An interview with Gary Brecka

That was me a year ago, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, that was your boy, Stephen A. I can't even tell you how bad I was. I was 208 pounds. I was always skinny. I was skin and bones with a pot belly. 208 pounds. Nearly 30% body fat, a cholesterol level over 301 point away from being a full blown diabetic. And that was after I had Covid, which damn near killed me. This is a year later. As you can see, times have changed. I feel lovely. I think I look lovely. And guess what I'm on a mission to do. Make sure I can do exactly that for you too. Stephen A. Smith show ain't just about sports. It ain't just about pop culture and entertainment. It ain't just about politics. It's about helping everybody make their life better. Whatever way we can pull that off. The number one mission is health. There is no wealth in any category without good health. We gonna start today doing everything we can to make sure we address that issue. You want to get healthy, you want to be better, you want to do what you can to move your life in a forward, more positive direction. Listen to this special edition of the Stephen A. Smith Show. Yours truly with the one and only gary brecker. But 10x health. Wait till you hear this brother drop his knowledge.

Let's go, y'.

All. What's up, everybody? Welcome to the special edition of the Stephen A. Smith Show. I've been looking forward to talking to you guys and ladies for a very, very long time. Obviously over the last year or so, you've heard me do something that I have never done and that is mention my health in a positive way. It was so bad for me. As I pointed out in the cold open, I had no reason to look in the mirror other than for brushing my teeth and washing my face. I didn't want to look in the mirror because life was that bad. Needless to say, things have changed and I have a couple of people to thank for it. But none more so than the individual that I'm about to introduce you all now to as well. First of all, he's got his own Instagram account, his own TikTok account. He's got a couple of millions of followers. He's the co founder of 10X Health System. Obviously he's got a podcast, a big time podcast. The Ultimate Human. He is the one and only Gary Brea. Wow. He is sitting right next to me. What's up, big time? How are you, sir? How's everything going? It's good to see you.

How you doing? I'm doing great, man.

I think it's appropriate to start off this conversation, really, this interview, by giving you major props and things.

Thank you.

I appeared on your podcast a few minutes a few months ago. I definitely saved this because I'm in pretty damn good shape right now.

You are.

I'm feeling good about myself. And you obviously have. You deserve a lot of credit. I can't thank you enough for the help that you have given me. When you first saw me. Tell the audience. They saw a picture of me. Yes, but tell the audience what kind of condition I was in.

Well, you know, everybody sees what's going on on the outside. Right? Right. So we were taking a look at what was going on in the inside. We did a gene test, we did a blood test, and the blood revealed something called metabolic syndrome. And people might have heard of this and don't really know what it is. If you know what it is, then good for you because it is the leading cause of cardiovascular disease. And what it is, it's any two of the following five. Abdominal obesity, elevated blood sugar, elevated insulin, high triglycerides, blood fat, and high cholesterol. And you had all five of those. Right. The. When you came to see me, the blood was. Was sort of a disaster. Right. And we talked about this, and we've been very upfront about this. And, you know, this happens slowly over time. It's not like you wake up one day and you got abdominal obesity and you're insulin resistant and you're, you know, your triglycerides are high, which is a measure of blood fat. And, and your, your sugars are off the charts. It, it happens slowly over time. And there are people listening to this podcast right now that had two or three or four of the five signs of metabolic syndrome, and they do not know it. One of the first signs of cardiovascular disease is sudden death.

Sudden death. So that a sign, you die?

That's a, That's a symptom. That's one of the, that's one of the signs. So they say, what are one of the first signs of, of. Of. Of advance? You go and ask a room full of high profile entrepreneurs, I said, how many of you really believe that your health is more important than your wealth? Every hand went up. How many of you believe that your health is more important than your business? Every hand goes up. And then when you bring a few people up onto the stage and you ask them a few questions about their business, how much did your business make last month. Okay. Made $668,000. How much did it net last month? $148,000. How many employees do you have? 72. What's your net revenue per month? 142,300. What's your hemoglobin A1C? Where are your testosterone levels? What's your D3 level? Blank. And I do that to rattle their cage a little bit, to say, you need data. You gotta get some data on your body.

But my question to you would be, when folks are lacking the data, usually you go to a doctor when you're not feeling well, or you go to a doctor for a particular checkup. They give you an exam, they analyze you, they dissect you, and they say, okay, this is what your situation is. They might show you some of that numbers. They may give you a copy of your records and what have you. But that's basically it. That's what you go by. So is it really about the patient and not really prioritizing getting their numbers? Or is it about the fact that we live in a culture where you go to the doctor and you just trust what the doctor is telling you and you go from there? Unless you're feeling too bad that you need. You feel an urgency to try something different.

All right, this, this is going to get me in some trouble, and it's probably going to split your audience right. In half. But the truth is that, you know, we have a sick care system, and it is designed, and it makes hundreds of billions of dollars a year to manage symptoms and, and manage disease. We are very good at symptom maintenance. We are very good at disease management. So when some traditional, not all, but when some traditional physicians will look at your medical record, they're looking to see if you have disease or pathology, they're going to say, stephen, I'm looking at this. You're fine. You don't have diabetes, you don't have heart disease. You don't have any markers that you've had, you know, any kind of active pathology in your body. Come, you know, come see me and next year. But then you go, well, well, I'm. I'm having a hard time, like recalling names at cocktail parties. And, you know, I'm having a hard time, you know, with words making it to the tip of my tongue and just not making it out. I'm having a difficult time remembering where my car keys and my wallet are, and I just don't feel good. I know that I don't have the same energy level, and I know that I Don't have the impetus to work out. Libido has left the building. I don't feel aroused any longer. I've got no interest in, in, in sex any longer. I'm not out of love with my spouse or not attracted to my spouse. I just don't have libido. And, and, and so they, they don't want to live like that. When you made it, you. You gave me one of the greatest quotes of all time, and you said, there's a difference between being alive and living and living. And I love that quote because most of the time we're going to go to our doctor to keep us alive. But if you really want to live, if you really want to thrive, you've got to put raw materials back into the human body. God meant for us to have it all. The libido of a tiger, the energy of 10 men. To sleep like a bear, to have clean, clear waking energy, to have that positive aggression towards working out, to feel aroused, to have the full range of emotions. And as we get older and these things creep up on us, we just sort of accept all of these things as a consequence of aging. Weight gain, water retention, brain fog, poor sleep, poor response to exercise. They are not a consequence of aging at all. They are a consequence of missing raw material in the human body. You know, I always tell the story about when I was in grad school and I had to take all these plant botany courses, which I hated. I was trying to get a second degree in human biology, right? But if you have a leaf rotting in a palm tree and you call a true arborist, a true botanist, out to your house, they'll look at that leaf and they'll stay. They will not touch the leaf. They will core test the soil, and they'll say, you know what, Stephen? There's no nitrogen in this soil. And they will add nitrogen to the soil and the leaf will heal. Human beings are no different. We just stopped thinking about it this way. We've lost all faith in humanity and mankind. The body's ability to heal itself, the power that this has over this. And when we get certain pieces of data, one of which, in my opinion, should be a genetic test, I think everybody in the. On the planet to do. Should do one time in their life the same test you did. You don't have heart disease. You don't have any markers that you've had, you know, any kind of active pathology in your body. Come, you know, come see me in next year. But then you go, well, well, I'm having a Hard time, like recalling names at cocktail parties. And, you know, I'm having a hard time, you know, with words making it to the tip of my tongue and just not making it out. I'm having a difficult time remembering where my car keys and my wallet are, and I just don't feel good. I know that I don't have the same energy level, and I know that I don't have the impetus to work out. Libido has left the building. I don't feel aroused any longer. I've got no interest in. In. In sex any longer. I'm not out of love with my spouse or not attracted to my spouse. I just don't have libido. And, and, and so they. They don't want to live like that. When you made it, you. You gave me one of the greatest quotes of all time. And you said, there's a difference between being alive and living and living. And I love that quote because most of the time we're going to go to our doctor to keep us alive. But if you really want to live, if you really want to thrive, you've got to put raw materials back into the human body. God meant for us to have it all. The libido of a tiger, the energy of 10 men. To sleep like a bear, to have clean, clear waking energy, to have that positive aggression towards working out, to feel aroused, to have the full range of emotions. And as we get older and these things creep up on us, we just sort of accept all of these things as a consequence of aging. Weight gain, water retention, brain fog, poor sleep, poor response to exercise. They are not a consequence of aging at all. They are a consequence of missing raw material in the human body. You know, I always tell the story about when I was in grad school and I had to take all these plant botany courses, which I hated. I was trying to get a second degree in human biology, right? But if you have a leaf rotting in a palm tree and you call a true arborist, a true botanist, out to your house, they'll look at that leaf and they'll. They. They will not touch the leaf. They will core, test the soil, and they'll say, you know what, Stephen? There's no nitrogen in this soil. And they will add nitrogen to the soil and the leaf will heal. Human beings are no different. We just stop thinking about it this way. We've lost all faith in humanity and mankind, the body's ability to heal itself and the power that this has over this. And when we get certain pieces of data, one of which in My opinion should be a genetic test. I think everybody in the. On the planet to do, should do one time in their life the same test you did, same test Dana White did. It's a genetic methylation test. It tells you what raw material, what vitamins, minerals, amino acids, nutrients can your body convert into the usable form and what can it not? Once you have that piece of data, and you only do that test once in your life, you are now supplementing for deficiency and not the sake of supplementing. You want to go down a rabbit hole, you start getting on social media, and you start getting on Facebook and the Internet, and you start talking to your friends about, well, what should I be taking? Why are you feeling so good? And it's NMN and nicotinamide, riboside and Ashwagandha and St. John's Wort and CoQ10 and multivitamins. And. And the truth is, the biggest fallacy in all of modern medicine is that what goes into your body and goes into my body is treated the same way. We need to know what our body processes and what it doesn't. And when you find that out, it's like the missing nitrogen in the soil. Magic things happen.

And you're saying the genetic test can do that?

That genetic test did that, the one we did with you.

That's right. You know, I remember when you gave me the test, the first thing. I don't know if you remember. You should remember this. The first words that came out of my mouth, I'm not Dana White. Do not tell me. Do not tell me how much time I got left to live. You told Dana White. I mean, that was. I mean, of all the great things that you've done, that. That has been noted, you know, has been noted throughout the years. Obviously, one of the most popular things you ever did was you were the guy that told Dana White, the president of the UFC, he had 10.4 years to live. The first words out of my mouth to you was, if we're going to do this, I do not want to know. I want to have clue you very.

Very well did say that. I do remember that. You made that very clear. I do not want to know how long I have to live.

That's right. I didn't want to know that. I don't want that creeping up on me or what have you. But when you saw me and you saw my blood work and you saw what needed to be done, one of the things that I've been telling, telling people throughout the last year or so, they've watched Me, they've seen my transformation. I still got a ways to go. I'm just getting started. I'm not finished, I promise you that. But I lost a lot of fat. I went from 29.6% down to 10.4. I was with you to communicate with you the whole time.

Yes.

And a bunch of people said, I had people come up to me, man, you know, that was epic. Must be good. I'm like, I didn't, I'm doing cardio six days a week, weightlifting five days a week. I got my supplements and vitamins, but I'm not doing that.

Yeah.

So I, what did I do? What was it about me that I was able to attack that ultimately got me to this point of your estimation?

Well, I mean, the bottom line is you put in the work and nothing frustrates me more. And it doesn't frustrate me for me, it frustrates me for people like you, People like Dana White, Steve Harvey. When, when, when, when they get on the air like this and they tell a very vulnerable story. They talk about their blood work and their, and their, their sugar levels and their insulin resistance. I mean, this is not something that we popularize. And then, and then the media and social media, the, the, they'll say, oh, I could have done the same thing if I had a million dollars. I could have done the same thing if I took anabolic steroids. And they want to take away the actual work that you put in.

Right.

I will, I, I will say this emphatically without disclosing your, your medical record. You are not on steroids. You are not on growth hormone. You did not take Ozempic or Wagovi or Semaglutide or Tusepatide, any of those things that, these common weight loss drugs. It's not that I don't think that they have a place.

Right.

You did three things. You began to supplement for deficiency. So what we did was we took that genetic test of yours and I said, stephen, this is the type of B12 you need. It's called methylcobalamin. You actually are very deficient in one of the most key nutrients in the human body called methylfolate. We think that folic acid is a necessary nutrient in the human body. It's not. Folic acid is a man made chemical. You cannot find folic acid anywhere on the surface of the earth. It does not occur naturally in nature. But yet we spray our entire grain supply, all white flour, all white rice, all white bread, all white pasta and all cereals, with this chemical. Folic acid. And then we wonder why we have so much add, so much adhd, so much bipolar, so much depression, so much poor sleep, so such a skyrocketing rate of, of infertility. We have skyrocketing rates of, you know, miscarriages, multiple miscarriages. And yet the body is just missing simple raw materials. I'm not saying all the time, but there's enormous amounts of clinical evidence, peer reviewed clinical evidence that support the fact that when you have a gene mut, which you had called mthfr, the most common gene mutation in the world, your body cannot process this folic acid. You have to give it methylfolate. When we gave you methylfolate, all of a sudden we saw some of these major markers of inflammation. Homocysteine, C reactive proteins start to come down. We saw the gut motility start to return to normal. People spend a lifetime struggling with gut issues. They got gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, irritability, cramping. They look at food sensitivities, they look at food allergies, they do stool testing, they do all this stuff.

Yeah.

They overlook the fact that the body needs this nutrient methylfolate in order to have the pace of the gut be normal.

My entire staff is listening to you because each of them got bellies. But go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. Except.

I see it. Except one. Okay. All right. These are my next superhuman projects that are right off camera here, but my next superhero project. So, so what happens is you put that raw material back in the body. Now, we did do a couple of things with some peptides, right? Because I want to point out, you pointed out the amount of body fat that you lost. But what's really important is you not only did not lose muscle, you gained lean muscle mass over the same period of time. And that's critically important because when people use these wegovies, Ozempics, Semaglutide, you know, the, the, the weight loss drugs, a third to half of the weight they lose is lean body mass. Now, when people say they want to lose weight, what they really mean is I want to lose fat.

Right?

That's what they mean. They don't mean I want to lose muscle, I want to lose connective tissue. I lose bone. I don't want my bones to demineralize. I don't want to lose, you know, tendons, ligaments, cartilage. I, I don't want to erode. I want to lose fat. And that's a really important distinction. You, you began a weight Bearing exercise program. We balanced your testosterone without testosterone. I'll just be clear about that. You were deficient in vitamin D3 in something called DHEA.

Right?

We restored those levels. Your testosterone numbers came back. You did take an amino acid peptide, 44 chain amino acid peptide called Sir Morlin, which helps rewind your pituitary to a more youthful level of growth hormone secretion, which helped you maintain your muscle mass and build muscle mass. We put you on a very specific multivitamin. That multivitamin was designed for you based on your genetic test. And then you started slowly climbing out the hole. You also made some dietary changes.

We started watching the sugar paleo keto diet. I did that. I did cardio. I do. I still do cardio six days a week. I live five days a week.

Yes, that's where the work comes in. The work did not come from anabolic steroids. The work did not come from magic weight loss drugs or pills. The work came from your diet and lifestyle changes. And we supported the human body by giving it the raw material it needed to do its job.

It's interesting that you bring all of that up and I thank you for that. And again, I thank you for all your assistance. I remember Steve Harvey called me and he raved about you. Dana White is the one who introduced me to you. And, and obviously you know how I feel about him. You know, when people look at any of them or the few people that might mention something about me and if they allude to something like Ozempic or anything like that to me, it's not an attack against me, it's an attack against you. And you have a lot of people that have so many questions about how legit you are, how real you are. And what does 10x health and what does the ultimate human in the podcast that you have, the ultimate human podcast bring to the table? When you hear these things about yourself, particularly in this day and age, how does that make you feel? I told you before, I'm used to the scrutiny. I don't know if you were.

Well, I mean, to be patently honest with you, you've, you've actually helped me a lot with that. You've helped me understand that I, I'm, I've never had this level of media exposure. And, you know, I was a mortality expert for, for large life insurance for 22 years. And I, I spent my time reading medical records and predicting how soon people were going to die. And I wasn't in service to humanity. I knew that if I were able to pick up the phone and contact these people. I could have made a material change in their life.

Let me stop you right there though. What do you mean you were not in service to humanity?

I was in service to myself, man. All, all I really wanted to do was be wealthy. I, I, I love the data. I was, I'm a scientist. You know, my undergraduate degrees are in biology, my postgraduate degrees are in human biology and I worked for the mortality division. And essentially we would take 10 years of medical records on you and 10 years of demographic data and we would predict how many more months you had left on earth. And you begin to realize very quickly that the reason why people are not living longer, healthier, happier lives, or what we called modifiable risk factors, which meant had I just been able to, and I was precluded by law, but had I been able to pick up the phone and just call that person and say, listen, you need to stop taking, stop taking the methotrexate, start taking this, start taking vitamin D3, get off of this, take that, you know, get your, your, your anemia is non responsive to what you're taking. You need to switch to this. Had I just been able to contact a patient, now I understand why they don't, didn't allow me to do it. I'm not licensed to practice medicine. I am not a physician, okay. I'm a human biologist. I have an entire team of clinicians that work for 10x health that are, that are board certified MDs and what have you. But had I been able to contact that patient, on average I could have added seven years to their life. And I woke up one day and, and realized that this was not just data, that there were human beings on the other side of these spreadsheets.

How long ago was this?

This was nine years ago. And I made a very conscious effort, a very conscious decision that I was not going to spend another day of my life predicting how soon people were going to die. I was going to spend the balance of my lifetime helping people live healthier, happier, longer lives. Because for 22 years I had access to one of the most incredible databases that had hundreds of millions of lives in it. And I could see that people were dying because of lifestyle choices and because of nutrient deficiencies. And that disease and pathology wasn't happening to us, it was happening within us. And I saw that how, how people were suffering from anxiety and anxiousness and depression and ADHD and all these things that they chalk up to a consequence of aging, which are not consequence of aging, they're consequence of missing Raw material in the body. And I quit my job and I literally came home one day, was my girlfriend at the time, became my fiance, is now my wife. And I told her, I said, I quit my job today. And I had a calling and I said, I, I want to, I want to start a wellness franchise. And, but not being licensed to practice medicine, I had to find a physician. I had to find a, I had to find a PA and a nurse practitioner and I rented out a little place in a strip mall and I just, and I started taking all of the data and information and educating these doctors and we started treating people and, and it just exploded and it took off. And I never really had the vision of, you know, building a billion dollar company or even a hundred million dollar company. And I really had the vision of like, you know, making a lot of money or being as big as we are. I just knew that I wanted to be in service to humanity, that I, I knew that I had a message that people needed to hear. And so I've just gone out and told that message over and over and over again. And you know, when the content became viral and I started to get some patients that were, or some clients that were well known like Dana White and yourself, Steve Harvey and, and I was on the episode the Kardashians and all of this, which is not really what I wanted to be known for. I wanted to educate the masses. Then, man, the vitriol came. It's, it's, it's astounding. Like people watch hours and hours and hours of my content and find the one gotcha moment and then they'll, they'll just do reels on it and write articles about it and I make mistakes like everybody else. I'm not infallible. Sometimes I'll read an article and then I'll talk about it on social media and then I'll get torn apart on social media and I'll go back and go, you know what, I really shouldn't have said that. I really shouldn't. I should have checked the, I should have checked the cited research. I should have looked up the study myself. I should have validated that this was a, a real clinical study before I put it out in the public domain. So some of it is know I, I, I, I deserve, because I, you know, I put that information out there, but, but it's hard to deal with sometimes because I see when they tear down the people that are putting in the work, it bothers me more that people are attacking Dana White for doing things that he hasn't done. Like they accuse him being on anabolic steroids, accuse him of, of being on all these weight loss drugs and they accuse him of having cosmetic surgery even. And, and I happen to know that none of that is true with you too. And so I, you know, I take the heat to me personally, but when it comes to, you know, guys like you and clients that I'm working with, it's like, man, don't take away the guy's hard work, right? I mean, he's waking up every day, he's putting in the work, he's watching what goes into his mouth. He's on a supplement regimen. And I'm happy to tell you what that supplement regimen is. And yes, he spent 150000 on equipment. But that same equipment you can get for free. I tell people all the time you can drop 120 grand on a red light bed or you can expose your skin to sunlight. You can use a hypermax oxygen system for five grand, or you can learn.

To do breath work.

You can, you can use a PEMF mat in your bed for five grand or you can touch the surface of the earth. But, but aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort. You see, people pursue comfort so aggressively that they accelerate their aging. We have got to stop telling grandma not to go outside. It' not to go outside. It's too cold, to just lay down, to just relax, to eat at the very first pang of hunger. This is destroying humanity. We, the human body responds very positively to stress. If you don't tear a muscle, it doesn't grow. If you don't load a bone, it won't strengthen. If you don't challenge the immune system, it weakens and atrophy kicks in. Atrophy kicks in. You know what you're seeing coming out of this pandemic? You are seeing the consequences of a global weakening of the immune system. Again, not to make a I, I divide audiences when I in half when I say this, but the worst thing that ever happened to humanity was residential quarantining, masking and social distancing. You take human beings out of contact with other human beings, the immune system stops defending itself, it weakens. And now all of a sudden you got monkeypox. Did you ever heard monkey pox? No. You. We're on our eighth version of Omnicron right there. I think we're at our sixth, seventh booster now. And my point is that I believe a lot more in what God gave us than what man makes us. And we have the Ability to defend ourselves as long as we condition the body like that. It's called hormesis.

I can tell you this. One of the things, I've never been an individual, of course I go to the doctor often. Never been scared to go to the doctor. Got something wrong with me, I'm going to the doctor.

Me too.

Number one, you've never discouraged me from going to the doctor. You wanted me to go to the doctor and you challenged me. Let's see what the results are now that you've been doing X, Y and Z. So I always appreciated that. But one of the things that I pay a lot of attention to when I see folks within the medical profession, I'm not going to mention any names, but when I see folks in a medical profession coming after you and they're talking about the success that you've been able to reap and the money that you've been able to make, I don't recall any doctors treating me for free. Everybody is trying to, to, to make money. And I don't have a problem with that. My concern is whether or not you know what the hell you're doing. And that's the biggest thing for me. And what you can't afford, you can't afford. And what you can't, you can't. You find different ways to work around it, which I've done all my life and so many others have done as well. Do you find yourself tempted to challenge these folks in a public platform who have challenged you and your knowledge?

Yes, but not for the purpose of berating or belittling them. For the purpose of benefiting our audiences. I think a good spirited, civil fact based debate is going to benefit our audience. You know, there was a, there was a big hit piece on me in the Daily Mail.

Okay.

I don't have a, a whole lot of respect for the Daily Mail, but it ended up in the Daily Mail. And, and what was astounding to me was I said, talked about a clinical study was actually in the Wiley Journal of headaches in 2016. Okay. If your audience wants to look it up. And it showed an inverse relationship between sodium intake and migraine headaches. So in other words, it showed that low sodium increased the incidence of migraine headaches and by actually increasing sodium intake, it decreased migraine headaches. Now what's interesting about my, my past is I came from a big data past, you know, hundreds of millions of lives. And now the platform that I have, we see, you know, November, we did 20,000 gene tests. We do 15 to 20,000 of these tests a month. So we have enormous pools of data on real people, real human lives. And I rarely see the people that are challenging or taking issue with me putting up their results that they're having in patient or client after client after client.

They're just busy knocking down what you're attacking.

The, the phrase, you know, the, you know, the phrase or the nuance that I made in a, you know, three hour podcast. I mean, there's some of these, these guys on social media that after my Joe Rogan podcast said, I'm going to spend 40 hours debunking Gary's podcast. And I said, well, first of all, how do you know that there's anything to debunk before you even watch it? And you're really going to dedicate 40 hours of your life to actually going through and dissecting every surgical word that I said to see if I made a mistake and then extrapolating that, why aren't you out there in service to humanity too? I mean, we're actually all on the same platform. That's why you'll never see me be right or belittle or attack one of my competitors or, or even these guys that assault, you know, make a regular project out of assaulting me, because I don't think it's in, in furtherance of our mission. You know, I, the greatest advice I ever received, you know, from my father, was if, if you want to, if you want to shrink your problems, grow your purpose. And, and it doesn't grow my purpose to get into a battle with these guys. What would serve humanity is for them. And I've invited them, some of these people onto my podcast and say, listen, I'll have a platform. You bring whatever issue it is you, the sodium issue with migraine headaches, by the way, if you have migraine headaches, understand that migraines, the brain does not have pain receptors, so it actually is not capable of sending a pain signal. So we know that migraine headaches don't come from the brain. They come from the covering of the brain, the dura. The covering of the brain and the dura hates being stretched and contracted, and it's very sensitive to the sodium gradient. Now, I'm not saying that all people that suffer from migraine headaches need to take sodium, but people that take mineral sodium, like Baja gold salt and Celtic salt and add it to their, their, their drinking water, I can tell you, not anecdotally, from thousands of clients that have come through our, our clinics, it has a positive effect on Migraine headaches. You were one of those people.

Yes.

That woke up every morning with, with headaches and that. And after I had you start drinking this in the morning, you called me and said the headaches are gone.

I went, I went from age 19 to age 55 with a headache every single morning. I would start out behind eight ball, proverbially speaking, figuratively speaking, actually, behind eight ball. I came to you and I asked you about my headaches and that's how it really started. Before I even got to the part about wanting to get rid of my belly and what have you. The number one reason I came to you initially when Dana White introduced me to you, is that I was waking up with headaches every morning and my head felt like it was banging. It was banging and you had it. And at the time you called it cogni nourish. And you talked about how I'm not dehydrated, I'm low in sodium.

Yes.

And that was 14 months ago. And in 14 months I've had three headaches.

There you go.

In 14 months I've had three headaches.

And I can tell you there are thousands of clients that would repeat that same story. And now someone wants to go into the published peer reviewed clinical literature and find a clinical study where that might not be true. But we, we, at some point, we have to acknowledge that some of the worst research done on human beings is when we study things in isolation. You know, when you, you want to cut a human being's life expectancy in half, put them in isolation. You want to see really poor clinical trials done on human beings, take one cell or one organelle out of the body and study how it behaves in a petri dish. We, we, we live in communities and cells function and thrive in communities. When you take them out of their community, they behave differently. When you start to understand real human physiology, human beings and, and human anatomy, you start to understand that very often it is simple missing raw material in the human body that is causing it to behave in some way. You know, we have an enormous body of patients that, that come through our clinical system. See our, our, our physicians, they have add, they have adhd, they have ocd, and nobody even really tells them what it is. Right. So if you have a, why do.

You think that is? Why are they not being told what it really is?

Because if I can get you to believe that you have a disease, I can get you to subscribe to a lifetime of medication.

I mean, money's in a medicine.

Well, that's what you're saying the type 2 diabetes is 110 billion dollar annual industry in the United States? 110 billion.

Is that the largest?

It is. Cardiovascular disease is the largest as a grouping. But type 2 diabetes is 110 billion dollar industry. I mean, do you think that there's a meeting going on in some big pharma boardroom right now trying to put that out of business and, and say, how do we get that, you know, 110 billion off the balance sheet? And you know, it used to be that, you know, the diets that they would put up on some of these websites were really insulin dependency diets used to drive me crazy. I'm like, why are we telling type 2 diabetics to eat a bowl of oatmeal with crushed brown sugar, natural honey and a glass of orange juice? These people need fats and proteins or you need to take the pressure off of the pancreas. And, and you know, you got listeners right now, you know, that have ADD or adhd and no one's actually told them it's not an attention deficit at all. It's an attention overload disorder is too many windows open at the same time. You see, in the human mind, we don't just create thought, we also break thought down. So if you create thought at a faster rate than you break it down, the mind gets clouded, right? So you're paying attention to too many things. People with ADD or adhd, you know, very often do not lack the ability to pay attention. They lack the ability to pay attention to so many things. So if we can actually get them to degrade thought at the same rate that they create thought, then the mind calms down. You see, modern medicine says, okay, if the mind is racing, let's put an amphetamine into the body to race the central nervous system to match the pace of the mind. So let's take the system that's not broken, break it to match the system that is broken. That's what Vyvans, Adderall, you know, Ritalin. These are, these are amphetamines for them for the most part. Whereas if we could just quiet the mind, then all of a sudden that little anchor of ADHD would come right up off them.

You know, a lot of people out there go like this, I want some weed. That will do it. You know, that's what a lot of them do. You know, I need to quiet the mind. I need to be a bit mellow. I need to, you know what I mean? Hell with the supplements, hell with vitamins. Damn Good. I'll be dead. If I'm interested in exercising. Let me get some weed and I'll be fine. What does weed do for folks?

All weeds do and see is a coping mechanism. There is a difference between coping and getting rid of something. So let's say, you know, if you're on a boat and you throw an anchor off your stern, you got two choices. You can either add power to the motor, right, and just drag it, or you can pull it up. And so what you're talking about doing is just adding power to the motor. You're like, well, I get anxiety, so I smoke weed and I push the anxiety down. You know, I got this really active mind. So I smoke weed to tranquilize myself and get into a tranquil state. Well, what if instead of having to deal with it, think about, you know, a lot of therapy and I'm not poo poo in therapy by any means. People have trauma that they deal with. And I'm an enormous fan of counseling and therapy.

I've gone through therapy. My mother died.

I have to, I went through it for my divorce. Yes, and I, and I, I'm a big believer in it. But my point is, the majority of the way that we teach people when they have a condition to deal with that condition is to cope. We teach them coping mechanisms instead of saying, why don't we get rid of this, right? I mean, if you have anxiety and you, you, you actually truly suffered from anxiety. And I know a lot of people, including my, my wife, that used to suffer from anxiety. It is a crippling condition because you don't fake anxiety, you fake being okay. And if your anxiety has a couple characteristics, number one, you've had it on and off throughout your lifetime. Number two, you can't point to the specific trigger that causes it. And number three, um, when you take anti anxiety medication, it just makes you feel like a zombie. That is a telltale sign that it is coming from a nutrient deficiency. And that is the majority of clients that have anxiety. Now why do I say that with so much conviction? Because we have seen thousands of these patients in our clinic. They're not my patients. They are patients of our clinical team. And we have data. And one of the big things, one of the, one of the, you know, the great things that I, that I feel is a blessing that's been bestowed upon me is the, is the access to so many thousands of people. Now I used to access them in a database and predict when they were going to die. Now I access them in a Database. And I can see what is making them live, live longer. So take it. Take this anxiety patient. If you're listening to this and you have anxiety, you need to do this genetic test. And you'll find that very often, not always, but very often, you'll have a genetic mutation called mthfr or comt. Compt. And when you supplement for this deficiency, what happens is these fight or flight neurotransmitters that rise in your brain called catecholamines start to degrade. Because when people have anxiety, what happens is these fight or flight neurotransmitters begin to rise in their body and in their brain without the presence of a fear. You see, we, we don't understand how unsophisticated the brain truly is. It really doesn't know the difference between perception and reality. If you drove home tonight and you got out of your car and somebody was standing in front of you with a knife, that's a very real threat. Your pupils would dilate, your heart rate would increase, your extremities would flood with blood. You would start having a fight or flight response, right? And that fight or flight response is catecholamines rising in the brain. Fight, orf, flight neurotransmitters, adrenaline, you know, ephedrine, dopamine, ephedrone, rising in your brain. Now you're ready to fight or flight. Well, you could also be laying in my bed tonight. We're on the 21st floor of a condo here. You could be laying in my bed tonight. You could start thinking about getting eaten by a shark and you could have the exact same reaction. How is it that you can have the same reaction to the presence of somebody standing in front of you with a knife as to an entirely imagined event? Because the brain does not know the difference between perception and reality. And to the brain, they the exact same thing. So now that we know it's a rise in catecholamines, what can we do to lower those? You can take methylated B vitamins, you can take methylfolate, you can take something called same. These are proven over the counter supplements that actually fill in the deficiencies. So your body can break these neurotransmitters down and all of a sudden people go, oh, got them free of anxiety. Well, you never had anxiety, you had elevated catecholamines. And, and we just lost so much faith in the human body's ability to heal itself. Right? That's my message. My message is to the masses is to you are not as sick as you think you are you are not as pathological as you think you are. 90% of what you are dealing with right now is not the consequence of aging. It's not the consequence of your environment. It's not the consequence of stress.

It's ignorance.

Consequence of missing raw material.

Missing raw material which you have no knowledge about. You don't know any better. But there's a whole bunch of people in and outside the medical profession that don't know enough to tell the audience what you just told us. I'm going to transition and switch just a little bit because I want to get to how you start off your day. Because see, you don't have problems. You don't have the problems that most folks have.

Yeah.

There's a reason for that.

Yeah.

And people need to see this. So stick around. This is Stephen A. Smith show coming at you right now. When we come back, we're going to show you how this man starts off his day. So you could have a clue as to the things he does to make sure he's vibrant, energized, ready to go on a day to day basis. Stick around. Gary Brer with your boy Stephen A. Smith back with more in a minute. I want to take a second second to make sure everyone knows that the NBA playoffs are fast approaching. Which means every basket, rebound and assist is important. And I don't know about you, but I need to be in the middle of that action. And how do I do that exactly? I use Prize Picks, the largest fantasy sports platform with more than 3 million members. You see Prize Picks is not only super exciting but it's incredibly easy to play. And it takes only 60 seconds to make your picks. All you do is select two or more players from whatever sport you love. The NBA, MLB or even the mma. And then choose more or less of their in game stats. Which means every point hit or round will turn into a into big time cash. So if I know that LeBron is dishing out 10 assist or Aaron Judge is hitting two homers, I need to pick that and then play to see that big time money. So go to prize picks.com and use promo code SAS for a 100% deposit bonus. Up to 100. That's right. Go to prize picks.com type in mind this is SAS for a first time deposit match up to $100. That's code SAS when you go to prizepix.com pick more, pick less. It's really that easy. Just for everybody to know. I want you to tell everybody. I want you to give us a lowdown of how you start off your day. You're snoring, you're sleeping, you get up, what do you do?

Okay, so it's a lot, but since you asked. So in my bed, I've got a couple of sleep hacks that I use. This is a Sleep eight mattress. Basically what it does is it runs cool water underneath my body at night. So it keeps my body cool. Beneath that is something called Pulse Electromagnetic Fields, a PEMF mat. So that PMF mat is actually underneath here. And it will, it will blast Pulse Electromagnetic Field. It will blast electromagnetic, a low gauss current through my body. So this keeps the body alkaline. It actually separates all my red blood cells, pulls me into a deep sleep. This keeps me cool while I'm sleeping at night.

And when the body is kept alkaline, what does that mean?

Aldorin state is a disease free state. So the PH range of the body is actually very narrow. It's only about a half a point. But the more acidic you get, the sicker you become. The more alkaline you get, the better you feel. And so it's a very narrow range. So one of the ways to keep that range is to use Pulse Electromagnetic Field. PEMF also blows out all the EMF.

Frequency in your body.

It actually repolarizes the surface of your cells so they can eliminate waste and they can repair and they can detoxify, they can regenerate. So you might as well do that while you're sleeping. So my sleep environment's really important to me. Behind you is a is an air filter. We call this surgically clean air. It filters my air down to 0.1 micron, less than the size of a virus. When I leave the house, I run an ozone setting. It kills mold spores and mycotoxins, so there's no dust, no pollen, no viruses in the air. I keep the bed nice and cool. I use a PMF mat to get me into sleep. I know it sounds like a lot, but sleep is so important.

I'm going to say this, you sound like you're getting perfect sleep, a perfect environment in which to sleep. You would think that's all you would need to have a beautiful day. But that's not where you stop. That's just the beginning. So let's walk around and please feel free to show us what are the steps you take to make sure that you'll have a fruitful day, a beautiful day, because I want to do this for myself.

So I get into my bathroom and what I do is I splash A little water on my face. I mean, you want to know my exact routine? I'll tell you.

I'm asking.

So I come in here and splash a little water on my face. I brush the floss my teeth, and then this is just a spare cold plunge. I just like to keep one closed. But this is not the one I use in the morning. Splash cold water on my face, I brush my teeth, and then I come in here and I get in, I go straight into a cold bath. And this is the hardest thing to do in the morning because.

Cold bath, cold plunge.

Cold plunge, baby.

The one that Steve Harvey, Dana White and everybody's been talking about. The one you subjected me to.

This will become your drug of choice. I'm telling you, it will become your drug of choice. It's three minutes minimum, six minutes max. That's it. There's no evidence that I've seen that longer is better or colder is better. I keep this at 48 to 50 degrees. So I come in here, I got a pair of shorts on. I'll just splash water on my face. I brush my teeth, and then I immediately take three deep breaths. And then when I hold that breath, I just, I get all the way out before. And you know the fault podgement? Yeah, it's like how long does it.

Take you to get enough?

But I don't know. Well, it takes me seconds to be quite honest with you. It feels that way anyway. I know when I use it, it's hell. It's never easy, but the benefits are worth it. I know that. I never have felt more alive. What else you do from here?

Okay, so that's.

Okay, so now we're in your fitness next.

Yeah, now we're going. I call it the pain palace.

Okay.

So I get up on this treadmill. This is an EMF free treadmill. So it's just self powered so you can power this thing yourself. So you can walk on it, you can run the NFL falsies, the Shredville, because even the running backs can outrun this because it doesn't have a top speed. So you put this mask on and basically what this is doing.

You hear that? Yeah.

Okay, that's actually. It's taking 21 oxygen from the air. The ambient air that we're breathing is 21:02. This air is 93 to 95% oxygen. So I put this mask on.

I'm.

Connected to this bag and I breathe down 900 liters of oxygen in the morning.

And that does what for you?

So this is called Ewod exercise with oxygen therapy. For multi step oxygen therapy, there's a Nobel laureate prize winner in medicine, otto Warburg and Dr. Van Art, who actually did a lot of work on multi step oxygen there. And most multi step oxygen therapy is increasing your heart rate just a little bit and using high amounts of oxygen to perfuse your tissues. The presence of oxygen is the absence of disease. So if you're not gonna, you know, if you could, if you could do one of these, great. If not, you've got to learn to do breath work and you gotta blow out all that other gas out of your body by doing deep breaths. If you're not gonna do that, which is you can use what I do. You do this hyperminance oxygen, you're breathing 93 to 95% oxygen. 10 to 12 minutes. Flood the blood with oxygen. Dude, you feel amazing. You feel like you won the lottery office.

That combined with that. Yeah, body and alkaline.

Yes, your body. Now hold on, dude, you just woke up from a deep sleep. You slept cool. You had your eye mask on, you had your PMF mat keeping you alkaline. You woke up, you splashed water in your face. Brush your teeth, you hit the cold plunge. When you get out of there, you're switched off.

Then you come in here and you.

Warm your body back up. 10 to 12 minutes of hypermax oxygen.

And then I got one more style for you.

Let's go. Show me that one more stop and.

I'm going to show you the red light therapy bed. Now this is amazing. This is arguably my favorite anti aging longevity device. This is the most powerful red light bed on the market. There are 45,000 light diodes in here. So some of this red light is visible, some of it is invisible. Those are infrared or near infrared wavelengths. So red light therapy is amazing. So rage in sports recovery, the rage in anti aging, it's great for the skin, it reduces inflammation with dilates the micro capillaries and like your eyes and your organs, your spine. So when you lay in this thing, basically what you're doing is you're in here for about 15 to 20 minutes and it's reducing inflammation. What it's doing, Steve, is it's kicking out a gas inside your cell called nitric oxide and forcing oxygen into the cell.

Right.

You just flooded the blood with all that oxygen. Now you come in here and you drive it, right.

What about the person that asks why would this be leading when you just got out of bed? You were laying on a PMF man. You, you, you got your System alkalized, you went on a hypermax machine and you breathe all of that oxygen into your body. All of that going on, why would you still need this?

To reduce inflammation, to increase collagen, elastin and fibrin in your skin, to dilate those micro capillaries. And there's a nanometer away length in here. It goes through the cell wall, through the mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell, and then kicks a gas out called nitric oxide and forces oxygen in. Remember I said the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease? Well, if I was to boil cellular biology down for you to one sentence, it would be this. When oxygen enters the mitoch, enters this motor inside the mitochondria, you get a 16 fold step up in energy, cellular repair, waste elimination, detoxification, regeneration. There are lots of clinics that have these. If you don't want to spring to buy one of these beds or even red light panels which are available, you can get them on Amazon. If you don't want to get one of those red light panels, just Google around and find a clinic near you that allows a membership or something, a pay per service. And use this a few times a week. See how you feel. Dude, it's a game changer.

One more thing you want to show us.

Now this is, this is what I use on occasion. I don't use this every day. This is a full system reset, right? Because it's called a VEMI acoustic bed.

Okay.

This is a vibroacoustic bed. They say that only the most enlightened monks can actually really get into a true theta state. A state where you're devoid of qualified.

Right?

So even the thought about whether or not you're having a thought is a boat.

That's true though. It's true.

I'm not going to see you doing guided meditation or anything.

I can't imagine.

Have you ever tried? I've never tried.

I've never tried it, but I will because I've heard a lot of great, great things about it.

It's amazing. But you know, I've tried to do.

It and I like, I, I forget.

With these guided meditation, they're like there's a tunnel and there's a light at the end of the tunnel. And then my ADHD kicks in and I'm like, well, if there's a light at the end of the tunnel, something's going on down there.

Why don't we get down there, right? What are we doing down from this end?

And like, I just can't shut my mind up. So what this does, it turns on an acoustic wave. You'll hear it. It's going to turn on a sound wave. It's going to match that to a light wave, infrared, near infrared, far infrared light waves. And it's going to sync that with a pulse electromagnetic field wave, a magnetic wave. So I got sound, light and magnetism, when they harmonize every cellular structure in the body response. And then you put these, these theta wave headphones on that, it runs a theta frequency into the brain and it does what there is no sensation of the passage of time. So you get here about 10 to 12 minutes into this treatment, you're out. And I've been on here after a shut off for 90 minutes.

And I thought five minutes ago, I'm. In fact, I got on a year.

Before a podcast the other day and my production manager came in and Woke me up 90 minutes later.

It was like, hey, we got to shoot.

So it helps you sleep. What else does it do?

Resets your brain. It allows your brain to really calm down. Puts you in a theta state, very low brainwave activity. Think about the last time that you.

Actually did have a thought in your head.

But what does that do for you? If it gives you. Basically it's giving your brain a rest, Bringing your brain. Okay, so if your brain gets a rest, once it gets that rest, what.

Happens to you after that when you come out of that state? So when you get off of here, I feel a little bit grog talking for about five, five or 10 minutes. And then all of a sudden you feel like you took a limitless pill. It's like you're clear, you're clean, you're cognizant, you're awake, you're focused. It's just a feeling of clarity and zen, that's. It's hard to describe. If you, if you talk to somebody who's really mastered the art of meditation, they'll tell you the same thing. I come out of the meditative state and I can problem solve. My stress is gone. It seems like the problems of the world have melted away, grew back, focused on my purpose. You know, my problems have shrunk. It's medit, if you can harness it, is is a longevity and brain life hack.

And that is how you start your day. We got a lot to talk about. Welcome back to Stephen A. Smith show right here over the digital airwaves of YouTube and beyond. Of course. Just saw some video of this man doing his morning routine, the PMF mat. You know, I mean, I mean Red. Red therapy. Red cell.

Yeah.

Red light therapy.

Red light therapy. Had that going on. The cold plunge, which.

Don't get me started, which we are getting in after this podcast. You're going to do it.

Don't tell audience that. Please don't tell audience that. I'm trying to get out of that right now.

Dude, we're doing it.

There's so much stuff that you've done, but not just the critics, but the average viewer would say, I don't have access to all of that. I can't do that. Stephen A. Is on television every day. He's got a. He's got an advantage. This guy is Gary Brecker. He's a superstar in this business now. Made gob and gobs of money because 10x health is so successful. The ultimate human. So successful. You know, I mean, they're living in a different world. To that. You say what to that?

I say that all that stuff that you just saw out there is. All it's doing is mimicking what we get from Mother Nature. We get three things from Mother Nature. We get magnetism from the Earth, we get oxygen from the air, and we get light from the sun. So the truth is, if you want to know how to do it for zero, you got to get back in contact with the surface of the Earth. I know it sounds crazy, but there is something called earthing, or grounding. It is very real. Taking your shoes off and touching the surface of the earth, you discharge into the earth. You can actually repolarize the body by touching the surface of the earth. So take your shoes off. Think about it. If you're listening to this podcast right now, think about the last time that you had bare feet touching bare soil. I mean, dirt, grass, sand. That was the last time you discharged into the Earth. Then you can actually learn to do breath work. Very simple. You know, I read a statistic. I don't know if it's true. I didn't look up the study. I got a lot of trouble for repeating it online. But this, it said. There was an article that said that after the age of 30, 95% of all human beings will never sprint again for the rest of their life. It made a lot of sense to me because, you know, when I started looking at the environment in the world around me, even. Even the athletes that. That, you know, people that go into the gym every day, nobody is sprinting, right? So. So we're not using our auxiliary muscles of respiration, our intercostals, those. Those muscles that really help us breathe and Basically, you know, our life expectancy is directly related to our oxygen level. We used to call it a hypoxic curve. We would use this curve to predict the onset of and the severity of and how quickly people would succumb to disease. We're actually, we all actually die of the same thing. We die of hypoxia, lack of oxygen to the brain. That's the definition of death. Now it might be a heart attack, a gunshot, you know, a stroke, a bus. But the point is that we, we are not getting enough oxygen into our bodies. We don't even use our auxiliary muscles of respiration anymore.

But you're telling folks what to do and they shouldn't deny it because clearly you know what you're talking about. But they'll look at you, you and they'll say you're not doing it because of all the things that they just saw you do, the machines that you have.

But I'm just telling you, they're telling.

They'Re saying, Gary, you're telling us to do that, but are you doing it?

Yes. When I'm on the road, I am absolutely doing that.

Right.

If you have the fortune to be able to mimic mother Nature by buying some of this equipment and putting it in your house for convenience, then by all means do it and please done it. Stop badgering and attacking the people that do.

Right.

But if you, if you don't, you can get all of those things that I just went through on that and that little talk. You can take your shoes off and touch the surface of the earth. That is like using a PMF mat. You can learn to do breath work. That is like that Hypermax oxygen system. You can, instead of take getting into a cold plunge, you can take a cold shower. Everybody's going to take a shower. If you live in the Midwest or the Northeast, you have the advantage of having really cold water.

What's more advantageous, the cold plunge or the shower? Because I remember you one time alluding to, to the cold plunge being about 29. Better.

It's 20 shower, but yeah, so, so water is 29 times more thermogenic than air, which means it removes heat from the body at 29 times the rate of air. Okay. So when you get in a cold plunge.

Yes.

Heat is leaving your body at 29 times the rate of air at the same temperature. That's why you can die of hypothermia in 72 degree water. You can't die of hypothermia in 72 degree air. Right. So, but if, if Again, maybe the cold plunge is the best, but it's good to take a cold shower. I'm telling you. Aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort. The more aggressively we pursue comfort, the faster we age. So what if you woke up in the morning, took your shoes off, touched the surface of the earth, actually took your shirt off and exposed your skin to sunlight during the first 45 minutes of the day. It's called first light. No UVA, no UVB rays, no damaging rays. Healthy blue light resets your cortisol, resets your melatonin receptors, does more to turn your circadian rhythm back on and put you into a deep sleep that night than any drug that you can take touch the surface of the earth. You do some breath work in the morning, you expose your skin to sunlight and you take a cold shower. Run that for a week, Run those four things for zero for one week. Take a one to three minute cold shower, take three rounds of five obnoxiously deep breaths. And in between each round of breaths, hold your breath as you, as long, as long as you can. Why? Because you want to drive up the carbon dioxide level and dilate the vessels in your body. Carbon dioxide is the main vasodilator in the human body. So we can access these things. The question is, will people do them right? So the excuse of seeing somebody with a hundred thousand dollar light bed is. I can't do that. Yes, you can. You can take your shirt off and can expose it to sunlight. So wake up tomorrow, touch the surface of the earth, do a few rounds of breath work, expose your skin to sunlight, take a cold shower.

But here's the flip side. See, because I thought you liked me. I really did. Until, until, until, until you insisted that I get that damn cold plunge. And oh, that was one of the funniest moments, you know, I mean, phone.

Call I got from you.

I still haven't recovered from you exposing me to that damn cold plunge.

Harvey's the one that gave you all the about.

Go ahead, give my audience, give my audience the whole lowdown for the, for the cold plunge Stephen A. Smith experience that you subjected me to, by the way.

I mean, talk about that. First of all, he literally tried to convince me that black people do not get in a cold plunge. He literally pulled the race card on me, dude.

I did, I did. I tried.

And I said, well, Steve, Steve Hart. That's true.

Exactly, exactly right.

One of the black guys off camera is like, he's actually right about that.

It's true.

He's like, first of all, Black people don't get a cold plunge. And I was like, all right, Steven.

And then you guys told me to call Steve Harvey.

I told you to call Steve Harvey.

And he.

He gave me.

You.

He gave you a whole line. He gave you a whole ration. But he was. To your defense, you got the cold plunge. And the very first day, you got in it for the very first time for six minutes. Yeah, I remember that. And you're like, exactly how cold does this have to be to be a cold plunge?

And you said 58 degree.

I said 58 degrees. Yeah. That's where you start cold plunging. Now, 5048 to 50 is better. But I said 58 degrees. And to your credit, you got in for six minutes. 58 degrees, right? And then it became your drug of choice. I told you that would happen. Because you get that peripheral vasoconstriction. You drive that blood into your core. It goes up to your brain, your liver, your lungs, your pancreas, your kidneys. You get a. You get a rush of dopamine that lasts hours, not minutes. You get an elevation in dopamine in those.

And dopamine does what for you?

It's what. Dopamine is. The main driver of behavior. Dopamine is. Is one of those neurotransmitters that elevates your mood. The endorphins that you get from the. The runner's high or the exercise high. It's. It's. It's one of those neurotransmitters that drives mood. It just elevates your mood. And then you. You activate something called brown fat in the human body.

You.

You. You turn a thermostat on, right? You exchange calories for heat by activating brown fat. Because once you cool the body off, there's a cost to return to normal body temperature, and that cost is calories. So you feel so awake, so clean. There's also a special type of protein in your liver called a cold shock protein. There's also heat shock proteins. And I've been. I've been, you know, down the rabbit hole of these cold shock proteins lately. There's one called LIN28A and LIN28B, and they're highly associated with an improvement in insulin sensitivity. So. So now the cold plunge is being linked to things like improving your insulin sensitivity, reducing body fat. And yes, if you activate brown fat and increase your metabolism and improve your caloric expenditure, you actually should be burning more fat. An elevation in mood, an elevation in emotional state, a prolonged elevation of dopamine and you can access this for free. The reason why people don't want to do it is they don't want to leave their comfort zone. Tomorrow morning, just try it. Just take, you know, lather up to your. So take your shower. Turn the shower as cold as it will get. Step out of that stream, let it get nice and cold. Take a deep breath, step into that water stream and just deal with it. Just deal with it for 60 seconds. You'll get through it. And if you can, push that to three minutes, dry off and see how you feel. The whites of your eyes will be crystal clear. You will be wide awake and cognizant and clear. You'll have that elevated endorphin rush and you'll feel that way for hours.

When we started off the show with this interview, before the interview began, I showed a picture of me from a year ago. Skinny fat, no definition, no real lean muscle, pot belly, 208 pounds.

That must be tough to look at, man. When you sent me some of those old pictures, I'm like, I still remember you being that round.

I look at it every day. I look at it every day. This is my number one source of information, inspiration. I wake up every morning and I look at that picture of myself because I say never ever again. Body fat was at 29.6%. Insulin resistant levels was at 27. Cholesterol was at 301. I think it was 301. I was at that.

That's right.

I look at it every day. I look at every day. My number one source of information, inspiration. I wake up every morning and I look at that picture of myself because I say never ever again. Body fat was at 29.6%. Insulin resistant levels was at 27. Cholesterol was at 301. I think it was 301. I was at that.

That's also 301. Your triglycerides were over 300.

That's right. And my A1C levels, I was at A6, 3, 6 4. You see a full blown diabetic that was at 6, 3.

That's right.

Insulin resistant levels dropped from 27 to 2. Cholesterol dropped, are now 176. Yep. Right. Yep. Yesterday I'm, I'm looking at. That's right. I'm looking at that lean muscle. I've gained about 5, 6 pounds.

Blood sugar's at 301. Your triglycerides were over 300.

That's right. And my A1C levels, I was at a 6, 3, 6 4. You still full blown diabetic that was at 6, 3.

That's right.

Insulin resistant levels dropped from 27 to 2. Cholesterol dropped around 176, right? Yep. Yesterday. I'm look, I'm looking at, that's right. I'm looking at that lean muscle. I've gained about 5, 6 pounds.

Blood sugar is in the normal range. You're not, not only not on the verge of diabetes, which you are a tenth of a point away, you are not even pre diabetic anymore. You normal blood sugar. You have single digit insulin maintaining low levels of average blood sugar, which means you are more insulin res. More insulin sensitive. That is a great sign. It's one of the hallmarks of longevity. Cholesterol is down to 179, Ken. And we just mentioned that you are not on cholesterol medication.

That is correct.

I'll just put that out there.

That is correct.

In fact, you're not on any cardiovascular medication. Your, your testosterone, this is gonna be really hard for people to believe, but your testosterone level is approaching 1000 and you are not on testosterone. There is an enormous sugar. You're not only not on the verge of diabetes, which you are a tenth of a point away, you are not even pre diabetic anymore. You normal blood sugar. You have single digit insulin maintaining low levels of average blood sugar, which means you are more insulin res. More insulin sensitive. That is a great sign. It's one of the hallmarks of longevity, for the record.

And that's crazy. I mean, I'm wondering about my, you know, am I explaining a lot of things, you know, saying I got the testosterone level of a 30 year old and I'm not, I'm not really, I'm not using anything to get me there. You know, I'm just saying, you know, I mean, it's a good feeling. It's a good feeling. But, but, but, but in all seriousness, Gary, of all the things that, the.

Condition that I was in and Charles down to 179. Ken, and we just mentioned that you are not on cholesterol medication.

That is correct. And the things that you had me doing, what stood out in your mind as the most dangerous po. Element of my condition?

When you first met me, what stood out to me was I, I know from being in the mortality space and that mortality fact. I'll just put that out there.

That is correct.

In fact, you're not on any cardiovascular medication. Your, your testosterone. This is gonna be really hard for people to believe, but your testosterone level is approaching 1000 and you are not on testosterone. Okay. Abdominal Obesity, hypertension, which, which you had a time, which you don't anymore. Hypertension, elevated, very elevated cholesterol, very elevated triglycerides, very elevated insulin. So these, these, we call them mortality factors, at some point they begin to converge for the record.

And that's crazy. I mean, I'm wondering about my, you know, am I explaining a lot of things, you know, saying.

And when they touch, they become comorbidities and there is a parabolic metabolic impact on the body, meaning a dramatically negative impact on the body. These were converging in my opinion, and I'm not a licensed medical professional, so.

I got the testosterone level of a 30 year old and I'm not, I'm not really, I'm not using anything to get me there, you know, I'm just saying, you know, I mean, it's a good feeling, it's a good feeling. But, but, but, but in all serious.

Just give you my, my private opinion as a human biologist, being on the doorstep of being an insulin dependent diabetic was your greatest risk factor. And the reason why I say that is when we would do mortality modeling, what happens is people, slowly their blood sugar rises and it rises and it rises over time and they become pre diabetic and they're, Isn't this.

Gary, of all the things that, the condition that I was in and the things that you had me doing, what stood out in your mind as the most dangerous element of my condition? When you first met me, what stood.

Out to me was, I know from being in the mortality space and that mortality factor to creep through this diabetic category. 5.6, 5.7, 5.8, as soon as they cross this 6.0 mark, they're 4/10 of a way point away from being diabetic is a parabolic rise and it happens very fast. It may take years. You can spend years in the pre diabetic range and once you get to the top end of that range, it explodes. Once that insulin takes off and then it eventually crashes and the blood sugar takes off, now all hell breaks loose. The triglycerides skyrocket, the cholesterol gets out of control, the abdominal obesity gets worse. And, and, and now instead of sumpters, okay, abdominal obesity, hypertension, which, which you had a time, which you don't anymore, Hypertension, elevated, very elevated cholesterol, very elevated triglycerides, very elevated insulin. So these, these, we call them mortality factors, at some point they begin to converge. I think that took you two years to occur. Month over month over month, it gets Worse. And we saw this in the mortality space. So I, I felt, and I told you this at the time, that it was very serendipitous that we met at the time that you did. And, and also that you were as committed. And I think, you know, when I look back on it, I remember thinking in my mind, okay, I'm gonna, I'm, I'm gonna shut these guys headache, I'm gonna shut this guy's headaches down right away. I'm gonna give him a glimpse in the next seven days of what it's like to feel normal. Because you told me you felt amazing and I reminded you you didn't feel amazing, you just felt normal. Because I knew that if I could shut the headaches down, if we could shut the headaches down and I can make you have a glimpse of how good it feels to feel normal and just. And when they touch, they become comorbidities and there is a parabolic impact on the body, meaning a dramatically negative impact on the body. The seven day period of time then the hook would set because I have to have you on the team. These were converging in my opinion and I'm not a licensed medical professional. So you know, I mean, let's not, you know, let's not poo poo that fact that you put into work, you changed your diet up, you made lifestyle modifications, you made dietary changes, you committed to going into the gym, you know, that was on you. But the point is that you have to give people a glimpse of how good it just give you my private opinion as a human biologist. Being on the doorstep of being an insulin dependent diabetic was your greatest risk. Feels to feel normal, to set that hook. Same with Dana White and same with every factor. And the reason why I say that is when we would do mortality modeling, what happens is people, slowly their blood sugar rises and it rises and it rises over time and they become pre diabetic. And they client that I work with, with our clinical team is I try to very quickly give them a glimpse of what it's like to be all the way on the other side. And they're like, wow, I feel amazing. And then you don't want to go back sort of creep through this diabetic category. 5.6, 5.7, 5.8. As soon as they cross this 6.0 mark, they're 4/10 of a way point away from being diabetic is a parabolic rise. And it happens very fast. It may take years. You can spend years in the pre diabetic range. And once you get to the top end of that range, it explodes once that insulin takes off, and then it eventually crashes and the blood sugar takes off. Now all hell breaks loose. The triglycerides skyrocket, the cholesterol gets out of control, the abdominal obesity gets worse. And, and, and now instead of something that took you two years to occur, month over month over month, it gets worse. And we saw this in the mortality space. So I, I felt, and I told you this at the time, that it was very serendipitous that we met at the time that you did. And, and also that you were as committed. And I think, you know, when I look back on it, I remember thinking in my mind, okay, I'm gonna, I'm, I'm gonna shut these guys headache, I'm gonna shut this guy's headaches down right away. I'm going to give him a glimpse in the next seven days of what it's like to feel normal. Because you told me you felt amazing and I reminded you you didn't feel amazing, you just felt normal. Because I knew that if I could shut the headaches down, if we could shut the headaches down and I could make you have a glimpse of how good it feels to feel normal in just a seven day period of time, then the hook would set. Because I have to have you on the team. You know, I mean, let's not, you know, let's not poo poo. That fact that you put into work. You, you, you changed your diet up, you made lifestyle modifications, you made dietary changes, you committed to going into the gym. You know, that was on you. But the point is that you have to give people a glimpse of how good it feels to feel normal, to set that hook. Same with Dana White and same with every client that, that I work with, with our clinical team is I try to very quickly, quickly give them a glimpse of what it's like to be all the way on the other side. And they're like, wow, I feel amazing. And then you don't want to go back. That's what you kept saying. You're like, I'm never going back. How are you ever going back?

I went from connect. I went from being conniving and slick and trying to avoid the gym to being pissed off that I missed going to the gym.

I know.

Yeah, that's how I went. And I ask you a question, you know what, listen, because I'm, everybody knows I'm very. Yes, I'm on espn. Yes, I've got my podcast and my show here, everybody knows a lot about me, but they also know I'm incredibly private. I don't divulge a lot of stuff about myself because, damn it, it ain't people's business. And I tell them to go kiss off. I ain't telling everybody stuff. But when it came to the issue of health, I felt obviously differently because Covid, it was, I was, it was, I was very public. Everybody could see the damage that it had done to me, et cetera, et cetera. So let me, right here on my own show, ask you something that I never wanted to know, and that is, now that I'm out of the woods and I'm a little, I'm a little better. I'm a little, I say a lot better, but I'm only saying a little because I know where I'm aiming to go. You know, if you had to give my life expectancy back a year ago, now that, now that it is a year later, I mean, I think I'm ready to hear what, what around. What you would have told me. What would you have told me? If I wanted to be Dana and I wanted my life expectancy?

Well, it would have been substantially less than it is now. Right, right. Because what would have happened, it would.

Have been 10.4 years.

And for the record, I, I, I want to, I want to say that you can't just do a blood test and a gene test and to predict when somebody's going to die. I've done one life expectancy prediction since I left the industry.

Okay.

And that was Dana White.

Okay.

I do not do anything.

And he asked you to.

And he, and he asked me to, but he actually made it a condition on me meeting with him and. Because when I left that industry, I left that industry for good. Because I, I, I, I want to forget that that time in my life. It's actually what propels me forward right now. I think that I found my purpose in, in that pain. You know, I'm, I've thankfully turned it around from really regretting, regretting that time to saying, okay, well, that's where I gained my education, and that's where I got the knowledge to turn around and help people. But in your case, what was very close to happening was the convergence of these mortality factors, mortality debits. And like I say, when they become comorbidities, it's, it's a very dangerous situation. And one of the things that we would try to do in the mortality space is we would try to predict the chances that somebody would change, we would try to predict the chances that we could continue this mortality factor for a prolonged period of time. And the majority of people do not make a change. And they are leaving this earth years earlier than they should. And they are, they are, like you said, they, they stop living and they become alive for many, many more years than they need to be. And then they die earlier than they should because they are not willing to modify these risk factors. And so I would simply say that it has more than doubled the amount of time that you have left on earth that I'm certain of. But to be exact, I didn't, didn't run those numbers, but more than doubled.

What kind of trouble is society in right now compared to a decade ago, two decades ago? The food, the processed foods. Yep. The carbonated drinks, the alcohol, the troubles with sleep. There's so many things that affect human beings and we see the world that we're living in and it just seems to be so much more temptation. Like, one of the things that frustrates me about what you tell me is when you tell me to stay off sugar, I'm like, ha.

I mean, everything has sugar.

I mean, how the hell can I step it? I mean, shoot, sometimes water tastes like it got a little sugar in it, for crying out loud. I mean, I, I just don't, I. You just look at it and you just lose it because it's like you're trying to figure out how to do it, but it seems virtually impossible. I'm wondering, as we sit here today, you reflecting on all that, you know, all that you've learned, all that you continue to learn and ultimately try to teach to the world.

Yes.

How much trouble are we in as a society, health wise, compared to what it was a decade ago? Two decades ago?

Well, a decade ago, life expectancy was still moving forward. For the first time in, in measurable life expectancy history, our life expectancy is getting shorter. The United States is the number one spender in healthcare worldwide. We spend about four and a half trillion dollars a year on healthcare. We lead the world in five things. We lead the world in having the lowest life expectancy at birth. We lead the world in infant mortality. We lead the world in maternal mortality. We lead the world in type 2 diabetes and obesity. And we lead the world in chronic multiple disease conditions, so meaning the highest number of chronic diseases in a single body. And we are ranked 32nd in, in the world in life expectancy, 39th in healthcare delivery. So we know the spending does not equate to outcomes. Medical error is the third leading cause of death in this country. You know it. It only trails cardiovascular disease and cancer. That's a 2016 study by Johns Hopkins. So we have to become citizen scientists. We have to take our health care into our own hands. And I am not saying if you hit a windshield and cut your face, you got to go to the doctor. If you get pain going down the left side of your body, you need to go to the er. What I am saying is if you want to be in a state of optimal health, it is up to you, because the medical system is not going to do that. And so I, I developed a couple of simple rules, and one of them is I, we should think about putting this invisible fence around our bodies and we should filter things before they get to the temple, rather than allowing our temple to be the filter. Okay, Certainly we should filter our, our tap water. If you want to know the filter that I use, I put it right up on my, my Instagram. If you want to know any of the supplements or products I use, some of them I have affiliations with, some I don't. They're all on my Instagram. But the point being that we should be filtering our water. We should be eating whole foods. It's not keto, paleo, raw food, vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian. It is whole foods. The problem now with most of the food that we eat is not the food that we're eating. It's the distance from the food to the table. Right? We take a, we take a seed oil, like a canola oil, which, you know, if you, if you, if you press certain seed oil plants, I mean, they're, they're harmless. But then we take that seed oil and we, we de gum it with, and it comes out gummy, and we degum it with hexane, a known neurotoxin. Then we heat it to 405 degrees and we turn it rancid. Then we deodorize it with sodium hydroxide, which is a known carcinogen, and then we bottle it and we put it on the shelf and we, and we, and we feed this to the public. The amount of pesticide, herbicide, insecticide, glyphosates and preservatives that are in our food are not recognized by the body. You know, if your great grandmother wouldn't recognize it, you probably shouldn't eat it it. And, and so I, I, I, I want to try to teach people simple ways. I did this thing on my, my, my Instagram and social media. I call it lateral shifts, where I Will take any food that anyone likes to eat and make them two promises. They open their refrigerator, I do it live. They open their refrigerator and I'll take any food that they like to eat. I'll make them two promises. Number one, I won't change the flavor profile. And number two, I will not add a penny to the budget. I am allowed to make it less expensive, but not allowed to make it more expensive. To show people that you can take these lateral shifts from eating these highly processed foods. You can exchange it for whole foods, more nutrient dense foods. You don't have to be. It's not about fear mongering. It's about awareness, it's about education, and it's about understanding that you can go into the grocery store, shop the perimeter of the grocery store, get everything that you need that's not processed, that doesn't have all the folic acids and the, and the fortified and enriched flowers and things like that. And you can materially change the trajectory of your life by making some very, very simple choices.

But isn't it as simple as you make it sound because you're so knowledgeable? It might sound significantly more complicated to somebody who doesn't know any better and one who is also inclined to listen to a medical profession where we've already conceded the money's in the medicine. I mean, how do you combat that if you're just a regular old Joe, you know, or sue trying to make some, you know, trying to make, make an honest living, trying to live a good life and you're dependent on the easiest path to prosperity because life is just so complicated when you bring all those other things into the equation.

Well, you've got to become a citizen scientist. You have to educate yourself. If, if not you, you will eventually pay the price. I mean, and so it depends on what your priorities are. And when I ask the majority of the people where health and wellness is and their priority, they always tell me it's at the top. Well, then where are you spending your time? What are you reading? What are you educating yourself on? You know, if I gave you a book on yourself, would you even read it? And why do you have more information on your, on your, on your business than you have on your own temple? And the basics are you start with a gene test and supplement for deficiency, and then eventually you work your way to getting some information from, from blood work. Look at your, look at your hormone balance, your nutrient deficiencies and your blood sugar control. Just start there. You get those pieces of data, you will materially change the Trajectory of your life. And your primary care doctor can do that for you. Maybe not the gene test, but your primary care doctor can do everything else.

We're sitting here in your. I don't even know what to call this. I'm not gonna tell the audience, but it's immaculate. It's. I mean, thank you. You got some property here. You got a wonderful wife.

I've been very blessed.

You got wonderful kids. You got a lot going on for yourself. I got a couple of people here. One's married. He's. He's nose wide open. The brother, he's in love with his wife. He don't know what to do with himself. Okay? I got another dude that, I mean, he is about to get married. He proposed to his girl and he was the one crying. He was the one crying, not her. I mean, I mean, you can't make this up. I mean, I would say happiness, peace, that goes a long way towards making yourself healthy.

Amen.

Is that an exaggeration? Is that accurate? What can you tell me about that?

So think about this. When you look at the blue zone research around the world, right? And you look at blue zone research is where they did the, you know, the longest life expectancies on earth, you know, the, the centenarians and the hyper centenarians. What you found was not a lot of commonality between the diets, right? You had the Mediterranean diet, You had people that eat high carbohydrate diets, like, like in Sardinia, you had people like in Singapore, they actually eat high volumes of meat. High, high meat and saturated fat. And you have all, you have this prolonged life expectancy. There were some common themes that ran through all of these, and two of them were, number one was mobility until late in life. Sitting is the new smoking. Sedentary lifestyle is the leading cause of all cause mortality. Sitting, Sitting is the new smoking.

Sitting is as bad as smoking.

Sitting is worse than smoking.

Why am I not dead? This show, I got to sit down for first take. I mean, how am I.

What, because you move your ass, you get in the gym every day.

Oh, that's true.

But I'm saying, like, the sedentary lifestyle is the leading cause of all cause mortality. And, you know, we are just not moving anymore. We don't even have to move to get food, right? I mean, you got Uber Eats, you got Instacart, and, and, and so, you know, the happiness. If you were to ask me, Gary, what is happiness? What is emotion? What is a mood? Well, it's a collection of neurotransmitters bound to oxygen. So when you deprive the blood of oxygen, you actually deprive your body's ability to access certain moods. The reason why nobody has ever woken up laughing, no human being has ever woken up laughing. The reason why no human being has ever woken up laughing is you don't have the oxidative state to experience laughter. But can you wake up angry? Yes, because anger does not. That emotional state does not require oxygen, doesn't require a high oxidative state in the body. So if you want to experience the upper range of emotion, passion, elation, joy, arousal, libido, all the hell, yeah, I won the lottery kind of emotions, you got to get oxygen into your body, you got to get blood flow to the brain, so you can actually experience those emotional states. So when you say happiness, yes, happiness can be getting married, happiness can be getting a new car or new boat, or moving into the house of your dreams. But happiness comes from your physiology. Happiness comes from having a purpose, and happiness comes from having the right nutrients in the body. So you can make neurotransmitters to experience that mood. You know, it's interesting, you know serotonin, which is the main driver of emotion, this mood, this, this neurotransmitter, serotonin. Do you know what we make it from? We make it from an amino acid called tryptophan. So is it possible that a simple deficiency in tryptophan, an amino acid, could cause a deficiency in this neurotransmitter? Yes. This is what I mean about nutrients missing from the human body. Do you know how many times I saw people walk into their primary care doctor with a clinical deficiency, deficiency in vitamin D3? And without even doing the proper testing, the doctor goes, you know what, Steven? You've got rheumatoid arthritis. And why would he say that? Because the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis very often mimic the symptoms of clinical deficiency in vitamin D3. All you have is a nutrient deficiency. Now you're diagnosed with a disease. You know what happens once you're diagnosed with that disease? They put you on something called a corticosteroid. And you know what a corticosteroid does? Initially, it causes a reduction of inflammation, but then it eats the joint like a termite. And now, six years later, you're having a joint replacement. And as soon as you have the joint replacement, you don't ambulate as well. You're not as mobile. And as soon as you reduce mobility, you start to bring in all the Diseases that exacerbate with reduced mobility. So if you run this back, you died of a disease that you never should have had because of a surgery that wasn't required, because of medication that you, you did not need, because of a disease that you didn't have. You had a nutrient deficiency. And this is what I mean. We are not as sick or pathological as we think we are. Nutrient deficient. I know I said 100 times.

And having said that, have you ever thought about this? Just got a couple more questions before we end this interview. Have you ever thought about the fact that with all that, you know, all the knowledge that you have, all that you've espoused, what level of pressure that puts on you? One would think the pressure is, oh, keep knowing what you're talking about. I'm thinking about something else. We better not see you depressed. No, we better not see you limping around. We better not see you looking angry. We better not see an abundance of things that you just spoke about that if your body has these kind of things inside of it, you're going to be in optimum health. And as a result, you're not going to be subjected to some of the things that normal folks are subjected to. Have you ever thought about that at all? And what kind of pressure it puts on you? It's almost like somebody being in the public eye and they got to watch every little thing that they do. An actor, an actress, an athlete, et cetera, et cetera. Some folks might look at you and say, that's the stratosphere you're approaching. To that, you say, what?

Well, it's. I have an obligation to be authentic about what I say. So the lifestyle that I, that I leave behind the scenes is the same lifestyle that I put on Instagram. I did three hours of live zooms today. I took the laptop and walked around the house. I show all of the. I show what I use in my daily life on the, on the Ultimate Human podcast. You will never see an ad read, you will never see me become a prostitute for products or services. And, and believe me, it comes my way. I have a hard and fast rule that I do not promote anything that I do not use in my daily life, every day in my daily life, or that I do not have first hand knowledge of. And you will never see me with this CBD gummy and this multivitamin and this energy drink. And unless I am using that in my daily life or I have firsthand knowledge of it. You saw that graveyard of products in the back of My condo back there. I am incessant about testing things because I want people to understand that, you know, I want to take the products that do not have a voice that are doing the right thing for humanity and I want to give them a voice. My, my, my partner said to me, Grant Cardone said to me one time, he said, Gary, what's more important, the best product or the best known product? And I'll never forget because I, I said, well, probably for revenue, it's probably the best known product. Which is why I am going to give a voice to the best products. I want to push them up through the noise like the real grass fed farms, the real, you know, the, the, the cereals that are not bad for kids, the, the snacks that actually have nutrients in them and are not full of like pesticides and herbicides and food colorings and high sodiums to give a voice to those things. So it makes the choices for people easier about how to, how to navigate this. But it is a crazy amount of pressure, Steven, especially the amount of vitriol that I get from, from, you know, really just trying to do the right thing.

Misconceptions about you.

Top misconceptions about me? Wow, that's a, that's a great question. I would say the top misconceptions about me are that I'm, I'm driven by, I'm driven by money. And that's an, Success was a byproduct of being in service to humanity. It wasn't the quest. It's so funny because initially all I really wanted to do was be wealthy and I couldn't create any wealth. And then I decided that I wanted to focus on people's well being. And then I became wealthy. And now everybody accuses you because of your level of success, of having some kind of ulterior motive. It's the same thing I see them do to clients of mine that have dramatic changes in their life and they always want to tear it down and say they must have cheated. But a lot of times people like yourself and Dana and others are just putting in the work. They really did just put in the work.

Last question. When you see me, when you see.

Dana, we're about to be neighbors, buddy.

When you see, hopefully when we see Dana, when you see Steve Harvey, when you see so many of us, you talk about us and our willingness to have put in the work. In the end, when you look at America out there and you're talking them to them and trying to encourage them to put in the work. So ultimately there's a level of health that they can achieve that will make them feel wealthy in and of themselves. What's the best advice you can give to them to get them started, to jump start their lives for the better?

Well, the word wealth is actually derived from the word well being. To be well in being. So to be wealthy used to mean to be healthy. And so that's, that's the root of that word, you know. I'll tell you just a quick story. I was on a, an episode of Access Hollywood a few weeks ago and it was at Universal Studios and, and the Access Hollywood stage is in the center of the park. And they actually picked me up at the back and I was getting walked through the park by, by security and, and I was just looking around. You know, you see this heavyset grandma, she's in a, she's in a motorized wheelchair. She's got a 2 liter of soda in her inner thing. Then you see heavyset mother in the fanny pack. And then you see a really, really heavy set, even obese kid that's just entering puberty. And I made a comment to the security guard. It really, his answer just really struck me. It blew me away. And I was just trying to be funny. I said, what's with all the fanny packs? It's like a fanny pack pandemic up here. And he said, oh, you know, they can't put their hands in their pockets. And I was like, wow, these guys are all wearing fanny packs because they can't put their hand in their pockets. And I look over and there's a kid, must have been 13 years old, and he's sitting on a, he's sitting on one of the benches and he has a 64 ounce Big Gulp in his hand. And he's got a paper with a funnel cake on it, A plastic, I mean, a paper plate with funnel cake on it. Well, the funnel cake is, that's deep fried white flour in seed oil with 10x sugar on it and 64 ounce big gob. I start running the math in my head, I'm like, that's 39 teaspoons of sugar in his right hand. It's another 50 grams of sugar in his left hand that's soaked in seed oils with 10x sugar on it. And I realized, like, to me, it actually made me a little angry. I wanted to go to the mother and be like, this is child abuse. But I, I realize that they just don't know. And so that's why my message is for the masses. Because I truly think that people really don't know. And there are some simple choices that they could make. So here's what I would tell everybody listening to this podcast. You want to feel that the best that you felt in the last five years to decade of your life for no money. Number one, wake up. Tomorrow morning, try to wake up with the sun. If you can, expose your skin to sunlight, go outside and get first light. Just get the benefit of this beautiful blue light with no uva, UVB light rays, damaging rays. In the morning, expose your skin to that sunlight. Do three rounds of five deep breaths with a breath hold in between. Come back in and take a cold shower. Just tell me how good that one choice makes you feel and let that be the start of your journey where you go out and get information on your body and you start to make a change based on that data.

I'm a skeptical individual. I've gone. I've gone to doctors all my life. I still go to doctors. You've never discouraged me from going to a doctor, never will. I still train all the time. You've encouraged me to train as often as I possibly could and to seek encouragement. I'm on my supplement protocol. I've changed my diet. But so much of what has happened to me is because of how you guided me. And I just want to let you know, for my audience, I appreciate it. There's so many components that we that that come with it and I get that. But it has to start somewhere and it has to start with you knowing exactly what's wrong and attacking the immediate problem so you can begin to cure your body. I have felt better than I have felt in 30 years. And I'm just getting started. Thank you from the bottom of my.

Heart for all you've done. Thank you for that.

I definitely appreciate it. The one and only Gary Brecker right here was Stephen A. Smith. That's my journey. You see the man that's helped me get here. There's no question about that. I know how I feel about you. The proof is in the pudding.

Damn it.

I look in the mirror now compared to how I didn't want to look in the mirror a year ago. That's how it goes. This is the Stephen A. Smith Show. That's the one and only Gary Bracket. Thank him so much again for your, for your time, your energy, your knowledge and everything like that. I hope y' all enjoyed this episode. I hope you make sure to prioritize your health. There is no wealth without health. You heard him say it. You've heard me say it a million times. I'm going to tell it to you again. This is why I got so many, so much energy. This is why I have so many jobs. This is why I could continue to flow the way that I flow, because I'm actually trying to take care of myself. I hope that was inspirational. It should be. We'll talk about this in the days, the weeks and the months to come. For Gary Brecker, this is Stephen A. Smith signing off. Peace and love, everybody. Until next time.

Thank you, brother.