do breathwork within 30 minutes of waking every single day like clockwork I've never missed it you missed a few um but uh just a simple round of breath work natural light in your eyes just to say i'm awake you know you're elevating your cortisol you're decreasing your melatonin your body locks into that cycle delaying your coffee for 60 minutes maybe even to up to 90 minutes um and easing your way into the day just um but having the same routine where you do sunlight breathwork if you can grounding where you drink the same thing in the mornings we we both make the exact same cocktail i am not trying to push supplements on you guys will tell you exactly what it is it's eight to ten ounces of water we put a scoop of perfect aminos in there we put a squirt of baha gold sea salt hydrating

Starting point is 00:20:16 mineralizing putting the amino acids and then we'll put two sometimes three of those has H2 tabs, which makes hydrogen water. You can use a hydrogen bottle if you have one. He's kind of lying, though. I actually like all my things separated out. She does. Oh, my gosh. I still drink at all.

Starting point is 00:20:32 31 of the manual. Yes, there's a lot. She does all of it, but in sequence. Yes. I just do it all at one time. And we whack that back. Hydrogen water actually drops the inflammation, turns the lights on. Amino acids are the non-essential amino acids.

Starting point is 00:20:47 They don't break a fast. And then minerals, if you don't do anything else, a good mineral salt first thing in the morning is an excellent way to hydrate and mineralize the body is probably the cheapest biohack that you'll have those those bags of salts are 15 20 bucks and that last you months and months so that's what we do every single morning and that's in pickin that's in dubai that's in saudi arabia that's in florida wherever we are we actually wake up sunlight breathwork and we have that cocktail versus separated ones all together This is the Comtee, like, so she has a gene mutation called Comtee, C-O-M-T.

Starting point is 00:21:24 Oh, it's fun. And this is like where you're just bordering on anxiety and anxiousness kind of all the time. And so like when we go into the woods, perfectionist. I'm going down the hill and I'm like halfway down the hill and I look up and she's just doing these baby like very intentional steps. She knows where every foot is landing. She is very intentional. I go, I don't want to eat it. I call it the Comtee walk because I'm so scared of.

Starting point is 00:21:48 falling. So, yeah, I do. Like, we were in the shale pit the other day, and I think I looked at you and I go, does it seem like I'm always trying to figure out how we can have fun and you're always trying to figure out how we actually don't get hurt? Yes. And we both started laughing, but. Gary has no fear. And I have all the fear. So we try to balance it somewhere in the middle that makes sense because it doesn't work either way. But yeah, walking in the woods,

Starting point is 00:22:17 will say just really interesting. She doesn't break a branch. She steps very intentionally. Okay. So morning habits that destroy your energy, focus, and mood. Coffee too soon, not having a morning habit, and scheduling things too early in the morning. I really think that we could all learn something from the Blue Zone studies, and that is that we have to be intentional about self-care. Women are especially bad at this because they wake up and put the needs of everybody else. So family, spouse, co-workers, what have you. Getting the kids out of the school, making all the lunches, yeah. But we've been very intentional about our mornings for me.

Starting point is 00:22:59 The first 60 to 90 minutes of every day belong solely to me. Same with her. And then after that, you can give the rest of your day away. And I find it's just an excellent way to just be present for your partners and for your audience. I give the rest of my day away to you guys and to, our platform. And Sage does the same. So I think another important part too is so that mornings aren't so stressful. If you're a parent, you have kids and you're trying to get everybody out the door at the same time is pre-plan things the night before. So I was always a big like

Starting point is 00:23:33 make every all the lunch before or the night before and then have the outfits laid out, have like I'm trying to think of the back in the day. I don't have to do that anymore. Thank goodness. But but have everything just laid out. So you don't wake up when everybody's cross-eyed and everybody's whining about having to be awake and whining up going to school or whining about going to work. And it's just ready to go. You've already, you know, exactly what you're putting on. And you really just need to like grab the bag, eat some lunch, eat some breakfast and go.

Starting point is 00:24:04 So I think pre-planning helps the mornings go smoother as well. And I think it's a good habit to get into. So, yeah. This is actually a really interesting one. If you could only track three biomarkers for the rest of your life. life, which ones would you choose and why? Wow. I would say if you could only track three biomarkers, number one would probably be sleep. I think sleep is our human superpower. It's easy to track, eight sleep, an aura ring, a fifth bit, a whoop. There's lots of ways to track

Starting point is 00:24:36 your sleep. You'd be shocked what is affecting your sleep and what's not. Alcohol, 100% of the time, sleep disruptive. Eating too close to bedtime, 90% of the time it will chew into your sleep time screen time in bed really does destroy your sleep um so actually getting those metrics and really having the data so that you know what's disturbing your sleep if you're not sleeping you're just not thriving i mean that's the that's the bottom line i really do think that sleep is our human superpower i mean number two for me would would definitely be hormones um wow number three there's so many there come to mind if I could only track three be sleep hormones and probably key nutrient deficiencies vitamin D3 DHEA being the primary two I agree with the hormones

Starting point is 00:25:30 and the sleep and the sleep thing is new for me so but I appreciate understanding it better even though my ORRing has definitely just told me, yes, you're a night owl, not a morning person, and my circadian rhythm is, you know, not normal, but at least I know who I am and I just make adjustments for it. But steps, I feel like when I track my steps, it makes me, when it shows me that I'm low on my steps, it makes me go, okay, I need to, you know, scoot my butt around a little bit more and figure something out, even if it's housework. Like sometimes I, certain days where I'm just so busy and all it is is just walking around, cleaning things up. So, um, but I think, I think it encourages you. It gamifies the exercise to, to track your steps.

Starting point is 00:26:20 What's one health myth you wish every woman and every man would stop believing today? Wow. My answer to this is thinking you constantly have to be on a diet. I feel like it messes when people, especially when girls, young girls, think that they have to be following some sort of special diet, it gets in their head. And I think it's what creates a lot of disorders, eating disorders. And they think they need to be a certain size. And they're, you know, looking at these magazines and these beautiful women and blah, blah, blah. But I think if we just, everybody understood that you just eat whole foods, stay away from the process stuff, stay away from fast food, just eat a good, healthy meal and in moderation, everything in moderation,

Starting point is 00:27:09 understand food better, I think is a big thing that people don't understand. I remember a girlfriend of mine loves sweet tea, loved it. And she was heavy and she couldn't understand. I'm eating everything right. I'm eating salads every day and grilled chicken and, you know, veggies and all the things that were correct. But I'm trying to walk through like, okay, well, that all sounds good. You're on the right supplements. Like, where, where is this? Why can't this

Starting point is 00:27:38 weight fall off? And then I'm like, wait a second. What are you drinking? And it was sweet tea. And I swear to God, she grew up in the South. So sweet tea is just what they drink on a normal basis. It's like water. And she didn't realize that sweet tea has just as much sugar as a soda, if not more. And so she had to, I was like, okay, that's where you're probably going wrong. So you need to take down the sugar content. So I was, like literally take it down by a fourth until you wean yourself off to unsweet tea. And so each, you know, week she would put a little less sweet tea and she either water it down with regular like unsweet tea anyway. Then she was half and half. And then it was, you know,

Starting point is 00:28:19 going in the right direction. And then you could just unsweet. You could substitute it with monk fruit or alulose. Yeah, something a little bit healthier than just straight sugar. I think mine would be the same way. I think that, you know, our ancestors didn't count macros. Our ancestors did. probably did not know the difference between a carbohydrate protein, saturated fat and unsaturated fat, mono-unsaturated fat. I don't even know all that stuff.

Starting point is 00:28:41 Yeah. And, you know, they ate till they were satiated. And if you're on a whole-food diet, meaning you're eating mainly whole foods, not dogmatic dieting, you're actually tapping into your body's own natural ability to gauge the nutrient content of what you're eating and make you feel satiated. And so we really focus on whole-food dieting,

Starting point is 00:29:01 eating whole foods. But in terms of a myth, I would say that, you know, there's a few myths out there, one that women shouldn't weight train. I think that's a massive myth. I mean, Sage's body completely transformed. Thank you, Alexia Clark. Thank you. You know, when she started weight training and actually putting muscle on, most women actually

Starting point is 00:29:25 look better when they are, have more muscle. And it wasn't crazy. You literally work out 12. a week with Alexia, two 30-minute sessions, but it was just adding weight in the right way and not heavy weight. It wasn't crazy. It was nothing. It was just staying consistent and then just the way that she taught me these exercises that I just hadn't been doing before. So I think, you know, following a program or hiring a trainer if you can, but even just following a program like Alexia, this is so great to, she transformed my body. I'm getting back to it this

Starting point is 00:30:00 week. You really did. Like, shockingly transformed her body. I mean, I was chasing her around like a high school. Oh, Lord. Still do. I said, okay, should we cut that out? I need to cut that one out.

Starting point is 00:30:11 Mom's listening. But it is crazy. Like, I'm more attracted to you almost today than the day we met. But the other one is intermittent fasting, especially women. I will tell you from having been in the functional medicine space for 10 years with a clinic and treating thousands of young menstruating women, some of the worst integrative. disasters I have seen are women that eat in a very narrow feeding window like their husbands. So their husband is on an intermittent fasting program. It works great for him because he has

Starting point is 00:30:40 higher hemoglobin A1C or more insulin resistant or higher blood sugar or he's just consuming a lot more food. So intermittent fasting works great for the majority of men. It is hit or miss for women. If you have poor blood sugar control, intermittent fasting can be amazing. You're one of those women that is a little hypoglycemic, you know, you actually have your insulin sensitive, not insulin resistant, and you have good blood sugar control and your numbers, your glycemic profile, meaning your insulin is low, below 10, preferably below 7, your hemoglobin A1C, which is three-month average of your blood sugar is at or below about 5.3. Very often women come in with very low blood sugar, like a hemoglobinacy of 4.8, which means half the time you're hypoglycemic.

Starting point is 00:31:34 And they're intermittent fasting. They're eating in the same narrow window, four hour, six hour window, like their husbands, even an eight hour window can be too narrow. And what this does for women because of their cycle, the follicular, the ovulation, the luteal, they're literally three different people at three different times of the month. And so this can actually really throw your hormones into a tailspin and you can actually start retaining water. Nothing is more frustrating for a young menstruating female than to actually start to retain water and think that you're getting fat when you're not eating and you're exercising and you're doing all the right things. You're cold plunging. You're doing the sauna. You're going to orange theory. You're going

Starting point is 00:32:13 hammer down and you're really making an effort, but you actually can't lose any weight. And you're watching your husband eat like a dinosaur and in a narrow feeding window and he's gaining muscle. and he's fine and you're having mood shifts and water retention. So if you are going to do intermittent fasting, which I'm a fan of, just get your blood sugar profile done. And if your average blood sugar is very low, you have an A1C is very low. You are not candidate for intermittent fasting. Women do very well eating in a 1212 window, 12 hours of eating, 12 hours off, writing their meals out. And that way cycles do not impact your mood and your mood and your water retention so much as they will when you are eating in a narrow feeding window.

Starting point is 00:32:59 So I would say that's one of the myths that, and I often see, you know, couples trying to do things together. We try to do things together. But, you know, intermittent fasting, like I say, it works for the majority of men. It's hit or miss for women. It's not a one size fits all. One thing that I've done because I'm not, again, back to the, I'm not a morning person. It also means I don't love to eat a big meal in the morning. So Gary will make me eggs and bacon, an avocado or something, and I'll eat it. But sometimes I just don't really want a huge meal, so I make a protein smoothie. And that's been my new gig lately because I just put everything I can into a protein smoothie.

Starting point is 00:33:37 And I'm also struggling to get enough protein. And that is, we could do a whole podcast. I feel like that. Let me put your protein smoothie recipe. There's a lot of ask for that. So we'll put that in the show notes, too. throws much stuff in one drink as you can. California and you can go to Airwain, you can get the Gary Breck's smoothie.

Starting point is 00:33:55 Oh, there you go. That's very delicious. Which was really funny because we were in L.A. yesterday or a day before yesterday. And we were in Airwine getting the Gary Bricka perfect Bito smoothie. And I went to the counter and we ordered two Gary Breka smoothies. And the guy was like, he legit said, oh my God, that's my favorite smoothie. Yeah, that's my favorite smoothie. And he goes, I need your name for the smoothie order.

Starting point is 00:34:14 And I go, Gary Breka. And he goes, oh, I'm sorry, sir. I need your name for the smoothie order. And I said, Gary Breka. And then he got really pissed off and he goes, sir, I need your name for the smoothie order. I go, my name is Gary Breka or Gary Breka. And he goes, oh, you're Gary Breka. This is kind of funny.

Starting point is 00:34:36 So if starting from scratch on a health journey, what's the number one thing you would do first? Okay, so I would, the very first thing I would do is I would develop a discipline in morning routine. It does not need to be expensive, does not need to involve a fancy gym. I would start doing the same thing every single day with the first 30 to 60 minutes of my day. I can't tell you how important that is. The reason why developing a healthy morning routine, if you like journaling, if you like practicing gratitude, if you're someone that is a person of faith and you want to pray, but doing it at the same time within the same distance of waking every day is critical.

Starting point is 00:35:16 I have a morning routine where I do breath work. When I can, I ground. We live in a condo, so I don't get to ground that often. But we do. Breathwork every morning within 30 minutes of waking. 100% of the time, I am trying to get natural light into my eyes. And I drink the exact same cocktail within 30 minutes of waking. I take the perfect aminos. I take the Baja Gold Sea salt. And I take hydrogen water tablets. You don't need to follow that exact routine. But the more systematic you are within 30 minutes of waking, the more your body will tie into the circadian rhythm. I also think if your morning is hard, your day will be easy. And so by moving your workouts to the morning and making it non-negotiable, even if it's as simple as a 30-minute walk, 30-minute walk with a weighted vest, 30-minute walk on an

Starting point is 00:36:02 incline on a treadmill or even better outside, having a consistent morning routine, I cannot tell you how good that is towards you succeeding and having habits that lead to a healthy lifestyle. And then the second thing I would say is really focus on eating a whole food diet. And I get a lot of questions about what a whole food diet is. You know, a simple way is when you, when you look at the back of a label, you don't need to become an expert at reading labels. When you look at the back of a label, if you see ingredients on there that you don't know where to find in the grocery store. If you can't pronounce it. That's a process food. If it has a color, if it has a number, if you've never heard of it before. Yeah, just just read the lay. Can I find, where is the polysorbate 80?

Starting point is 00:36:44 No idea what that is. No idea. Where are the natural fruit flavors? Can I find those on the shelf? If you know that you cannot locate that item in the grocery store, it's a highly processed food. Shop the perimeter of the grocery store. Can't tell you how far that will go. Frozen dinners, horrible.

Starting point is 00:37:04 You know, avoiding seed oils. But the main thing is just switching to a whole food diet. Teach your kids that way, too. I think if more parents taught their kids how to spend. the box around and read it. Because there's a lot of packaged food out there that actually is decent and has five or less ingredients. But if it's got a long list and it's so small, you can barely read it. Stay away. And if you can't pronounce it, it has a color or a number. Those are the things I always recommend to parents for kids. So how do you increase, how do you increase

Starting point is 00:37:38 mitochondrial function naturally? So the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. it's what makes ATP. That's what powers human beings. We're not actually powered by the water we eat or the air we breathe or the, I mean the water we drink, the air we breathe or the food that we eat. We're actually powered by a singular energy source called ATP. So eventually all of that distills down, gets into our cells and becomes one form of energy. The fact that you even know what a mitochondria is is a great sign. So there are lots of things you can do that are good for mitochondria. One of the best things you can do is high intensity. cardio training doesn't need to be often but it's cardio um high intensity cardio two or three days a week is excellent for your mitochondria red light therapy is excellent for your mitochondria and you don't have to invest in a very expensive red light bed you can get red light panels you can go to a clinic that allows you to to use red light on a subscription basis those are excellent for your mitochondria also things that really impair mitochondrial function are the big four that I talk about all the time mold mycotoxin heavy metals viruses parasites um I have a free cleanse on my

Starting point is 00:38:52 website you can download the mold cleanse the metal cleanse there are ways for you to detoxify yourself from heavy metals mold and mycotoxins you'd be shocked how many people actually have these and they're just learning to deal with them they think that the symptoms are consequences of aging and they're not consequences of aging at all. It's actually a consequence of microtoxin in your system. And you want to talk about liberating when you find out that you've been running around with an energy level at 60% of normal

Starting point is 00:39:22 and you just go back to feeling normal because you began to detoxify, that is the best thing that you can do for your mitochondria. Lots of these things interrupt the cycle called the Krebs cycle that the mitochondria uses to make energy. And you'll find yourself chasing all kinds of supplements. You'll take NMN, NAD, nicotin my riboside, nicotinic acid, all those things I think are amazing.

Starting point is 00:39:48 You'll take resveratrol and go Q10 and you're taking Aschua Gonda. But the truth is you very well may have one of these micro toxins in your body. Do a simple urine test, find out you have it. Start on a detox protocol. Sweating, regular bowel movements, urinating more frequently by hydrating, putting minerals into the body, you know, and doing things that service your mitochondria, which mainly is taking the toxins out.

Starting point is 00:40:15 High intensity of cardiovascular exercise, red light therapy are excellent ways to boost your mitochondrial function. Okay, what are the best supplements for children? I'll get a lot of questions about this. You want to take a crack at that? Yeah, methylated. I always, always, always look for methylated multivitamins. The important thing for kids, and we learn this with our nieces, so let's say you get a really good

Starting point is 00:40:43 gummy children's, you know, multivitamin. My niece, who is 75 pounds, takes a very different dose than my niece that was, well, at the time when we started this whole thing, she was like 30 or 40 pounds. So you can't give both kids the same amount, the same dosage. it very much, it varies by height, weight, and their behavior because they may or may not do well with it depending on their methylation. Now, if you can afford to get a genetic test done, I highly recommend getting the gene test done, the test for the five, the MTHFR, MTR, MTR, HCY, and Comp T. Because I think it is crucial to really get data on your body like you were talking about earlier,

Starting point is 00:41:28 but for your children. It's a cheek swab. And then you can get them on the right. Methylated B-12 is going to be methyl-comalamine or hydroxy-cobaliman. And the methylated vitamin B-9 is going to be folate or five-methylate. Yeah, definitely not folic acid. You want to avoid, suspend the labels around, and look for the word cyanocobaliman. I preach this all the time.

Starting point is 00:41:52 But cyanobalim, start to the C, C-Y-A-N-O. and you want to avoid folic acid, which can also be found in all your carbs. So look for pasta, rice, bread, all that stuff. Yeah, I would say two things if you have young children that will cost you next to nothing. One is get the fortified or enriched foods out of their diet. Fortified or enriched foods are foods that are sprayed with a chemical folic acid. And remember, folic acid is not a natural compound. You cannot find it anywhere on the surface of the earth.

Starting point is 00:42:21 It does not occur naturally in nature. you find it mainly in flour, cereals, breads, pastas, and grains of any kind. If you are going to feed your children those, which is okay, get the non-fortified, non-enriched versions of those. Switch to the organic versions of those. Listen, there's what I share on this podcast, and then there's what I share with my inner circle. If you've been following me for a while, you know how I hold nothing back here. But my VIP community, that's where the real magic happens.

Starting point is 00:42:52 Picture this. You're struggling with energy crashes, brain fog, or just feeling like you're not operating at your peak, and you don't know where to get real answers. But here's what really sets this apart. You're not just getting my insights. When I have incredible guests on the podcast, VIP members get to submit questions for a private podcast segment. So that world-renowned expert we just interviewed, you get exclusive access to their knowledge, tailored to your specific situation. This section is under the private podcast section in the Ultimate Human Community. And speaking I'm exclusive, you're getting my personal protocols, the exact tools I use for water fasting, gut optimization, and morning routines that have taken me decades to perfect. This isn't theory.

Starting point is 00:43:32 This is what works in the real world. The community launches challenges throughout the year where you get direct access to me and my network of experts. It's like having a personal health advisory board for less than $100 a month. Your health is your wealth, and this investment pays dividends for life. Join the VIP community at the ultimatehuman.com forward slash VIP and step into your ultimate potential. Now, let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. Be careful with organic, too, though, because now they're starting to mess with it. Yeah, switch to the, specifically look for the words fortified or enriched to be hyper-specific. The majority of organics do not have that. Correct. Occasionally, it's in there. But getting the fortified or enriched

Starting point is 00:44:11 foods out of their diet will go light years to improving their behavior. Just assume that your children have the most common gene mutation in the world, because if you make that assumption and they don't, you're still going to find a better behaving child in the house. Secondly, if you're choosing a children's multivitamin, look for the word methylated. I know we both said that, but that is very key. Most companies that have actually gone to the extent to methylate their vitamins and put the methylated version of nutrients and the vitamin have already gone to the extent of getting sugars and fillers and dyes.

Starting point is 00:44:46 They're generally your better brands. they'll they're the thorns the pure encapsulations the symbioticas they're the better brands that you can trust and rely on body health um and those those vitamins because they're methylated they've already thought about the other things like added sugars and artificial flavors and you can really change the trajectory of your kids tension span their focus their concentration how nice they are to people we've noticed that with kids they'll say oh my brother was so mean this week and then she realized he had not been taking his vitamins and that he was like holy cow you're right and he started taking his vitamins but another thing to be aware of is let's say a serving

Starting point is 00:45:28 it says on the back serving doses like four gummies um for one kid the kid that's at a heavier weight that might be right now i would oh yeah good call thank you um make sure you take your vitamins thank you thank you it also applies to adults mood and behavior. Anyway, so kids, sometimes it'll take two in the morning and two after school because you don't want to give it all four doses or all four gummies all at once in the morning. It will over-methylate them.

Starting point is 00:46:02 So spreading it out through the day. And even so much as I remember telling my sister, give them one in the more, like one and a half in the morning and one and a half in the evening. So it's like you gradually go up and you can go out by half gummy. I know it sounds crazy, but it really, you will see the difference in your kids when you get the right dosage. Yeah. What, how can expecting mothers continue their biohacking efforts while pregnant? There's a lot you can do as expecting mother to biohack while you're pregnant.

Starting point is 00:46:35 I would say that mobility is one of the best things you can do as an expecting mother. Simple walks. Walking is uniquely designed to move our lymphatic system. and the more weight you gain, which you will because your estrogen will go from in the 400s into the 4,000s as you get pregnant. The primary role of that form of estrogen is to retain water, which is necessary to have a healthy baby because you want to pad the uterine wall, so you are going to retain water. But what this also causes is a lot of lymph trapping.

Starting point is 00:47:07 It traps, lymph fluid, walking one of the best things that you can do. You actually can still take cooler showers. You don't have to get into a cold plunge. We can take cool showers. You can expose your skin to sunlight. You can do breath work because especially in the latter stages of pregnancy, there's a lot of pressure on the diaphragm. There's a lot of pressure on what we call the auxiliary muscles of respiration.

Starting point is 00:47:30 Sitting up straight a few times a day and just focusing on doing a few rounds of deep breathing can be excellent for expectant mothers. As the day goes on and your breathing is more shallow, you get more fatigued. So just consciously reminding yourself that I need to stop, do a few rounds of just really good, deep focused breathing. I know that I can walk throughout my entire pregnancy. You can take methylated vitamins. If you are pregnant, please do not dose up on folic acid. Now your doctor's probably telling you to do so.

Starting point is 00:48:01 Dose up on methyl folate. You're trying to prevent a neural tube defect. Folic acid has to be converted into methylfolate in order to prevent neural tube defects. methylfolate is already in the available form. Very often pregnant women are told to take high doses of folic acid, and this actually can solicit postpartum depression, which for the record can begin during pregnancy. Even though they call it postpartum depression,

Starting point is 00:48:28 it usually begins with the onset of taking prenatal vitamins. So you're going to take a prenatal, take a methylated prenatal vitamin, look for methylcobalamin, look for methylfolium, look for methylfolium, those are what will prevent neural tube defects in your fetus. You can also take amino acids. You can absolutely take minerals and nutrients like mineral salts. You can take hydrogen tablets. These are all very safe to take during pregnancy. I would avoid the extreme biohacking things like saunas, red light therapy beds, although most of what I've read, I have not read any derogatory

Starting point is 00:49:07 studies, but I would just avoid red light therapy. I would avoid cold plungement. any of the extremes. Yeah. Think of like you can't get in a hot tub when you're pregnant. You wouldn't want to do the opposite and get in a cold plunge. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:49:19 But remember, babies and fetuses are parasites. It is a parasitic relationship. That's weird. I know it sounds terrible to call their baby a parasite. But what I mean by this, it's a very one-way relationship. It is taking from the mother. So if you're deficient in calcium or magnesium or zinc

Starting point is 00:49:38 or amino acids, it will strip them from the mother's body. If that fetus wants calcium, it'll leach it from your bones. If it wants amino acids, it can strip it from lean muscle and take calcium. So making sure that you're neutrophied so that the fetus is neutrophied so that you don't actually suffer the consequences of nutrient deficients of your pregnancy. Oh, they take it all. They take it all.

Starting point is 00:50:01 I actually hate it eating. It's worse when you're breastfeeding because you think it's, you've got to eat a lot when you're pregnant, it gets significantly worse when you're breastfeeding full time. But I just remember I was sick of eating. I just so annoyed that I had to eat so much to keep up with growing a baby and then feeding a baby. It's a lot of work for mamas. How do we help our children eat more nutrient-dense foods? I'm going to take this one because I was going to say Sage is actually really good at this.

Starting point is 00:50:34 I am really good at this. And it's not just for children. but for elderly people, too, who have very specific palettes that they don't want to change. And we've had some of those in our family. I noticed that you talk to our nieces a lot about how they feel after eating. And she's done this for years. And what's really interesting, this is just not, this is an observation. I mean, this has been for the last 10 years, we've been together, is letting them eat what they want and then focusing them on how they feel.

Starting point is 00:51:05 And it was really interesting over time was I noticed that our nieces stopped wanting to eat the foods that didn't make them feel good. And most kids, I think, aren't having their attention drawn to how they feel. They're only drawn to how it tastes in that moment. And they don't realize that now their tummy hurts and now they have a headache or now they feel tired. They're having a temper tantrum or a meltdown. Cranky. So I will give you credit for that. She's constantly drawing attention to how they feel.

Starting point is 00:51:34 But go ahead. I think if you have a picky eater, again, whether you have a child or an elderly person or even a middle-aged adult that hasn't figured out how to eat good stuff, hiding things, I know that sounds terrible, but hiding like curing veggies and adding it to, let's say they just like regular old spaghetti. Well, instead of just doing a tomato sauce, puree, you know, saute and puree, squash, zucchini, broccoli, you know, whatever kind of veggies and add that into the sauce because they're just going to see red sauce and throw that over some, you know, some good organic pasta. And, you know, you can even add some sort of protein into that too with

Starting point is 00:52:16 beans or whatever. And so things like that, adding it into protein smoothies. So you can still have the berries and the honey and the sweetness of it, but add in Greek yogurt for for added protein, add in some avocado for good healthy fats, some coconut milk. What else? Mac and cheese is a good one to hide things in, too. Yeah. So there's a lot of different ways to, you know, take pizza, but hide the veggies and add in the protein. And a lot of times kids think they have gluten allergies or gluten sensitivities and they

Starting point is 00:52:51 have folic acid sensitivities. So, again, really getting the folic acid out of their diet is huge fresh. And in fact, the next question is, how do we best support young boys with ADHD symptoms without medications? Do you also like me to take this one? Yes, go ahead. I know a lot about, I feel like I have a Ph.D in ADHD and an OCD. And an OCD. I've got the OCD. You have the ADHD and we're just, you know, we can be a hot mess if we haven't had our vitamins. But I think, again, I, you know, I'm so big on.

Starting point is 00:53:28 methylated multivitamins, I think, or just vitamins, if you don't want them all together in one, you know, separating them out. But it's so crucial. And for ADHD, I think what has really, really helped, and OCD, is a good form of B12. So methylcobaliman, hydroxycopaliman, good form of B9, which is the methylated folate, or five methamphalate. And then zinc and magnesium. magnesium has been a huge addition to your routine. So if I were to take magnesium in the morning, it would put me to sleep. I'm very affected by magnesium, but I don't have ADHD. You have the H, the hyperactivity piece of ADHD, which is why you're so popular.

Starting point is 00:54:13 And because you have all the energy of 10 men. And you have a smile on your face, but you are trying to go like 80 miles an hour at all times. And, but if you have a little bit of magnesium in the morning or you have it at night when it does make you go to sleep and you've got it in your system, but even just a little bit in the morning or the afternoon, it just calms you. It brings you back to a normal level instead of being always like, like your head is going to blow off your shoulders. Yeah, I feel like that's going to my shoulders. Yeah. Pretty much all of that. So if your kid is deficient, I would look, I would get a panel and you get a panel on kids too.

Starting point is 00:54:49 but look for deficiency in zinc, magnesium, and B12, and vitamin B9 for folate. So I think that those four are crucial. I think supporting young boys with ADHD symptoms without medication threefold, number one, methylated vitamins, huge. Fulic acid is an absolute no-fly zone. Get it out. If they have ADD or ADHD, zero folic acid, so the bagels, the Pop-Tarts, the cereals, those are going to be fortified or enriched, and that is going to send them into

Starting point is 00:55:19 a tailspin and then must have scheduled activity. You know, one of the, I'm a chairperson of the Maha action, which is Bobby Kennedy's big push to get not just corruption out of our food supply and our nutritional research, but also to get physical education back into the public school system. You know, one of the interesting stats that you look at is the increased incidence of what we would call behavioral disorders, poor attention span. And lack of focus, lack of concentration, inability to complete assignments, disrupt the behavior when you start taking physical activity out of the public educational system. And a lot of public school systems have actually replaced physical education with classes

Starting point is 00:56:07 that have nothing to do with being physically active. I can promise you this. Young boys were not meant to sit in seats for six or eight hours a day and learn. taken information. And so having times where your voice can actually get energy out is critical. They build up something called catacolamines, which are fight or flight neurotransmitters. They cause their mind to race. They make them hyperactive. And they need activity. So if they're not in sports, getting them into some kind of structured exercise program, whether it's karate or jiu-jitsu, or if they're not actually qualified or don't like playing team

Starting point is 00:56:48 sports, even getting into individual sports, tennis, anything where they can actually move during the day, activity will do more to bring down their ADHD symptoms than just about anything. But the three musts are methylated vitamins, getting folic acid out of their diet, critical for ADD and ADHD, young boys and movement. We're going to add two more things to that. Okay. You got to get out the, which is this down.

Starting point is 00:57:14 Thank God it's a push right now is getting the food dyes out of our food. So no food die for kids, especially if they have ADD or ADHD. And didn't your mom put you in a trampoline class? Okay. So that, I just laugh about it, but actually- She did when I was- Trampoline. I have the H in ADHD.

Starting point is 00:57:34 You do. Yes. It's cute sometimes. Sometimes not. It's cute. I'm going to remind you that you said, I'm going to clip this part of the podcast. And you actually tell me to shut my face. I do.

Starting point is 00:57:49 And leave you alone. But I love you. I'm going to play this video. Okay. No, I never question. But I think that's why you wake up with the zoomies and you, that's why you go to the gym. And you are consistent with it because it truly makes you feel better. So I think giving that gift to your children and helping them get their energy out by, you know, let them run around the block or something.

Starting point is 00:58:10 Or if you, you know, you're trying to get them out the door for school. Seriously, buy one of those little mini trampolines. And I'll just bounce around. Yeah. Get the zoomies out. And we also need to bring back recess, and I'm so glad that they're doing the presidential test again. Yeah. Oh, that's so good.

Starting point is 00:58:23 So how to transition off of caffeine without losing productivity? That is a great one. So I know so many of us. So first of all, delaying your caffeine for 69 minutes after you wake up and have a demonstrative difference in how much the caffeine impacts you in a beneficial way. That's the first thing. Secondly, if you're trying to get off of caffeine completely, lots of ways to do this. Cacao, raw cacao, is actually taste just like coffee. You can get raw decaffeinated cacao, and it will taste like coffee.

Starting point is 00:59:00 You can put the things in there that you like, like raw milk creamers or MCT oils. We use one called Alchemine, which actually reduces the acid and does have some flavoring. Um, but, um, matcha teas, which are an acquired taste. And I find that people that switch from caffeine, caffeinated, uh, coffee to non-caffeinated machas actually say that it makes them feel better. Um, there are several, unless you have a comp tea break and then you don't want to have that. Yeah. That would make me feel worse. Yeah, you don't want to have that if you have the COMT break. Um, uh, and so it, so transitioning off of caffeine does not have to crash you. I would implore you to try the morning cocktail that I use, which is sea salt.

Starting point is 00:59:49 I use a Baja gold sea salt. I put a scoop of something called perfect aminos, and I put one or two, sometimes three, hydrogen tablets. What very often you are feeling in the morning is the inflammatory compounds that are still left over in the brain. So you're trying to switch the lights on and feel clear and focused and energetic. So for about a dollar a day,

Starting point is 01:00:10 you can drop an elemental magnesium tablet it into a glass of water, you can add the sea salt, and then you will feel the lights come on. And that clarity that you're looking for for caffeine is not so stimulatory, but when the lights come on like that and you just feel clear and focused and awake, you're doing it with out caffeine. The other thing is exchanging caffeine or light movement. One of the best ways to wake up your brain actually make you feel more alert and more focused is to move. So try to transition from caffeine to movement, even if it's just 15 minutes

Starting point is 01:00:49 of walking, 20 minutes of walking first thing in the morning, movement will do more to wake your brain up and improve your alertness, focus, concentration, as well as your short-term recall, and then just taking caffeine and trying to stay sedentary. Overcoming being in a sedentary state is what a lot of us are trying to do with caffeine. Movement will overcome that sensation of being exhausted, sit. But for the rest of us who still like a cup of coffee in the morning? I just don't have any issues with caffeine, by the way. Because as much as I have quit coffee twice in my life, once for a bet and once because

Starting point is 01:01:24 I was pregnant. Otherwise, I've been a coffee drinker since college. Since I did a study abroad program in Italy and I just learned to love and appreciate and enjoy it. But I think if you really did need to back it down on the caffeine, again, it's kind of the the same thing I told my friend with the sweet tea, go half and half. So do half caffeinated, half decaf, and work your way down because if I were to quit caffeine right now, that cup of coffee, I would for sure have a headache. I know that for sure and that's okay. But I would have to

Starting point is 01:01:57 ease myself into detox, not detoxing, but just ease myself into giving it up, I guess. But you can also replace it with either an herbal tea. Um, there's other, What was the mushroom one we tried before, too? There's that. Higher dose. Nope, that's the face mask. No, no, no. Oh, doze.

Starting point is 01:02:17 Doze. Yeah. And I think that was good. So you still sort of get that earthy kind of dark, add milk to it kind of flavor. And those don't have caffeine. Right. Yeah. So I think you can ease yourself into other things, but you can, you know, go slowly into it.

Starting point is 01:02:35 You don't have to just give it straight up because that's hard. Yeah, I mean, giving up caffeine cold turkey, especially. for people that drink a lot of coffee can be very tough. One of the things I would implore you to do is to get a certified mold-free coffee. There is one that is about to hit the market called Trueista that is certified mold-free, certified chrylamide-free, and USDA-organic. It is not much more expensive to go USDA organic and mold-free. Coffee has a very special type of mold in it called an okra-toxin.

Starting point is 01:03:10 Okotoxin A. We have both had okotoxin A poisoning from coffee and also from stored nuts. I know that sounds crazy. Oh my gosh, man, my coffee has to be mold-free and you're just fear-mongering, but I will tell you that if you are a consistent coffee drinker, the marginal increase by going mold-free will be a game changer for you. If you like coffee and you're going to enjoy coffee, and I have zero issues with caffeine. I think caffeine is actually very good for you. It has a whole bunch of positive consequential effects that just make an effort to go organic and mold-free. One little trick that we found, it's a blue box. It's coffee in a tea bag. So when you're purity or something, I don't know what to call. But it's really good. We'll link that in the show

Starting point is 01:04:00 notes. No affiliation for the record. I'm just something I found. But because we travel so much, And I think that our mold toxicity came from, I'm sorry, but there's really crappy coffee out there. Yeah, and we were drinking it by the boatload. And I think that's what happened. So I bought these, it's too hard. I mean, how else you're going to travel with coffee? So they're tea bags. And so you just order, you know, good hot water or make it in your hotel room or ask for it on the airplane.

Starting point is 01:04:27 And then you've got the tea bag and then you bring like the non or whatever those coconut milk creamers like powdered. Yeah, I love coconut. So just add that. So it makes it easier to travel and get good coffee when you're traveling. How to overcome incredibly itchy skin with no rash, especially at night. Okay, itchy skin. That is a thing for perimenopause too, and we can go to that later. But weird itchy spots.

Starting point is 01:04:51 I don't understand it. Why? And what do I do? Usually these are circulatory related. Remember, the 70% of our circulation is not done by our heart. Our heart only circulates 30% of the blood in our body, the balance of your circulation and 63,000 miles of blood vessel is done by an activity called vasomotor, for vasomotion. Usually when the itchiness comes, it's coming from the vasomotor activity below the dermal layer,

Starting point is 01:05:16 the capillaries, the smaller blood vessels that are just below the surface of the skin. So things that increase circulation are usually good for this systemic itching. So resveratrol is an excellent supplement for this. Magnesium is an excellent supplement for this, especially at night. try magnesium three and eight if you need a magnesium to help you to help you sleep um anything that improves vasomotor circulation like hydrogen water hydrogen gas hydrogen bathing that will definitely take away the itchy sensation the other thing you can do is warm shower before bed um i like to end on a 30 second cold shower not prolonged so it doesn't wake you up but warm showers will

Starting point is 01:05:59 actually improve the surface circulation and very often will remove of the itchiness. So here is what I would do in decreasing order. I would make sure that I'm getting the right minerals. Mineral salt, magnesium, resveritrol, and potentially warm showers right before bed. Usually when you get out of a warm bath or exit a warm shower and then dry off and get into bed, you'll see that that itching doesn't occur because you actually had the vasodilation below these. If you know me, you know I'm a huge believer. in the benefits of hydrogen water. H2 tab delivers cost-effective portable tablets that generate ultra-clean molecular hydrogen at 12 parts per million, one of the highest concentrations on the

Starting point is 01:06:46 market, with over 1,300 published studies showing benefits of oxidative stress, energy, recovery, brain function, and so much more taking charge of your health has never been easier or more cost-effective. Just drop a tablet in water, let it dissolve, and drink it back. It's less than a dollar a day. Science-backed and part of my daily routine. I never travel without this, and it is my favorite biohack. Visit drinkh2 tab.com. That's drinkh2 tab.com and upgrade your hydration today. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. I'm trying not to laugh because I'm thinking about how I take such a scalding hot shower. You do? That it like terrifies you. Yes. I can. can't even, we have two shower heads and I have two showers. And I, sometimes for whatever reason,

Starting point is 01:07:39 I'll walk over and use hers. And I'm like, babe, I don't even know how you can stand the water hitting your skin this hot. It's kind of like cold lunch. It's like the extreme. And it just feels so good. But she will stand in it. Skinny little sage will just stand there forever and just let the water run over her body. I feel like my skin's going to peel off. Okay. Weight training. Did you have any more for that? Nope. Weight training in a fasted state. Should I take amino acids before my workout and how much?

Starting point is 01:08:09 Absolutely. Positively, you should be taking amino acids before you work out. I get so much flack for this online. Don't follow the advice if you don't want to. I'm so irritated by this. No, but give your explanation of why you have to have some sort of protein before you work out because the thing, the myth for women was go to work out on an empty stomach. like you were gonna lose all this weight

Starting point is 01:08:34 and actually it's the opposite. There's nothing more frustrating, especially, it seems to be a lot more prevalent in women than a men to say, look, I wake up in a fasted state, I have a cup of black coffee, I go to Orange Theory, I go hammer down for 55 minutes, I've been doing that five days a week for three months and I haven't lost a single pound.

Starting point is 01:08:53 We heard it all the time. All the time in the clinic. All the time. And it's very frustrating because, you know, women are trying, they're doing the right thing. they're doing the right thing. They're like, Gary, I'm not even eating. You finally get them to the gym and they're going to the gym and then they're not seeing any improvement. And when we dialed it back and asked all the questions and figured out, oh, it's because they're

Starting point is 01:09:13 going starving. You're not eating, but your body is. It's just eating you. You know, the priority of energy in the body is first we use glucose. We burn the glucose down to a certain level. When glucose gets to a certain level, you will switch to your reserve form of energy, which is glycogen, which is stored glucose in the liver. Glycogen will be thrown back into the bloodstream in the form of glucose called gluconeogenesis. And very often you can exercise through your glycolic reserve, at which time your body has a fat source and it has a lean muscle source. So we saw hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times women that would wake up in a fast,

Starting point is 01:09:56 fast at state, have a cup of black coffee, sometimes a pre-workout. They would go to the gym. They would really go hammer down. And then they would come home. They would delay their eating because they're not hungry after exercise. They would eat later in the day. And they would do this repeatedly and not lose a single pound. Here was the shift that we made that worked. You know, there's something that Tim Ferriss pioneered 30, 30, 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking, followed by 30 minutes of steady-state cardiovascular exercise. Again, I am affiliated with perfect aminos, and I am a big believer in perfect aminos, but amino acids are not proteins. They are the building blocks of proteins. When you take amino acids, all nine of the

Starting point is 01:10:40 essential amino acids, in the right ratio, they do not convert to sugar or to fat. They build protein, which is muscle, natural killer cells, collagen, elastin, fibrin. So, try this, wake up in the morning in a fasted state, have your cup of black coffee, pick one scoop or five tablets of supplement called Perfect Amino, buy this for one month, and then go to the gym. Or take 30 grams of protein. Or you can shake or bar, eggs and bacon. You may not want to do that.

Starting point is 01:11:11 Especially women, they just don't want to pile in that much of a macro right before they work out. You are still in a fasted state. I want to be clear about that. They will not break a fast. They're 99% absorbable. They're equivalent to 29 grams of weight protein. So you're essentially giving yourself the building blocks of proteins before you go exercise. I have seen miracles in our female patients and not saturating.

Starting point is 01:11:35 Within a week, it's crazy. Like all of a sudden, then they start dropping the way. You will notice right away. Make that one change. Drink your black coffee. That's what you like in the mornings. Take a scoop of perfect aminos. I would add mineral salt and hydrogen tablets.

Starting point is 01:11:50 at a minimum, take a scoop of perfect aminos and then go to the gym and go hammer down. Well, and you don't even have to hammer down, though, either. And I do tell this to people who haven't been to the gym in a while or intimidated by the gym, haven't lifted weights in a while. If you can just walk around your block, like even if you've got to knock out your phone calls, your Zoom calls, whatever, just walk around the block that first 30 minutes of the day or within the 30 minutes of the day. But have your protein first and then go and do it.

Starting point is 01:12:17 And what is it? the steady, so 130, keep it under 130, 130, 140. Yeah, 125, 130 beats per minute. So where you could still have a conversation, but you're walking fast or walking your dog or whatever, just get out and move. Yeah. And that, because every time we have somebody that's like, I don't know, I don't know, I can't run a marathon, we're like, we're not asking you to.

Starting point is 01:12:38 No, the, the women that work out in the fasted state that had just the perfect amino and continue to work out in a fastest state and stay fasted, um, that is when we, saw dramatic body morphic changes. And if you'd like, I can refer you to literally hundreds of women who have done that at dramatic changes in their physique in very short periods of time. And they say that in the first week, they just feel better. So that would be my very succinct advice for that. I think the one you skipped was how to fix low testosterone without TRT. And I think this is important, especially for young men. We used to see a ton of young men. and I talked to somebody else that owns clinics and they're seeing it too, a lot more young men

Starting point is 01:13:21 than ever before, I think, with low testosterone in their 20s, which is scary. And I think a lot of it is phones, cell phones in the front pocket are terrible for them, put in your back pocket or somewhere else. I think processed food and all those things. But anyway, what is a good way to solve TRT issues, testosterone issues? So low testosterone. Remember, no matter what anyone tells you, there is no better hormone than one the body produces on its own, full stop. So getting on TRT too early for men, I think is a big mistake. So here's the five things that you want to look at. When you get a hormone panel done, you want to look at your testosterone, your free testosterone.

Starting point is 01:14:04 You want to look at a protein called SHBG, sex hormone binding proclululine. It is exactly what its name sounds like. It is a protein that binds to sex hormones, mainly testosterone. So you're producing healthy levels of testosterone. This protein is binding to it and carrying it out of the body as if it weren't there and you exhibit signs of low testosterone. If you have high SHBG, you take a mineral called boron, which you can get over the counter just about anywhere.

Starting point is 01:14:31 You take a mineral called boron as directed on the back of the label. It will bind to the SHBG, lower SHBG, and very often raise your free testosterone. Problem could be solved. If not, take the next level and look at your D. H-E-A, dihydri, epiandrosterone. DHEA is one of the building blocks of hormones. And very often when you're deficient in the raw material to make the hormone, your hormones are low, not because you can't produce them, but because you don't have the raw material to make them. And so I would look at your D-H-E-A level. I would start with between 10 and 25 milligrams of D-H-E-A on a daily

Starting point is 01:15:09 basis. It's in your bloodstream right now. You're watching this podcast. So it's a very easy supplement to supplement with start with the lower doses 10 milligram work your way up to 25 milligram women i would also start in lower doses because it can um activate sebaceous acne so you want to start slow um but raising your dhia level in the upper third of the range can do dramatic things for hormones as does raising your vitamin d3 level on your lab this will be something called vitamin d 25 hydroxy you want that to be between 60 and 80 nanograms i think vitamin d3 is is one of the most clinically under-supplemented things in the world. 5,000 IUs to 10,000 I use of vitamin D3 with vitamin K2.

Starting point is 01:15:55 Good manufacturers will put the right ratio of D3 and K2 together. So you don't need to buy these separately. They should be in the same supplement. So vitamin D3 with K2, the H-EA, looking at the SHBG, looking at your free and total testosterone. After that, I would look at things that turn the same. signal up to raise testosterone before you replace testosterone. So things like enclomaphene, canadarelin, gispeptin, HCG, human corionic canatotropin. Talk to your doctor about

Starting point is 01:16:29 peptides and signaling hormones that can actually raise your natural production of the hormone. Very often people that are low on hormones don't need hormone therapy. They need nutrients or they need the raw materials. What about if men are on testosterone therapy doing injections, but then they decide they want to start a family or they want to have another kid or something? Do they back down to? Yes. They would back off of regular testosterone injections.

Starting point is 01:17:02 They would titrate down on the testosterone injections and they would switch over to testicular stimulants, things that are mimetics of luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone. Remember, your testicles don't decide how much testosterone they produce. The pituitary does. And it does it by signaling not only for sperm, but also for testosterone. Lutonizing hormones stimulate the luteal cells. Follical stimulating hormone stimulates the follicular cells, which makes sperm. And so you can mimic these signals by taking the my medics. HCG is good for men and women that are seeking to be more fertile, getting off of the testosterone and onto things like enchlomaphene, HCG, Cispeptin, ginaerone, these are things that will raise not only your sperm level,

Starting point is 01:17:53 but also your testosterone level. So I would be talking to your doctor about those, leutinizing and follicle-stimulating hormone my medics, and those will help raise. Just think people are going to go into their doctor and they're going to say those words. and the doctors will be like, how in the heck did you figure this out? I want a ludinizing hormone and a follow-keel-stimulating hormone by medic. They're either going to love you and they're going to love you and hate you. Take this podcast in and just put it to that one place, okay? Guys, this is amazing.

Starting point is 01:18:24 I love these, I love these Q&As. Thank you guys for submitting your questions. I hope you found value in this. You know, we've created something called the VIP community. It is my community where I spend a lot of time in Q&As. We built a course called Becoming the Ultimate Human. It's a university that goes through everything from improving your sleep to the best morning routines, diet, supplementation, breathwork, sunlight, grounding, travel tips. I go deep into the research behind each of these.

Starting point is 01:18:58 I give you the evidence. I tell you exactly what supplements to take, not all of which are my supplements or supplements I have affiliations with. We have an online community. The course that we built, we built to actually market to the world for $1,195, we decided to put it into this VIP community for free. I do private podcasts in this community. So after every podcast, I take the podcast guest into a private room and answer my VIP community questions. It's an amazing, amazing community. It's $97 a month.

Starting point is 01:19:34 always our information will be free on my podcast always it will be free on our podcast shorts my instagram but if you want to go deeper if you want more handholding if you want mold and heavy metal detox protocols if you actually want a community that water fast together it goes through detoxification together um that really lays their crazy on the table and solves it in real time head over to the ultimate human.com forward slash VIP and become a member of the VIP community for $97 bucks. You'll get the course for free. I think you will absolutely enjoy it. If not, you can cancel any time. But I think it's a really cool community too of like-minded people that are helping each other, supporting each other, lifting each other up. Stories in there are incredible

Starting point is 01:20:23 autoimmune. If you're in the beginning of your health journey or just try to figure out like there's just so much information, how do I? wrap my arms around it. I think it's such a great, like, group of people. And yeah, there's a lot of great benefits to it, too. Yeah. And one other thing that I'll say, since I don't do not on these is often, everything that we talk about that we use, it's on a daily basis. Like, I would, I think the one thing that I love about when you started this is that you don't, you test everything. We are getting pigs all the time. We, so if we, if we're talking about it, it is because, because we've tried it, used it, do it on a daily basis.

Starting point is 01:21:02 We've usually used it in our clinic system. So we've usually, like when I say boron lowers S-H-B-G, it's because we put thousands of clients on boron and watch their S-HBG come down. If we talk about, you know, D-H-E-A and D-3 raising testosterone, because we put thousands of clients in our clinical system on to these supplements, and they've had positive results. So it's not always about trying to sell a supplement or product.

Starting point is 01:21:25 It's because this is what we use every day in our daily life, and I will tell you exactly what has worked in our clinic system because there is a lot of confusion out there. And I think a lot of people, when they start this journey, are like, oh, my gosh, should I take Kocetan, Resveratrol, St. John's Ward, NAD. What's the difference in NAD and NMN? And all of those supplements are great, and they're probably made in great facilities.

Starting point is 01:21:48 But don't mistake a really well-manufactured supplement for something that you need. And- Well, and what works great for you, like N-D, for instance, works great for most people. It doesn't work good for you. It is horrible for me. That's right.

Starting point is 01:22:03 If you feel depressed, anxious, even to like having a panic attack, which I've had before. Happens with methylene blue. It happens with a lot of supplements that, you know, elderberry, quercetin, which are great supplements. Right. But if you have certain gene mutations, like comp tea. Terrible for me. It could be a disaster.

Starting point is 01:22:21 Yeah. So things that are healthy for other people don't always work for me. And that's okay. it. So we've, you know, that's, again, we lay our crazy out on the table. Yeah. This is what we're here for. So if you have follow-up questions, if you want us to go deeper on anything, I mean, you know, this is the, the VIP community is a great place to ask us questions. And you know, I wrote dozens of guides that I, some of them I spent months on, just very intentionally putting together eight-week detox for mold, eight-week, 12-week detox for metals, very specific protocols for

Starting point is 01:22:55 different types of autoimmune from thyroid to crones to what have you the different types of gut binders really deep dives you can download them for free in the community um you can take the ultimate human course for free once you're in the community but would love to see you in there would love you to be a part of this journey with us um but most importantly i thank you guys for taking the time to submit your questions if you got value out of today's podcast and until next time that's just science I don't know.

The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 199. Debunking Health Myths with Sage Workinger-Brecka & Gary Brecka

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