Architect Your Longevity: Brain Hacks, Mind Mastery & Environment Secrets | Claudia von Boeselager

Hey there, I'm Claudia von Boeselager, a former investment banker turned entrepreneur, longevity coach, biohacker, and mother of two. Once burnt out and overwhelmed with chronic health issues, I've transformed my life and helped thousands of people do the same. I've even reduced my biological age by 17 years. Yes, I'm 26 again. Now I'm here to share the tools, strategies, and inspiration to help you live healthier, happier, and longer. On this podcast, I interview world-leading experts in health, biohacking, mindset, and performance, and share personal stories and learnings to bring you the latest insights and tips. Think of this as your go-to space for real talk about all things health and optimizing your life. Ready to unlock your best self? Let's dive in. This is the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast. Hello, dearest ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Claudia von Boeselager, here. You know I love bringing you the best insights for a longer, healthier, more vibrant life. That's why I'm thrilled to share a recent conversation I had on the Gladden Longevity Podcast with the brilliant Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, now available here on the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast. We went deep into some seriously hot topics, and I know you'll want to hear them. One was around how your environment is your longevity lab, Discover how optimizing everything from air quality to the colors around you can profoundly impact your health. To unleash your brain's superpowers, we explored cutting-edge methods for cognitive enhancement, including novel molecules, psychedelic-assisted therapies, and advanced brain training. We also covered how to hack your mind and master your life. Learn how emotional healing, things like EFT tapping, mindset shifts, and understanding your unique biological rhythms can unlock your full potential.

We also touched on AI, a topic close to my heart, which I very much love and, and I'm excited about. Your ultimate longevity assistant.

See how artificial intelligence isn't just for sci-fi, but a powerful tool to optimize your health and boost your creativity. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd absolutely love to hear from you. So please leave a review on this app with your favorite insights or takeaways.

It would mean the world to me and allows me to bring even more amazing guests to you. Please enjoy this episode.

Welcome to the Galadin Longevity Podcast with Dr. Jeffrey Galadin, where our passion is helping you to become an age hacker. On this show, we want to help you optimize your life energy, longevity, health, and human performance with impactful and actionable information by answering 4 questions. How good can we be? How do we make 100 the new 30? How do we live well beyond 120? And how do we live young for a lifetime? Now, here's today's episode of the Gladden Longevity Podcast.

Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Jeffrey Gladden. And as always, we're here answering the biggest questions we can think of, which is how good can we be? How do we make 100 the new 30? How do we live well beyond 120? How do we live young for a lifetime? And how do we actually create a 300/3,000-year-old mind? Today I'm going to be interviewing Claudia von Boeselager. I know that's a mouthful. She's going to be speaking to us from London, England. She has a really interesting background in finance and has transitioned into the longevity space. She's a multiple business owner and is really, really, really passionate about creating environments that facilitate people living well. And I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation. I really did. We go down down several different rabbit holes that I think you're gonna find really interesting. So enjoy this podcast. Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Jeffrey Gladden. And today we are gonna be going on a journey that I find incredibly interesting, which really has to do with architecting the environments we reside in to actually help support the mission of longevity. It crosses over to several different things, but we have Claudia von Boeselager, I hope I didn't mess that up too badly.

It's a tricky name. I know.

Yeah, pretty close. And she's working with a company called Lumera that we're excited to hear more about. So Claudia, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Geoffrey, for having me back on. Such a pleasure and excited to dig into all things longevity and health.

So, yeah, absolutely. So bring us up to speed a little bit on what you've been what you've been up to with Lumera?

So, yeah, amazing. So I think that, and you'll know yourself, that this industry is just exponentially booming. And, you know, myself being in the space and through also my podcast that I have as well, you get to meet so many amazing, wonderful people and speaking at different conferences, etc. And you get approached by so many people that are keen to either, you know, if they have a clinic to upgrade the clinic or real estate developers want to have, you know, wellness offering that's more longevity biohacking focused. To hotels, etc. And I've decided to— or we decided with my business partners to come together. And so we have a longevity clinician on board, Ashley Madsen, who, you know, Stanford trained, multiple trainings across different things. And then Alexandra, who is our biohacking equipment expert through personal challenges with Hashimoto's disease, etc. And so, yeah, with Lumara Collective, we really wanted to help clients who have potentially gotten burnt in the past to know what to do. And by burnt, I mean the following, that people, there's so much happening in the space that, you know, someone will put on Amazon a red light panel and be like, this is the red light panel to have. And it's, they're disappointed when it falls apart that, you know, they spend all this money on it, that it, it doesn't work, et cetera. And so we wanna really help clients to have the best of what's available. And that includes from the longevity cutting-edge protocols to the biohacking equipment and stacks and marrying the two, essentially complementing each other if they have the, you know, staff training with that. And even looking around things like the environment, you know, how do you create these regenerative environments from copper flooring to, you know, NASA-tested plants to air purification, et cetera. So, that's kind of in a nutshell.

Yeah. No, it's fantastic. You know, in our world, We understand that the environments that we reside in are really key factors. It's important to try to have as much goodness there as possible, as little badness there as possible. And it kind of crosses over not only into, you know, air and water, but like you're talking about construction materials and, you know, even humidity levels and things like that. So a lot of things that I think people don't think about is actually really having an impact on their global health and therefore longevity. I think also even the colors that are in the environment as well as the sounds that are in the environment.

Yes.

Being able to tune the nervous system into different states of relaxation or attention and focus, all those things become really, really important when you think about How do we optimize the human experience? Right. So, yeah, very fun playground.

It is a fun playground. Yeah, it's a fun sandbox and globally. And, you know, I think it's also combining ancient practices because if you look at the concept of feng shui, you know, this is a thing about getting the right energy and the right flow and things like that too. And, you know, as an interesting anecdote, friends recently, the whole family discovered they were all neurodivergent. They didn't realize that. And the kids, through their diagnosis were like, you know, actually, I'm— now I understand myself a little bit better. The, the coloring of our living room I don't like. I really struggle with. So they repainted it, and then the whole family just is actually using the whole living room space again as well. And so these are little nuances, but when we get to understand the impact our direct environment, particularly our home or our office where we spend a lot of time, can have on us, making refinements, maybe going down the rabbit hole, understanding what is possible is so important. And, you know, looking at non- toxic paints, right? Or even the cleaning products we use. You know, people are optimizing everything and then they're using super poisonous cleaning products on their desk and then they're standing there inhaling all the toxins for the next hours. And that's right, these little things that we forget about but are so essential to our overall well-being. And then they're wondering, you know, later I've got such a headache, or, you know, they have the door open and there's heavy traffic outside. Well, all the exhaust from the cars are coming in and they're inhaling it as well. So without overwhelming people, it's trying to help, you know, what are the steps that could be taken to start optimizing that environment? Yeah.

You know, I was seeing some really interesting data on forest bathing, which essentially means going out and spending some time in the forest. And I think it was in Japan they were doing this, and it was— people were going out for like 3 or 4 hours at a time, and it was having a dramatic impact on their heart rate variability, their sense of stress, their sense of life satisfaction for the next week, actually, which is really interesting too. So it's really, I think, important to think about the fact that each of us lives in multiple environments. Right? We live at home. We live at the office, but then we also live on business travel. We live on vacation, and we also live in sort of a recreational space, right? When we get out and we do the thing that we enjoy doing outside.. And I think being able to kind of be intentional about each of those and understanding the interplay between them can be super helpful.

Right?

Yeah. There was an interesting study also that I saw that they were measuring stem cell release in monks that were meditating, and they would put themselves into a theta state, right? A theta brainwave state, which is a deep meditative state. It's just above delta, which would be sleep. So it's in that hypnagogic state or pre-sleep state, but it's a very deep and profound meditative state. And they were noticing that there was a 40% increase in stem cell release.

Amazing.

Into the body. Correct. Right. To heal whatever was going on. Right. So when we're talking about, you know, we talk about, well, we're going to go to stem cell therapy and exosomes and all these other kinds of things. In many ways, we sort of need those things because the environment we put ourselves into is very toxic, and it can be toxic in many ways. So anyway, it's kind of cool. I think the more you can bring, in some sense, the outside inside, I think the better people feel, the fresher the air is, the more tranquil the paints are, the smells that are there, all that kind of thing. So I don't know if— I'm sure that's something you guys are factoring in.

Yeah, exactly. But I love what you picked up there, and I think that's so important for people to realize. And in the Western society, we've been brainwashed to believe that we need something external. We need a pill or we need, you know, some external help to solve a problem, right, that we have or whatever it might be. And that exactly goes to show that instead it's like, why not train or, you know, incorporate a practice where you are training your delta brainwave states, right? And, and theta brainwave states. You know, even going into alpha is super helpful as well. Instead of looking for external modalities. And why not sort of looking at your schedule and knowing, okay, I need to be in the office this amount of hours and I have then the EMF exposure and all the things going on, but let me carve out maybe, you know, if you live near a beach, maybe on the way home, I'll just walk for 10, 15 minutes on the beach and then, you know, rebalance myself and get that beautiful, you know, magnesium in the air and that calming effect of being by the sea. And so it's trying to figure out, you know, how can you incorporate these little nuggets of goodness to recalibrate and allow your system to be in that beautiful homeostasis state that it wants to be and less affected by all the different insults, essentially all the different factors that are happening on a on a regular basis to it. So, yeah.

It makes you wonder if we could move predominantly from oasis to oasis to oasis, right? Like, like, we're here in the office, create this as an oasis, you know, with plants and oxygen being released and CO2 being taken out, things like that. You get in your car, maybe there's a way to architect a car that's more of an oasis, right? Or when you get home, right? Well, yeah, right. And probably not an electric vehicle with all the EMF, right? So, there are many, many interesting things here. But then, you go into your home, then you go into your garage for that matter, right? And kind of looking at it all through the lens of how would we optimize this with kind of an oasis mindset. And then, there are places where you do want to be excited. You do want to be, you know, whatever. It's not about being calm. It's about being, you know, whatever. Being able to step into those as well.. So there's almost a journey that each of us goes on in the course of a day. It could almost be mapped out as a roadmap of what does anybody go through in the course of a day. Right. And how do you architect each of those things, including the bedroom, your sleep, your— 100%. Exactly.

When your optimal time is to set yourself up, like, have some sort of morning practice. Right. Which we know is so essential to when are you able to access best flow state for that creative work so you can really be in your zone of genius and make something amazing versus the more administrative, the phone calls and the emails and whatever else you need to do in the other part of the day. And so I think the more we're able to structure that, it's phenomenal. And one area I'm also very passionate about is, you know, how do you kind of biohack around the female biorhythm and helping women actually understand that, you know, we're not little men. And, you know, while men have the 24-hour testosterone cycle, women have a 28, on average, day cycle. And we're 4 different people in the space of a month. And so if you know what superpowers you have at different phases of the month, utilizing them versus trying to fit in. And, you know, I'm speaking as someone who began a career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs, where it's a very male-dominated environment. And sometimes you could, you know, keep up and perform. And other times you're just like, oh my God, I'm so overwhelmed. It's 4 in the morning and I still haven't finished. What's going on? You know, so I've learned a lot since then.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really wonderful thing to bring forward. Because, you know, women, you could say they go through 4 different personalities in the course of a month, hormonally based. Men go through changes as well, not as predictable in some ways. Right. And so, but the point is, I think if you have the ability to architect your cycle to where, you know, the things that are going to be supportive to you at this portion of the cycle or things that you're going to want to expand into at this portion of your cycle, That'd be a— that's a really cool thing. I don't know if anybody's actually sitting down and mapping that out with women. Right? I think that would be like a really cool consultative idea.

Right?

Yeah.

Thank you. I have a podcast episode on it if women out there want to check it out. Feel free to reach out to me and very happy to dive in, especially someone who's been in the corporate world. I'd love it. And I'd love more team leaders to be more aware of this and how they can use it to their advantage as well. But I also think, you know, looking at it bit more of a meta level. So for men and women is also like, how do you want to map out your year and looking at almost at that phase, right? So like, what are ideal downtime? So maybe if you have kids, you know that you've got your summer vacation or certain like vacation periods, and maybe those are times to be more present, to reset, maybe to plan. Maybe, you know, you wanted to spend time writing a book or something where you wanted to take out from that sort of day-to-day. And then other times when, you know, you're full force, maybe you come back after your vacation and you're like, all your ideas, you want to get going and looking at that sort of longer period of time over a 12-month period of how do you map out your year to have the things to look forward to and those different rhythms in there so that you can go and then you can have the, you know, rest and relaxation, but also creativity times as well. And so that's a concept that I've been, you know, thinking more and more about and how could that be used for people to structure a life of their dreams that they're being at their best self, um, also on an annual basis essentially.

Yeah, I think that's a great insight. I think it's hard for people to think probably beyond a year, like to do a 5-year plan. I was just thinking, or a 10-year plan. It's a little tricky to do that. I mean, you can have some sort of global aspirations, but I think you can get reasonably granular in a year, right? In terms of dates and holidays and family and vacations or whatever. I think one of the things that pulls at all of us is the need to be reactive. Right? In other words, things come up, the unexpected comes up, calls for our attention. And even though we have a plan to do something, then we're called to react to something as opposed to living in a place of simply being proactive all the time.

Right?

So it seems like being able to have a mechanism to go from that reactive state where we get a little more, not necessarily activated, but we can get a little more activated, or at least we get pulled out of that one place of being to be able to get back to that place of, you know, stillness, so to speak, or creative space. Do you have any tricks around that?

I do, and I walk my coaching clients through these as well. So first of all, I help people get very clear on their why, right? That, that true north blueprint. Because I feel like many of us say yes to so many things because we're not 100% sure exactly what it is that we're trying to get to and what our purpose is. And so, you know, obviously first piece is the mindset, but then looking at that true north blueprint. And then as the next step, it's also looking at what is the way to say no to the things that are not in our alignment. And there's a few different analogies that I love, right? So, you know, things will always come up, right? But if if you look at something, and this is besides an emergency, a child, sick child or something like this, but sure, sure, a last minute thing, or like, hey, you know, we're going here, do you want to come, you know, or come to this event, etc. And so, you know, for one of them is like, if there's, there isn't a 7 out of 10, you only have an 8, 9, and 10 out of 10, or a 6 and below, if it isn't an 8, 9, and 10, or 10 out of 10, it's a no, right? So you need to prioritize your time and know that you only want the things that are your Wow, I'd love to be there if it's an okay, it's a no because you're deprioritizing yourself, your time, your creativity, your family or whatever it is as well. Or also if you get an invitation 6 months out and I think, you know, myself included, but also clients are like, oh, but if it's in half a year, it's so hard to judge. And I'm like, oh, of course I'll have time then. But what I love to say is that, you know how busy you're going to be next week. So look at next week Tuesday. And if you would be able to schedule in next week Tuesday and you still— then you can say yes for 6 months out. But if you know that there's absolutely no way that you'll have time next week Tuesday, then it's a no. Um, and so by freeing up that time and having just those core components as much as possible in your calendar, when these curveballs sometimes do come up, you have a little bit more wiggle room to shuffle things around versus having that jam-packed schedule. And, and Jeffrey, like, I'm coming from the person who said yes to everything in my 20s and would sometimes even, you know, embarrassingly be at 3 events in one evening, and everyone's angry at me because I came late to one and then I was leaving early and all the rest of it too, just because I couldn't say no because I was saying yes to everything. And to the detriment of things now. And, you know, if I go to events now, like, my favorite thing is to connect deeply with one, maybe two people. The previous me would be, I need to say hi to everybody and connect as well. I'm exhausted. I haven't had any deep, meaningful conversations. And I think, uh, with age and wisdom, it sort of changed perspectives as well. So I think having that clarity and taking the time to figure out what is that true north blueprint for you makes it easier to say no to things and have more time in your schedule. So then when things do come up, you then have the tools to say, is this something— okay, emergency aside, right? But is this something that I want to do or not? And if it's aligned with my mission and what I want to do, then yeah, I'll schedule it in and I'll make time for it.

Yeah, I think that's a really wise And I think some of the greatest life satisfaction comes in the deepest connections, right? So whenever there's an opportunity to make a deep connection as opposed to a superficial connection, that's probably a bit of a bellwether as well, right? I think the other thing is I was thinking as you were speaking was 6 months out, sometimes there are things that come up that that you might not be able to fit into next Tuesday, but they align with a bigger direction that you're trying to go. And it's like you make the commitment to that because it's like, I don't exactly see how that's going to work right now, but it feels like I'm aligned with the direction that that's taking me, and I'm going to commit to that.

Right.

Kind of think so.

Yeah. No, 100%. Yeah.

No.

And at the end of the day, and this is something I've been working on over the last year because I used to be very cerebral and not very connected to intuition and gut gut instinct. If it feels right, then trust that. And you never know what will unfold as well, but it's a little bit more that analytical, like, does this 100% make sense? It's like, no, it feels right. It's something that would bring me joy. So, I'm going to say yes to it and let's see what happens.

So, yeah. I think that's another really key piece is I think we've all, particularly people that have come through any professional track, is we tend to intellectualize life because it's a skill set that we use at work. And so we tend to think that it's transferable into every area of life, whether it's a relationship or an athletic event we want to participate in or whatever. I think the idea, though, of feeling into things and certain personality types, I guess if you look at Myers-Briggs, are more feeling into things than others. But nonetheless, I think feeling into things and almost using your body's response and your nervous system response to something, because you can think you wanna do something, but if there's still a little knot in your stomach, then it's not excitement, but it's actually dread. Then being able to sniff that out, you know, can save you a lot of heartburn.

100%. And I get people asking, you know, how do you tune into that as well? And I think one is just pausing, first of all, because we're all like, go, go, go, right? So just pausing a second, breathing into it and thinking, do I feel energized from the idea or do I feel like heavy? You know, and just even just checking into that. And the more you check in, the more you get used to checking into it as well. And then just trusting the outcome, right? You can overanalyze and you'll never really know. But yeah.

I think that's a helpful tool. It's interesting to me that my intuition is almost never wrong. Yeah. It's almost never wrong. Like, sometimes I'll override it, and then at the end of something, I realize I had it right in the first place.

You want to share an example, Jeffrey, with the audience?

Oh, well, you know, there have been a lot of people I've dated in the course of my life where it's like there was a premonition that this wasn't the right thing, but it's like, oh, there's so many nice things here or whatever. But in the end, it was always the thing that I knew right up front that kind of—

right? Yeah. But I guess those are life experiences as well, right? And I've also learned personally a bit more like, you know, compassion and forgiveness of self. Like, we're not perfect.

Oh, for sure. Oh, for sure.

Yeah. Yeah.

There is no, there is no self-flagellation here. I think I got over that a long time ago. I used to be really hard on myself. Until I kind of developed a couple of things. One was realizing, you know, when you're in a competitive thing, right, going to medical school, things like that, whatever career you go down, you know, you tend to beat yourself up. It's like, well, if I'd only remembered that, or if I only knew this, or if I'd only this or whatever, and you're never sort of enough or you're never good enough. Exactly. And at one point, I had the realization that I'm not the smartest person in the world. I realize that. That's okay. But I'm actually smart enough to do anything I want to do. I'm smart enough to do anything that I really want to do. It's like, well, that's good enough for me. I mean, God bless me that I'm smart enough to do that, but it's great. I can do anything I want. So it's like, okay, I don't have to worry about that anymore. And I could just kind of lay that to rest. And then I think the other thing was when my son was born and I felt unconditional love for another human being. It's like, oh my gosh. Okay. So then it was, I would give that to myself. And then it was like, wow, okay, this feels really good too. So when you, so there is no self-flagellation, there's really only love. And I think a lot of people, part of the stress is that they feel like they're trying to measure up. They're trying to be something that they feel they're not yet. And yet getting to the point, maybe you've had your own journey around this, would be interesting to share, but getting to that point where you have unconditional love for yourself. And if you do something that doesn't work out, for me, there's no mistakes, there's no failure, there's only learning situations, right? So it's just like, oh, it's just learning.

It's fun. Yeah. And that's that beautiful reframing, right, as well. And so if you look at this, and I've been on a very long journey and constantly learning, and I'm an eternal student, forever learning every day. But a lot of the stories, those negative stories particularly we tell ourselves, are from childhood. And it's a child's interpretation of an event that happened. And it made— they made themselves— it means a certain way about themselves. I'm not good enough. I'm not lovable. I'm not smart enough. I'm not tall enough. I'm whatever it might be. And it might have been something an adult mentioned knowingly or unknowingly that the child then just interprets. And so I think for people who still struggle with with negative self-talk and, you know, trying to break that cycle. It's almost doing, you know, there's different modalities, of course, around it from that inner child work of looking like what was the first time you experienced that? And often people can be like, oh yeah, well, when I was 3 and, you know, I missed kicking the soccer ball or whatever it was. Well, my dad shouted at me and from then on I was convinced, you know, I'm bad at sports or whatever it might be. And so understanding that was a scenario and that you are not that person. And I think it's really separating the ego from the self and being able to do that. And it is a longer journey and multiple modalities. And I've gone down many rabbit holes in this space.

Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting to your point. I think it's really critical in this process to do the deep dive and go back and understand kind of what happened, who said what, what did I do, who's responsible for what, all of that. Because without that, I think it's impossible to heal it. But I think the other interesting thing is that those activities and events, even though we've intellectually made peace with them, they can still live in our nervous systems, kind of in our bodies, so to speak. And they're still right. It's almost like in the subconscious. And what I've been working with is the idea that those were basically imprinted by experiences and we can do the intellectual work, the deep dive and understanding. That's a good tee-up or setup. But it's really the only way to override experience is to overwrite the software with a different experience. Right? Because when you've actually felt a different experience, then you can live that experience. It's like, no, this experience now replaces that experience. Right? Then it's like, now it's really solid. It's like you can never take this away.

Right? I'd be I'd be curious to hear about how you do that. For me, there's like one tool I find really powerful is the EFT tapping. I don't know if you know that. So we know that the body keeps the score, but that's a really amazing way to shift it. And another way I found very powerful as well is like looking at back and as children.

Just for the audience, why don't you talk about the tapping?

So yeah, so it's emotional freedom technique, EFT tapping. I'm not trained in it, but thankfully a dear friend of mine is and she's absolutely amazing. And The first time I did it, I was like, you know, you just kind of tap along certain meridian points while you start off at the beginning. You have a session and you basically name the challenges or the beliefs and the feelings you have around it. And then as you tap through with ideally a practitioner, obviously if you do this many times, you can do it separately, but you then start reframing like, well, maybe it's possible to see this from a different perspective and you kind of open yourself up to an opportunity and just through this tapping modality of these different places on your body, it literally frees and shifts the whole emotional energy and visceral energy, I would say, because you don't feel that same. And after, if it's done successfully, and sometimes it takes 60 minutes, sometimes it takes 90 minutes, sometimes it's maybe 10, 15 minutes, whatever, you know, you need in that moment, it releases that body keeping onto in your field, in your, in your fascia, wherever it might be stored, those memories, those experiences, and you you just don't feel that PTSD, that trauma, that, that experience the same in the same way. It's really powerful. Um, but I've even done like hypnotherapy, um, I've done past life regression, right, psychedelic stuff as well. So, um, I've tried different modalities and I'm super curious, as I've mentioned, and, and super keen. And especially when there's amazing science behind some of these modalities, I think it's so empowering for people suffering from different things to try Mm-hmm.

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Please enjoy. Yeah, no, I think it's true. I think that the tapping can be very powerful. I've done some of that in the past as well around a couple of things. Came up. And just so the audience understands, we're talking about sort of tapping on your forehead, tapping above your eyes, below your eyes, on top of your head, on the side. There's different touch points that you touch on your face, and you can touch on your body as well, things like that. But it's something about the tapping. It sort of opens up the nervous system to enable it to be reprogrammed. And I think this is so key. If you're wrestling with something and you're listening to this, it's super important to do the deep dive and understand it. But what you're really going for in the end is to be able to reprogram it so that you can then transcend it. And when you transcend it, then you became thankful for everything that ever happened because now you have more insight, empathy, love, more connection with people around whatever they're dealing with. But you're not living in reaction to it on any level, not just intellectually, but even carrying that in your nervous system or in your body's fascia for that matter. Right.

So it's pretty interesting. 100%. And you start realizing that life happens for you, not to you. And I love that.

Yeah.

That's right.

When you're able to see it from that meta level is like, well, actually, I did suffer there, but thanks to that experience, it gave me this, this, and this gift, and it brought me down this road. Whatever it might have brought to. So, yeah, sometimes it doesn't feel very good. I can admit that as well along the way, but as you move through it, then it's amazing.

Yeah. And for somebody that's eternally curious, as you are, what happens is when something new happens, you simply become curious about it. Like, I wonder what I'm going to learn here. I wonder why this is happening, right? Instead of going immediately to judgment and judging the situation when that puts you at odds with it because it's not Or victim mentality.

Why is this happening to me? And asking very disempowering questions. And there's also a phrase, and I find it really powerful, that the quality of your life is a direct reflection of the questions that you ask.

High five, man. I think we talk about that all the time here. The questions are everything, right? Yeah.

Very, very cool. And so reframing it and asking better questions. So like, why is this happening to me? No, like, What am I supposed to learn here? Or what is the gift in this situation?

That's right.

And then it switches already the mind and the field.

So what are the questions you're asking currently? Oh, good question.

No pun intended. I think for me, you know, Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, and I don't know if your audience is familiar with this, right? Yeah. But I believe that within our lifetime, it's like a virtuous circle of continuously going through this hero's journey and getting to different levels and or depths, whichever way you want to call it. And so I think now is I notice there's so many shifts happening. And I think everyone notices this as well. But there's so much good there too.

Right.

So yes, that is always available, but the good is there too. And so for me now, it's really understanding you know, where do I have my biggest purpose? Where can I help as many people as possible? And I'm really excited personally about AI and what it can do. And as someone who's also neurodivergent, I finally feel like, oh my gosh, my brain that loves to do many different projects at the same time, I can have the AI trained on different aspects of it and keep up the speed and allow me to have multiple companies. I also have an AI company that we're developing for neurodivergent kids with some business partners as well. So Thanks to AI, I can do so many multiple things at the same time, which I just absolutely love. So, I guess the questions I'm asking is, you know, what is the biggest impact? How can I help as many people as possible while at the same time being present, being true to myself, not getting into that too cerebral go, go, go, but remembering to pause, remembering to be present with my kids because they're growing up so fast and, you know, enjoying those little things in life and stopping to smell the flowers along the way. Yeah, sometimes I'm better than others. I don't know about you, Jeffrey. What are your questions at the moment?

Well, I like your reference to the hero's journey. Right. I don't know if you're listening to this and you haven't seen the movie Finding Joe. I would go on YouTube and look for this movie. It's called Finding Joe. I watched it. I tend to watch everything at like 2x, but I watched the movie at a fairly fast pace. But it was really transformative to see that really all of us are on a hero's journey. Right? And the question is, what hero's journey are you on? And I think the premise for me has become really to become the unencumbered full expression of Jeff Gladden. Right? The unencumbered full expression of Jeff Gladden. So what's the unencumbering? Well, it's really unencumbering myself from things that I've been living in reaction to. Right. So then I've healed and transcended those. Right. And so that's part of the hero's journey. And then the fully expressed portion is actually once you're unencumbered, then it's like, oh, well, okay, well, maybe we'll do this or maybe we'll do that. I've always had an interest in this or that. Right. And some of the realizations I've had recently spiritually have been that when you get to a place where you feel unencumbered and you feel empowered. And if you've been following some of the quantum chips, which if you're in the AI space, you've probably been following work with the ModRaja chip and the Willow chip and what they're discovering about the nature of the universe. I mean, it's unbelievable. There's a code behind the code. It's a recursive code.

Can you share more for people who haven't heard about this yet?

Yeah. So, it's basically in Right. In quantum physics, basically, we talk about that you can never sort of stop energy completely. Even at absolute zero, there's still in the quantum field, there are particles that are coming in and out of existence and there's an energy at that field. And when you also realize that things are not really defined until they're quote unquote observed or until they collapse into an actual reality, then you start to realize, oh, and when you've had spiritual experiences, when you realize that consciousness is pure love, and now physics is telling us that consciousness actually predates the universe as opposed to the universe giving rise to consciousness, right? That all, that's coming, all that's being, if you want to go down the rabbit hole on this, it's all there really. It's very, very cool. So now when you realize that there's, it's pure love, that you're connecting to and the universe is completely malleable because it only consolidates once you set the intention and put it in motion, then it's like, well, okay, we just woke up today. The whole universe is our sandbox, our playground. It's like playing with your best friend. It's like, well, what do we want to do today? And it's like it changes your life completely. All of a sudden you realize you're here really from my place, from a loving place to create joy. And that's my purpose in life because I think that's actually the meaning of life is from a, you know, what does love love to do? It loves to create. And what's the feedback loop on creation? It's joy. So when you walk into every situation, like when I was meditating this morning, it's like, what do I want to do? Well, I want to have loving conversations that create joy all day long with everybody I come in contact with. Right? Beautiful. Yeah. So when you do that, then you realize that you have the ability to create in every moment, whether it's ordering a sandwich or whether it's having a podcast or whether it's talking to a client or, you know, whatever it is, right? So anyway, that's kind of how I think about it.

I love it.

Yeah.

And I think that that also coming back to that AI analogy as well, people are like fearful of AI, but if you see it as a tool to enable creativity, to enable you to step into your best self, yes, there are challenges, et cetera. I'm not denying all of that, but I think what, you know, figuring out what you need to be that best version of yourself, to be in that creative flow, your zone of genius, more often than not during your days is is magical.

That's right. I agree. I agree.

Yeah.

I've come to see AI really as an incredible— well, it's an incredible tool. I tend to characterize it as my unbelievably smart assistant, right? Like, if I want to go down a rabbit hole, it's like, well, tell me more about this, right? And you tell it what you want, and you learn how to prompt accordingly. And then it's like, oh my gosh. Yeah, that's great.

So I have a funny analogy for you, though, Jeff, that Essentially, it starts out as your super smart colleague that has like really good points, and that's good as well. But if you start working on like larger documents or larger context and things like that too, it becomes like your colleague with ADHD because it's like randomly throwing stuff in and it's like, where did this come from? Oh yeah, you're right. And forgetting other things as well. And then at some point it becomes a person with dementia because it's like completely leaving out like a chapter or a major part as well. So it's like these transitions of it too. So It still is not perfect.

There's none of those. No, it's not perfect. No, that's right. I tend to use it for shorter sequenced scenarios, not trying to like put together a whole system with it yet.

But yeah. And the one thing I love as a little tip is using one AI against the other. It's really funny because then I ask another AI model, like, what do you think of this? And get feedback and feed the other. I'm like, oh, wow, that's amazing feedback. And then I'll ask another one as well. And so just kind of bounce around as well. And it's interesting also speaking with friends who have college student aged kids. Kids. And, you know, where there's a little bit more of a risk because I feel like we've lived pre-AI, right? And having, you know, the sovereignty to think of things, think of ideas, work through concepts, and understand that AI is a tool to bounce off our ideas. But, you know, speaking to these friends, they're like, you know, my daughter feels that it's her idea that she puts into GPT, but GPT writes everything. And that's fine because it was her prompt. So that was enough to qualify it. And so that's a little bit scary because I feel like we still have that ability to gauge, does this actually make sense? No, this is total nonsense actually. Let's tweak it again or reiterate. Whereas I think there's going to be a generation that is just blindly going to believe that whatever is said is said and it's done.

So yeah. No, that's a good point. I was at dinner the other night with some people that had started a company actually to train this generation critical thinking skills because they felt as AI was on the rise, critical thinking skills were actually going down to your point. People were not able to evaluate it and actually realize that this may not be correct. Right. So, yeah, it's fascinating. I think the other thing that's interesting is, and this sort of plays into what we're talking about, is the future of of the world when AI is starting to replace more and more jobs, right? And people end up with a question of meaning. And so some of the conversations we're having about not living in reaction to these traumas that we've experienced, going back and being able to heal those, I think becomes a critical part of adapting to a world where AI is able to do many things because I think we'll have a clearer sense of purpose even in that scenario, right? Whereas if we're kind of on tilt and we're thinking we have to do this and if we don't do that, we don't have value and we're not lovable and all these kinds of things. If we're actually free to know we are lovable and we are valuable, it doesn't really matter what's going on. You see, it gives us more latitude to be able to adapt.

I agree with you 1,000%, and I think that's a really, really important point, Jeff, people really need to understand the importance of doing the so-called shadow work, right? Like dealing with those limiting beliefs that maybe trauma that from the past, like we cannot run away from that because it is keeping you trapped essentially. And if you can work through that, as painful as that can be, you can then step into a higher version of yourself where typically you will be free to live your purpose, to genuinely be able to want to make a bigger impact in the world, helping other people. So your why is more than just about you. It's about a bigger sense sense of purpose and community. And then you're in that creative genius space where the AI is just a tool for you, but you're inventing and you're creating, et cetera, versus being in that more limited way of thinking and being. So yeah, I think that's a really important point.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it gives me great optimism for the future, right? Because it's something that nobody can take away from you, right? It's something that's yours. It's you. Very, very cool. So what are the questions that you're asking with the company right now?

Yeah, I think it's trying to help people understand the benefits and realizing how much— obviously, we're drinking the same Kool-Aid. We're in the health optimization longevity space. We know it. We've read the science. We know that this is, you know, has legs to it. Where is, you know, speaking to some people who want to get into longevity medicine that want to have clinics, they're like, you know, but is this really true? Is this really going to make a difference? And so realizing that some people are just so far outside of it still, and it's that education piece and trying to communicate in a way that people can really understand. That's more from a business perspective, but from an individual person perspective as well, I think I think it's giving people back hope. They hear about, you know, Bryan Johnson spends $2 million a year and they're just like, there's no way that I can ever, you know, do something like that. So what my future is like chronic disease and going blind with diabetes or whatever it might be as well. And I think what's so important is for people to realize that even with small iterations, small changes, like you talked about forest bathing, right? I mean, you might not have a forest near you, but some sort of nature hopefully near you. Spending time in nature, getting morning sunlight, sleeping well, hopefully not with too much noise and toxins in your environment, feeding yourself well, being really aware of what you're putting into your body. It's essentially the medicine you feed yourself every day. Breathing, meditation, etc. Like a lot of modalities are free. Obviously food is not, but, you know, finding people that bring you joy and spending more time with them and filtering out maybe the people that stress you out a bit too much, as much as possible. So I think that's really important point as well, just to reach a wider audience of people to realize there's so much that we can do to step into that highest version of ourselves that doesn't need to cost millions of dollars, essentially.

Yeah, I think that's right. I think, I think that's exactly right. It's interesting to us that we do end up doing a personality profile on everybody that we work with. Yeah, it's called a culture index and it basically gives us an idea of who that person's personality is kind of in its best native state as it consolidated about age 12, combination of nature and nurture, right? Like, who is this person? And then the second portion of it is actually looking to see who they're asking themselves to be at their work or in their job or as whatever they perceive as their life's tasks. And we also measure psychic energy units in terms of how much psychic energy do you have to flex out of your sweet spot, so to speak, into being something other than your sweet spot. And it's really interesting because there can be a tremendous amount of inherent stress in trying to flex out too far. And different people have different amounts of psychic energy that they can spend and other people have very little. And we've had people sell companies. We've had people change jobs, hire assistants, leave companies, do all kinds of stuff based on what the findings are. Right? And it's really interesting. I think when you think about toxicity in your life, one of the toxins that we have is this concept of trying to force ourselves into a job or into a situation that's not really a good fit. Bit. Yeah. So if you're listening to this, we had a client from Canada who came down. She had an issue with mold in her home and was having symptoms. Her kids were having symptoms. Her husband loved the house. He wasn't impacted, so he wasn't too excited about, you know, moving. But anyway, when she came down, she ended up working for an oil company in Canada. And we looked at her profiles, and it was like, you know, this job is not serving you well. You know, you really have much more creativity than you're allowed to show here. And there are things— you have leadership capabilities that are being kind of squelched in your current position. And she said, yeah, yeah, I know. But, you know, they pay me twice as much as I could get anywhere else. And so there's, right, people get caught. But she said, but she said, my, my boss is talking to me about a promotion. I said, well, that's what you want to do. When you have that conversation based on what I'm showing you here, tell them that these are the things that are really going to allow you to, you know, not only strive but shine for the company. Right? And so she did that. And they put her in a new position, and she's loving it. Right? So, right? So in other words, there are toxins that come in through so many different areas, but our relationship to ourselves, our relationships with our jobs, and then the people that we surround ourselves with are a massive part of this.

So— Oh, yeah. I mean, they say you're the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Right? So it's definitely true. I'm curious what came up for you, Jeff.

In my personality? Yep. Yeah. It came up that I'm more of a visionary, of course. I'm always 3 mountain ranges over kind of seeing what's over there.

I know this.

So, yes. You know the feeling, right? Eternally curious, a little bit more of an introvert, reasonably fast-paced from thing to thing, although I can concentrate. And I'm not one to color inside the box. Right? I'm always coloring outside the box. And so, the disconnect for me between my native personality and what I was being asked to do at work was I had to color inside the box more. Right? Because of medicine, because of licensure, because of, you know, different things that you have to take into consideration. Yeah. So it was manageable, but that was the piece that was a little incongruous for me. So if I have the ability to kind of do things that are more freewheeling even, than what I do, not freewheeling, not in a cowboy kind of way, but in a way of just being able to iterate off of inventive ideas that I have, then that's where I kind of shine.

Right. Beautiful. Yeah. Your zone of genius. And have you incorporated them then? And do you have that ability to?

Yeah. I've found places to be able to do that. Right. So, yeah. So we're building some stuff and doing some stuff and whatever else that gives me kind of the ability to kind of just say, oh, well, let's just throw the boxes out. Let's, let's start.

Yeah. I'm curious, 'cause you mentioned at the beginning there's new research that's come out and some new projects you wanna share. I don't know if you've shared with your audience, but I probably—

yeah. So, you know, we're going down the, the path with, with brain health. Of course, it's really, really important. And there's really two sides to brain health. One is cognitive impairment or cognitive ability. Yeah. And so, with that, we've gotten a hold of a new molecule called TB006, which is an anti-galactin-3 antibody. It's a monoclonal antibody that binds up galactin in the brain, which is kind of a pro-inflammatory mediator in the brain and seems to be present in almost all neurodegenerative disorders. So, being able to bind that up, particularly if you do it in conjunction with other modalities that we have available to us like hormone optimization, thyroid, genetics understanding, reprogramming the brain with transcranial magnetic stimulation, different nootropics, peptides, stem cell, you know, all the different things that can go into actually rebuilding a brain. But, when you use this molecule, even for people with early cognitive decline, you can get a 250% increase in cognitive ability over what they would have had, right? So, yeah. So, it's pretty dramatic. And so, we're super excited about that. I mean, I think all of us interested to maintain our brains. 100%. The other part of it that's really interesting is the whole idea of psychedelic-assisted therapies as being ways to go in and help reprogram. Right. So tapping, we talked about that as one modality. There are other people with severe PTSD and others, people coming out of the military, people coming out of fairly horrific life experiences. And sometimes using these psychedelic-assisted therapies, whether they're DMT-based or psilocybin-based or MDMA-based, can actually really have a transformative impact for people where they can rewrite the software. In a matter of 5 hours, they can do what 15 years of therapy wouldn't do. Right? And so that's super exciting too, because when you think about freeing people up to be their unencumbered selves, and then you think about giving them cognitive ability, It's very exciting.

Oh, I love it. I mean, these are speaking to my heart 100%. As you may recall, my mother suffers with dementia. And obviously knowing now what I know, we missed early signs that could have got her back on the right track. And in January 2020, she had a very bad fall, major head trauma, bleeding in the brain, et cetera. And now she's late-stage dementia and she can't walk anymore. She hardly speaks. But every now and then a moment of clarity, which obviously brings us joy. But it's really, you know, my big why. And I've gone down many rabbit holes with understanding different neuroscience methodologies. Methodologies as well. So I'm super big fan of brain training. I don't know if you've come across the NeuroVizr, which is the pulsating light with sounds.

Yep, I've seen it. Yeah, we've been using BrainTap for a number of years, which is photobiomodulation and auditory things. And I know there are new ones out there. I've tried one that was actually a little too much for me the way it was programmed.

But you can adjust the light, right?

Yeah, exactly. Here, try this.

I was like, okay, But I know it's quite intense. I did the first one I did was full as well. But what's really fascinating is that out of MIT last year was research around pulsating light that it was actually shown to clear amyloid plaque. And it's that brain fitness training. So I also have a brain tap device, but there you train one brainwave state like the alpha or the theta. Whereas the, with the pulsating light, because it's random, it's constantly forcing your brain to train itself. So it's really like a mental exercise. Device. Okay. And, I don't know if you've come across the founder, Garnet, excuse me, Garnet Dupree, who's 76 years old, I believe, and sharp as a laser. I mean, he's unbelievable. So, I was like, okay, definitely good sign.

Yeah. So, for the audience, what's the name of the device again?

It's called the NeuroVizr, and Vizr is V-I-Z-R, NeuroVizr. And essentially, you have just a headband on. It has a panel that's a certain distance from you.

From your eyes.

You can It's magnetic, so you can flick it off if you find it too much. I've had my mother with her dementia. My 86-year-old father's had it on. I obviously put down the light. I like to go a bit hardcore. You can stack it with multiple gamma training and different brainwave training as well. And then you have obviously the sound that goes with it that encompasses it too. And you could even stack it with a vibroacoustic chair. So you have the vibration through the body as well if you want to go all out with it too.

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's very cool. Yeah. So the binaural beats also entrain the brain into different states as well. So that's very cool. Yeah. I love all this. And there's also sound frequencies that have been shown to decrease amyloid. I forget the exact frequency it is, but I think I want to say it's a low frequency, like about 40 Hz or something.

40 Hz. Yeah. 40 Hz. I believe there was research out of Korea. I was writing about that actually recently in my newsletter.

Yeah. So people can sit in these chairs with the vibration of 40 Hz. Its sound is more than just what you hear. Right. So they were sitting in these chairs with 40 Hz and hearing it and also feeling it and having improvement. So, yeah, I love the idea of stacking all these things together. Right. So now you're doing it with nootropics, you're doing it with peptides, you're doing it with other things. Right. And the stem cell drip. Yeah, exactly. That's right. And you boosted your NAD levels ahead of time.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Well, I commend Texas for their recent funding for the ibogaine research, which I think is phenomenal. I've had Talia Eisenberg on my podcast who has the Beyond Ibogaine clinic in Mexico, which is like tons and tons of veterans, thankfully, that come through there. But, you know, such amazing scientific research out of Stanford and Johns Hopkins around its Benjamin Button effect that within one dosage that people are reversing their brain aging by 1.5 years biologically, which is just absolutely amazing because of the neuroplasticity effect. So I think ibogaine is a very interesting molecule, which has been around for hundreds of years but not studied from Western scientific point of view as well. So yeah, I think it's, it's really powerful.

Yeah, these things are very powerful. Um, the increase in BDNF seems to be, um, pretty characteristic of this whole space. You know, psilocybin does a similar thing, uh, DMT has an impact this way. So brain-derived neurotrophic factor is a way that you basically build new synapses, make your neurons more robust, et cetera. So, it is interesting to think about. I've always wondered, you know, how smart would we be if we actually got fully optimized, right? And how much fun would that be, right? So, you know, we all get along, but I think we could all get along a little better is kind of how I feel about it.

So, I wonder though about that, that if you just become so hyper-able and capable could you sit down with your old friends at a table and just listen to them banter on about some—

I can't do that now. I can't do that now. But I can sit down with them and engage with them. It's not so much about that. I think part of the beauty of this journey, this hero's journey, becoming unencumbered and fully expressed, is that you lose judgment. Judgment. You just end up with compassion for everyone. And so you just want to connect with everyone. There isn't really judgment. But being able to go either into a circle of people where you're able to communicate at that level or just create on your own is super cool. But it's fun to find people you can actually kind of go like this with.

Connect with. Yeah. I agree. Yeah.

Beautiful. Cool. Awesome. Well, Claudia, it's been wonderful chatting with you.

Me too, Jeff.

Thank you so much for having Absolutely. Yeah, we should do it more often. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Beautiful.

All right.

Amazing. Thank you so much.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Gladden Longevity Podcast. If you would like more information on what we've discussed or other topics, please reference the show notes or go to gladdenlongevitypodcast.com. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter by searching Gladden Longevity. Longevity. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to get future episodes delivered to you and share our podcast or this episode with someone in your life that you may find benefit. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week with another exciting episode. The Glydon Longevity Podcast is provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute medical advice. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding your medical condition. The use of any information and materials linked to this podcast is at the listener's own risk.

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