The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 78. 7 Miscarriages to Miracle Baby: The Test That Changed This Family's Life

Starting point is 00:00:00 The biggest struggle that you had was that you had had a sequence of miscarriages. Yeah. When we met, you had just had our second child, two viable births, and then seven miscarriages. Most pregnant women take a folic acid supplement. And for my body, with that gene break, that is not good. It was a whole journey and process. And so this little third guy came around. It was the healthiest pregnancy. And then he came out and he was healthy and it just illustrated those changes we had made with you, the overall health of my own body. And I remember that you were really frustrated because your OBGYN and the doctors that you were seeing just couldn't figure it out. Yeah, they were mystified.

Starting point is 00:00:39 But what I said was, let's start with the ultimate human. Hey guys, welcome back to the ultimate human podcast. I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Brekka, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. so recently we've gotten a lot of requests through all of our channels the you know the audience emails me all the time on podcast topics that they like to see and topics that they'd like to see you know covered on the podcast or experts that they love to be put in contact with and one of the requests that seems to be growing in popularity is the relatability of certain guests that have just been on a journey. And they ask that we put more, in their words, average people on because they feel like sometimes

Starting point is 00:01:33 I'm only in service to the elite athletes and the ultra celebrities and the A-listers and the ultra wealthy. And so I have an amazing couple on the podcast today. I've been on a journey with these folks for a very, very long time. They are Paul and Kerry Hickman. And when I met you guys, it was actually through the 10X, it was through the GrowthCon network. And I just remember you were a volunteer fireman and you were training pretty hard for different activities as a fireman. You were doing coaching, right? Yeah, we had both just left coaching. Both left, just left coaching. And by coaching, I mean sports coaching. And they're also in the

Starting point is 00:02:17 real estate space. They flip homes for a living. But, you know, without putting too much out there, this is your American family, right? And the biggest struggle that you had, I remember you cried to me the first time that we met, was that you had had a sequence of miscarriages. Yeah. Seven, if I remember. Seven we had, when we met you had just had our second child. So two viable births and then seven miscarriages to get those two. And I remember that you were really frustrated because your OBGYN and the doctors that you were seeing just couldn't figure it out.

Starting point is 00:02:55 Yeah, they were mystified. Yeah. And you were kind of torturing yourself. You know, was it what I had for breakfast? Was it the sip of beer that I had? You know, was it the processed cheese that I had a little nibble of? You know, you just were internalizing this because when you go through, and there are so many women listening to this podcast right now that are suffering from repeated multiple miscarriages and they're not getting any relief and their level of doubt is just growing.

Starting point is 00:03:20 They're doubting themselves. They're doubting modern medicine. They're doubting expensive treatments. So I want to talk a little bit about the journey that we went on. Because at the end of the day, as complicated as this process of methylation is that we're going to talk about, it really was simple changes that led to your next birth, your next healthy child, and the fact that you didn't have miscarriage. Yeah, we have three kids now. And the third one was a surprise after we had started working with you. I actually didn't even go into the doctor until the 19th week of pregnancy. And normally you're in a long time before that. Because I just assumed it would terminate itself. That had been my history. We had struggled so hard to keep the two that we had to that point viable and healthy. And I just, I was like, yeah,

Starting point is 00:04:11 we don't really need a third kid. So I'll just let this one go. Right. And you're 41 years old too. Yeah. I was 41 at the time. I'm like, I'm older, I'm heavier, I'm all the things. And this will just go away at some point. Um, you know, and I, I'd kind of let go of the guilt and the stress at that point. And, um, of the previous broken to the guilt, I don't know if you let go of it or gave up to it. Right. Um, just didn't want to fight. Yeah. I didn't want to fight it. And we had two beautiful kids and I really wanted to focus on them and let them be the thing. And

Starting point is 00:04:45 so, yeah, at 19 weeks, I'm like, I better go in and just... This is not terminating. This is not terminating. And so, yeah, I better go make sure it's healthy and see what's going on, get an ultrasound. And the doctor, the OB was kind of shocked. She was actually mad at me. Why have you not come in up to this point? How far along are you? Especially given your history of having the last seven. Right. And even the two, the two that we had were difficult pregnancies, ton of weight gain, a lot of swelling and inflammation. The birds themselves were, you know, I think pretty normal hospital birds, but the recovery was really awful for, for myself, my own body. I had a really difficult time breastfeeding.

Starting point is 00:05:27 I mean, it was just, it was a whole journey and process. And so this little third guy came around and my gosh, it was the healthiest pregnancy. I felt great up until the end. He was overdue. That was fine. I wasn't like, let's get this baby out. I'm like, we're cool, man. I feel great.

Starting point is 00:05:43 Yeah. And then he came out and he was healthy and we're cool, man. I feel great. Um, and then he came out and he was healthy and it was a great birth and an easy recovery. And it just, it illustrated those, those changes we had made with you, the overall health of my own body. It was like, this was a, you know, you can see health with weight loss and changes. Like you can feel that I can tell someone I have more energy, but here is another human being that I had birthed that was like a physical representation of how much healthier that journey had been through that nine months versus the previous.

Starting point is 00:06:16 Yeah. I don't want to be a little specific for a minute because I remember you and I initially met and you pulled me aside and asked me if I could help with this. And immediately I try to simplify things. You know, when people start leaving the what I call the hub of the wheel and they start chasing all of the spokes, right, and you start saying, well, I don't sleep very well and I've got anxiety and my gut's a mess and I've had seven miscarriages and I'm overweight and I can't shed this weight. My hormones seem out of balance. I've got a lot of brain fog and I'm just, miscarriages and I'm overweight and I can't shed this weight. My hormones seem out of balance. I've got a lot of brain fog and I'm just tired. I'm a shadow of my former self because I was a competitive athlete for my whole life

Starting point is 00:06:53 and I just don't understand like mentally. And we had this conversation, I'm still a competitive athlete in my mind, but my body is like, no, you're not. It doesn't look like it. Or it doesn't look like it or it doesn't feel like it. And eventually, and I know there's a lot of people listening to the podcast right now, it's like chronic pain. It will break the will of the strongest of people. And to give into the

Starting point is 00:07:15 fact that even though you want to expand your family, you're not going to expand your family because seven times in a row, it didn't result. Eventually you just give it up to God and go, okay, well well maybe this is god's plan and we're not meant to have a third child but what but what i said was you know let's let's just let's simplify this right let's bring it all down and let's start with the basics and make sure that your body has the raw material it needs to do its job right and in order to do that we did a methylation test, a cheek swab. And we found out, lo and behold, you have gene mutation called MTHFR

Starting point is 00:07:51 that 44% of the population has. And there's no reason to feel guilty about it, but MTHFR has a whole myriad of consequences. It's the hub of the wheel. And it leads to all of these spokes. And interestingly, nearly every symptom that you had, we could trace back to this gene mutation. And I said, if we fix this, we fix all of the rest. And there was definitely some doubt in the beginning.

Starting point is 00:08:19 For sure. We were like, you want us to drink more water? This is never going to work. We're going to fix this at the grocery store? Yeah. And that's what we said. We're going to fix this at the grocery store. We're going to fix it by supplementing for deficiency, not the sake of supplementing. So we do this gene test. The gene test comes back.

Starting point is 00:08:37 You have the MTHFR gene. I won't tell you what the nickname of that gene is because I get trouble for cursing on podcasts. But it stands for methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase. And this gene mutation requires certain specific supplementation. And I want to talk about the relative ease in what the supplements were. And I want to emphasize that these were not expensive,

Starting point is 00:09:03 rare supplements. We were talking about B complex, methylfolate, specific form of B12 called methylcobalamin, trimethylglycine, relatively good, clean over the counter supplements that we could get. But we started to supplement for deficiency. And I remember immediately started to tell me that you were feeling better.

Starting point is 00:09:25 You were like out of your mind because you did the same test. And I remember you telling me about some of the results. You're in your mid forties and you're running circles around these guys in their twenties at the fire department, running up and down steps and doing these VO2 max tests and everything. So I want to talk about the foundation of where we started with just basic supplementation. And then we started talking about fixing this at the grocery store. So walk us through that. Well, like you say, we're, I think, pretty normal average people. We've got car payments and jobs and lives and stuff like that.

Starting point is 00:10:02 We're not some celebrity with a staff. Right. So we need a grocery list and we need, hey, these couple supplements, can you fit this into your budget? Okay, it's a few fewer times to Starbucks or something like that a month. And we can offset one thing with another and we can blend this into our life. And I mean, like you say, struggled with having kids, struggled with energy and brain fog and all kinds of things. And from our kids were, our first two were 2014 and 2016. We met you in 2018. And then Colt, our youngest, blessed us in 2020. And the only thing- We call him the methylation baby.

Starting point is 00:10:42 Yeah. So the only thing that happened in our lives between Forge and Reagan and Colt that significantly changed was meeting you and including these minor little tweaks to our diet. And just, again, the choices that we're making at the grocery store and adding some very attainable... I mean, stuff you could buy at Costco. Yeah. I remember you were going to get a cortisone injection when we first met. And I said, why don't we do this? Let's put the cortisone injection off and let's start increasing our hydration with sodium water, adding Celtic sea salt at the time. And now I use Baja gold salt, but adding Celtic sea salt to your drinking water, significantly increasing your hydration and making sure that you're

Starting point is 00:11:29 consistent on taking the supplements. And the supplements that came out of that gene test that gave us a very specific roadmap. So we're talking about relatively little changes. It was very little. It was partly figuring out, for me, with the prenatal vitamin, for instance, was chock full of folic acid. They put that in all, I mean, I think they're required to prescribe, you know, whether you actually take it or not is your choice. But most women, most pregnant women take a folic acid supplement. And for my body with that gene break, that is not good. And so it was figuring out, okay, there's folic

Starting point is 00:12:06 acid in this. We can replace that single multivitamin with a different multivitamin that has what your body needs for methylation, along with the vitamin C's and D's and all the other healthy nutrients. A couple of things, you know, we added like a, an extra vitamin K in there and, you know, a couple other little things. I mean, just in the, you know, the vitamin D, I remember you gave us the list and I'm like, oh, great. You know, this is going to be some huge thing. We're gonna have to make a lot of changes to be able to afford this. And then you're like, but you can get this, you know, this one comes at Costco and this one, you can order on Amazon. And we were floored. I was like, this is, it's so simple. It's up to us to take the pills and make the changes, um, to, you know, to choose different types of food, to try and eliminate the folic

Starting point is 00:12:51 acid from the food in my case. Um, and it was just, it was simple and relatively cheap and, um, just easy to implement in our busy lives. It wasn't some huge overhaul. We weren't buying some crazy equipment. It was just some huge overhaul. We weren't buying some crazy equipment. It was just some really small incremental changes with consistency added in. Yeah. And I think too, what I want to emphasize is, you know, we did the test, we started supplementing for the sake of deficiency, not the sake of supplementing. And then we started to walk our way through some basic dietary changes. And, you know, I do this thing called lateral shifts where I try to take the foods that

Starting point is 00:13:25 everybody loves to eat and we just shift those to foods that are more nutritious. We don't really add a lot to the budget. Now he's way off the deep end. He's buying like half cows from out of the state and then getting his own grass fed meat. But, you know, as we started to implement these changes, you know, initially we were really trying to target keeping you conditioned for your, you know, your volunteer fireman position and you having a healthy pregnancy. That was our goal. And then as a consequence, you guys get on this journey. Well, now we're aging in reverse. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:14:00 And now you're down 68 pounds. 90 pounds. 90 pounds. Holy cow. 90 pounds. Like, I guess, last 13 months. Yeah. So 90 pounds in 13 months. And you're down 68 pounds 90 pounds 90 pounds like i guess last 13 months yeah so 90 pounds in 13 months and you're down 68 you're down you're down 68 pounds um that's a whole person or two decent sized little people yeah um that have been lost from your family not our family but we make big kids oh you make big kids, you know, like all of the consequences of this have been amazing.

Starting point is 00:14:26 I mean, first of all, you guys look amazing. And, you know, how has that impacted your business? I mean, you're flipping homes and the energy that you have for your kids and you homeschool too. We do. I mean, it's everything. You wake up in the morning, you know, kids get up early. And instead of dragging out of bed, it's, I'm up with them. And I, you know, I am doing the things in the morning with them. We go to the

Starting point is 00:14:51 zoo followed by the pool. I mean, we're doing all the things. And I, you know, for me, my parents are like, I call them roll around on the floor. Grandparents, they are, they wrestle with them. They take them hiking, they do all the things. And I was getting to the point where I couldn't do that anymore. I was the sitting on the couch directing traffic mom because I was so heavy and so tired and I just didn't, I didn't feel good. I didn't feel like participating. And when we made those changes with you, suddenly I could wrestle with them and run with them and chase them and be outside, you know, throwing balls or doing whatever it is.

Starting point is 00:15:26 And it was everything for me. And I'll tell you, the biggest initial shift that we made was we got all of the folic acid out of the diet. And that's a little tough because folic acid is in breads, flours, cereals, pastas. It's in any foods that are fortified or enriched. But once you make the shift- Our kids read labels now. They do? Yeah. No, I get videos from your son. cereals, pastas. It's in any foods that are fortified or enriched. But once you make the

Starting point is 00:15:45 shift- Our kids read labels now. They do? Yeah. No, I get videos from your son. Like, hi, Mr. Gary, I took my vitamins. And then you're like, how do you feel? And he's like, I feel calmer. I feel less excited, less excitable, and more focused. And I can concentrate. I mean, the cutest videos and I love getting those. Yeah, and it's a gene. So, I mean, we both have the MTHFR break. And so genetically, and I think it's a Punnett square, our kids all have it too.

Starting point is 00:16:14 Whether they've been tested or not, they're all gonna have- We tested them and we're like, oh, yeah, turns out- Yeah, they are. Yeah, there it is. So we not only are then charged with making those lifestyle changes for us at home with the food choices and the supplementation, but now we have to teach them to do it on their own eventually. That's the parenting charge.

Starting point is 00:16:34 Yeah, but you said that they're adopting it pretty good, right? I mean, they're fully on board. Like your son came home the other day and said, we're not normal, right? I don't eat like all the other kids, you know? We told him that Gary wanted to interview normal people, and he goes, well, but you're not normal. Yeah. We're not normal.

Starting point is 00:16:52 Yeah, I love that. Way to go, Mom. Yeah, he's not normal because he's not eating all the Funyuns and the Cheetos and what have you. But the point is, I think, you know, the point that I want to make is that subtle, consistent changes over time. And you do not have to be—we didn't make you guys raw food vegans overnight, right?

Starting point is 00:17:10 We didn't take all the fun out of your lives. I didn't put you on a really restrictive diet or a hyper-restrictive exercise program. We tested. We found the deficiency. We fixed the deficiency. Then we went to the minor lifestyle changes. What things do we need? What are the no-fly zones? Folic acid. We got the folic acid out of the deficiency. Then we went to the minor lifestyle changes. You know, what things do we need? What are the no-fly zones?

Starting point is 00:17:27 Folic acid. We got the folic acid out of the diet. And, you know, I tell people, too, once you learn to read the labels and you go to the grocery store and you find the foods, the hard work is right up front, right? Like learning what labels do I read? But then you're getting the same foods over and over and over again. It's not like you constantly have to do that. Right. Well, and that was the 1.0. I mean, we were, we were faced with so many other challenges in life, Gary, that we were, I'm self-employed. So

Starting point is 00:17:55 we've got our own like self-employed health insurance that cost a fortune. And we're, our health insurance was underwritten through life insurance policy, which you know all about. Right. And my liver enzymes were off the chart. And we couldn't bring them back down. I looked like an alcoholic, even though I don't drink. Right. And so I'm like, well, I don't have any other solutions.

Starting point is 00:18:16 Let's ask Gary what he thinks. Yeah. Started testing for some food sensitivity. Just eliminated some things that lateral shifts. Yeah. And that liver enzyme over about six months came down. Yep. And dropped our health insurance costs by like a grand a month.

Starting point is 00:18:31 I remember when that happened because we started you on glutathione. And glutathione is the main antioxidant in the human body. It's manufactured by the liver. It actually resides inside of every living cell in the human body. Every single cell in our body contains glutathione. When you get low on glutathione, very often it stresses the liver. It actually resides inside of every living cell in the human body. Every single cell in our body contains glutathione. When you get low on glutathione, very often it stresses the liver. And I remember we started using... We added 200 milligrams of glutathione daily.

Starting point is 00:18:54 And you're right, the liver enzymes came down further and further and further, which ended up being a huge cost savings for you with the health insurance. 05.02 And made me just feel better right because like i would eat things that my body thought was poisonous even though it's like you know almonds right because you didn't know because it was healthy right not healthy for him right and that was the the blood testing was and the methylation i mean all of it the food sensitivity stuff that we've done um it just illustrates like we are all individuals and there is no cookie.

Starting point is 00:19:25 I mean, there are some cookie cutter things, but generally I am very different than Paul. And our kids who are the same, you know, they're half and half genetically of the two of us. They're each individuals too. And narrowing down what your individual needs are or your individual deficiencies are and supplementing those or working on those, improving them. And how hard has it been with the kids since we took the folic acid out of their diet? They're also on supplements. They're on basic gummies, basic methylated nutrients. I mean, they take their supplements in the morning, right?

Starting point is 00:19:58 Yeah. And they avoid folic acid. We've got them on great snacks. They're active kids. What kind of changes have you seen in them? Because I can talk about the changes I've seen in your son, who also had pretty severe ADD and ADHD. And I think a lot of parents struggle with that because they don't realize that this could be a nutrient deficiency and the presence of nutrients that their little bodies can't process.

Starting point is 00:20:29 And they get the call from the school that, hey, little Johnny can't pay attention. He doesn't follow directions. He can't complete assignments. He's disruptive. He's hyperactive. He can't sit still. He's very impulsive. So now we need to bring in the Ritalin to solve this. Well, we want to stay as far away as we can from pharmaceutical interventions. So blue light 06.05 Scott Bauer 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00 maybe for all three of them ever, we've gotten like maybe two or three prescriptions. Yeah. Like we had pink eye in our house the other day, about six months ago. We had to go to the pharmacy. Didn't even know how to get a prescription. Sounds to me like your health insurance coverage is...

Starting point is 00:21:13 Our four-year-old walked into the doctor's office. He was terrified because he doesn't remember ever being there. Right. So he's like wearing... Am I? Yeah. The crunchy paper and all that. And that's another thing.

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Starting point is 00:21:46 Change your life. Visit Plunge.com and shop now. Listen up. Parents that are struggling with children that have ADD or ADHD or OCD or these impulse control disorders, and I'm really, really reluctant to use the term disorder. I really hate mental disorder. What's their superpower? Social disorder.

Starting point is 00:22:03 It's their superpower. It will be their superpower one day day we tell our son that it, it, it feels limiting right now. If he can learn to harness that, you know, all, all the great entrepreneurs, you know, businessmen that we know you have ADD tendencies. Yeah. Every elite athlete, you have to be able to multitask if you're going to have success in life. So this can be a superpower for them. They just don't know how to use it, harness it, channel it in a positive way. And it is so frustrating as a parent. Oh my gosh. And to see them suffer and to think that the only way to fix it is to put amphetamines into their

Starting point is 00:22:42 body to race their central nervous system to somehow quiet their mind. But I want to, again, I'm going to get back to some practical things because you know, what's exciting about this podcast is, and I talk about this all the time, I want people to leave with practical things that they could do. They could put into work with it in their daily life that they could try in their house, even if they don't do my test or take, take my supplements, like simple things. So one of the more impactful things for your kids has been removing the folic acid, eating whole foods, taking supplements that are methylated supplements. And recently, because big data,

Starting point is 00:23:21 and I'm a huge fan of big data, I talk about this all the time, how we might not have a randomized controlled clinical trial that specifically says this is what you have to do. But when you observe large populations of people, and you see that in a large population, when an event happens, you see this predictable outcome, that to me is as valid as a clinical trial. And so like, for example, we've never done a randomized controlled clinical trial on parachutes, but I sure as hell wouldn't jump out

Starting point is 00:23:52 of an airplane with that one, right? Tom. Our seven-year-old has a whoop. Yeah, oh, that's even cooler. I got one too. And we can look at, on a day he goes horseback riding or rides his mountain bike, what his his sleep score recovery yeah like all those like we can put data to these activities and we can learn so much but but what's really

Starting point is 00:24:14 cool is we talked about these red light glasses and each and you spoke to your um optometrist and he said blue light glasses sorry um yeah they filter out blue light and allow the red. And he said, we don't have a clinical trial to prove this, but we've seen that in kids that have ADHD and ADD and have poor sleep patterns, that these blue light glasses, meaning blue light blocking glasses, which allow higher amounts of red light through, are very calming, very centering,

Starting point is 00:24:45 and improve their sleep. And lo and behold, you ordered a pair of glasses off of Whoop, and you immediately saw his sleep score improve. I want to talk about that a little bit. Yeah, I mean, this is a kid on, I mean, he's seven. I can count on one hand prior to the glasses. And even after, his sleep has always been disrupted. So we've seen huge improvements with our work through you guys in his behavior during the day. And his ability to control his moods and things like that.

Starting point is 00:25:14 But the sleep has always been disrupted. So I can count on one hand the number of times this kid slept through the entire night in his seven years of life. And you expect that as a baby. Yeah. And he comes highly inappropriate for this this is it's a family podcast guys but he's so he's such a light sleeper and he comes you know he's just all the things wake up and um we put those blue blue light glasses on him blue light blocking glasses yeah and um i that night so i we gave him to him after dinner he wore them for about two hours

Starting point is 00:25:52 and then he went to bed um slept through the night for the first time in probably five or six years the whole night and it was one of those things because if your kid's up moms will know this yeah if your kid is up eight times a night, so is mom. And so my sleep was also disrupted. So I remember waking up that morning being like, what just happened? I just literally slept eight hours. You go to check on him, see if he's okay. I couldn't believe it.

Starting point is 00:26:18 Like, is he all right? And at first we were like, that's just placebo. We told him these glasses would help him sleep. And lo and behold, they helped him sleep. So we'll we'll keep trying it well it's been about a month now and he is i would say consistently maybe up once a night or not at all that is amazing remarkable and so you know what's happening there is um he's also calmer throughout the day though yeah yeah no this this this is very real. So your son also has a gene mutation called COMT, C-O-M-T, remember? And that COMT gene mutation is what down-regulates a category of neurotransmitters called catecholamines.

Starting point is 00:26:56 And these catecholamines are fight-or-flight neurotransmitters. And you don't have to be in a full-blown fight-or-flight state to be stimulated by catecholamines. And a lot of people don't realize that you can be body calm, but mind awake. And in children, their mind goes straight to worst case scenario. So at night, if their mind wakes up, right, they're immediately thinking alligator under the bed, burglar in the closet, you know, monster outside the window. Because he's wearing it every day, all day. Yeah yeah his heart rate would spike to 140 when he woke up in the middle of the night yeah and you know because the time stamps on there we could look back no wonder this kid woke up yes he was scared to death yes by something we don't know what but what he was he wasn't actually scared by something

Starting point is 00:27:40 what he his body was mimicking fear by rising rise in catecholamines, right? So what happens is when these things flood the brain, if I could magically inject you with catecholamines, you would begin to have a fight or flight response. And in lower doses, maybe your heart rate's not increasing and your pupils aren't dilating and your hearing's not getting specifically acute and your extremities aren't flooding with blood, but you are in a very heightened, wakened state, as you can see by his heart rate. And there's a lot of paucity, or there's a paucity of information out there about this. And I know there's parents listening to this right now going, oh my gosh, that's my kid. You know, why are they so fearful all the time? Why, when his environment or her environment quiets, does their little mind wake up? Why are they up all night? And these are usually the kids

Starting point is 00:28:24 that end up in mom and dad's bed by the morning because you hear the pitter-patter, pitter-patter. And finally you give up. And finally you give up and you're just like, get in here because I need sleep. And the reason for that is that these catecholamines that rise, that create this waking state are also fear-based neurotransmitters. So they're actually in a fearful state. They don't know why they're scared, but they're scared. And we would ask them, what is it? I don't know. Worst answer for a parent. No, it's the worst answer for a parent. And sadly, it's just like trying to have a young child describe what it's like to feel anxiety. Anxiety is a very complex emotion, even if you ask an adult, what is anxiety? Well, it's a fear of the future, of something

Starting point is 00:29:05 that might happen that's probably not going to happen. And it may have never happened, but I still feel like it's going to happen. Right. Okay. Now I need to have you committed. That's complex. Yeah, right. But it's, you know, and all of the comments like, you have nothing to be afraid of, there's nothing for you to worry about. Doesn't help. Doesn't help. You cannot reason somebody out of having an anxiety attack or feeling anxiety because that feeling of fear is very real. It's very visceral to them. And even though they can't tell dad what it is, which frustrates, especially dads, because we like to take the toolbox out and be like, well, let's fix it.

Starting point is 00:29:41 You think there's a monster? Let's go search the closet. There's not a monster. Go back to bed. It's like we want to, you know, we're like bears, you know,'s a monster, let's go search the closet. There's not a monster, go back to bed. It's like, we're like bears. We just want it to be simple. But the truth is that he has that fear without the presence of a fear.

Starting point is 00:29:56 And so what those glasses do is they actually reduce catecholamines. They bring down the cortisol level and they actually at night, they'll raise the melatonin level naturally. They'll help create this balance of light stimulated cortisol and darker stimulated melatonin. And they naturally calm down

Starting point is 00:30:14 and they naturally go into a sleep. And I'll tell you, I mean, beside from ending the seven miscarriage streak, if we do nothing else for the family, if you start restoring healthy sleep, moms and dads and the kids, that is a superpower. When we bought these things, I'm like,

Starting point is 00:30:32 80 bucks, these things better work. Will Ahmed's a good friend of mine. He's going to be so happy to hear that they worked. But day one, and then it continues because it wasn't this placebo effect. And I'm like, can we buy stock in these? Now we need four more pairs in our house. Can you do prescriptions?

Starting point is 00:30:52 Isn't it amazing some of the simple things that we can do to get back to the basics? Because if you think about what's happening, some of us can tolerate it and some of us cannot. But we are in very non-traditional environments. We our lighting you know fluorescent lighting and even some of the lighting that we're under right now this is the junk food of lighting right and when we put junk food lighting into our bodies we get a junk food lighting response right we get stimulation when we should be trying to be calm we get calm we should be stimulated right um we get this sensation of fear when there's no reason to feel fear and i know a lot of parents are struggling with that and these these are kind of simple

Starting point is 00:31:30 solutions before you go to pharmacology that have very little downside risk that could have demonstratively beneficial impacts like what you guys are experiencing yeah and that's been you know just small incremental change like a lot of people ask me like, well, where do I start? You start, just pick something, do one thing, have your kid drink more water. You drink more water,

Starting point is 00:31:51 just something simple. Do that for a few days. If you feel capable and able to make another change after a few days, great. If you don't keep just doing the water thing, like just pick one thing, start somewhere. People ask like, Oh my gosh,

Starting point is 00:32:03 how'd you lose the weight? Or, you know, how did you change your fertility journey? I can't point to one thing, start somewhere. People ask like, oh my gosh, how'd you lose the weight? Or how did you change your fertility journey? I can't point to one thing. It's been a total journey. I mean, even today I've learned things that I didn't know before. You have to be in that kind of learning mode, learning every day, little incremental steps, consistent work, positive direction.

Starting point is 00:32:26 And over time you see massive life-changing shifts. Yeah. But I mean, we are evangelical about this. We traveled from Omaha, Nebraska to here for this. Yeah. I mean, that means a lot to me too. I mean, I love you guys. We've been on this journey for a long time. And I asked them, I said, would you guys just come on the podcast, the podcast short and tell your story? And they're like, whatever you need, we'll be there. For anybody who's skeptical, look us up. You can find us online. Call us up. We'll, I'll send you our gene tests.

Starting point is 00:32:54 We'll show you. We've got the data from us, regular people, you know, and we'll show you pictures of our pantry and our Amex bill, you know, and substantiate, you know, what we're doing here. Because we believe, like, we don't have any formal training. We don't represent you or anybody else. But we believe so much in this, the transformation it can make, and that you can

Starting point is 00:33:14 avoid some of that, like, mainstream medicine or pharmacological interventions with trips to the grocery store. And so somebody's gonna need to get their own personal advice from you, but we can share our personal story with them and be a support network. That's what's inspirational. You know, I think that when we just educate people without inspiring them, they don't make a change. And the whole purpose of the podcast,

Starting point is 00:33:37 the whole purpose of the message is to try to give enough education so that people are inspired to make a change. And I love bringing in folks like yourselves because you represent every mom and dad and parent that's that's that's out there that's got a kid that has some kind of issue some kind of add or adhd or sleep disruption um we're all a little overweight none of us have the body morphic image that we all really want to have but when you talk about stripping 90 pounds off your frame, 68 pounds off of your frame, taking the anxiousness and the anxiety

Starting point is 00:34:09 out of your kids, having a healthy full-term pregnancy, you really, it sets a hook that you talked about it in the kitchen before we got on here. You just don't want to go back, right? And it's not like a daily struggle to keep this up. It would be a daily struggle to go backwards. Yeah, we've built habits now around this stuff. So the initial changes we made are not hard anymore. But I look at it as like, pick your hard. You can live a life with a lot of inflammation and it's really hard at the end.

Starting point is 00:34:41 It's gonna be hard at some point. 90 pounds is hard. 90 pounds is hard. Or you can take a year and really work on yourself, on your weight, on your kids. Do the hard work now so that you can live life later. I mean, to me, it's hard no matter what. It's when it's hard and how it's hard. And to me, we have learned, I think, that the little daily difficulties are a lot easier than the big kind of hard. Consequences.

Starting point is 00:35:11 The big consequence. We'll have like Cheerios that find their way into our pantry. And I'm like, no. Gary said no. Find their way into our pantry. Going in the junk. Or we had to buy new clothes. That's the biggest complaint I got too.

Starting point is 00:35:27 That was fun. But we're like, do we keep the fat clothes around just in case? Like, no, those got to go too. Like, this is a one-way trip. Yeah. That's so awesome. Yeah. That's so awesome.

Starting point is 00:35:38 So I try to keep these podcast shorts a little shorter than a full length podcast. But as young parents, you know, starting a family, what advice or as young parents who have a young family, what advice would you have for them? And just like you said, where did you start? If you could pick maybe one thing, where do they start? Should they start with the testing and the supplementation? Should they start with some of the dietary recommendations? Where would you start if you were advising a family that's starting a journey that you guys are on? Man, I think the genetic testing and the methylation stuff is so attainable. There's a small upfront cost.

Starting point is 00:36:18 Yeah, and you only do it once in your life. But your genes are never going to change. So you need that test one time, and now you have all kinds of information that can be applied everywhere. And I think that's the most impactful thing. And that's kind of the first hit. And then I would say the salt water. Just as a simple thing that everyone can do. I mean, you see every kid's got a water bottle, right? Most of these kids are deficient to put just a tiny pinch of salt in there. Um, and you know, every day sports water bottle, get them off the sports drinks and get them onto the salt water for yourself. I mean, I, when we first started the water journey, I'm like, this is so, you know, body weight divided

Starting point is 00:37:02 by two and ounces. I'm like, this is a ton of water. And I would say I was pretty hydrated before. I was not. And started doing that, and it made an immediate difference. Well, he didn't have his shoulder injected, I remember. Now, before we leave the house for an activity, it's like, okay, line up. We're filling water bottles. We've got a 10-gallon milk can that we take with us places because we're drinking filtered water and it's going to have electrolytes in it we're not you know we're not going into a

Starting point is 00:37:29 quickie market and that's i would say of all of my whatever you want to call biohacks my number one biohack is the that baja gold salt just because a 15 bag of that will literally last you five years right and you can cook with it you can put a pinch of it in your in your drinking water and i think a lot of us are so mineral deficient now. And we actually overhydrate. We don't mineralize. And so the hydration even works against us. So I think those are great tips.

Starting point is 00:37:53 And I think when you do the water, the salt water, it makes you more aware of the other things, the other areas in your world that are maybe not as healthy as they should be. Right. It kind of, for me, that was the catalyst of awareness to do the methylation tests and to start filling those deficiencies in. And it was kind of the, it was like the door that opened and in came this waterfall of health and wellness that we're still, we're still on that journey. But it, you got to open that door somehow.

Starting point is 00:38:23 I agree. And that's really all that I want to do. I want to put enough information out there so that people are inspired to start that journey like you guys did. You're further down the journey and there's somebody that's watching this right now that's starting that journey right now. And it's like, okay, I can buy $5 worth of Baja Gold Salt and I'm going to get the money together to do this gene test and I'm going to start supplementing for the sake of deficiency and see what my body can do. Right.

Starting point is 00:38:48 Well, and it starts with the $15 bag of salt from Amazon. Yeah. And then it's like, hey, these water bottles, they're only $250 a piece. They'll take two. So it's a slippery slope. And now he's got a cold plunge. He's got the $100 cold plunge that's inflatable. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 00:39:03 I got my Amazon cold plunge. I'm just simple. Still simple things. Filled it up. But I call that my drug of choice. You know, I think that. But if you can't afford a cold plunge. But now you can actually get the inflatable cold plunges that you just put the ice in.

Starting point is 00:39:15 69 bucks on Amazon. And it lasts a couple of days, too. That's what people don't realize. I just stayed at the hotel in New York, at the Peninsula in New York, for a couple of days. And they filled our tub with ice when we got there. And I filled it with cold water. Yeah. For three days.

Starting point is 00:39:30 It was ice cold. It didn't, you know, it wasn't like I had to keep filling it. Just add a little more ice tomorrow. The $69 one comes with a travel case, Gary. If you could get off your wallet and buy one, you could take it with you. Yeah. And then you just work your way up to a cold plunge when the budget allows i tell people all the time and as soon as you get some money forget

Starting point is 00:39:48 the range rover get yourself a cold plunge and red light bed and some of these other modalities but well you do those simple things and whatever you do for work the energy you carry with you will earn more income you'll eventually get to the range rover oh yeah it's an investment it's and it in it investments return yeah and i mean i don't frankly need a bigger house because like come, you'll eventually get to the Range Rover. Oh, yeah. It's an investment. Investments return. Yeah. And I mean, I don't frankly need a bigger house because like we talked before, a bigger house is just a longer walk. I don't know. You guys keep having kids. You're going to need a bigger house.

Starting point is 00:40:14 We've sped up the fertility train here. We just need to slow that one down and you won't need a bigger house. Bunk beds. Simple solutions. Guys, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming on and just being Then you won't need a bigger house. Bunk beds. Bunk beds. Simple solutions, right? Guys, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming on and just being vulnerable and sharing your story and talking about how the complexity is in the simplicity and how the simplicity really affected your life.

Starting point is 00:40:39 So I really appreciate you both coming on. We're honored to be here and so happy to be a part of this journey and so thankful for you. We met Gary at a lunch table, and I think probably first we talked to you only because your name tag was upside down. That's right. And Paul said, hey, I'm Paul, I'm Gary, and your name tag's upside down. And that was the catalyst for the conversation that led to all this. And I'm just so thankful for that little upside down name tag. I'm so grateful to have you and Sage in our lives.

Starting point is 00:41:13 It's one of those tipping points. And hopefully this podcast is going to be the tipping point for somebody else. I hope so. On their journey. Well, guys, the Hickmans are just like every other mom and dad out there. They want to have healthy, bright, young kids that are calm and not driving them crazy. And they still want to keep their fit physiques, their energy level, their deep sleep, their focus and concentration, just like every other mom and dad and every other entrepreneur out there. And

Starting point is 00:41:40 somehow they've been able to pull it all off. So I hope that this inspires you guys on your journey. And as always, that's just science.

The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 78. 7 Miscarriages to Miracle Baby: The Test That Changed This Family's Life

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