Gary Brecka: The SECRET Blood Marker That Could Save Your Life! (pt. 2) : 1248

If I can get you to believe that you have a genetically inherited disease, then I can easily get you to subscribe to a lifetime of medication. I have not seen in the last seven years a single client that reported suffering from anxiety that did not also have gut issues. Not once. If you just looked at your methylation pathways only and supplemented for that deficiency and did a basic blood panel, you would be 85% of the way there. But the question is, what does your body need?

You're listening to the Human upgrade with.

Dave Asprey.

With genetics Today. You and I are both very interested in methylation. I have mthfr, I've been managing my homocysteine.

You're a.

Since I was in my. My 30s. And a COMT issue as well. Walk listeners through what methylation is and why it's a big issue.

Methylation is also called one carbon metabolism. It is essentially the best way that I can explain it is, it is how the body takes the majority of raw material and converts it into the usable form. So I always use the example that we pull crude oil out of the ground and. But you can't put crude oil into your gas tank because the car doesn't understand that fuel source. Crude oil has to be refined into gasoline. Once it's refined into gasoline, the car understands that fuel source. This is very true at a cellular level in our body. I mean, virtually no compound that we put into our body, virtually nothing, no vitamin, mineral, amino acid, protein, carbohydrate, fat, nutrient of any gets used in the format that we put it in. Right? We eat to feed our bacteria, our bacteria eat to feed us. And cellular biology is no different when you look at things like, for example, folate or methylfolate, because MDHFR is one that you have it, I have it. It's one of the most common gene mutations in the world. So this methylenes heterohydrofolase reductase, folate reductase enzyme basically will take folate, it will put it through a sequence of reactions, right? It will, it will begin to refine f. So it's taking the crude oil, it's beginning to refine it into gasoline. And one of the last stages of refining is turning a form of folate into something called 5 methylfolate. And methylfolate is the bioactive form. It's when the DNA is replicating, it is what will stop the DNA from going into something called S phase arrest, which is a protective mechanism that's used to keep mutations from being passed on and from, from bad genes. From problem promulgating. And so imagine the DNA unzipping and rezipping and unzipping and rezipping. And as it's, as it's rezipping and it's twisting itself back together, if it goes into S phase arrest, it sort of stops the process. Methylfolate is one of the nutrients that's required to continue that assembly. And so now you have this, let's say you have mthfr. If you were to look at a diagram of cellular biology, you'll see you would see that folic acid, which is a man made chemical, it's entirely synthetic. For the record, it doesn't exist anywhere naturally in nature. You cannot find folic acid anywhere on the surface of the earth. Please stop taking it if you're pregnant. Thank you. Take methylfolate. So folate from green leafy vegetables and folic acid enter the cycle. At the same time they go through this process of being refined and then they hit the MTHFR enzyme, the enzyme that the MTHFR gene codes for. Once they hit this, this, this enzyme, if that code is not there, that last conversion process doesn't occur. And ditto this for hundreds of other methylation genes, right? There are ones for coenzyme Q10 that can't convert it to ubiquinol. There are methylation genes for catecholamines, the fight or flight neurotransmitters, the downregulation of catecholamines. The more you are impaired in the downregulation of catecholamines, the more likely you are to experience fight or flight like symptoms. Ptsd, hence anxiety, anxiousness, rapid heart rate, all of the activities that go with awakened mind and all of the activities that go with a fight or flight outcome. So methylation is this process of taking the raw material and converting it into the usable form. I personally believe this is one of the most overlooked things in all of modern medicine, that deficiencies can lead to the expression of disease. So, for example, you know, we've had 150,000 patients come through our clinic system. More now, probably 190,000. I have not seen in the last seven years a single patient, a single client. And I don't have patients. I'm not licensed to practice medicine. I want to be clear about that. I'm not a physician, I'm not licensed to give medical advice, but the people that work for me are. And I did not see a single patient come through our system that reported suffering from anxiety, that did not also have gut issues, not once. So they would report rampant anxiety. You know, that that's not tied to our outside environment. And at the same time, they would report some combination of gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, irritability, or cramping throughout their lifetime. And these are the people that have been down the gut microbiome route, They've been down the food sensitivity route, they've been down the food allergy route, They've done elimination diets. Nothing's worked. They eat the exact same thing. They blow up like a tick, and then they eat the exact same thing on Wednesday, and they're fine. So why is this? It's because methylation, when we have deficiencies in key raw materials because of a genetic mutation. Right. That does not allow that raw material to be converted into the usable form. If you can't make this conversion, you have a deficiency. And these deficiencies are like the hub of the wheel. They make a patient crazy because it's the one thing that goes wrong that causes everything.

Yeah.

And the next thing you know, they have a mood disorder, they have gut dysbiosis, they have sleep disruption, they have anxiety, they have hormone imbalance.

Unhealthy children.

Unhealthy children. Right. And so is it possible? And this, this is one of the reasons why I left my previous industry and got into the wellness space, was it became glaringly apparent to me, Dave, that the majority of people are not living healthier, happier, longer, more fulfilling. It's not because they don't have red light therapy or they're getting too much blue light or, you know, they're not getting sunlight in their eyes in the morning, which are all great things. It is because of nutrient deficiencies.

Agreed.

And as the soil has become increasingly more nutrient deficient, our cellular biology is bathed in a toxic soup. And then we are not giving ourselves the raw materials that they just simply need to do their job. The basics, just like they say. You can't, what, supplement your way around a bad diet.

You kind of can, though. At least if the diet's deficient in minerals. You can take minerals. It's better than the bad diet.

Highly processed diet.

You should do both.

Yeah, you should do both. So the whole point is that, you know, I like the methylation testing as a. As a baseline, because this tells you what you're deficient in. And if you. If you meet the deficiency versus supplementing for the sake of supplementing, I mean, you and I both know, and we're probably victims of this ourselves. I mean, you can get paralysis of analysis going down the supplement bandwagon, I can sit here and make an argument for ashwagandha Rhoda, for Coq 10, for St John's Wort, for Rishi, you know, for, for cordyceps, for just, you know, there's so much out there that you can make a very valid argument for. You know, resveratrol is great for you, but the question is, what does your body need and if you don't meet the deficiency? And we, and we believe this in cellular biology, right? I mean, if that leaf started rotting in that plant right there. Actually that's a fake plant, but I just realized it's not my plan. Just so we're clear, it's not your plan.

Okay, good.

But if that were a real plant and the leaf started rotting in that plant, and you called the true arborist, a true botanist, out to look at that leaf, they would not touch the leaf. They would co test that soil and they would say, you know what, Dave? There's no nitrogen, there's no phosphorus, sulfur in the soil. They would add that compound to the soil and the leaf would heal. And very often, you know, you see this in human beings. If you're deficient in methylfolate, what happens? Well, your gut motility is messed up. And what happens when you mess with the motility of the gut? You get all of the consequences of things like irritable bowel syndrome, and they're not correlated to what you're eating. And it drives you people crazy because we, we very often overlook this conveyor belt like pace to the gut, right? So if we're not moving at the right rate and eliminating waste at the right rate, now all of a sudden we got constipation or cramping or bloating or diarrhea or irritability or any number of other things. And we're like, what did I last eat? What's going on with my gut microbiome? And the truth is, if you're deficient in methylfolate, that peristaltic activity is impaired. And so very often we can address a myriad of issues. It's like the bullseye of the target. When we do a methylation test, we find out what we're deficient in and we supplement for deficiency. I always say that if you want to see magic happen in human beings, give their body the raw material it needs to do its job and try to get out of its way. Rarely in my 20 year career did I see that diseases and pathology were things that were happening to people. They were things that Were happening within people. Right. I mean, if you think about all cancer is, you know, all cancerous cells were at one time a healthy cell. So the metabolism shifted. Why the metabolism of the shell shift? And why do we not believe that healthy cell that became sick cannot go from being a sick cell to being a healthy cell?

Of course it can.

Of course it can. And so the concept is that we're walking around this world innocently, meandering through our lives, and disease and pathology are attacking us and happening to us. And I caught heart disease, and I caught cancer. And, no, these are things that are happening within you. And very often, if you just arm your body with its own ability to protect itself, we think about waste elimination as stool and urine. But cells are dirty little birds, right?

Oh, yeah. Free radicals everywhere.

You have free radicals everywhere. And we eliminate a lot of cellular waste, you know, in the process of repairing, detoxifying, eliminating waste, dividing. This is a dirty process. And the cleanest engines still create exhaust. And if you're not eliminating that waste, then it backs up and blows the motor. And methylation is the key to these pathways. Transulfuration, you know, glutathione, you know, detoxification pathways. And if you can just restore that basic balance to the body, the raw materials that it needs to do its job, in my opinion, for the mass part of the population, this is where they start. And then you start to get data from blood work, because blood work changes, genes don't. And so once you supplement for deficiency, now you go into the blood work and you say, hey, what is happening to my C reactive protein? What is happening to my alkaline phosphatase? You know, what's happening to my EGFR rate and my blood urine, nitrogen and creatinine? What are happening to the biomarkers that would show me that methylation has improved my. You know, what's happening to homocysteine? Am I able to take homocysteine and convert it into homothioneine? Because if you start to do that and homocysteine starts to lower, and you see a drop from high double digits on your labs back down into the single double digits on your labs, well, then all of a sudden, you see these. These other markers of disease, like hypertension. Very often, this is what happened with Dana White, for example, had one of the highest homocysteine levels I'd ever seen. Why was it close to 50?

Holy crap. That's insane.

50? Ran his labs. Wow. Triglycerides fasting. Triglyceride was 800 796. Also the highest I'd ever seen. Wow. Which, by the way, means that your blood is solid at room temperature.

Yeah.

And it was. I remember it because the. The nurse that drew Dana's blood, I was in his office, and I was sitting at his conference table, and there's, like, a vestibule that you walk into that goes out to his assistant's area in the hallway. Dana was next to me, an eye shot of me, but she was around the corner so I could see her, but he couldn't. And I. I still remember holding up the vial of blood and going, wow. And she was turning it like this. Because what you do for blood is when you draw the blood, you lay it on the counter for 30 minutes, and then you centrifuge it. And it didn't coagulate. It hardened.

When I was 26, I had my blood drawn, and they looked at how rapidly it coagulated. Within 10 seconds, it was fully solid. And they're, like, not good times, like, high risk of stroke and heart attack. I'm, like, not even 30. Right. Because I had some serious problems going on. But it wasn't because of triglycerides. Yeah. It was because of clotting factors.

Yeah. So, I mean, those are dangerous, too. But, you know, I. So I think a lot of times. So then you start to look at it like, what's causing this? When he's on blood pressure medication, he's on cholesterol medication. He's on, you know, diuretic.

Was he eating a lot of fructose?

Using a lot of fructose?

Well, that'll. That'll do. Those triglycerides for you.

Huge amounts of fructose and, you know, large amounts of Sugar and Omega 6, especially on an empty stomach. A lot of it. So, you know, in weeks, we had cleaned it up. Yeah. Really cleaned it up. He was on a CPAP machine, you know, vomiting at night. All of this he's been very public about. So I don't know. I'm not talking about anything. You're respectful. But the point being that, you know, when I looked at his homocysteine level, I was like, man, I'm shocked that no one's checked this homocysteine level. And so I explained homocysteine to him and how it's normal. It's a normal amino acid, but when it rises, it can very significantly irritate the endothelium, the. The lining of the artery. And when you irritate arteries, very often their response is to Constrict. And if you've got 63,000 miles of blood vessel in your body, it doesn't take much arterial narrowing to drive pressure up. So the reason why you can't bring the blood pressure back down is not because you're not pounding the heart enough with ACE inhibitors and beta blockers and calcium channel blockers and diuretics. The reason why you can't bring the blood pressure back down is because you have this vascular constriction.

Right?

I mean, if I caused a massive vascular constriction in the majority of your vessels, your pressure would go up. Yeah, but there is nothing wrong with your heart.

I wouldn't have all the veins.

You trying to show the guns, dude? Because I will take my shirt off. I think I got a short sleeve on. But. So the point is that, you know, here you are going down the cardiovascular bandwagon when you're a nutrient. I put them on high doses of something called trimethylglycine, which is just another amino acid.

I take one and a half grams a day.

Okay, great. And as the homocysteine fell, blood pressure start to return to normal. He felt so much better, the brain fog lifted. You gotta remember that 70% of our circulatory system is microvascular. Right? I mean, it's not even done by the heart. Yeah, the heart circulates 30% of our blood, but nobody listening to this podcast right now has a heart that is strong enough to pump blood from the center of their chest to the tip of their toe, through all the capillaries in the brain, through the liver, the lung, the pancreas, the kidneys.

It doesn't even fit in the micro capillaries that the blood cells are bigger than the things they go through. So they have to think of a.

Snake swallowing a mouse.

Exactly.

That's vasomotor.

And that's not pumped by the heart.

No, it's pumped to the entrance. And then this vasomotor activity takes over, which is very analogous to a snake swallowing a mouse. So imagine if you impair the vasomotor circulation or the vasomotion circulation. That's 70% of your circulation. Right. I mean, the reason why a lot of people start wearing readers in their 40s, 50s, 60s. Majority start in their 40s. It's not necessarily their eyesight's getting bad. It's that the vasomotor activity, the microvascular supply is getting compromised. And as soon as you start to compromise circulation and you deprive tissues of oxygen, now you're laying fertile ground for hypoxia. You're laying fertile ground for lower focal areas of low ph and acidity in the body. And now you've got these little fertile landmines for disease. Disease that are starting to crop up all over the place. You restore that circulation and you, you reduce that risk. So I guess it's a very long way of saying that very often we are nutrient deficient. And because of these nutrient deficiencies, in large part due to poor methylation, which is a genetic predisposition that can run in families. And then there's this notion that disease runs in families. Like, oh, well, you have hypothyroid because, you know, your aunt on your mom's side has it, your mother has it, you know, your uncle has it. The heart disease runs in your family. That's why you have heart disease. And very often it can be the methylation deficiency, it can be the nutrient deficiency that runs in your family, not the disease.

Well said.

But if I can get you to believe that you have a genetically inherited disease, then I can easily get you to subscribe to a lifetime of medication.

Right?

And so, you know, like, my message for people is if, if we started, if you just looked at your methylation pathways only and supplemented for that deficiency and did a basic blood panel, hormones, nutrient deficiencies, glycemic control. If you just started there, hemoglobin A1C, low glucose, insulin, hormone panel, CBC, CMP, triglyceride, lipid profile. If you just started with that basics, you would be be 85% of the way there. You would have the data to know how to supplement for it, and you would have the markers that you could target for lifestyle changes. And like you, I'm a huge believer in data. And what I find is that in our world it's very normal. Right. But when I go out and do a lot of stage talks and interviews and, you know, I speak to large volumes of people. You can ask a whole ballroom full of, you know, 5000 entrepreneurs, 2500 entrepreneurs. What's more important to your health or your wealth? Oh, my health. My health is my most important thing.

They don't spend that way and they don't think that way.

Get them on the stage and ask them what their hemoglobin A1C is. They're not trusting what their free testosterone is. Yeah, you can ask me three levels.

You can get their ebitda, which is.

Get their ebitda, you know, their income statement, balance, P. L. And they can spit it off the top of their.

Head and they don't know homocysteine and.

They don't know homocysteine or heme1c.

What if there was something you could add to your water to make you perform better, have more energy and protect your cells from damage? Hydrogen is the smallest molecule in the universe and the only one that can get deep inside your cells, mitochondria and even your DNA. It fuels energy production, crushes oxidative stress and supports sharper brain function. Hydrogen's a gas so you can't take it as a pill. So you either have to to breathe it in or infuse it into your water. But your tap bottled or filtered water doesn't have it. That's why I use the Echo Flask. Echo Flask is a hydrogen generator that uses advanced electrolysis and a proprietary proton exchange membrane to infuse your water with pure hydrogen. No chemicals, no ph change, just therapeutic science backed hydrogen. I've noticed more energy, faster recovery, less inflammation and mental clarity that lasts all day. Go to echo.comdave and use code DAVE10 for 10% off your Echo Flask. You'll feel the difference in days. Your phone screen is aging your skin and wrecking your sleep at the same time. Artificial blue light goes from your phone screen straight into your eyes and deep into your skin. That light messes with your melatonin levels, interrupts your deep sleep and speeds up skin aging by breaking down collagen. The Bodyguard's Red Light Converter fixes this at the source. It's a first of its kind screen protector with real tech that converts blue light into beneficial red light before it hits your face. It turns your scrolling into a skincare routine. It supports healthier skin, reduced eye strain, improved sleep quality and fewer screen related headaches. Third party testing showed a 50% plus increase in red light exposure within the optimal range of 620-770nm and this comes with zero compromise on your screen. The Red Light Converter preserves your screen's true colors and full touch sensitivity. Beyond its wellness benefits, the Red Light converter provides ultra thin edge to edge protection for your device and Bodyguard stands by their quality. Enjoy peace of mind with lifetime replacements ensuring your Red Light converter continues to protect and support your biology for the long haul. Visit bodyguards.com and use code Dave for 25% off. That's bodyguards with a Z.com for 25% off.

Here's an interesting thing, about 20% of people have Spina Bifida occultus and this is when your Spinal cord or your. The vertebra don't fully fuse, which is caused by a methylation issue in the mother. I have it and there's no symptoms, there's no danger from it except that you can see it on imaging studies, which means MTHFR deficiencies run in the family. And there's a few other things that I have biologically that I know came from my mother not getting folate instead of folic acid because.

Correct.

For her and for me, folic acid is poisonous because we can't process it.

Amen to that. Man, I get so much flack for that.

That's my first book was called the Better Baby Book. It's a book on fertility and preconcept. I went into MTHFR in 2011 on this. Wow. It was to teach people if you want to have healthy kids, you might want to take the right form of folic acid and the right form of B6 and understand these things because myelination, spinal cord formation, all these things. Are there even risks of autism in kids?

No question.

You have a methylating mom, whether she has MTHFR or not. Get her the right nutrients and the odds of ADHD and autism go down in the kids.

Major.

Since I had Asperger's as a kid, I'm like, I don't want to give this to my kids. So I did five years of research for that book. In fact, the mother of my children was infertile when I met her. And we restored fertility by restoring methylation, restoring minerals, restoring fatty acids, getting toxins out. And so many people can do this and we have an epidemic of low fertility. My 30 year old friends, massive. They're saying, I hope we can get pregnant. When I was 30 it was I hope we don't get pregnant.

Exactly.

So something shifted and this methylation thing is one of them because methylation also helps you get rid of environmental toxins. And if you're a bad methylator or even if you're a good one and you don't have the nutrients you need, you can't get rid of the toxins that are getting in the way of your fertility. And even if you don't want kids, fertility is a marker of youth, for longevity. So you want to be fertile even if you don't want kids for as long as you can.

Man, I so totally agree with you.

I love it that you've taken the MTHFR and some of the other sulfation pathway things and you're really talking about this over and over and over because we need this in society. It's a foundational part of biohacking and it is blood work based. How would someone who hasn't had blood work know they might be a bad meth later? Give me five things.

So here's five things to know that you're a bad meth later. So, for example, when I ask audiences how many of you have either suffered from or know somebody who suffered from anxiety? Let's start there. And literally 70% of the hands in the room will go up, up. And I'll say, ask them these three questions. And here's how you can link it back to methylation if you suffer from anxiety. Number one, have you had it on and off throughout your entire lifetime? They'll say yes. Okay, so that shows you, first of all that this is something that's not situational. Didn't start when you were 30 and got stressed out and had a bad boss.

It's because you're not trying hard enough, obviously.

Yeah. It's because this didn't start in your first marriage. You've had anxiety on and off.

It's not you, it's hardware problems.

Exactly. And you can prove that it's hardware by asking the second question, which is, can you always point to the specific trigger that causes it? Because if you have true anxiety, if you are claustrophobic, you're going to get anxiety stepping on a crowded elevator. If you are afraid of heights, you're going to get anxiety walking to the edge of a 30th floor balcony. That is perfectly understandable. But when you are sitting around at dinner with your family in a quiet environment and there's no presence of a threat for you to just start being overwhelmed by anxiety. This is dysregulation of catecholamines, which I can go into later. But so, number one, have you had this condition on and off throughout your entire lifetime? Number two, have you had the condition of gas bloating, diarrhea, constipation, irritability or cramping on and off throughout your entire lifetime? Gut dysbiosis and irritable bowel syndrome, if you will, which I think is kind of a nonsensical term. It's just sort of a term for the group of symptoms. Have you had that on, off throughout your life, your entire lifetime? Do you have any of the following? Attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, bipolar, manic depression, and trouble focus and concentrating. These are all highly linked to being a poor methylator. And they are called mood disorders or mental illnesses. But nobody Ever really tells these people what they are like. If you suffer from anxiety or attention deficit disorder, nobody says this is what attention deficit disorder is or this is what anxiety is like. Very specifically, if you ask A hundred people, 100 therapists, what is anxiety? If you ask 100 people that suffer from it, they will describe the characteristics of anxiety. But the truth is, anxiety is very specifically this. It is a rise in a class of neurotransmitters called catecholamines, of which therefore.

Let's go deep on catecholamines.

Yeah, yeah, we can go down to cat. I love catecholamines too. So catecholamines, epinephrine, norepinephrine, ephedrone, dopamine. These are part of the fight or flight response. So you walk out of this room and some guy is standing in front of you with a knife, you're going to get a dump of catecholamines.

Repeat those four for people. Epinephrine, also known as adrenaline.

Yeah, adrenaline. That's a good. We should say that. Norepinephrine, also known as noradrenaline, fedrone, dopamine. And so this class of neurotransmitters, these catecholamines, I mean, ancestry, they're super necessary. I mean, you're sleeping in a cage, you wake up, there's a tiger in your face. You don't have time to stretch and warm up and grab your spear.

Yeah, you need them.

You need pupils to dilate your heart rate to increase extremities, flood with blood, instant on. But, you know, in normal society, we don't want these kinds of reactions. And. And you don't have to be in full fight or flight. I mean, we should be walking around with catecholamines. Let's say at a 1 or a 2. A lot of people are walking around with catecholamines at a 5 or 6. So it doesn't take much to trigger them. They're always in the state of anxiousness. They're always in a state of mild anxiety. And this is why you can't point to the specific trigger that causes it. Because once we understand that we do not need the presence of a fear to feel fear, we begin to understand the genesis of anxiety. I don't need to walk out that door and have somebody standing in front of me with a knife, which will cause the catecholamine spike. I could be sitting in a podcast with you right now if I'm a really poor methylator. And the anxiety psyche could just start to come. And what I'm going to try to do is I'm going to try to link it to my outside environment.

This is so important. Physiological stress is more dominant than actual emotional stress.

It's so true. And it leads to emotional stress. Right. Because now I'm talking to you and I'm feeling anxious. So now I'm inward and I'm focusing on this anxious feeling that I'm having, and that makes me more anxious, which means I now I'm starting to feel anxiety. And now my heart starts to pick up the pace and I'm kind of like.

And it must be me.

Yeah, maybe I'm nervous about this interview.

You're feeling triggered.

That's what I'm going to do. I'm feeling triggered. So I'm looking to my outside world to explain what's actually happening within me. And that's where people go wrong, is that they automatically want to say, what triggered this? And people that have suffered from true anxiety, first of all, have never been told what it is. And second of all, will know that they very often don't need a trigger. And the worst thing to tell somebody who's feeling that way is to try to reason them out of feeling the way that they are.

Can't do it.

Right. There's no reason for you to feel that way, Dave. There's nothing for you to be afraid of. Why do you choose to feel this way? That will frustrate them. So when you have those conditions, like, you know, as these catecholamines rise now what happens in methylation, specifically mao and in compt, this catechol O methyltransferase gene is essentially, you take these catecholamines and we actually convert them into acids and then we eliminate them through our urine. It's a very normal process. And if we can't deaminate, if we can't break down these catecholamines and turn them into these acidic compounds that are then eliminated in the urine, then they rise. And when they rise, we feel anxiety. We actually feel fear without the presence of a fear. And these are the kinds of things that are just robbing people of their state of being optimal. Because these people will have very common sleep patterns. They'll lay down to go to sleep at night, and as their environment quiets, their mind wakes up. And so they're laying there, body tired, but mind awake, and they're ruminating, and they'll ruminate on the most innocuous little nonsense. Right. Did I get everything on my grocery list? You know, man, that was a really nasty post I got on Instagram today. And, you know, they just start riveting. What if I was to have a Christmas dinner party? What color dishes would I use? Just their mind is just right. It's just awake. If you talk to them, they'll tell you, I lay awake sometimes for hours thinking about the most innocuous little.

Now, is that adrenaline or cortisol causing that?

That's adrenaline, right? That causes that waking state. Cortisol will begin to respond as you get increasingly more fatigued. And so now you, you know, which is. We're starting now down the road of adrenal fatigue. But the. The point is that if you're not down regulating the catecholamines the way that you should, if you're not converting these catecholamines into these acids that are then eliminated in the urine and. And getting rid of them, because they're perfectly normal, too. Catecholamines are not only normal, but they're necessary. And this could be as simple as taking the right complex of B vitamins, the right amount of zinc, the right amount of vitamin C. D3 cholecalciferol is heavily involved in that pathway as well, which is why, you know, D3. I might even argue it's the most important single compound. It's hard to argue for one compound, but it acts like a hormone.

Magnesium. One of the two.

Yeah, one of the two. Right. I mean, it carries calcium. It does so much stuff. Immune system. The whole point is, what if you are just clinically deficient in the raw material that the body uses to break down catecholamines? I mean, the COMPT gene stands for catechol O methyltransferase, transferring a methyl group from the category of neurotransmitters called catecholamines. And in cellular biology and microbiology, simple things like one carbon metabolism, attaching or detaching that molecule, it completely behaves in a different way. Right, so we're really down to the microscience here. But these simple raw materials, the bioavailability of these raw materials to attach to molecular structures or detach to molecular structures is really important. I mean, same thing happens in thyroid. And we can. I don't want to go all the way down the thyroid bandwagon, but we.

Probably won't get there on this episode. But I've had a bunch of thyroid episodes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's 80% of our thyroid hormone. Our T3 hormone, anyway, is not even made by the Thyroid, it's through this deodinization process in the liver and the gut and the periphery. And very often nutrient deficiencies interrupt this deionization process and lead to low thyroid hormone. You get diagnosed with hypothyroid, you're put on medication that's holding your thyroid responsible for a crime it's not committing when you have a nutrient deficiency. And so I keep going back to this nutrient deficiency, one of the interesting things that we used to see very often. And in 2016, I was kind of vindicated when Harvard came out with the study on ICD9 and ICD11 codes, and they determined that medical error was the third leading cause of death.

Amen.

And I also get a lot of flack for that. But you're welcome to look up the study Harvard University, 2016.

Iatrogenic death is a big thing.

Iatrogenic death, yeah. Physician induced death. So where were these mistakes coming from? Well, I'll tell you. What we saw very often was if you have a significant clinical deficiency in vitamin D3, 7, 9, 11, or 12. Right. And I know the range is 30 to 100, but really 60 to 80 is sort of the functional optimal range. There's actually some really good evidence for breast cancer for women in those ranges, benefits for women, breast cancer risk. But we would see these prolonged clinical deficiencies of vitamin D3 repeatedly present to primary care physicians, like rheumatoid arthritis. You don't have rheumatoid arthritis. If they had done RA factors or SED rates or any confirmatory diagnosis, they'd see the patient doesn't have rheumatoid. But because the symptomology is so parallel, and lots of things are diagnosed by your doctor by observation. Parkinson's, for example. So we don't have a diagnostic marker that says you have rheumatoid. But you wake up in the morning, your soles of your feet are sore, and ankle, you know, sore naked. When you get out of bed in the morning, your ankles are really sore. When you. You walk to the bathroom to take your first piss, it's moved to your knees and your hips and now your low back. Lately it's really hard to make a tight fist. My hand just aches. Those are also signs of very significant deficiencies in D3. And so now the doctor goes, you know what, Dave? You got rheumatoid arthritis, by the way.

When I was 14, I was diagnosed with it.

Were you really? Okay, so there you go. So we would see this, and I would go, this is awful. There's nothing confirming this now they go, don't worry, we're going to put you on something called a corticosteroid, you know, methotrexate, whatever it is. And now which, which those actually then give you an MTHFR gene mutation which we could talk about. They essentially block folate metabolism. But now you can put on a corticosteroid. We know now, we knew then, but now the, the literature is starting to support it. The corticosteroids, you know, first they have their anti inflammatory effects. The sad thing is that they work, work. Your ankle pain goes away, you're like Ah, Dr. Was right, I had rheumatoid and I feel better. But then they eat the joint like a termite. And it was so accurate that six years and one day later these people were having joint replacements. And it was so accurate Dave, that we, that if you were a 60 year old female and I saw that you were misdiagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis because you had a D3 deficiency which you still have, I would artificially advance your age 6 years. I would schedule the joint replacement for you. And then after I scheduled the joint replacement I would begin to reduce what we called the ambulatory profile, which is how well you ambulate. As you reduce the ambulatory profile you could bring in all the diseases that exacerbate with reduced ambulation.

Check this out. Diagnosed at 14 first knee surgery at 26 years later. There you go.

Wow. There you go.

You nailed it.

It's proof positive. Nailed it. Yeah. So that's what happens to so many people. And it's so sad, it's sad that it happened to you. And if anybody is listening to this, this is why I'm, you know my, my mantra is nutrient deficiencies, guys. And I'm not even talking about the exotics. I'm not talking about nad drips. I'm talking about the basics like minerals.

Fat soluble vitamins, minerals, B vitamins, B.

Vitamins, fat soluble vitamins, methylfolate, trimethylglycine, can.

You talk about the ratio of norepinephrine to epinephrine?

I won't say that I know a lot about norepinephrine to epinephrine ratios. I do know that catecholamine metabolism and catecholamine ratios are significantly impact mental illness. In fact the categories of diagnoses that they use to slot people between attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, bipolar schizophrenia, manic depression, all of these different mental illnesses are Directly related to the ratios of catecholamines to one another.

You nailed it.

Thank you.

I have some data for you on this.

Okay, good.

Personal anecdotes that just illustrate how important what you're saying is. My mid-20s, I was desperate, having this brain fog. My career in Silicon Valley is taking off. I'm in pain all the time. I'm fat, like, just nothing works. So one of the real cutting edge physicians I worked with back then ran my epinephrine to norepinephrine ratio. And I always get them backwards. I forget if it's EPI to norepi or.

That's what I do too.

Yeah. Anyway, it's the ratio of the two. And a normal healthy ratio is four to one.

Right.

And when you're burned out, the ratio goes up maybe to 10 to 1. My ratio was 46 to 1, so I was 10 times burned out.

Wow.

And I didn't even know that I was feeling anxiety all the time because it had been present my entire life. And so knowing this, like, well, you have some adrenal fatigue here. But it wasn't actually adrenal fatigue. It was a bunch of other stuff like methylation, like lack of vitamin D and things like that. A couple years later, I'm at my first personal development event and we're doing some exercises and I'm like, freaking out here. And I would have said, like, I'm not really freaking out, but I was. I'm like, I can't be in the room. Like, this is too crazy. So a real wise therapist sat down with me and she said, well, you gotta be feeling something in your body, right? I said, yeah, my stomach feels a little weird. I said, all I'm feeling is angry, though. And she said, well, that feeling in your stomach, it's something else. And I said, well, what is it? She goes, it's fear. And just like you said earlier, I go, there's nothing in this room for me to be afraid of, therefore it's not fear. And she laughed and she goes, fear is an emotion. It doesn't have to be logical. And it was like a bomb going off in my head. I'm like, oh, my God. It doesn't have to be rational. What I didn't know then is that this was directly tied to my MTHFR status. It was tied to my vitamin. Probably tried to compare my testosterone levels and my thyroid levels and comt in my case. And since then, I've learned how to manage all that stuff and learned how to consciously take myself out of a fight or flight state. And I've learned that if I don't manage my biology carefully by having the right nutrients for my physiology, which is different than yours and different than anyone else's, I'm kind of a dick, right? And when I manage it. I used to be a total asshole in my 20s. I recognize that.

Oh really?

And if I want to walk around with peace and kindness, I better take the right thing supplements.

It is so true. My wife Sage talks about it all the time. She's like, you know what? I've become the best marriage counselor because I can look at methylation between a husband and a wife and I can, I can tell you exactly what they fight over. I can tell you who ruminates constantly and needs constant reinsurance and is always the doomsdayer and takes everything to worst case scenario. And who could give two shits even if the, if the roof is caving in, as long as it's not caving in in the room that they're actually in at the time, right? Like, and these two kinds of personalities var often get together and they, and they don't understand one another. When you actually methylate them both, they come more into the middle. You know, the anxious anxiety ruminator, overthinker. You know, it doesn't become so hyper fixated on things, doesn't exhaustively overthink things, doesn't constantly need the reassurance and the mess making, doesn't give a shitter, starts to be a little more conscientious. It's, it is amazing how our cellular, our mood can be driven by our cellular biology. And, and, and, and, and this also translates into the labs. When you see poor waste elimination pathways, you know, what we call detoxification or transulfuration, These are people that you have to be very, very cautious when you are treating them for any kind of toxicity, heavy metal toxicity, mold, mycotoxin, you know, viruses. Because you can't just all of a sudden start to detox these people and dump now back into the bloodstream and expect for it to be eliminated. You have to fix these, you know, support these elimination pathways, get the other natural pathways like sauna and sweat and, and other elimination pathways also working and then bring them into detox. This is why some people that have mold toxicity, for example. I happen to live in the mold capital of the world.

Amen. Moldymovie.com you know about that moldy movie? That's my mold documentary, dude.

I'm definitely gonna watch that.

Oh yeah, it's free. It yeah, mold was a major part of my journey as well. So talk to me more about mold.

So, you know, I had some experience with it through our clinic system because Dr. Minkoff told me that Miami was the mold capital of the world. So I'm in, I'm in, I'm in, I'm in. He's in Tampa, but I'm in Miami. And I think it's one of those things that goes so unnoticed and flies under the radar for so long because.

It'S tolerable for some people, but if you don't methylate, it's not tolerable, it's disabling.

Yeah, it can be. It can be disabling. But, you know, a lot of people with mold toxicity, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, they're walking around at a 5.

Yes.

And they just accept the 5 because it's not enough to drive them to the emergency room is what I'm saying. Right. It's not like looking down and like, I broke my finger. I need to go to the urgent care.

It's just like I feel hungover all the time.

I just feel shitty all the time.

Maybe I'm not trying hard enough.

I'm, I'm, I'm mood numb. I'm getting no stimulus from my relationship. Maybe it's my spouse, maybe it's my kids, maybe it's my career, maybe it's my boss, maybe it's my self esteem, my self image, all of these things. Hormones are always out of whack, or even worse, my blood work is all in range. That's the other nasty one. But I absolutely feel like. And, and I'm pulling a basic blood panel because not all mold sends your hormones into a tailspin and jacks up your liver and puts you into early stage kidney failure. It's. Those markers don't jump off the page and cause you to do more investigation. You're. In fact, your markers very often can the, the major markers. Not, not mycotoxin. Mold markers can be stable, but you feel like shit and you're mood numb and you have no energy and you're lethargic and your brain fog is off the charts. You literally get a great idea and walk to the, you know, in the bedroom. You walk into the kitchen, wonder what the hell you're doing in the kitchen. I mean, people will report sometimes forgetting how to get home on the way to work. And they eventually kind of think and think and think and they're like, oh, yeah, I gotta turn here.

That was me.

Yeah, that level of brain fog is.

The air you're breathing making you sick. Just because you don't see mold doesn't mean it isn't there. My friend Jason Earle has been on a mission for over two decades to help people understand the hidden role of indoor air in their health. He's one of the world's leading experts on mold and indoor air quality and he created the Got Mold Test kit to make professional grade air testing simple and accessible. It uses cutting edge air sampling tech that top inspectors trust and it's engineered for you at a fraction of the cost. It takes just minutes to get samples using the patented Biovac air sampling pump. Then you send them prepaid to one of the most prestigious microbiology labs in the world. No guesswork, no paperwork and no hidden fees. You get fast results, intuitive reports and great support. And since you keep the pump, you can retest anytime for less. It even comes with a lifetime warranty. Mold may be invisible, but its impact isn't. This kit helps you understand your environment so you can take action for your your health. Go to gotmold.com and use code DAVE10 to save 10% and see what's in your air. Because the best biohackers don't guess. They test. Right now, your body might be wasting energy on stress instead of healing. That's why your gut feels off, your brain feels dull, and your immune system keeps letting you down. What if you could switch your healing state back on without meds, stimulants or guesswork work? Vibrant Blue Oil's parasympathetic essential oil blend is a powerful, non invasive way to activate your nervous system and shift your body into healing mode just through scent. A drop behind your ears can help switch off your stress response, calm inflammation and support digestion, detox and immune function. And it can even help clear up your stubborn brain fog. It's natural, easy to use, and thousands of happy customers already love it. And right now, the Human Upgrade podcast listeners can grab a full size Bottle for over 50% off at vibrantblue oils.com Dave that's vibrantblueoils.com Dave don't wait to start feeling like yourself again.

Back in the the 90s, one of my doctors was Dr. Tim Guilford. He's the first guy to launch liposomal glutathione. In fact, I him do that and he said, Dave, my patients don't come back. He said, I get them. Well, he said, you keep coming back. And he said, I want to run an HIV test on you. He says, I don't think you have it, but your immune system is so jacked up, I don't understand it. So I didn't have hiv, and he did run a mold allergy panel, and I was allergic to eight of the top 10 toxic molds, which was a clear indication of exposure. I'm like, aha. Now I know what it is. One of the reasons I was so fat is zearalenone is 10,000 times stronger than human estrogen, and it's made by toxic mold, which was under my dishwasher. And I grew up in a basement with toxic mold, and I'm a bad methylator. So I went on this huge mold journey, and that's why it's been a big part of biohacking. It's like, what are the invisible environmental factors? Toxic mold is a major one. That's why moldymovie.com is free for people. That's why I make homebiotic, which is.

A. I'm sure that I put moldy movie on. Oh, yeah, I didn't know about that.

We should talk about homebiotic too. It's.

Yeah, I know about home biotic.

You do?

I use.

Very few people know about it. That's. I invented that stuff because, like, I just needed something to do. And I have a lot of compassion for kids because every public school is moldy and given what, a third of kids don't methylate well and they're. They're disabled by the error in their classroom and their parents think they have adhd. He said, this is one of the things that's a mission for me. I love you're talking about this.

I. I love talking about this too, because I almost think, for example, you know, I spoke in an ozone conference not too long ago and in. In Orlando. Pretty progressive group. Group of physician. Yeah, yeah. And Shallenberger and some of them love Fred Schellenberger. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, and. And he's done amazing stuff for our team. And I am. I am an absolute, just major proponent of ozone. I have a hocat machine in my master bedroom. That's how much I like ozone.

Ozone machine or the full steam sauna?

The full steam hochat.

Aren't you worried about the steam making molds? I always have a hard time getting the steam out of my mouth.

No, I just open the doors and there's a very little bit of steam. But I also have a 0.1 micron air filter. And then I have an ozone filter in the room too. So when we leave, you hit a button and it actually Runs ozone gas into the air. But whenever we're in there, even though it has this destructuring thing that sort of vacuums out there, I think it puts it through a carbon filter and sort of sucks the steam out. And when you open it, it does let a little bit of steam out. But in Miami, especially in the winter, I'll just, I'll open the door.

And as long as you have big doors that open.

Yeah, big, big doors that open. Getting a hocat. I run a, an air filter that really filters the, the air down 0.1, 0.3 microns. And then, and then I run this ozone thing when I, when we leave. But you know, I said, what if we took a giant step back, back. Every time that we looked at a patient and evaluated their symptoms and we saw these aberrations in their blood work, we saw things out of place on their white blood cell profile, for example, like immature granulocytes or these things that are elevating chronic low grade infections that don't really jump off the page. And we said, okay, first of all, we're going to assume that God didn't make a mistake. Meaning that these autoimmune conditions are not conditions where the immune system has gone haywire. It's the conditions where the immune system is acting proper. We just have to figure out why it's there.

So good.

And we took a step back and we said, okay, I'm not going to assume that my Crohn's patient woke up one day and the immune system just turned on the colon. I'm not going to assume that my Hashimoto's patient just woke up one day and the immune system's attacking the thyroid or you know, yes sir, Granz is stacking the lacrimal gland or whatever the condition is. I'm going to assume that the immune system is acting properly. I got to figure out why is it attacking the colon, why is it after the thyroid? Why is it after the lacrimal gland in the eye? Why is it after the blood? Blood. And if we just did broad scale pathogenic testing. Mold, mycotoxin, metals, parasites, viruses.

Yes.

In the vast majority of the cases it would go bing and you would see it and you go, you know what? You know, God didn't make a mistake. The immune system showed up for a reason. Because most of the time the immune system is called to the science light for a reason.

It's not crazy and it's not self harming. It's just trying to figure out what's going on.

It's so true. I always use this analogy. I don't know people are going to see this visual, but you have a mold spore, a mycotoxin, a, you know, a virus, in some cases parasites. And you have a healthy cell. They don't hide like this. They hide like this. Right, right. Encapsulated a virus here, you know, it's going to attach to the cell, it's going to inject its DNA and it's going to go in here. So they encapsulate it. So now what if the immune system wants to get to this guy, what is it going to do? It's going to go after this nucleocapsid protein. It's going to by it's manufacturing an antibody to this cell. Not in an effort to kill the healthy cell, but in an effort to get to the invader. Right. I mean, if the police were chasing a perpetrator and he came in this room and locked the door.

Door.

They would kick that door in. Not because they're trying to bust down the door, but because they're trying to get to the perpetrator. The immune system is the same way. It will very often chase invaders into healthy cells. Well, once it goes into the healthy cell, how does it get through the door of the healthy cell? Very often it will create antibody reactions to healthy cells. So if we just took a step back and said, hey, let's do a full panel of, of mold, mycotoxin, metals, you know, parasites, I mean, we could go down a whole parasite bandwagon too. And parasite. And cancer. And parasite. And some of the most debilitating diseases in the world. Because I believe that in the vast majority of these cases there is a bug, an invader that is causing it. But we assume that immune system screwed up. So now we have to suppress the immune system and crush the inflammatory response. Response. And neither of those are.

It's a beneficial inflammatory response to a problem. It's kind of weird how fenbendazole and ivermectin, which are anti parasitic drugs, stop.

Cancer in clinical trials study published in September that just came out. Yeah, the one that they.

What was the other one? Really? It was fenbendazole, not remdesivir.

Ivermectin. Was it hydroxychloroquine?

It was a third antiparasitic that fewer people know about.

Yeah, it was one. I wasn't super.

Like menbendazole or something?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And a lot of people don't know that. I, I think It's a good idea to occasionally take an anti parasite. I'm on one right now, including pharmaceuticals.

12 and a half milligrams of of metformin. I'm doing it, I mean, that. Metformin of ivermectin. And I'm just running that for seven days with a little bit of fat.

Once a month I take fenbendazole for a couple days.

Yeah, I think it's a great.

I don't need little worms floating around in there.

Yeah. And if you think about. Because you know, our, our body is, is even if you're very healthy healthy, it's also very hospitable for lots, lots of bugs. I mean, we're moist, we're dark. There are corners that can hide. You know, viruses are infamous for hiding in the dorsal root ganglion and coming back out. So like sometimes when we do testing, they don't show very often. Metals don't show in a lot of these Hashimoto's patients, for example, you know, you have metals embedded in the thyroid.

Oh, yeah.

We had several Parkinson's patients over the last last few years that were diagnosed with Parkinson's by observation. And our clinical team did full viral panels on these patients and said, you've got one of the highest West Nile viral titers we'd ever seen. And interestingly, Miami beach was like the West Nile capital, the Zika mosquito capital of the world for a short period of time. They actually had. About 10, 11 years ago, they had a prohibition on pregnant women visiting south beach because there's such an outbreak of Zika mosquito and Zika carries this West Nile and people got infected. And then there was this pandemic of Parkinson's. And it wasn't a pandemic of Parkinson's, it was a pandemic of Parkinson's like symptoms. Right? Because if you start with a pill rolling tremor, you go to some dysdyaticokinesias, then the flexor dystonia, the shoulders rolling forward, the head and the mood collapse. You check enough boxes for. And if you're in the right age range, you sort of checking the number xboxes for this, the early onset of this disease. And I wish that more often we would take a step back and say, let's do this full panel of all of the possible invaders that could have come in and set up shop and cause these conditions. And I think that you would find the vast majority of chronic debilitating disease and autoimmune has an origin in a pathogen, a pathogenic origin.

It's Either a pathogen or a toxin.

That's what I mean. I'm just gonna put them all in the cabinet.

Yeah. And for listeners, it's probably not a lack of trying. It's that you're lacking some nutrients. You have too many toxins. And that combination is even worse because now you're lacking nutrients, so you can't get rid of the toxins, but you can at least minimize exposure. And you probably have a virus or a bacteria or a fungus that you don't know about or a parasite. And when you just go through that combination, it's amazing what you're capable of. A lot of this unlocking human performance.

And people feel so good. People have been walking around at a five or six so long, and they've just accepted that as a quote, unquote, consequence of aging. They have forgotten how good normal feels. I'll never forget the day that Dana White was like, dude, I like, feel. Feel his exact sports. Amazing.

You got your life back.

Yeah. Like, you don't feel amazing, man. He goes, what? I go, you just feel normal. That's how good normal's supposed to feel. We're supposed to thrive. Right.

That was where the name bulletproof came from. Back when I was running Bulletproof, it was like, bulletproof, the state of high performance. Like, yeah, like, I've got this.

Yeah, yeah. Feel Bulletproof.

And it's. It's like, what are the words to say? I can handle anything life brings today. And that's our natural human state.

Yeah, man. Another day. I'm, like, so excited. And you talk about intellectual curiosity a little bit. The beginning of the podcast, I'd be like, I'm so intellectually curious. Right. Like, I'm curious about to finish your book, and I'm. I'm intellectually curious about. I've been deep down the rabbit hole of hydrogen water lately. And.

And, oh, yeah, Ty Tyler. Have you interviewed him yet?

Tyler's amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, talk about going deep in the cellular biology.

I think I had him on eight years ago.

Did you really come a long way. You know that he's a. He's a professional arm wrestler. No, I found that just. I had no idea. He's. He's in great shape. I just saw him at the.

He.

He was at the Biohack.

Yeah.

You know, where you and I got the award in. In Vegas a few weeks ago. And yeah, he's a professional horn wrestler and got a PhD. But that guy. I definitely need to have him on the podcast, and I just got to keep him Too deep out of the rabbit hole.

But yeah, he'll go down really deep on, on hydrogen. But he's in her drinking.

I drink it constantly. I mean, there's amazing site called hydrogen studies.com, but interesting. There was a study published, published in the Journal of Experimental Gerontology In November of 2021, if you want to look it up. Amazing study. And essentially what they did was they took 70 year old men and women and for six months with a placebo controlled group. It was a randomized trial, was very well controlled. One of the best studies I've seen, because some of the studies I think are somewhat anecdotal because it'll be like a single study. So somebody gets a concussion and they put hydrogen in the buccal fold and their symptoms, on the concussive scale, their symptoms got cut in half. And on the severity scale, their symptoms got cut in half. But it was a single person. And even though it was the only line that they used, or they have an ankle sprain and they soak in hydrogen water, but this was a really well done, randomized, placebo controlled, double blind clinical trial. And, and they actually used the Tet2 enzyme to measure methylation. And they looked at choline levels in the brain. They looked at markers of inflammation, including homocysteine, C reactive protein, creatine, phosphokinase. They looked at their sit stand numbers, the ratio and across the board, and they actually measured telomere lengths. It lengthened their telomeres, it improved their sit stand ratio, it improved their cognitive scoring, it increased choline levels, levels in the prefrontal cortex, it improved methylation. They reported better sleep, but measurably improved both REM and deep sleep, which means they're improving glymphatic drainage. And so, I mean, it is a phenomenal study. If you don't believe in hydrogen water or hydrogen tablets, you should read that study.

Love it.

And so I went deep down the rabbit hole and said, you know, I've been drinking these, you know, hydrogen water out of this, this bottle, but sometimes it's inconvenient for travel level. And Tyler's associated with this guy Alex, who's patented a process of compressing elemental magnesium with some organic acids. And when you drop the elemental magnesium with the organic acid into a glass of water, you get super high part per million hydrogen gas. And it makes it so easy to travel and it's less than a buck a day, so it's not something that's expensive. But you want to talk about improving the Absorption of your vitamins, minerals, amino acids, feeding a whole class of bacteria in the gut, you know, hydrogen gas. I think for me that maybe next to red light is probably the greatest biohack. Yes. The more I read. I mean, I have my Kindle with me now.

The studies are insane.

The studies are insane. And it's so cheap. Like H2 tabs will cost you, you know, less than a dollar a day. And the nice thing is, if you look at all of the studies done on human beings, there were no adverse events.

Yeah, it's. Except for blowing up. If you have too much.

Yeah, you can.

I gotta.

That's also okay.

I gotta ask you this.

Don't smoke around your hydrogen machine. Don't vape.

I've also experimented with. With CO2, which increases the more CO2 you have, the more you absorb oxygen. So one of the easiest ways to get CO2 in is rectally. You ever done rectal hydrogen gas?

I've never done rectal hydrogen gas, but I have done transdermal CO2, the. The COCAT machine. I've never done rectal hydrogen gas.

It's on my list of things to try. I haven't tried it, but I probably.

But they're tablet form now, so maybe I'll give it a whirl.

But it. But I guess you could do a hydrogen water enema if you wanted to, but water is good. It's better to put air in the back door because then you don't have to deal with any mess. Stuff.

Yeah. Messed up. You know, it's funny, we. Ben Greenfield is a good friend of mine. Came over the first time that. That we met face to face. We'd known each other through the industry. He actually came and spent a few days with me and he walks into my condo and he hadn't met my wife yet. So my wife's in the kitchen and he comes in, he throws his stuff down, and we're all just chatting it up in the kitchen. And all of a sudden he squats down in my kitchen, pulls his pants down. And he had just gone to see John Laurence, and he had an NAD suppository and a suppository of something else. Pops the suppository in, stands up, buckles his pants.

He doesn't just go to the bathroom.

And do that right in the kitchen. My wife was right there.

I was socially awkward.

I was looking at him, I'm like, hey, Ben, great to meet you. True story. Ben, if you're listening, I love you, brother. And washes his hands in the sink, dries his hands off and then fully inverts himself on my refrigerator. And my wife literally looks at me and she goes, how long is he staying? I go, babe, you're gonna grow to love him. He's staying here for three days. And by the end of the third day, she did love Ben. But. But it was just, you know, when you talk about the rectal route, that story just pops to mind. I've told it a bunch of times. I give. I give Ben. Was I gonna say I give Ben about it?

Yeah. I've had a lot of things in my butt.

Yeah.

All the suppositories and gases and ozone and, you know, it's. Especially with a history of GI issues that I've, I've had. I don't have a lot of GI issues. Now.

Vaginal ozone. I mean, you know, our clinical team's huge, huge fans of that. And, and if you think about it, I mean, once you get over the. Oh, it's rectal vaginal. I mean, once you get over the four year old ick factor. These membranes are highly conductive, meaning they're very good ways to get as good.

As an IV for a lot of these.

Yeah. Into the body and rectal and vaginal ozone. I've never done it with hydrogen gas, but with the HOCAP machine and our clinical team does it quite a bit. I love the transdermal route. We use the CO2 gas, which, contrary to popular belief, is the main vasodilator in the human body. It's actually not nitric oxide. Nitric oxide can even be a caustic gas. I think, I think the, from, from my view, I think we have a very myopic view of nitric oxide as a vasodilator, always being a good thing and thinking that the more nitric oxide the better. Whereas I think that's not a really winning argument. Because it can be.

Be though. Here's why. Too much nitric oxide will lead to peroxy nitrite.

Right.

But you know what quenches peroxy nitrite is hydrogen gas.

Yes.

So you can raise nitric oxide if you have enough hydrogen. Otherwise you want the right levels of nitric oxide, you want the right levels.

Of nitric oxide, but, you know, nitric oxide in high amounts, it can compete in the mitochondria for oxygen. You know, it actually compete at, you know, with cytochrome C oxidase for mitochondrial nitrogen. Nitric oxide will bind to cytochrome C oxidase and then you don't have oxygen binding at that site too. And one of the things red light does is it actually will release mitochondrial nitric oxide and. And force oxygen to dock, which. I know you're such a big fan of the mitochondria. You write about it in all of your books. And I. And I. I'm. I'm with you. I think the genesis of aging starts in the mitochondria.

Amen.

I think the secret to aging ends in the mitochondria. And I don't think people realize how. What a powerful organelle this is and how important it is and how the. The systemic damage that we cause to mitochondria is truly the genesis of aging. If you have healthy mitochondria, you are not aging as fast as somebody with damaged mitochondria.

That's a great way to wrap up the show because it does come down to mitochondria. If you want to be the ultimate human, you want to upgrade yourself and your power supplies, your environmental sensors and frontline creator of everything. If they're running at half effectiveness, you're not going to show up the way you want in your life, and you're going to feel anxiety and everything.

The majority of symptoms that we have from nearly all forms of pathology and disease are the indirect or direct impact that they have on the mitochondria. The manifestation of the symptom is because of how they have impacted the mitochondria, which is leading to the symptomology. And so if we could fix that, and I think all the good research is really in inside the mitochondria right now.

It's funny, all of the biohacking goals are mitochondrial goals. I don't care if you want to be happy. It's a mitochondrial issue. Ultimately, if you want to live a long time, it's mitochondria. You want to be faster, smarter, stronger. Mitochondria. Mitochondria. Mitochondria.

Absolutely.

And so we're in alignment there. And Gary, thanks for helping to make biohacking more and more of a global household term. This is an industry that some industry analysts say is worth $60 billion dollars. And it started with a hundred people in a Bar in 2014 at the first biohacking conference. Wow. And we've got our next biohacking conference coming up in May here in Austin. It's biohackingconference.com and it's a movement that requires hundreds of leaders and voices globally helping to share knowledge.

I'd like to be speaking there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So thank you so much for your contributions.

You're very welcome, Dave, and it's been an honor to be on your show. I've followed you and RA read your books and I've been a fan of yours for years and years and just to be sitting with you here, it's it's true honor.

Guys, thanks for tuning in. I think you learned a lot on this, whether it's mold, mitochondria, most importantly mthfr, where Gary's really shared a lot of knowledge, and if you haven't ever looked at your catecholamine levels and you feel like crap all the time, you're always anxious. There's so much wisdom for you in this episode. If you like it, leave a review Review thank you. See you next time on the Human Upgrade Podcast.

A Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully, read all labels, and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility. Responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.