The Test That Changed This Family's Life Forever | TUH #078

The biggest struggle that you had was that you had had a sequence of miscarriages.

Yeah. When we met, you had just had our second child, two viable births and then seven miscarriages. Most pregnant women take a folic acid supplement. And for my body with that gene break, that is not good. It was a whole journey and process. And so this little third guy came around. It was the healthiest pregnancy. And then he came out and he was healthy. And it just illustrated those changes we had made with you, the overall health of my own body.

And I remember that you were really frustrated because your OB GYN and the doctors that you were seeing just couldn't figure it out.

Yeah, they were mystified.

But what I said was, let's start with the. Ultimate Human. Hey, guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Breca, where we go down the road of everything. Anti aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. So recently we've gotten a lot of requests through all of our channels. The, you know, the audience emails me all the time on podcast topics that they like to see and topics that they'd like to see, you know, covered on the podcast or experts that they love to be put in contact with. And one of the requests they seems to be growing in popularity is the relatability of certain guests that have just been on a journey and they ask that we put more in their words, average people on because they feel like sometimes I'm only in service to the elite athletes and the ultra celebrities and the A listers and the ultra wealthy. And so I have amazing couple on the podcast today. Been on a journey with these folks for a very, very long time. They are Paul and Carrie Hickman. And when I met. When I met you guys, it was actually through the A10X. It was through the Growth Con network. And I just remember you were a volunteer fireman and you were training pretty hard for different activities as a fireman. You were doing coaching, right?

Yeah, we had both just left coaching.

Both left just left coaching. And by coaching, I mean sports coaching. And. And they're also in the real estate space. They flip homes for a living. But, you know, with. Without putting too much out there, this is your American family.

Right.

And. And the biggest struggle that you had, I remember what you cried to me the first time that we met, was that you had had a sequence of. Of miscarriages. Yeah, seven, if I remember.

Seven we had when we met. You had just had our second child. Yeah. So two viable births and then seven miscarriages to get those two.

And I remember that you were really frustrated because your ob GYN and the doctors that you were seeing just couldn't figure it out.

Yeah, they were mystified.

Yeah. And you were kind of torturing yourself. You know, was it what I had for breakfast? Was it the sip of beer that I had? You know, was it the processed cheese that I had a little nibble of? You know, you. You just were internalizing this. Because when you go through. And there are so many women listening to this podcast right now that are suffering from repeated multiple miscarriages, and they're not getting any relief, and their level of doubt is just growing. They're doubting themselves, they're doubting modern medicine, they're doubting expensive treatments. So I want to talk a little bit about the journey that we went on, because at the end of the day, as complicated as this process of methylation is that we're going to talk about, it really was simple changes that led to your next birth, your next healthy child, and the fact that you didn't have.

Yeah, we have three kids now, and the. The third one was a surprise. After we had started working with you, I actually didn't even go into the doctor until the 19th week of pregnancy. And normally you're in a long time before that.

Right.

Because I just assumed it would terminate itself. That had been my history. We had struggled so hard to keep the two that we had to that point viable and healthy. And, um, I just. I was like, yeah, we don't really need a third kid, so I'll just let this one go.

Right.

And you're 41 years old too.

Yeah, I was 41 at the time. I'm like, I'm older, I'm heavier, I'm all the things. And, you know, this will just go away at some point.

Yeah.

You know, and I. I kind of let go of the guilt and the stress at that point and of the.

Previous broken to the guilt. I don't know if you let go of it or gave up to it.

Right.

Yeah. Just didn't want the fight.

Yeah, I didn't want to fight it. And we had two beautiful kids, and I really wanted to focus on them and let them be the thing. And so, yeah, 19 weeks. I'm like, I better go in and just like, it's. This is not terminating, not turning. And so, yeah, I better go make sure it's healthy and see what's going on. You know, get an ultrasound. And the doctor at OB was kind of shocked. She was actually Mad at me. Why did you not come in up to this point? How far along are you?

Especially given your history of having the last seven.

Right. And even the two. The two that we have had were difficult pregnancies, ton of weight gain, a lot of swelling and inflammation. The burrs themselves were, you know, I think, pretty normal hospital burrs. But the recovery was really awful for. For myself, my own body. I had a really difficult time breastfeeding. I mean, it was just. It was a whole journey and process. And so this little third guy came around, and, my gosh, it was the healthiest pregnancy. I felt great up until the end. He was overdue. That was fine. I wasn't like, let's get this baby out. I'm like, we're cool, man. I feel great.

Yeah.

And then he came out, and he was healthy, and it was a great birth and an easy recovery, and it just. It illustrated those. Those changes we had made with you. The overall health of my own body, it was like this was a. You know, you can see health with weight loss and changes. Like, you can feel that I can tell someone I have more energy. But here was another human being that I had birthed that was like a physical representation of how healthy, of how much healthier that journey had been through that nine months versus the previous.

Yeah. And I want to be a little specific for a minute, because I remember you and I initially met, and you pulled me aside and asked me if I could help with this. And immediately, I try to simplify things. You know, when people start leaving the. What I call the hub of the wheel, and they start chasing all of the spokes, Right. And you start saying, well, I don't sleep very well.

Well.

And I've got anxiety, and my gut's a mess, and I've had seven miscarriages, and I'm. And I'm overweight, and I can't shed this.

This.

This weight. My hormones seem out of balance. I've got a lot of brain fog, and I'm just, you know, tired. I'm a shadow of my former self because I was a competitive athlete for my whole life, and I just don't understand, like, mentally. And we had this conversation. You know, I'm still a competitive athlete in my mind, but my body is like, no, you're not. And. And. Or doesn't look like it or doesn't feel like it, And. And eventually. And I know there's a lot of people listening to the pod. It's like chronic pain. It will break the will of the strongest of People and, you know, to give in to the fact that even though you want to expand your family, you're not going to expand your family, because seven times in a row, it didn't result eventually. You just give it up to God and go, okay, well, maybe this is God's plan, and we're not meant to have a third child. But what I said was, you know, let's just. Let's simplify this, right? Let's bring it all down, and let's start with the basics and make sure that your body has the raw material it needs to do its job. And in order to do that, we did a methylation test, a cheek swab, and we found out, lo and behold, you have gene mutation called MTHFR that 44% of the population has. And there's no reason to feel guilty about it, but MTHFR has a whole myriad of consequences. It's the hub of the wheel, and it leads to all of these spokes. And interestingly, nearly every symptom that you had, we could trace back to this gene mutation. And I said, if we fix this, we fix all of the rest, right? And there was definitely some doubt in the beginning.

For sure. We were like, you want us to drink more water?

Yeah.

This is never gonna.

Yeah, that's right.

We're gonna fix this at the grocery store.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's where. That's what we said. We're gonna fix this at the grocery store. We're gonna fix it by supplementing for this for deficiency, not the sake of supplementing. So we do this gene test. The gene test comes back. You have the MTHFR gene. I won't tell you what the nickname of that gene is because I get trouble for cursing on podcasts, but it stands for methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase. And this gene mutation requires certain specific supplementation. And I want to talk about the relative ease in what the supplements were, and I want to emphasize that these were not expensive, rare, you know, supplements. We were talking about B complex methylfolate, specific form of B12 called methylcobalamin trimethylglycine. You know, relatively good, clean, over the counter supplements that we could get. But we started to supplement for deficiency, and I remember immediately started to tell me that you were feeling better. You were, like, out of your mind because you were. You. You did the same test, and I remember you telling me that about some of the results. You're in your mid-40s, you're running circles around these guys in their 20s at the at the fire department, running up and down steps and doing these VO2 max tests and everything. So I want to talk about the. The foundation of where we started with just basic supplementation. And then we started about fix. Talking about fixing this at the grocery store. So walk. Walk us. Walk us through that.

Well, like you say, we're, I think, pretty normal, average people. We've got car payments and, you know, jobs and lives and stuff like that where, you know, we're not some celebrity with a staff.

Right.

You know, so we need a. We need a grocery list and we need, you know, hey, these couple supplements. Can you fit this into your budget? Okay. You know, it's a few, you know, fewer times to Starbucks or something like that a month. And we can offset one thing with another, and we can blend this into our life. And I mean, like you say, struggled with having kids, struggled with energy and brain fog and all kinds of things. And from our kids were. Our first two were 2014 and 2016. We met you in 2018. And then Colt, our youngest, blessed us in 2020.

And the only thing we call him the methylation baby.

So the only thing that happened in our lives between Forge and Reagan and Colt, that significantly changed was meeting you and including these. These minor little tweaks to our diet and just the. Again, the choices that we're making at the grocery store and adding some very attainable, I mean, stuff. You could buy it at Costco.

Yeah, I remember you were going to get a cortisone injection when we first met. And I said, why don't we do this? Let's put the cortisone injection off and let's start increasing our hydration with sodium water. Adding Celtic sea salt at the time, and now I use Baja Gold salt. But adding Celtic sea salt to your drinking water, significantly increasing your hydration and significant. And making sure that you're consistent on taking the supplements.

Right.

And the supplements that came out of that gene test that gave us a very specific roadmap. So we're talking about relatively little changes.

It was very little. It was partly figuring out. You know, for me, with the prenatal vitamin, for instance, was chock full of folic acid. They put that in all. I mean, I think they're required to prescribe. Whether you actually take it or not is your choice. But most women, most pregnant women take a folic acid supplement. And for my body, with that gene break, that is not good. And so it was figuring out, okay, there's folic acid in this. We can replace that single Multivitamin with a different multivitamin that has what your body needs for methylation along with the vitamin Cs and Ds and all the other healthy nutrients. A couple things, you know, we added like a, an extra vitamin K in there and you know, a couple other little things. I mean, just in the, you know, the vitamin D. I remember you gave us the list and I'm like, oh, great. You know, this is going to be some huge thing. We're going to have to make a lot of changes to be able to afford this. And then you're like, but you can get this. You know, this one comes at Costco, right. And this one you can order on Amazon. And we were floored. I was like, this is, it's so simple. It's up to us to take the pills and make the changes to, you know, to choose different types of food to try and eliminate the folic acid from the food in my case. And it was just, it was simple and relatively cheap and just easy to implement in our busy lives. It wasn't some huge overhaul. We weren't buying some crazy equipment. It was just some really small incremental changes with consistency added in.

Yeah, and I think too the, what I want to emphasize is, you know, we did the test, we started supplementing for the sake of deficiency, not the sake of supplementing. And then we started to walk our way through some basic dietary changes. And you know, I do this thing called lateral shifts where I try to take the foods that everybody loves to eat and we just shift those to foods that are more nutritious. We don't really add a lot to the budget. Now he's way off the deep end. He's buying like half cows from out of the state and then, and getting his own grass fed meat. But you know, as we started to implement these changes, you know, initially we were really trying to target keeping you conditioned for your, you know, your, your volunteer fireman position and, and you having a healthy pregnancy. That was our goal. And then as a consequence, you guys get on this journey.

Well, now we're aging in reverse.

Yeah. And now you're down 68 pounds.

90 pounds.

90. Holy cow. 90.

Like I guess last 13 months.

Yeah. So 90 pounds in 13 months and you're down 68. You're down, you're down 68 pounds. That's a whole person or two decent sized little people that have been lost from your family.

Not in our family, but we make big kids.

Oh, you make big kids. So, so, you know, like all of the Consequences of this have been amazing. I mean, first of all, you guys look amazing. And, you know, how has that impacted your business? I mean, you're flipping homes and the energy that you have for your kids. And you homeschool, too.

We do. I mean, it's everything. You wake up in the morning, kids get up early, and instead of dragging out of bed, I'm up with them. And I am doing the things in the morning with them. We go to the zoo, followed by the pool. I mean, we're doing all the things. And for me, my parents are like I call them roll around on the floor grandparents. They wrestle with them, they take them hiking. They do all the things. And I was getting to the point where I couldn't do that anymore. I was the Sitting on the couch, directing traffic.

Mom.

Because I was so heavy and so tired, and I just didn't. I didn't feel good. I didn't feel like participating. Right. And when we made those changes with you, suddenly I could wrestle with them and run with them and chase them and be outside, you know, throwing balls or doing whatever it is. And it was everything for me.

And I'll tell you, the biggest initial shift that we made was we got all of the folic acid.

Yes.

Out of the diet. And that's a little tough because folic acid is in breads, flours, cereals, pastas. It's in any foods that are fortified or enriched. But once you make our kids read labels, now they do.

Yeah. Yeah.

No. Yeah. I get videos from your son.

Yeah.

Hi, Mr. Gary. I took my. I took my vitamins. And then you're like, how do you feel? And he's like, I feel calmer. I feel, you know, less excited, you know, less excitable and more focused. And I can concentrate. I'm the cutest videos. And I love getting.

Yeah. You know, it's gene. So I mean, we both have the MTHFR break.

Yeah.

And so genetically. And the things. Punnett Square.

Yeah.

Our kids all have it, too, whether they've been tested or not.

They're all gonna have tested them. And we're like, oh, yep. Turns out there, you know.

Yeah, there it is. So we. We not only are then charged with making those lifestyle changes for us at home with the food choices and the supplementation, but now we have to teach them to do it on their own eventually. That's the parenting charge.

Yeah, but you said that they're. They're adopting it pretty good.

Yeah.

I mean, they're fully on board. Like, your son came home the other day and said we're not normal. Yeah, right. Well, we don't eat like all the other kids.

You know, we told him that Gary wanted to interview normal people and he goes, well, but you're not normal. Yeah, we're not normal.

Yeah, I love.

Way to go, mom.

Yeah, he's not normal because he's not eating all the Funyuns and the, and the Cheetos and what have you. But the point is, I think you know, the point that I want to make is that subtle consistent changes over time and you do not have to be. We didn't make you guys raw food vegans overnight. Right. We didn't take all the fun out of your lives. I didn't put you on a really restrictive diet or a hyper restrictive, you know, exercise program. We tested, we found the deficiency, we fixed the deficiency. Then we went to the minor lifestyle changes. You know, what things do we need? What are the no fly zones? Folic acid. We got the folic acid out of the diet. And you know, I tell people too, once you learn to read the labels and you go to the grocery store and you find the food foods, the hard work is, is, is right up front. Right. Like learning what labels do I read. But then you're getting the same foods over and over and over again. It's not like you constantly have to do that.

Right, Right.

Well and that was the 1.0. I mean we were, we were faced with so many other challenges in life, Gary, that we were. I'm self employed. So we've got our own like self employed health insurance that cost a fortune and we're. Our health insurance was underwritten through life insurance policy which you know all about.

Right.

And my liver enzymes were off the chart and we couldn't bring them back down. Even like I looked like an alcoholic even though I don't drink.

Right.

And so I'm like, well, don't have any other solutions. Let's ask Gary what he thinks. Yeah. Started testing for some food sensitivity. Just eliminated some things that lateral shifts.

Yep.

And that liver enzyme over about six months came down. Yep. And dropped our health insurance cost back a grand a month.

I remember when that happened because we started you on glutathione and glutathione is a isn't. It's the main antioxidant in the human body. It's manufactured by the liver. It actually resides inside of every living cell in the human body. Every single cell in our body contains glutathione. When you get low on glutathione very often it stresses the liver. And I remember we started using. We added 200 milligrams of glutathione daily. And you're right, the liver enzymes came down further and further and further, which ended up being a huge cost savings for you with the.

Yeah.

With the health insurance.

Well. And maybe just feel better.

Right.

Like, I would eat things that my body thought was poisonous, even though it's like, you know, almonds. Right.

Because you didn't know. Because it was healthy almonds and avocados for him. Right. And that was the blood testing was. And the methylation. I mean, all of it, the food sensitivity stuff that we've done, it just illustrates, like, we are all individuals and there is no cookie. I mean, there are some cookie cutter things, but generally I am very different than Paul and our kids, who are the same. You know, they're half and half, genetically of the two of us. They're each individuals, too. And narrowing down what your individual needs are or your individual deficiencies are and supplementing those or working on those, improving them.

And how hard has it been with the kids since we took the folic acid out of their diet? They're also on supplements. They're on basic gummies, basic methylation, super simple things. Nutrients. Nutrient nutrients. I mean, they take their supplements in the morning. Right. And they avoid folic acid. We've got them on great snacks. They're active. They're active kids. What kind of changes have you seen in them? Because I can talk about the changes I've seen in your son, who also had pretty severe add.

Yep.

And adhd. And I think a lot of parents struggle with that because, you know, they. They don't realize that this could be a nutrient deficiency and the presence of nutrients that their little bodies can't process. And they get the call from the school that, hey, little Johnny can't pay attention. He doesn't follow directions, he can't complete assignments, he's disruptive, he's hyperactive, he can't sit still, he's very impulsive. So now we need to bring in the Ritalin to solve this.

And that's. We want to stay as far away as we can from pharmaceutical interventions.

Right.

So, you know, blue light blocking glasses, the folic acid, you know, methylation, you know, directed dietary choices and supplements and all those sorts of things. Our kids, like, maybe for all three of them ever. We've gotten like maybe two or three prescriptions.

Yeah.

Like, we had pink eye in our house the other day about six months ago. We had to go to the pharmacy. Didn't even know how to get a prescription.

Right. Sounds to me like your health insurance.

Our 4 year old walked into the doctor's office. He was terrified because he's, he does never. He doesn't remember ever being there.

Right.

So he's like, where am I?

Yeah, yeah.

Crunchy paper and all that.

And that's another thing. So, you know, ever wonder how elite athletes recover faster and stay energized? It's the science of cold water therapy. Hi, I'm Gary Breca and I want to introduce you to Plunge. Plunge helps to soothe your sore muscles, boost your energy levels, and improve mental clarity. It's a powerful way to support your immune function and enhance your mood. Ready to transform your health. Take the plunge, change your life. Visit plunge.com and shop now. Listen up. Parents that are, that are struggling with children that have ADD or ADHD or OCD or these impulse control disorders. And I'm really, really reluctant to use the term disorder, I really hate mental disorder.

What's their superpower?

Social disorder. It's their superpower.

It will be their superpower one day. We tell our son that, yeah, it's, it feels limiting right now. If he can learn to harness that. You know, all the great entrepreneurs, you know, businessmen that we know, you have ADD tendencies.

Yeah.

Every elite athlete is.

You have to be able to multitask if you're going to have success in life. So this can be a superpower for them. They just don't know how to use it, harness it, channel it in a positive way. And it is so frustrating as a parent. Oh, my gosh.

And to see them suffer and to think that the only way to fix it is to put amphetamines into their body, to race their central nervous system to somehow quiet their mind. But I want to, again, I want to get back to some practical things because, you know, what's exciting about this podcast is, and I talk about this all the time, I want people to leave with practical things that they could do, they could put into work with their. In their daily life that they could try in their house, even if they don't do my test or take, take my supplements. Like simple things. So one of the more impactful things for your kids has been removing the folic acid, eating whole foods, taking supplements that are methylated supplements. And, and recently, because big data, and I'm a huge fan of big data, I talk about this all the time, how we might not have a randomized control, controlled clinical trial that specifically says this is what you have to do. But when you observe large populations of people and you see that in a large population, when an event happens, you see this predictable outcome, that to me is as valid as a, as a clinical trial. And so, like, for example, we've never done a randomized, controlled clinical trial on parachutes, but I sure as hell wouldn't jump out of an airplane without our.

7 year old has a whoop.

Yeah. Oh, that's even cooler.

And we can look at. On a day he goes horseback riding or rides his mountain bike. What is his. His sleep score recovery? Yeah, like all those, like, we can put data to these activities and we can learn so much.

But, but what's really cool is we talked about these red light glasses and each. And you spoke to your optometrist and he said, blue light glasses. Sorry. Yeah, they filter out blue light and, and allow the red. And he said, we don't have a, you know, a clinical trial to prove this, but we've seen that in kids that have ADHD and ADD and have poor sleep patterns, that these blue light glasses, meaning blue light blocking glasses, which allow higher amounts of red light through, are very calming, very centering, and, and improve their sleep. And lo and behold, you ordered a pair of glasses off of Whoops, and you immediately saw his sleep score improve.

Yeah. This is a kid on. I mean, he's seven. I can count on one hand prior to the glasses. And even after supple, his sleep has always been disrupted. So we've seen huge improvements with our work through you guys in his behavior during the day and his ability to control his moods and things like that. But the sleep has always been disrupted. So I can count on one hand the number of times this kid slept through the entire night in his seven years of life.

Yeah.

And you can hear that as a baby.

Yeah.

And he comes.

We might have to cut that one out. Highly inappropriate. This is. It's a family podcast, guys.

But he's so. He's such a light sleeper and he comes. You know, he's just all the things. Wake him up and we put those blue, blue light glasses on him. Blue light blocking glasses.

Yeah.

And that night. So we gave them to him after dinner. He wore them for about two hours and then he went to bed, slept through the night for the first time in probably five or six years. The whole night. And it was one of those things, because if your kid's up, moms will know this.

Yeah.

If your kid is up eight times a night, so is mom.

Yeah.

And so my sleep is also disrupted. So I remember waking up that morning being like, what just happened?

Yeah, I just literally slept eight hours.

Whoa.

Yeah.

You go to check on him, see if he's okay?

Yeah, like, is he all right? And at first we were like, that's just placebo. We told him these glasses had helped him sleep, and lo and behold, they helped him sleep. So we'll keep trying it. Well, it's been about a month now, and he is, I would say, consistently, maybe up once a night or not at all.

That is amazing.

Remarkable change.

And so, you know, what's happening there is.

He's also calmer throughout the day, though.

Yeah, yeah. No, this, this is very real. So your, your son also has a gene mutation called compt C O M T. Remember? And that COMTG mutation is what downregulates a category of neurotransmitters called catecholamines. And these catecholamines are fight or flight neurotransmitters. And you don't have to be in a full blown fight or flight state to be stimulated by catecholamines. And a lot of people don't realize that you can be body calm, but mind awake. And in children, their mind goes straight to worst case scenario. So at night, if their mind wakes up. Right. They're immediately thinking alligator under the bed, burglar in the closet. You know, using the data monster outside the window.

Because he's wearing it every day, all day.

Yeah.

His heart rate would spike to 140 when he woke up in the middle of the night. Yeah. And you know, because of the timestamps on there, we could look and be like, no wonder this kid woke up. Yes, he was scared to death.

Yes.

By something.

We don't know what, but what he was. He wasn't actually scared by something. What he. His body was mimicking fear by a rise in catecholamines. Right. So what happens is when, when these flood the brain, if I could magically inject you with catecholamines, you would begin to have a fight or flight response. And in lower doses, maybe your heart rate's not increasing and your pupils aren't dilating and your hearing's not getting specifically acute and your extremities aren't flooding with blood, but you are in a very heightened waken state, as you can see by his. His heart rate. And there's a lot of paucity or there's a paucity of information out there about this. And I know there's parents listening to this. Right? Now going, oh my gosh, that's my kid. You know, why are they so fearful all the time? Why when his environment or her environment quiets, does their little mind wake up? Why are they up all night? And these are usually the kids that end up in mom and dad's bed by the morning because, you know, you hear the pitter patter, pitter patter, finally give up and finally give up. And you're just like, get in here because I need sleep. And the reason for that is that, you know, these catecholamines that rise, that create this waking state are also fear based neurotransmitters. So they're actually in effect, fearful state. They don't know why they're scared, but they're scared.

Right.

And we would ask them. Yeah, what is it? I don't know.

Yeah.

Worst answer for a parent.

No, it's the worst answer for a parent. And sadly, it's just like trying to have a young child describe what it's like to feel anxiety. Anxiety is a very complex emotion, even if he acts an adult. You know, what is anxiety? Well, it's a, it's a fear of the future, of something that might happen that's. It's probably not gonna happen. And it may have never happened, but I still feel like it's gonna happen.

Right.

Okay, now I need to have you come in. Right, right. But it's, you know, in all of the comments, like, you have nothing to be afraid of. There's nothing for you to worry about. Doesn't help. You cannot reason somebody out of having an anxiety attack or feeling anxiety. Because that feel, that feeling of fear is very real, it's very visceral to them. And even though they can't tell dad what it is, which frustrates especially dads because we like to take the toolbox out and be like, well, let's fix it. You think there's a monster, let's go search the closet. There's not a monster. Go back to bed. It's like we want to, you know, we're like bears, you know, like, we just want it to be simple.

Yeah.

And, but, but the truth is that he has that fear.

Right?

Without the presence of a fear. And so what those glasses do is they actually reduce catecholamines. They bring down the cortisol level, and they actually, at night, they'll raise the melatonin level naturally. They'll help create this balance of light stimulated cortisol and darker stimulated melatonin, and they naturally calm down and they naturally Go into a sleep. And I'll tell you, I mean, beside from, you know, ending the seven miscarriage streak, if we do nothing else for the family, if you start restoring healthy sleep, moms and dads and the kids.

Yeah.

That is a superpower.

Yeah.

Oh, my God. When we bought these things, I'm like, 80 bucks. These things better work. Yeah.

Will Ahmed's a good friend of mine. He's gonna be so happy to hear that they worked. Right.

But like day one and then it continues because it wasn't this placebo effect. And I'm like. And we're all getting stocking these, you know.

Yeah.

Now we need four more pairs in our house. Can you do prescriptions?

Isn't it amazing? Some of the, you know, simple things that we can do to get back to the basics and because if you think about what's happening, you know, some of us can tolerate it and some of us cannot, but we are in very non traditional environments. We regulate our lighting, you know, fluorescent lighting and even some of the lighting that we're under right now, this is the junk food of lighting. Right. And when we put junk food lighting into our bodies, we get a junk food lighting response. Right. We get stimulation. When we should be trying to be calm, we get calm. We should be stimulated.

Right.

We get this sensation of fear when there's no reason to feel fear. And I know a lot of parents are struggling with that. And these, these are kind of simple solutions before you go to pharmacology that have very little downside risk that could have demonstratively beneficial impacts, like what you guys are experiencing.

Yeah. And that's been, you know, just small incremental change. Like a lot of people ask me, like, well, where do I start? You start. Just pick something, do one thing. Have your kid drink more water. You drink more water. Just something simple. Do that for a few days. If you feel capable and able to make another change after a few days, great. If you don't keep just doing the water thing, like, just pick one thing, start somewhere. People ask like, oh my gosh, how'd you lose the weight? Or how did you change your fertility journey? I can't point to one thing. It's been a total journey. I mean, even today, I've learned things that I didn't know before. You have to be in that kind of learning mode, learning every day, little incremental steps, consistent work in a positive direction. And over time, you see massive life changing shifts.

Yeah, but I mean, we are evangelical about this. We traveled from Omaha, Nebraska to Here for this.

I mean, that means a lot to me too, man. I love you guys. We've been on this journey for a long time, and I asked them, I said, would you guys just come on the podcast, the podcast short, and tell your story? And they're like, whatever you need.

We'll be there for anybody who's skeptical. Yeah, look us up. You can find us online.

Right?

Call us up. We'll. I'll send you our gene tests. Yeah, we'll show you. We've got the data from us regular people, you know, and we'll show you pictures of our pantry and our, our AMEX bill, you know, and substantiate, you know, what we're doing here. Because we believe, like, we don't have any formal training, we don't represent you or anybody else, but, like, but we, we believe so much in this, the transformation it can make, and that you can avoid some of that, like mainstream medicine or pharmacological interventions with trips to the grocery store. So somebody's gonna need to get their own personal advice from you.

Right.

But we can share our personal story with them and be a support network.

That's what's inspirational. You know, I think that when we just educate people without inspiring them, they don't make a change. And the whole purpose of the podcast, the whole purpose of the message is to try to give enough education so the people are inspired to make a change. And I love bringing in folks like yourselves because you represent every mom and dad and parent. That's, that's, that's out there, that's got a kid that has some kind of issue, some kind of ADD or ADHD or sleep disruption, we're all a little overweight. None of us have the bodymorphic image that we all really want to have. But when you talk about stripping 90 pounds off your frame, 68 pounds off of your frame, taking the anxiousness and the anxiety out of your kids having a healthy full term pregnancy, you really, it sets a hook that you talked about it in the kitchen before we got on here. You just don't want to go back. Right. And it's not like a daily struggle to keep this up. It would be a daily struggle to go backwards.

Yeah. We've built habits now around this stuff so that the initial changes we made are not hard anymore. But I look at it as, like, pick your hard.

Yeah.

You know, you, you can live a life with a lot of inflammation, and it's really hard at the end. It's gonna be hard.

90 pounds is hard.

90 pounds is hard. Or you can take a year and really work on yourself, on your weight, on your kids. Do it. Do the hard work now so that you can live life later. I mean, it's. To me, it's hard no matter what. It's when it's hard and how it's hard. And to me, we have learned, I think, that the little daily difficulties are a lot easier than the big kind of hard consequences. The big consequence.

We'll have like Cheerios that find their way into our pantry. And I'm like, no. Gary said no. Find their way into our pantry. Going in the junk, you know, or we had to buy new clothes.

Yeah. That's the biggest complaint I got too.

It was fun.

But we're like, do we keep the fat clothes around just in case? No, those gotta go too. This is a one way trip. So.

That's so awesome. Yeah, so that, that's, that's so awesome. So I try to keep these podcast shorts a little shorter than a full length podcast. But as young parents, you know, starting a family, what advice or, or as young parents who have a young family, what advice would you have for them? And just like you said, where, where did you start? If you could pick maybe one thing, where do they start? Should they start with the testing and the supplementation so they start with some of the dietary recommendations? Where, where would you start if you were advising a family that's starting a journey you guys are on, man.

I think the genetic testing and the, the methylation stuff is so attainable. Like there's, there's a, a small upfront cost.

Yeah. And you only do it once in your life.

But your genes are never going to change. So you need that test one time. And now you have all kind of information that can be applied everywhere.

Right.

And I, I think that's the most impactful thing. And that, that's kind of the first hit that. Yeah.

And then I would say the salt water.

Yeah.

Just as a simple thing that everyone can do. I mean, you see every kid's got a water bottle. Right.

Most of these kids are mineral deficient too.

Put just a tiny pinch of salt in there and you know, every day, sports water bottle, get them off the sports drinks and get them on to the salt water. Yeah. For yourself. I mean, I, when we first started the water journey, I'm like, this is so, you know, body weight divided by 2 in ounces. I'm like, this is a ton of water. You know, And I, I would say, like, I was pretty hydrated before I was not and started doing that. And it made an immediate difference.

Well, he didn't have his shoulder injected.

I remember now before we leave the house for an activity, it's like, okay, like line up, we're filling water bottles. We've got a 10 gallon milk can. We take with us places because we're drinking filtered water and it's going to have electrolytes in it. We're not, you know, we're going into a cookie market.

And that's, I would say of all of my, whatever you want to call biohacks, my number one biohack is that Baja Gold Salt. Just because a 15 bag of that will literally last you five years.

Right.

And you can cook with it, you can put a pinch of it in your, in your drinking water. And I think a lot of us are so mineral deficient now and we actually over hydrate. We don't mineralize.

Yes.

And so the hydration even works. Works against us. So I think those are.

And I think when you do the water, the salt water, it makes you more aware of the other things, the other areas in your world that are maybe not as healthy as they should be.

Right.

It kind of for me that was the catalyst of awareness to do the methylation tests and to start filling those deficiencies in. And it was kind of the, it was like the door that opened in came this waterfall of health and wellness that we're still, we're still on that journey. But it, you got to open that door somehow.

I agree. And that's really all that I want to do. I want to, I want to put enough information out there so that people are inspired to start that journey like you guys did. You're further down the journey. There's somebody that's only are then charged.

With making those lifestyle changes for us at home with the food choices and the supplementation. But now we have to teach them to do it on their own eventually. That's the parenting charge.

Yeah, but you said that they're, they're adopting it pretty good. Yeah, I mean they're fully on board. Like your son came home the other day and said we're not normal. Yeah, right. Well, I don't eat like all the other kids.

You know, we told him that Gary wanted to interview normal people and he goes, well, but you're not normal. Yeah, we're not normal.

Yeah, I love.

Way to go, mom.

Yeah, he's not normal because he's not eating all the Funyuns and the, and the Cheetos and what have you. But the point Is I, I think, you know, the, the point that I want to make is that subtle consistent changes over time and you do not have to be. We didn't make you guys raw food vegans overnight. Right. We didn't take all the fun out of your lives. I didn't put you on a really restrictive diet or a hyper restrictive, you know, exercise program. We tested, we found the deficiency, we fixed the deficiency. Then we went to the minor lifestyle changes. You know, what things do we need? What are the no fly zones? Folic acid. We got the folic acid out of the diet. And you know, I tell people too, once you learn to read the labels and you go to the grocery store and you find the foods, the hard work is, is, is right up front. Right. Like learning what labels do I read. But then you're getting the same foods over and over and over again. It's not like you constantly have to do that.

Right, right.

Well, and that was the 1.0. I mean we were, we were faced with so many other challenges in life, Gary, that we were. I'm self employed. So we've got our own like self employed health insurance that cost a fortune. And we're, our health insurance was underwritten through life insurance policy which you know all about.

Right.

And my liver enzymes were off the chart and we couldn't bring them back down even like I looked like an alcoholic even though I don't drink.

Right.

And so I'm like, well, don't have any other solution. Let's ask Gary what he thinks.

Yeah.

Started testing for some food sensitivity. Just eliminated some things that lateral shifts.

Yep.

And that liver enzyme over about six months came down and dropped our health insurance cost by like a grand a month.

I remember when that happened because we started you on glutathione and glutathione is a isn't. It's the main antioxidant in the human body. It's manufactured by the liver. It actually resides inside of every living cell in the human body. Every single cell in our body contains glutathione. When you get low on glutathione, very often it stresses the liver. And I remember we started using, we added 200 milligrams of glutathione daily. And you're right, the liver enzymes came down further and further and further, which ended up being a huge cost savings for you with the.

Yeah.

With the health insurance.

Well, and maybe just feel better.

Right.

Because like I would eat things that my body thought was poisonous even though it's like you know, almonds. Right.

You didn't know because it was healthy.

Right.

For him. Right. And that was. The blood testing was. And the methylation. I mean, all of it, the food sensitivity stuff that we've done, it just illustrates, like, we are all individuals. And there is no cookie. I mean, there are some cookie cutter things, but generally I am very different than Paul and our kids, who are the same. You know, they're half and half, genetically, of the two of us. They're each individuals, too. And narrowing down what your individual needs are or your individual deficiencies are and supplementing those or working on those, improving them.

And how hard has it been with the kids since we took the folic acid out of their diet? They're also on supplements. They're on basic gummies, basic methylation, super simple things. Nutrient nutrients. I mean, they take their supplements in the morning. Right. And they avoid folic acid. We've got them on great snacks. They're active. They're active kids. What kind of changes have you seen in them? Because I can talk about the changes I've seen in your son, who also had pretty severe add.

Yep.

And adhd. And I think a lot of parents struggle with that because, you know, they. They don't realize that this could be a nutrient deficiency and the presence of nutrients that their little bodies can't process. And they get the call from the school that, hey, little Johnny can't pay attention. He doesn't follow directions, he can't complete assignments, he's disruptive, he's hyperactive, he can't sit still, he's very impulsive. So now we need to bring in the Ritalin to solve this.

And that's. We want to stay as far away as we can from pharmaceutical interventions.

Right.

So, you know, blue light blocking glasses, the folic acid, you know, methylation, you know, directed dietary choices, supplements and all those sorts of things. Our kids, like, maybe for all three of them ever. We've gotten like, maybe two or three prescriptions. Yeah. Like, we had pink eye in our house the other day.

Yeah.

About six months ago. We had to go to the pharmacy. I didn't even know how to get a prescription.

Right. Sounds to me like your health insurance.

Walked into the doctor's office. He was terrified because he's. He does never. He doesn't remember ever being there.

Right.

So he's like, where am I? Yeah, the crunchy paper and all that.

And that's another thing. So, you know, ever wonder how elite athletes recover faster and stay energized? It's the science of cold water therapy. Hi, I'm Gary Breca, and I want to introduce you to Plunge. Plunge helps to soothe your sore muscles, boost your energy levels, and improve mental clarity. It's a powerful way to support your immune function and enhance your mood. Ready to transform your health. Take the plunge, change your life. Visit plunge.com and shop now. Listen up. Parents that are, that are struggling with children that have ADD or ADHD or OCD or these impulse control disorders, and I'm really, really reluctant to use the term disorder. I really hate mental disorder.

What's their superpower?

Social disorder. It's their superpower.

It will be their superpower one day. We tell our son that, yeah, it's, it feels limiting right now. If he can learn to harness that. You know, all the great entrepreneurs, you know, businessmen that we know, you have ADD tendencies.

Yeah.

Every elite athlete, you have to be able to.

Watching this right now. That's starting that journey right now and is like, okay, I can buy $5 worth of, you know, Baja Gold salt, and I'll, I'm going to get the money together to do this gene test and I'm going to start supplementing for the sake of deficiency and see what.

Multitask if you're going to have success in life. So this can be a power for them. They just don't know how to use it, harness it, channel it in a positive way. And it is so frustrating as a parent. Oh, my gosh.

And to see them suffer and to think that the only way to fix it is to put amphetamines into their body, to race their central nervous system, to somehow quiet their mind. But I want to, again, I want to get back to some practical things because, you know, what's exciting about this podcast is, and I talk about this all the time, I want people to leave with practical things that they could do, they could put into, to work with their. In their daily life that they could try in their house, even if they don't do my test or take, take my supplements. Like, simple things. So one of the more impactful things for your kids has been removing the folic acid, eating whole foods, taking supplements that are methylated supplements. And, and recently, because big data, and I'm a huge fan of big data, I talk about this all the time how we might not have a randomized control clinical trial that specifically says this is what you have to do. But when you observe large populations of people and you see that in a large population, when an event happens, you see this predictable outcome, that to me is as Valid as a, as a clinical trial. And so, like, for example, we've never done a randomized control clinical trial on parachutes, but I sure as hell wouldn't jump out of an airplane with that.

Our 7 year old has a woocommerce.

Yeah. Oh, that's even cooler.

And we can, we can look at. On a day he goes horseback riding or rides his mountain bike. What is his. His sleep score recovery? Yeah, like all those, like, we can put data to these activities and we can learn so much.

But, but what's really cool is we talked about these red light glasses and each. And you spoke to your optometrist and he said, blue light glasses. Sorry. Yeah, they filter out blue light and, and allow the red. And he said, we don't have a, you know, a clinical trial to prove this.

Right.

But we've seen that in kids that have ADHD and ADD and have poor sleep patterns that these blue light glasses, meaning blue light blocking glasses, which allow higher amounts of red light through, are very calming, very centering and improve their sleep. And lo and behold, you ordered a pair of glasses off of Whoops. And you immediately saw his sleep score improve.

Yeah. I mean, this is a kid on. I mean, he's seven. I can count on one hand prior to the glasses. And even after supple, his sleep has always been disrupted. So we've seen huge improvements with our work through you guys in his, you know, behavior during the day, his ability to control his moods and things like that, but the sleep has always been disrupted. So I can count on one hand the number of times this kid slept through the entire night in his seven years of life.

Yeah.

And you have to hear that as a baby.

Yeah.

And he comes.

We might have to cut that one out. Highly inappropriate. This is. It's a family podcast, guys.

But he's so. He's such a light sleeper and he comes, you know, he's just all the things. Wake him up and we put those blue, blue light glasses on him. Blue light blocking glasses.

Yep.

And that night. So we gave them to him after dinner. He wore them for about two hours. And then he went to bed, slept through the night for the first time in probably five or six years. The whole night. And it was one of those things, because if your kid's up, moms will know this. If your kid is up eight times a night, so is mom. And so my sleep was also disrupted. So I remember waking up that morning being like, what just happened?

Yeah, I just literally slept eight hours.

Whoa.

Yeah, you go to check on him, see if he's okay.

I believe it.

Yeah.

Like, is he all right? And at first we were like, that's just placebo. We told him these glasses had helped him sleep, and lo and behold, they helped him sleep. So we'll keep trying it. Well, it's been about a month now, and he is, I would say consistently, maybe up once a night or not at all.

That is amazing.

Remarkable change.

And so, you know, what's happening there is.

He's also calmer throughout the day though.

Yeah, yeah. No, this, this is very real. So your, your son also has a gene mutation called COMPT C O M T. Remember? And that comtg mutation is what down regulates a category of neurotransmitters called catecholamines. And these catecholamines are fight or flight neurotransmitters. And you don't have to be in a full blown fight or flight state to be stimulated by catecholamines. And a lot of people don't realize that you can be body calm, but mind awake. And in children, their mind goes straight to worst case scenario. So at night, if their mind wakes up up. Right. They're immediately thinking alligator under the bed, burglar in the closet, you know, using the data monster outside the window.

Because he's wearing it every day, all day.

Yeah.

His heart rate would spike to 140 when he woke up in the middle of the night. Yeah. And you know, because the timestamps on there, we could look back, no wonder this kid woke up.

Yes.

He was scared to death.

Yes.

By something. We don't know what, but what he.

Was, he wasn't actually scared by something. What he, his body was, was mimicking fear by rising catecholamines. Right. So what happens is when, when these things flood the brain, if I could magically inject you with catecholamines, you would begin to have a fight or flight response. And in lower doses, maybe your heart rate's not increasing and your pupils aren't dilating and your hearing's not getting specifically acute and your extremities aren't flooding with blood, but you are in a very heightened wakened state, as you can see by his, his heart rate. And there's a lot of paucity or there's a paucity of information out there about this. And I know there's parents listening to this right now going, oh my gosh, that's my kid. You know, why are they so fearful all the time? Why when his environment or her environment quiets does their little mind wake up? Why are they up all night? And these are usually the kids that end up in mom and dad's bed by the morning because, you know, you hear the pitter patter, pitter patter and finally give up, and finally give up. And you're just like, get in here because I need sleep. And the reason for that is that, you know, these catecholamines that rise, that create this wakened state are also fear based neurotransmitters. So they're actually in a fearful state. They don't know why they're scared, but they're scared.

Right.

And we would ask them. Yeah, what is it? I don't know. Yeah. Worst answer for a parent.

No, it's the worst answer for a parent. And sadly, it's just like trying to have a young child describe what it's like to feel anxiety. Anxiety is a very complex emotion. Even if you ask an adult. You know, what is anxiety? Well, it's a fear of the future, of something that might happen that's probably not going to happen. And it may have never happened, but I still feel like it's gonna happen.

Right.

Okay, now I need to have you. Right, right. I mean, but it's, you know, in, in all of the comments, like you have nothing to be afraid of. There's nothing for you to worry about. Doesn't help. You cannot reason somebody out of having an anxiety attack or feeling anxiety because that feel, that feeling of fear is very real, it's very visceral to them. And even though they can't tell dad what it is, which frustrates especially dads because we like to take the toolbox out and be like, like, well, let's fix it. You think there's a monster, let's go search the closet. There's not a monster. Go back to bed. It's like we want to, you know, we're like bears, you know, like we just want it to be simple.

Yeah.

And, but, but the truth is that he has that fear.

Right.

Without the presence of a fear. And so what those glasses do is they actually reduce catecholamines. They bring down the cortisol level and they actually, at night they'll raise the melatonin level naturally. They'll help create this balance of light stimulated cortisol and darker stimulated melatonin and they naturally calm down and they naturally go into a sleep. And I'll tell you, I mean, beside from, you know, ending the seven miscarriage streak, if we do nothing else for the family, if you start restoring healthy sleep. Moms and dads and the kids.

Yeah.

That is a superpower.

Yeah.

Oh, my God. When I, when we bought these things, I'm like 80 bucks. These things had better work. Yeah.

Will Ahmed's a good friend of mine. He's gonna be so happ happy to hear that they worked.

Right. And, but like day one and then it continues because it wasn't this placebo effect. And I'm like, you know, like, yeah, now we need four more pairs in our house. Yeah. Can you do prescriptions?

Isn't it amazing? Some of the, you know, simple things that we can do to get back to the basics and because if you think about what's happening, you know, some of us can tolerate it and some of us cannot, but we are in very non traditional environments. We regulate our lighting, you know, fluorescent lighting and even some of the lighting that we're under right now. This is the junk food of lighting. Right. And when we put junk food lighting into our bodies, we get a junk food lighting response. Right. We get stimulation. When we should be trying to be calm, we get calm. We should be stimulated.

Right.

We get this sensation of fear when there's no reason to feel fear. And I know a lot of parents are struggling with that. And these, these are kind of simple solutions before you go to pharmacology that have very little downside risk, that could have demonstratively beneficial impacts like what you guys are experiencing.

Yeah. And that's been, you know, just small incremental change. Like a lot of people ask me, like, well, where do I start? You start, just pick something, do one thing, have your kid drink more water. You drink more water. Just something simple. Do that for a few days. If you feel capable and able to make another change after a few days, great. If you don't keep just doing the water thing, like, just pick one thing, start somewhere. People ask like, oh my gosh, how'd you lose the weight? Or how did you change your fertility journey? I can't point to one thing. It's been a total journey. I mean, even today, I've learned things that I didn't know before. You have to be in that kind of learning mode, learning every day, little incremental steps, consistent work in a positive direction. And over time you see massive life changing shifts.

Yeah. But I mean, we are evangelical about this. We traveled from Omaha, Nebraska to here for this. Yeah.

And I mean, that means a lot to me too. I mean, I love you guys. We've been on this journey for a long time and I, and I asked him, I said, would you guys just come on the podcast, a podcast short, and tell your story? And they're like, whatever you need, we'll be there.

For anybody who's skeptical, look us up, you can find us online.

Right.

Call us up. I'll send you our gene tests, we'll show you, we've got the data from us regular people, and we'll show you pictures of our pantry and our, our, our AMEX bill, you know, and substantiate, you know, what we're doing here. Because we believe, like, we don't have any formal training, we don't represent you or anybody else, but like, but we, we believe so much in this, the transformation it can make, and that you can avoid some of that, like mainstream medicine or pharmacological interventions with trips to the grocery store. So somebody's gonna need to get their own personal advice from you.

Right.

But we can, can share our personal story with them and be a support network.

That's what's inspirational. You know, I, I think that when we just educate people without inspiring them, they don't make a change. And the whole purpose of the podcast, the whole purpose of the message is to try to give enough education so that people are inspired to make a change. And I love bringing in folks like yourselves because you represent every mom and dad and parent that's, that's, that's out there, that's got a kid that has, has some kind of issue, some kind of ADD or ADHD or sleep disruption. We're all a little overweight. None of us have the body morphic image that we all really want to have. But when you talk about stripping 90 pounds off your frame, 68 pounds off of your frame, taking the anxiousness and the anxiety out of your kids, having a healthy full term pregnancy, you really, it sets a hook that you talked about it in the kitchen before we got on here. You just don't want to go back back. Right. And it's not like a daily struggle to keep this up. It would be a daily struggle to go backwards.

Yeah. We've, we've built habits now around this stuff.

Yeah.

So that the initial changes we made are not hard anymore. But I look at it as like, pick your hard.

Yeah.

You know, you, you can live a life with a lot of inflammation and it's really hard at the end. It's going to be hard.

£90 is hard.

£90 is hard. Or you can then take a year and really work on yourself, on your weight, on your kids. Do the hard Work now so that you can live life later. I mean, it's, to me, it's hard no matter what it's when it's hard and how it's hard. And to me, we have learned, I think that the little daily difficulties are a lot easier than the big kind of hard consequences. The big consequences.

Well, I mean, art suffer. We'll have like Cheerios that find their way into our pantry. And I'm like, no. Gary said no. Find their way into our pantry. Going in the junk, you know, or we had to buy new clothes. Yeah.

That's the biggest complaint I got too.

That was fun.

But we're like, do we keep the fat clothes around just in case? No, those gotta go too. This is a one way trip.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's so awesome.

Yeah, that's so awesome. So I try to keep these podcast shorts a little shorter than a full length podcast.

Best.

But as young parents, you know, starting a family, what advice. Or, or as young parents who have a young family, what advice would you have for them? And just like you said, where, where did you start? If you could pick maybe one thing, where do they start? Should they start with the testing and the supplementation? So they start with some of the dietary recommendations? Where, where would you start if you were advising a family that's starting a journey you guys are on, man.

I think the genetic testing and the, the methylation stuff is so attainable. Like there's, there's a, a small upfront cost.

Yeah. And you only do it once in your life.

But your genes are never going to change. So you need that test one time. And now you have all kind of information that can be applied everywhere.

Right.

And I, I think that's the most impactful thing. And that, that's kind of the first hit that.

Yeah.

And then I would say the saltwater.

Yeah.

Just as a simple thing that everyone can do. I mean, you see every kid's got a water bottle. Right.

Most of these kids are mineral deficient too.

Put just a tiny pinch of salt in there and you know, every day, sports water bottle. Get them off the sports drinks and get them on to the salt water. Yeah. For yourself. I mean, I, when we first started the water journey, I'm like, this is so, you know, body weight divided by 2 in ounces. I'm like, this is a ton of water. You know, and I, I would say, like, I was pretty hydrated before I was not and started doing that and it made an immediate difference.

Well, he didn't have his shoulder injected.

I Remember now, before we leave the house for an activity, it's like, okay, like line up, we're filling water bottles. We've got a 10 gallon milk can that we take with us places because we're drinking filtered water and it's going to have electrolytes in it. We're not, you know, we're going into a cookie market.

And that's, I would say of all of my, whatever you want to call biohacks, my number one biohack is that Baja Gold Salt. Just a $15 bag of that will literally last you five years. And you can cook with it, you can put a pinch of it in your, in your drinking water. And I think a lot of us are so mineral deficient now and we actually over hydrate. We don't mineralize.

Yes.

And so the hydration even works, works against us. So I think those are, and I.

Think when you do the water, the salt water, it makes you more aware of the other things, the other areas in your world that are maybe not as healthy as they should be.

Right.

It kind of, for me that was the catalyst of awareness to do the methylation tests and to start filling those deficiencies in. And it was kind of the, it was like the door that opened in came this waterfall of health and wellness that we're still, we're still on that journey. But it, you got to open that door somehow.

I agree. And that's really all that I want to do. I want to, I want to put enough information out there so that people are inspired to start that journey like you guys did. You're further down the journey and there's somebody that's watching this right now that's starting that journey right now.

Now.

And it's like, okay, I can buy $5 worth of, you know, Baja Gold salt and I'll, I'm going to get the money together to do this gene test and I'm going to start supplementing for the sake of deficiency and see what my body can do. Right.

Well, and it starts with the, the 15 bag of salt from Amazon.

Yeah.

And then it's like, hey, these water bottles, they're only 250 bucks a piece. We'll take two. So it's a slippery slope.

And now he's got a cold plunge. He's got the hundred dollar cold plunge plunge. That's inflatable.

Oh yeah, my Amazon cold plunge filled it up.

But, but I call that my drug of choice. You know, I think that, but if you, you know, if you can't afford a cold punch but now you can actually get the inflatable cold plunges that you just put the ice in.

69 bucks on Amazon.

And it lasts a couple of days, too. That's what people don't realize. Like, I, I, I just stayed at the hotel in New York, at the Peninsula in New York for, for a couple of days. And they filled our tub with ice when we got there, and I filled it with cold water.

Yeah.

For three days. It was, it was ice cold. It didn't, you know, it wasn't like I had to keep, Just add a.

Little more ice tomorrow.

The 69 one comes with a travel case, Gary. If you get off your wallet and buy one, you could take it with.

You and then you just work your way up to a cold plunge when the, when the budget allows. I tell people all the time. And as soon as you get some money, forget the Range Rover, get yourself a cold plunge and red light bed and some of these other modalities.

But, well, you do those simple things and whatever you do for work, the energy you carry with you will earn more income. You'll eventually get to the Range Rover.

Oh, yeah.

It's an investments return.

Yeah.

And I mean, I don't frankly need a bigger house because like we talked before, a bigger house, just a longer walk.

I don't know, you guys keep having kids, you're gonna need a bigger house. We've sped up the fertility train here, so maybe we just need to slow that one down and you won't need a big, bigger house. Bunk beds. Guys, I, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming on and just being vulnerable and sharing your story and, and talking about, you know, how the complexity is in the simplicity and how the simplicity really affected your lives. So I really appreciate you both coming on.

We're honored to be here and so happy to be a part of this journey and so thankful for you. We met Gary at a, at a lunch table and we, I think probably first we talked to you only because your name tag was upside down.

That's right.

And we, you know, Paul said, hey, you know, I, I'm Paul. I'm Gary. Nice. Your name tag's upside down. And that was the catalyst for the conversation that led to all this. And I'm just so thankful for that little upside down name tag.

You and Sage in our lives times.

That's one of those, one of those tipping points. And hopefully this, this podcast is going to be the tipping point for somebody else.

I hope so.

On their journey.

Yeah.

Well, guys, the hickmans are just like every other mom and dad out there that want to have healthy, bright young kids that are calm and not driving them crazy. And they still want to keep their fit physiques, their energy level, their deep sleep, their focus and concentration, just like every other mom and dad and every other entrepreneur out there. And somehow they've been able to pull it all off. So I hope that this inspires you guys on your journey. And as always, that's just science.