Theo Lucier - Actionable Biohacks To Improve Every Aspect Of Your Life
16 Jul 2023 · 119 min
Theo Lucier went from real estate burnout to biohacking after head injuries and chronic stress damaged his memory and mental health. He reversed the damage with neurofeedback, sleep optimization, EMF mitigation, and plant medicines, and shares specific tactics like sleep inclining and blue-light fixes.
Questions this episode answers
July 16, 2023.
theo@burnoutdetox.com.
burnoutsummit.com (Beat Your Burnout).
Text the word COMP to 38470 or visit hustleandflowchart.com/comp.
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Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys Mount Wolf and Joe Fear. Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast.
Welcome back, man.
Welcome back. I like to go from low high.
That was very.
Welcome back.
Sounds like you're going through puberty.
That is just now orange. Yeah. Mm. Don't make fun of people going through puberty.
It's okay.
It's unnatural.
It's a little weird when a 35 year old guy is going through puberty.
Yeah, I'm 35.
6.
I'm decreasing in age 6.
It's all. Well, it's because of Mr. Theo on the show.
Yeah, that's true. He's helping me improve my age.
Anti age. Flipping yo age.
Flip yo age.
Ted slash Theo. So, yeah, you'll hear us reference him as Ted, actually, but Theo, Yeah, Theo's our boy.
So today on the show we have Theo Lucier. And yeah, like Joe said throughout the whole episode, you hear us calling up Ted. It's because we go back with him about 10 years.
Yeah.
And we've always known him as Ted, but now he's. He's sort of rebranding a little bit because he used to be in the real estate space and now he's in the biohacking space. Burnout.
Yeah.
You know, in the real estate space he's known as Ted and in the biohacking space he's known as Theo. So we have Theo on this show, but you will hear him refer to him. You will hear us refer to him as Ted.
It keeps the delineation of the content online much cleaner, which is nice. All right, so Theo is a total badass, as you probably have reckoned from the. Reckoned.
You like that Reckoned way of reckoning.
Reckoning. But if you just look at how long this episode is, and this doesn't mean. Don't listen to this episode. Cause it's longer than probably every single one of our episodes. Listen to this episode. It means it's very good.
Whenever you see a long episode from us, it means it. It was fascinating as hell. And we could not stop talking about whatever it is we were talking about on that episode.
100%. There's no other reason other than that. And not to say that previous ones that are under this mark are not fascinating. But don't be deterred because holy crap. Like Theo, he friggin. He came with. I think he probably came with 20 pages of notes of stuff to give our audience you and us. Because like I got my note here and I wish my sheet of notes, I have two pages front and back. I know you wrote a lot too.
I did, yeah.
And I mean, I don't even know how to say it other than he freaking laid out the gamut of how to prevent burnout in your life as a business owner and anxiety, sleep better, depression and all this stuff. These dependencies potentially that you might have. He gives a lot of these very, very, very, very, very specific things you can do.
I would say that this is probably.
One of, if not the most actionable podcast we've ever had.
I would say it's as far as.
Like the most as far as like after listening to this, things that you can go implement in your life to improve your life today.
Well, I know I'm going to go gather some bricks tonight. Yeah, well, let's go do something about my. No, I'm just going to leave it. That's an open loop.
But I'm going to go gather bricks.
And it's going to help me sleep. Go figure what that's going to do. Yeah, so you'll learn.
We get into Ted's story. Ted was a, you know, he was a realtor who had some massive burnout. He, you know, suffered through depression and anxiety and just a lot of had some really, really rough times. Sort of discovered biohacking and kind of really, really, really went down the rabbit hole of biohacking. Spent tens of thousands of dollars learning about the biohacking stuff and doing experimentation on his own body and just really, really going down that rabbit hole. And now he talks about how he just has tons of energy and he sleeps amazing and he doesn't suffer from a lot of the things he used to suffer from. And he's ultra productive and it's easier to get into flow states and we just talk about how he's done all of that. And this is like part one of a multi part series we're gonna do with him. So this is just scratching the surface, but you're gonna learn how to get better sleep at night.
You're gonna learn how to sort of fight anxiety and depression. You're gonna learn.
Struggling with your memory like, you know, you can't remember what you did yesterday very well. We're gonna talk about how to improve your memory, especially your short term memory. We're gonna talk about how to fight off procrastination. If you're procrastinating a lot. You're gonna learn about all sorts of new supplements and nootropics and eating habits. We're gonna talk about drugs and psychedelics. We're gonna talk about sleep. Yeah, yeah.
Did you say that?
Yeah, that was the first one.
Yeah. Because that was probably my biggest. Aha. Is just so much you can do around your sleep and that control and that can completely change your life. It did for him.
And we're not just talking about, like, there is a lot of scientific stuff that you'll hear, but he was. Theo was very, very, very.
Cognizant of making sure he's giving you tactics that you can go implement today, most of them free things that you could just go do. But then he also talked about a lot of supplements, a lot of sort of tools that you can buy to keep in your house to, you know, sort of minimize the negative effects of all the energy. Yeah, yeah, we'll get into it in the show.
You don't need to read. Yeah, but, like, big words are being thrown around.
I just want to set you up for the amount of sort of actionable things that are going to improve your life from this episode.
Yeah.
So it's. It's super important for. He actually did a summit called the Burnout. Wait, hold on.
Yeah, the Burnout.
Burnout Summit. Yeah. So check it out. There's actually. So the Burnout Summit. I'm just making sure as we beat your burnout. Sorry. Sorry, Theo. So it's Burnout summit dot com. Beat your burnout would be a great way for you to go check out. You could check out some of these. It's like a kind of like a Cliff Notes of some of these topics that he references here. Definitely. Obviously, after listening to this episode, go check that out. It's going to be just an extension of what this episode is and as an entrepreneur, business owner, that you're listening like you're. You're primed to so many more of these anxieties and stressors and things that. Depressive things. Like, I read something recently that entrepreneurs actually display almost all, if not all of the bipolar features that, you know, people that have bipolar entrepreneurs actually have that. And if we're not doing the right things to keep ourselves sane, keep the anxiety low, stress chilled out, I mean, you can really end up like, what Ted, he actually tells about a very vulnerable time. He never talked about this any, but involves a gun. And, like, it's very easy to spiral as an entrepreneur, specifically if you don't make sure you're listening to your body, listening to your brains. Your brains. But yeah, like, really all of them. All of your brains, but just really taking a moment to analyze yourself and not be in such a.
This.
Go, go, go, go, go. Because that's exactly how Theo burnt out and led him almost to a very dark place.
Yeah. I mean, you've heard this is sort of a reoccurring theme lately on our podcast, and I feel like this is some of the most important stuff we could talk about. I mean, the tactics to drive more traffic and to make more sales and, you know, do SEO and YouTube and make better videos, all of that stuff is amazing. But all of that stuff is pointless. If your body is wrecked, if your mind is wrecked, if you can't, you know, get in, you can't focus throughout the day, your memory's not all there. All those other tactics are completely useless if you don't have your yourself under control. So I think some of these episodes are some of the most important episodes that you tune into and the most impactful ones. You know, I know this episode is probably going to have had the biggest impact out of a lot of the episodes we've done recently. Just because there's so many things that I am going to do to improve my life after listening to this.
And that's why it's going to be a recurring. He'll be a recurring guest that he. He's just such a wealth of knowledge. So we're just going to continue to bring him on here until we drain all the knowledge out of his head. But I'm sure I'll keep refilling it with more, so that's not going to stop. But you got to get the notes.
Yes. Get the notes on.
Oh, my gosh.
Get the notes on this.
If you don't get the notes, we're probably like, this thing is going to probably be the most actionable, maybe the longest notes we've ever had.
Just the amount of supplements he mentioned, the amount of tools that you can put in your house, the amount of resources that he told us to go check out. Oh, my gosh, there's just so much.
So go get them notes and get them now. Like, literally hit pause. Go to your browser, go to hustleandflowchart.com c o m p comp hustleandflowchart.com comp.
Or text.
Or you can text the word comp c o m p to 38470. Yeah, so text comp to 38470 or go to hustleandflowchart dot com comp. We're going to ask for your email address, and we're going to send you those notes right to that same email address that you gave us when we asked for them.
I really wish I had the notes right now because as of recording we don't have any notes yet other than my scribbles from the episode. Because I really want to go buy some of these things and do these things like now. Because literally you said if you just implement some of these things within a week even less, you'll feel like a frickin new person. And like all these. Yeah. So sure, get them. All right. All right, let's go to Theo.
Let's go have a chatty slash.
Ted. Yo, yo, yo Ted. How you doing?
What's going on, man?
We have a TED Talk today. This is great.
Our first TED Talk.
First TED Talk.
Yeah.
We're going to get friggin sued for this now, aren't we?
Probably. But Ted's whole life is nothing but TED talks.
He's like, sue me, I dare you.
Yeah, man. Well, we, we go back pretty far. I mean, how long has it been? What do we think from GKIC days here in San Diego?
Oh, gosh. I mean, I started.
Weren't you like the first member or something like that of Henry's group or was even before Henry?
I was before Henry. So that's when Travis Tollestrup ran it. He was the first one to buy a chapter from Dan. And that was back in 2005.
Oh, wow. Yeah, because I think we joined up the GKIC local chapter in 2010, I believe so. You were probably in it for five years before we ever even popped on that scene.
Yeah. You know, and I'll tell you what, one thing about those meetings is. I wish I had taken action on everything a lot faster than I did. But the most powerful thing that I got from those meetings was the power of niches.
When you hear this.
Yeah, because I kept. Every month I would go and it was like drinking from a fire hose. And I get all these really cool marketing things you could do. And then I'd go back to my office, try to implement them. I'd get confused and overwhelmed and I just wouldn't do anything. But the one thing that was repeated over and over and over again in those meetings was you have to niche. You got to niche down. And at the time I was running a generalized real estate business, which means I was everything to everyone, which means that I didn't stand for anything. And I couldn't polarize anybody towards me. I was kind of competing at the bottom. And as soon as I Took that business and I niched it down to very specific psychographic niche as well as a very specific type of property. My business completely blew up. I mean, it went crazy.
Dude, that's crazy. And then I know you just refined things from that point on. I don't know how many. I mean, we all kind of have actually. It's like every apply to the entrepreneur.
I mean, some of that advice is some of the advice that I look back and when I was hearing it for the first time, I was thinking in my head like, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is the cliche stuff. This is the stuff you hear constantly. And I was kind of brushing it off. And then in retrospect, it was all this sort of cliche stuff. All this stuff that you heard over and over and over again. Like you got to divine your avatar. You got to like really know your usp. You got to niche down like all this stuff that you kind of constantly heard but you almost kind of took for granted. That's the stuff that all, once we once it sort of solidified in our brains, had the biggest impact. And you know, the niching thing is huge. And that's something that I feel like we only sort of came into our own with that kind of thing within the last three years.
Yeah, yeah. It's super basic stuff, but unless you. I mean, it's great to hear something and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that. I've read that in a dozen books, but unless you aggressively implement it, it doesn't matter.
Yeah, yeah. And I think, yeah, applying it in a very specific way, because I do remember those days, Matt, you and I almost would brush off some of these things. We're like, ah, another boring avatar exercise or defining our niche. And yeah, in retrospect, that makes up everything we do every single day.
Well, yeah, because once I knew, I mean, the real estate, the service side of real estate is extraordinarily competitive because the barrier for entry is very low and the cost is very low to get into it. And you have to define your audience and who you're talking to in order to kind of find these people and where they hang out at. Because technically anyone can be a client or a customer. And then you also have to stand for something specific. Like you have to draw your line in the sand and say, hey, I stand for this. And you're gonna repel a ton of people, but you'll attract the right kind of people. And for me, that ended up being. This is gonna sound crazy. This is how specific I got electrical engineers typically Also with a law degree, so they're patent attorneys that were 45 to 62 years old that were interested in buying their first, second, or third multifam building, that didn't want to do any of their own maintenance or management.
It's pretty specific.
I love that. Because just think about how much clarity that brought you back in the day rather than chasing all the deals or all the clients out there.
Yeah, well, just think about the sales messaging. It's like you are now talking to a very, very specific avatar, and it just makes selling so much easier when you only have to dial in your messaging to this one sort of ideal Persona.
So much easier, man. And it's like, that's. I'm so glad that I came from a face to face and phone sales background, because that's like a laboratory for figuring out what works really quickly. And you could. You could change your message, like, very quickly and, you know, meet people and kind of watch their face and see how they react to things that you said. And with these guys, you know, nobody wants to work with engineers. They're considered very difficult next to impossible clients in the field. And the thing is, is both my brothers are engineers, and I know what those guys need. It's information and a lot of it. And you absolutely cannot bullshit them at all. Like, you have to be relentlessly honest to the point where it's almost a detriment to you. And then they. Then you have them forever. I mean, I had a extraordinarily strong referral business because of that.
Mm. Makes sense. If you're talking their language, it's just a trust factor. And they're just gonna refer you around like crazy to all their engineer buddies, because they're all buddies. No one else can understand them.
Yeah, exactly.
That's smart, dude.
Well, let's get into your story a little bit. What are some, like, you know, one of the things we're trying to do with this show, and we're kind of. We're kind of pivoting the format a little bit. We want to get some elements of your backstory, but we kind of want the, like, the sort of big moments, the pivotal moments in your story that, like, this was a moment where I changed directions. Here was a moment again where I changed directions. Here. Here was an aha. That I had. Like, we kind of want to focus in on the pivotal moments of your. Your career trajectory. So what are. What are some of the big. You know, give us a little bit of the background and some of the pivotal moments that got you to these insights that you're having today and the people and the things that you're working on today.
Dude, I got this. This is great. So I grew up on a farm in rural Minnesota. The original one. I lived on hundred acres. The driveway was dirt. It was over a mile long. No tv, no neighbors.
A lot of the utilities were off grid.
And just isolation. Dude, I'm like.
I was gonna say it kind of sounds awesome, but at the same time, I might lose my mind.
Well, you strike me as someone who enjoys surfing as well. I may be totally wrong, but really, Matt, really, you know, you just strike me as a surfer type vibe, so I do. I don't know how you were surfing on the farm.
Yeah, that's actually a good question. We'll get into that. So, you know, rural Minnesota. But, you know, deep down I just. I was like, I gotta get out of here, man. I mean, the only reason somebody lives there is because you're born there. And it's. It's ferociously, you know, cold in the winter. We had times where it was over 40 below standing temperature at the 117 blow wind chill.
That's possible, huh?
Yeah, it is. Yeah. And my vehicle out of that life was a sport called Olympic Taekwondo. So there's two martial arts in the Olympics. There's judo, which everybody knows because Ronda Rousey got a bronze medal in the Olympics for judo before she went into mma. And there's taekwondo, which is a striking one. And I got into it when I was in junior high and I got pretty good at it. Kind of ran with it, and I was offered a partial scholarship for that at a university that had a really good program. And so I went and did that. And I was in university for.
Five years because I was in a sport takes a little longer to finish. And.
Part of that, I went to university in Australia and I just loved it. I loved the beach, loved the whole thing. And I was like, all right, when I moved back to the States, what's the closest thing that I can get to Australia? Well, that ends up being San Diego. So moved here, but I had a useless degree. It was a liberal arts degree. And no one's going to hire you for that. Especially in a competitive job market. A lot of people who are young and don't know anything, I was like, oh, I'll go do real estate, because that's where the money's at. And I did just normal human real estate, just like as a normal real estate agent. And that was good in the one sense because it was like a laboratory to learn how to sell. So I would go to Zig Ziglar seminars and Tom Hopkins seminars, and I would read books on how to sell and how to close and kind of learn that, because I had no experience doing that at all. And I did that for a number of years until the real estate crash in 2008. And then in 2010, with a business partner, I launched a new business, which is the niched one that we were talking about, where I switched over to multifamily in a very specific niche. And we were vertically integrated, so we were the broker, we were the property management company, we were the contractor, because we would remodel these entire buildings from the inside out. And we also had a management. Sorry, a maintenance division. So instead of getting paid once, where you just get a commission, you move on, we got paid four times. So you get the commission, the remodel, and then you get the evergreen, which is a word I know you guys like with the management and the maintenance and kind of the, you know, moving on from that. That business just exploded, man. I mean, it. Because real estate was dirt cheap by California standards. You could sell a building and cash flow like crazy, which, you know, only happens about every 20 years here when the. When the market cycles.
Right.
And, you know, that is ultimately what caused a pretty spectacular flame out with. With burnout. Was. Was that company.
So what was the source? Because I know it's like a huge pivotal part of your story is the burnout factor. Obviously, with Taekwondo. I know you told us you have a lot of head injuries and just getting smacked around a lot. I'm sure surfing kind of did that a little bit, but in a gentler way.
Yeah. So here's the thing, and I'll explain this in a second kind of what my backstory was, but for anyone out there that's had a head injury, they're not well understood. But what is now known is that there's gray matter and white matter. And so the gray matter is like your neurons. Those are relatively unharmed by an impact event. But the white matter is like fiber optic cables, and they're delicate, and they carry all the bandwidth or the communication between the gray matter, and they break and they essentially don't heal. They kind of do, but they don't. And your brain can route around the damage really efficiently. The problem is, when you're exposed to large amounts of stress, your bandwidth goes down even more because cortisol is very inflammatory to your brain. And it specifically works on your left prefrontal cortex, which is learning and memory. So that's when you're really stressed and you can't remember someone's name or words on the tip of your tongue. That's the cortisol acting in your prefrontal cortex. So your entire bandwidth goes down and you can get overwhelmed very easily. That's what's actually going on. So you can have a lot of head injuries, but if you're not stressed out, it's more or less fine. Your brain just routes around the damage. But when you're exposed to large amounts of cortisol, it's game over, man. I mean, you're going to be maxed out and overwhelmed and dealing with the sense of overwhelm kind of all the time. So in my case, Taekwondo allows knockouts. That's the goal, is to knock the other guy out. And it's done by kicking. You can't punch him in the head, but you can kick him in the head, which obviously there's a lot of force there. So I've had dozens of concussions, but I've had two pretty bad ones where, you know, I didn't fall over and I wasn't unconscious. Like, I still completed both fights, but like I had total amnesia for over 12 hours. Which means you basically, you're in a fight and you're like, oh man, this guy really just hit me in the head pretty hard. And then you wake up like 12 hours later, you're in different clothes, that it's dark out because it's night, you're in a different location and you're like really confused. So that means there's essentially your short term memories are so scrambled by the electrical storm going on in your brain that they can't be encoded for long term memories. And that's what actually causes that amnesia. And so when I was scaling that company up and things were getting crazy and we were just bursting at the seams with new business constantly and doing remodels and management and maintenance and dealing with new clients and. And all that. My bandwidth was reduced to basically zero. And I had what people call a brittle brain. And I'm sure some of your listeners have probably experienced some of that because that can be road rage, getting overwhelmed, frustrated really easily, stuff like that.
Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's interesting. I was actually. Joe Rogan actually had Malcolm Gladwell on his podcast recently, and they actually went into a discussion about what happens when you're blackout drunk. And essentially the way Malcolm Gladwell explained it is when you're drinking, eventually your Brain, it actually shuts down your prefrontal cortex when there's too much alcohol in your bloodstream. It just says, fuck this, I'm out. And it shuts off the prefrontal cortex and that's why you actually get blackout drunk, is for whatever reason your brain decides, I don't know what the function is of this, but it's. It actively shuts off your prefrontal cortex after so much alcohol. And that's why you wake up and can't remember what you did last night.
Yep. Yeah. And your prefrontal cortex is crucial if you're in business because it's organization, it's memory, and it's learning. So. And cortisol is actually, it's clinically proven. This has been studied in double blind, placebo, controlled, randomized studies. It actually physically shrinks your prefrontal cortex. Like chronic exposure to cortisol actually shrinks it. So.
I was driving around with like a walnut sized prefrontal cortex.
Think about like the. Well, like entrepreneurs as a whole, like how much stress that we put ourselves under. Slash just the environment that we're in.
Totally self induced too.
Yeah. So. And I remember, Ted, when you were talking, I forget what the term was. There was a book or someone you, you had on that was talking about. I think it was cortisol, the prefrontal cortex. And it's kind of like just being amped up all the time. I know Mike Dillard was on the show here and we talked about that.
Yeah, with Mike, he was having essentially just like adrenal adrenaline and cortisol just constantly being dumped into his body. It just never stopped.
Yeah, that actually happened to a friend of a mutual friend of ours. You guys know Brad Brinkman, right?
Oh, yeah, of course.
He had a similar thing where he felt a click in his brain, which. Which nobody really knows a lot about. But the theory is, is that it's actually a physical breach in the blood brain barrier and whatever the trigger was. So for Mike, it was mold in his residence. For Brad it was. He was having an allergic reaction to someone's pets in a home and it causes a breach and then it just gets turned on to permanent fight or flight mode and you can't turn it off.
And for Brad, that ended up in a whole host of physical problems, including Crohn's disease, basically. So what a lot of people don't know is super important for entrepreneurs to know. Because your energy, your brain is everything. It's you, it's your business, and your gut lining is made out of the same material that your blood brain barrier is made out of. So if you have a leaky gut or a permeable gut, you're going to have a permeable brain, too. And so different toxins, like, for instance, the bacteria that lives in your mouth when you floss. And you dislodge that biofilm that crosses through your mucous membranes, and it'll go straight into your brain. If you have a compromised blood brain barrier. And that's. That is a hidden source of brain fog a lot of people don't know about.
Wow. So. So a minute ago you mentioned that, like, your prefrontal cortex physically shrunk. It actually got smaller. So if that happens to somebody, is it possible to repair it or is that damage irreversible?
Yeah, I had a brain scan, man, that a clinician kind of chuckled and was like, I basically can't believe you're standing here because your left prefrontal cortex is dark.
How are you remembering anything? I was like, well, I carry a notebook around, except I often leave the notebook somewhere and I'll walk out and just forget it and I'll have to drive back and get it. I mean, I used to pay for groceries and leave the bags of groceries on the checkout stand, go get my car and drive away.
Whoa.
That's crazy.
Wow. So it's.
Man, you got to start carrying a tattoo gun around with you. Like momentum. Start tattooing stuff on your hand.
Yeah, it was like, momento. I actually, I used to do that. I would write with a sharpie on the back of my hand.
That makes sense, man. I mean, it's all these things that we're taking for granted and. And it just goes lights out. Like, literally lights out.
Yeah. I mean, so I'll talk about how I reverse it. But the important thing for people listening, if you might be struggling with some of the symptoms of chronic stress or burnout, is you need to take the steps to deal with it right now. You can't wait until it becomes a problem, because if I didn't have the money and the time to fix this, I don't know that I would have made it back because I had a significant problem with burnout and chronic stress. And what happens is that your brain becomes inflamed. Like, cortisol is inflammatory. So small amounts of cortisol are anti inflammatory. That's what it's there for. You get a fight or flight response and it releases these spurts of cortisol. It also has an anti inflammatory effect because that's what it was originally designed for. However, chronic long term exposure of cortisol is pro inflammatory and it releases something called inflammatory cytokines and that includes in your brain. And so it's now known that brain inflammation is a leading cause of depression. So it's basically the presence of excessive free radicals and oxidant species. It triggers your microglial cells in your brain to release these pro inflammatory cytokines which lead to depressive symptoms. And this wasn't known until pretty much like the last 10 years. So, you know, for people that are beating themselves up for not having willpower, for feeling depressed, for feeling pessimistic, you need to know that you can't think your way out of it. And it's not a lack of willpower that is causing this problem for you. It's actually something physical going on in your body that has a physical solution. So I used to beat myself up about this because it's like, shit. I used to be the most positive guy ever. I mean, you guys remember me back in.
Happy Smile. I was doing the warrior diet. I'd have like eight pieces of that naked pizza.
Yeah. I mean now you're just a total jerk. We don't want to be around you.
Yeah. But I turned into this pessimistic, depressed, road ragey, lack of memory, aging well beyond my years guy.
Yeah.
And I was like, this is not right. And I kept trying to think my way out of it and I couldn't. I just like the physical architecture for me to do that wasn't there. So if you do have chronic long term cortisol exposure and you're worried about your prefrontal cortex and some of the other things that can be harmful to your brain from stress exposure, it's totally reversible. And there's a lot of different ways to do that. The first thing that I did was something called neural feedback. Have you guys heard of that?
I've heard of it. And Matt.
Yeah, yeah, I've heard about it. I think when we had Mike Dillard on, he might have touched on it a little bit.
A little bit. I know that was a big part of his recovery.
Yeah.
Before we actually shift into the sort of things that you can do, I'm curious.
Was there any sort of catalyst for you? Because I know we mentioned Mike Dillard. It was like a mold issue with Brad Brinkman. It was a issue with pets. Yeah. Like a pet allergy. Was there some sort of catalyst or some sort of moment where you realize like, oh shit, this is, this is messed up. Like something's not right.
Like, where was that?
When did that happen?
I had a couple of them, man. So unlike those guys, like I didn't have a specific trigger. So mine was kind of like, you know how they talk about the frog and you put it in a, a cold pot of water and then it doesn't get out when you turn the heat up to get boiling because it happens slow. So mine was like that. It kind of happened slowly over time. But there were two incidents where I was like, okay, I need to fix this because this is getting desperate. So, you know, the memory and stuff I used to chalk off to the head injuries. And I was told by traditional allopathic medicine that there was no, no fix for it, which is not true. And so I would just write that off. But for me, because my sleep was so messed up and I was so stressed out. And I had been working years of 10 to 12 hour days, which was normal six to seven days a week. And I was definitely on call seven days a week, year round because I was completely responsible for the business. The buck stopped with me and it was a service business. And I started drinking at night to relax. And that started at like nine, if I was still at the office. And then it became eight and then six and then, well, it's five o' clock and then four and then after a few years, I remember I came into the office one time and I had a drink at 10am and I felt awesome. I was like, I made this pint glass gin and tonic. I took that thing down. I ripped through probably a dozen emails. I felt great. And I was like, this is a problem. I shouldn't feel good from this. Why do I feel good from this? This is a toxin. And looped in with using alcohol to relax, it was. I couldn't wake up in the morning and I felt terrible. So I was using huge amounts of caffeine and energy drinks and stimulants. And then I couldn't fall asleep because my body was so stimulated. So then I'd have more alcohol and became this self reinforcing feedback loop. And the thing about alcohol is is that it increases a brainwave called theta. And theta is like a form of relaxed.
It's basically, it's like relaxed analysis is the best way to describe it. And in small amounts it actually works really well. It's just, you can take it way too far.
Yeah. Like I know there's brainwave apps, like there's a theta brainwave setting for instance.
Yeah, yeah. So theta. So it's like 73% of famous writers were alcoholics. And that's a reason. It actually is really good for the type of brainwaves you need for writing. Kind of like a relaxed analysis. And so I knew the drinking was. I was like, this is not right. But then, man, there was one morning. It's kind of personal, but, you know, I'll share it anyway. I've never, never shared it publicly, but, you know, I was home by myself. I lived in this three bedroom by myself. And I woke up one morning and I just thought of all the work I had in front of me. And it was a huge amount of work, and there was no end to it. It just went on into the future basically forever. And I felt trapped by this business, and I was by myself. And I woke up feeling just shitty, just tired. I would wake up tired every day, and I just felt so bad. And I come from rural Minnesota. It's like in that part of the country, there's no politics attached to it. It's just what you have. But what you have is guns, right? And so I looked over at my gun safe and I was like, shit, man, you know, how hard would it be just to grab that 9 millimeter, pop around in and you know, just do it. And, you know, I hit the buttons on it, took it out, put it in my lap, looked at it for a while, and then I just like, I put it away, I locked it in the safe, and I literally started laughing. I was like, what the hell are you doing, man? Like, are you kidding me? And I was like, oh. I just wanted to see what it felt like. I was like, okay, no, this is ridiculous. So it was that moment where I was like, I'm out. I have enough resources. Like, I'm shutting down that business and I'm walking away from it. I don't care what the cost is. And I'm going full tilt into fixing this problem.
Dude, it's so cool that you. Thank you for sharing that. I think that's extremely powerful and it's awesome that you.
Do. You know what stopped you from going forward with that, like, gun literally right there? It seems, obviously you're extremely smart, you have all the support, you have all this stuff, but you still had this, like, brain fog. A lot of brain stuff happening, and then this amounting work. And obviously it's kind of self imposed. But do you know what the thing was that said, like, no, fuck this, I got to improve?
Yeah, it's a good question. There's nothing worse than losing your sense of self. And I had lost my sense of self. I went from a positive go, lucky guy that was so excited to live in San Diego to, you know, and I was making good money, man. Anybody should be happy with that. And instead, I was. I was just a shell. I was just. Just a shell of myself. And I think, you know, what. What stopped it was, if I really think about this, it's, you know, there's people in your life. I didn't want to. I didn't want to do it, do that to my mom. But just internally, I just knew it was fixable. I just had a sense that this was fixable. And.
That was that, like, the same. The same, you know, impetus that I had when I was younger that, you know, made a kid from rural Minnesota, you know, take Olympic style taekwondo as far as he could take it on a national level.
Somebody who would start a business in one of the most competitive niches there is in Southern California. It was that, you know, it was like, all right, dude. Like, I know this is fixable.
That's cool. Yeah, that's. I mean, that's because you had that amazing perspective where, I mean, I think, you know, my dad killed himself recently.
Yeah.
And, I mean, I think it was a 9 millimeter, too. And it's just like, I could see where that is. I mean, that is huge. And for any entrepreneur or anybody listening is to see the flip side. And like you said, not only the people around, but the fact that pretty much everything's fixable in some format.
Yeah. I think as an entrepreneur or business owner, like, ultimately, you know, it's fixable. Like, whatever the problem is, you know, it's fixable. And in my. Both businesses, I've had, like, of course, you get tons of problems, and I've had some really bad ones, but ultimately, they were always fixable. Right. And, you know, for. I just knew it was flexible, but it was literally that day, man, like, I quit that day. I went to my business partner, I said, look, man, I'm out, and I don't care. Whatever you want to do with my side of the business, I don't give a shit.
Good for you.
Well, if episodes like this and people hearing your story could prevent more of that kind of stuff from happening, I think we're doing a good job with the message here.
The important thing. Yeah. Is I think especially particularly for men, is that, you know, guys often feel more alone. So I think the male suicide rate is like 67% or something in North America. It's really high. It's much higher than the female one. And it's like, I think more people are kind of talking about this now because particularly as entrepreneurs, you can feel very alone. And the other thing to keep in mind is that, you know, when you have an inflamed brain, when you're dealing with large amounts of cortisol.
That'S even more isolating. And you need to know you're not necessarily going to be able to think your way out of that. Like it's a physical problem with a physical solution.
Yeah.
So, yeah, there's a lot of directions I want to go with this.
Well, thinking you're thinking. I want to make the point. Trying to think your way out of it can make you feel worse because you'll read a self help book and you might feel better for like 10 minutes and then you feel like shit again. And then you're like, well, it's obviously my fault because I take responsibility and personal accountability for things in my life and I don't have the willpower. So then you blame yourself for that.
Well, I think what I'm looking forward to most out of this episode is actually giving people actual tactics, actual things that they could go do to help them get beyond this.
Oh, I got that down. Yeah. Before we do that year and a half, I invest about $56,000 and I threw every therapy in the biohacking world, alternative health world, if you want to call it that, at it. And not only did I reverse all of that, I came back better, which from a performance aspect, if you want to optimize your brain so you can, I mean you can literally dollarize that if you wake up with more energy and you have more willpower to get out that many more marketing pieces a day, you're ahead of the game.
Yeah. So before we jump into the mechanisms, which I'm like super pumped on, I know Joe is too. I know you're excited to talk about them too. What are some of the, like the warning signs? What are some of the things that you know, if you're experiencing this right now, then this is kind of for you. You should be listening to this because I feel like most entrepreneurs are probably going to relate to at least some aspect of this. I know some of the stuff you've already talked about. I, I've related to heavily, like, you know, the idea of we'll make more and more money and we live great lifestyles and we kind of have everything that 10 years ago we would have killed to have today. And even having all this stuff, a lot of times we still feel like we're aimless, like I don't know what my next move is.
And I, you know, or alone in things. Shit, I feel that way all the time, you know, in certain things. Even though I have a partner and a great wife and family and all that stuff. But we're all dealing with these little struggles.
Yeah.
So I mean, what are some of.
The like things that people like that are some warning signs that like, you know, here's some things that you know, maybe you're experiencing, but this is fixable.
I got it. Yeah. So the signs. I'm just going to go through a list here, actually have it ready. So no zest for the joys life has to offer. Road rage, loss of interest in social life, decreased productivity, loss of sense of self.
Irrational irritability. Big one. Poor digestion because you're in fight or flight mode and your body will shunt blood away from your non essential functions like digestion, relationship issues, I mean interpersonal issues in your work, loss of interest in your job, Suicidal thoughts, loss of sex drive, pessimism, gut bloating, lulls in energy, brain fog, massive one, lower back pain, autoimmune disorders, extreme procrastination, loss of drive, signs of premature aging, depression, poor quality sleep, probably one of the largest ones. And just kind of a general mental and physical exhaustion. Just kind of a sense of that.
Cool. All right.
I already relate to about. I mean there was four or five on there that I really relate to. Like the, the irrational irritability, that's me every once in a while. But there's some times where like I'll get triggered by something and then 20 minutes later I'll be like, why the hell did that upset me? Like it's something that doesn't even like I'll see like one of my friends do something on social media and I'll be like, that's really stupid. Why is he doing that? And then I'll get like pissed off that somebody else did something that had zero effect on me or my life at all. And I. And then like 20 minutes later I'll come back to normal and be like, why was I upset about that? Like, what was that about? You know, so that I've had sleep issues for a long time. I actually still to this day use THC to help me go to sleep at night. You know, I've got, in the morning sometimes I have an issue procrastinating. You know, I'll get out of bed and I kind of don't really want once I get into the flow. I'm good, but I usually have a hard time getting into the flow first thing in the morning. So a lot of what you just said related to me, so that's why. Same kind of pumped to get into this.
Yeah, I would. So the big five from that list would be anxiety, depression, sleep disturbance, fatigue, and then kind of generalized pain and illness. And if you guys want to get into sleep, like, I know it's a popular topic and there's a lot of stuff that's been kind of cut and pasted online, but I can guarantee you I have better information on sleep than most people out there.
I would absolutely love to talk about that.
Yeah. I mean, this episode may be a little bit longer than normal episodes, but, like, if we can get. Get as much help for as many people listening as possible, I think.
Yeah, let's give people some tools, man. I mean, that's. That. That was kind of my goal for this episode. But you know, what else do you guys want to. Want to jump on while we're talking about this?
Well, let's. I think sleep is great. So, of course, you know, we just addressed the common issues and I relate to a ton of them too. I want to see that list. I mean, we have a note taker taking notes on all of this. So anyone listening, I know you rattled them off quick, but we'll have them all list it out.
Yeah, I mean, if you want to send us that list too, we can. You can make sure that's in our notes.
Yeah, for sure. So, you know, let's talk about some of these things that. Some common. Maybe let's start with the things that we can control like now without having to really. Maybe it's spend a ton of money or go places, but like, what can we do in our daily lives now? Sleep being a huge one. And then we can get into things, like stuff.
Yeah. Do you want to start with sleep and then branch out from there?
Let's do it.
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. Because sleep. Sleep is everything. Sleep. Sleep is the best medicine. Okay, so.
Let'S just start. Let's just start with free and we'll go. We'll go from there. So have you guys heard of Gravity Inclined sleeping?
I've heard of it. I don't know what it is.
I mean, I can kind of guess by the name what it is, but I don't. I mean, I don't know anything about it.
This is going to blow your mind, man. And. And I don't know why more people don't do it, because it's literally, it's free or dang close to free, and it makes a huge difference, especially for entrepreneurs. So when you're using your brain a lot during the day, you actually produce these metabolic byproducts from thinking hard. And they're a toxin and they're cleared out from your brain. But that's only done at night. And this is done through a completely separate system in your body called the glymphatic system, and it's in your brain. It was only discovered sometime in the mid 2000s. And the way that they found that is they're doing these sleep studies and they would see that people's brains would physically shrink during the night and then they would plump up again. And what that does is it was acting as a pump to kind of pump all the fluid out through the glymphatic system, which then hooks up to your lymphatic system and kind of drains that out and detoxes your brain. In addition to that, when you look at animals, whether they're livestock or wild animals, given the choice, they will always sleep with their head uphill. And the reason why is because it helps their glymphatic system drain while they're sleeping. Except. And traditionally, humans would always kind of sleep on these uneven surfaces, always with their head uphill. Until recently, everyone sleeps on a flat bed, right? So.
If you incline your bed about 4 to 6 inches, depending, like you literally not just the head end, but you literally go to the legs at the head end of your bed, and you tilt the entire bed four to six inches, you'll sleep super hard and you'll wake up with a lot more energy and a lot more refresh because you're draining your glymphatic system that much more effectively.
That's fascinating.
I've definitely never heard of that.
So that's, that's one you can do. So if people want to, I mean, if you have people listening where they're like, yeah, I don't want to go to my yard and get a couple of bricks like I did. There's a company called Samina S A M I N A. They're from Austria, and they actually design this into their beds. So you can, you can do it completely flat, you can tilt it up to 6 degrees.
And you can just buy it and you're good to go.
So it needs to be like the whole bed though, not like one of the sleep number things where you could sort of like pivot your back up a little bit.
No, it has to be the whole bed. That way it effectively drains in your lymphatic system.
Makes sense all the way through.
Yep.
That's like a super easy. And you know, for people that want to test it, give it at least a week. It might feel weird the first two nights after that, like you're not going to want to go back. And that's called gravity inclined sleeping. For someone that wants to jump online and do a little bit more research.
Seems like it would be effective. If you use silk sheets, you just like slide off.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Find yourself on the floor in the morning.
Yeah, this one's a game changer, man. It's really good. So, and then people ask me about sleep all the time from my list and it's like a lot of people just don't want to do the basics. I'm going to give some people some resources so they can actually execute on the basics. Because most people will have probably heard of this already. So you have to eliminate blue light two hours before you go to sleep. So the deal with this, the deal blue light is this. If you're exposed to it, your eyes and in your skin, it suppresses melatonin. Why do you want melatonin? Well, melatonin is your brain's master antioxidant. So if you have cortisol all day, melatonin is what goes into your brain at night. Not only does it help you sleep, but it's a very powerful antioxidant for your brain. Super important. The problem is if you're exposed to blue light, even less than a second's worth, it suppresses your melatonin production for two hours. So you know, if you throw on a nightlight, you know to go pee at night and it's midnight, you're not going to be producing melatonin again until 2am so you have two options. You're either going to get blue light blocking glasses or you're going to replace the lights in your house, or at least some of the lights in your house with special type of light bulb that doesn't emit blue light. So what I usually recommend, I don't have any financial affiliation with these companies at all. TrueDark has very good technology for their blue light blocking glasses, specifically what they call the twilights because they block not only blue light, but also violet and green, which also suppress melatonin. They're hideous. They're like birth control for your face.
If you're serious about it, you just gotta do it, man. Man. Just throw them on two hours before you Go to bed, you're gonna start pumping out melatonin, you're gonna jump in your tilted bed, and you're gonna wake up and you're gonna feel superhuman.
So even if you're someone who maybe before going to bed, you like to watch a little bit of TV or something in the hour before bed, you could still do that if you're wearing these glasses.
Exactly. Yeah. It's gonna look weird, but just get over it, man. I mean, do you want more energy for your day so you can create an awesome life, or do you want to be blasted with blue light because you're, you know, watching God knows what on tv?
So now, is there any benefit to blocking the blue light throughout the day? Because, I mean, you see guys like Dave Asprey and, you know, our buddy Mike Koenigs, Like, a lot of these guys, they wear the sort of glasses that have that yellow shade over them, but they just wear them all the time. Is there any benefit to that?
It depends. I mean, I have six pairs. Like, I've tried literally every company's almost.
It depends. So for a harsh internal blue light environment, like. So I have a three screen set up at my office. Yeah. I will often wear, like a 40% blue light blocking glass. So that kind of the problem with overexposure to blue light during the day is that's very excitatory to your brain. So what that means is it revs up cellular metabolism and it REVs up their ATP cycle, and it makes you kind of cracky and kind of wiry and then ultimately kind of tired. And so you don't want to do that. You kind of want to have smooth energy. So if you're in a harsh indoor blue light environment, I'd recommend a pair of the kind of amber ones that don't block 100% of it, otherwise you get too tired. But outside of that, I don't think it's a huge thing.
Got it. Cool. Okay. And now lights around the house. What do you recommend?
Yeah, so this website is straight from 1994. You guys just gotta get past that.
It means that they're good at making light bulbs, not fucking around with their website.
Well, it's a really cool story. These guys were engineers. They're lighting engineers for ge, and they found out that blue light past a certain level is classified as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization. They got concerned about it, and they created this technology for light bulbs that didn't produce blue light. And they brought the idea to ge. And you wouldn't have it. They said, yeah, we're not going to sell enough of these. So they left GE and created their own company, and that company is called lowbluelights.com.
And just people that jump on there just get past the way the site looks. These light bulbs are awesome. And they also have nightlights. So for people that don't want to go all in, like I did, like, my entire house has these light bulbs. And so once the sun sets inside the house, it's. There's no blue light. And so people come over there, they get really tired, they complain. I'm like, yeah, you're supposed to go to bed at this time. I mean, this is. This is fine.
But, you know, for people that don't want to go all in, I would say get a few of the nightlights and, you know, just throw them in your bathroom in case you have to get up or something. Or maybe get one light bulb and throw it in the lamp that's in your bedroom so at least you're not blasted with it in there.
That's a good idea. Yeah. We're on the site now. Just kind of cruising around. They got a ton of stuff.
Yeah. So their glasses are. This the old technology. They're still good, but they're not ideal. So if you're really dealing with some sleep disturbances, you're going to want to get the type of glasses that look red. So that would be truedark. And then there's another company, I believe it's called Raw Optics ra.
That also use a similar type of technology. But it's easier from a lifestyle perspective, I think, to have the lights, because then you don't have to mess around with the glasses. Unless you're watching a screen.
Yeah. Ooh, I see something there for.
They have a nursery package.
The nursery package. Because that was actually.
Well, yeah, a lot of people. I mean, cheese. I shouldn't even be saying this because I don't have any kids, but think about it, man. I mean, a lot of people complain about their child, their newborn not sleeping. Well. Yeah. If you go in there to feed your kid and you blast it with blue light, you're suppressing your kid's melatonin for another two hours.
Yeah. You know, it's funny is because I have a newborn and she. Yeah, I have these lights that, like, I could change all the colors. I think they're called whiz or something. And I actually keep, like, the blue light on at night. I don't know if it's the same kind of blue Light, but it's like, you know, it's less harsh. But I think about that actually, like just last night.
Yeah, it sounds like the Philips hue system or something like that.
It's kind of like that. Yeah, it's all WI fi driven.
Yeah, well actually that's my next topic. And don't worry, I'm not going to like go down this huge rabbit hole. I'm just going to give people actionable things that they can do.
You're good.
So speaking of WiFi and EMF, I used to think it was BS. It's not. So here's what it actually does. It acts on the voltage gated calcium channels on your cells and it floods your cells with excess calcium. What that does is it makes you more alert. So when you drink coffee, the compounds in coffee, including caffeine, flood your cells with calcium. That's what makes you more alert. And because you have the most mitochondria in your brain, it acts on your brain the most. So when you're exposed to EMF at night, even if it's a low level, you're kind of constantly tricking, trickling calcium into your cells through these voltage gated calcium channels and it keeps you more alert. So you're never gonna get that deep delta sleep that you're normally gonna get in the first one to two hours of going to bed, which is the most important sleep phase out of the four. So there's two things you need to be aware of, is super easy to handle. So it's like 96% of the EMF you need to worry about. It's in your own home. Don't worry about your neighbor because you know it's, it's logarithmic. Like it decreases with inverse square of its distance, which means this, the signal drops off like really fast. So for your WI fi you need to turn it off at night and you can go on Amazon and you can get something called a mechanical outlet timer. They're like seven bucks and all you do is because you don't want one that runs off of wifi, obviously, otherwise you're blasting yourself with more wifi. But you just program this thing by literally pushing in buttons. You plug it in the outlet, you plug in your wifi into that thing and then you know, come 10, 11pm it turns off, come 7am turns on and you don't have to think about it, it just cuts that signal and then you're not blasted with WI fi all night.
Now what about like cell phone, like 4G type things?
We're going to. We're going to get into that.
And hopefully Bluetooth is in there as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we got that, too. So WI Fi, big one. Now, the second one that a lot of people don't know about is dirty electricity. Have you guys heard of that again?
I've heard of that. Don't know what it is.
All right, let's check this out. So your outlets radiate a cloud of EMF about 6ft out from the outlet. And there's a lot of reasons what causes it, but basically, all the devices that are plugged into the grid in your own home and your neighbors, anything that is connected through the electrical utility box, like those big green boxes you see in neighborhoods, all those electronics send signals back into the grid and they reverberate and they oscillate and they create their own EMF frequency. And that radiates out about six to eight feet from the outlet. And that also acts just like the other EMF from the WI fi and it keeps you more awake. And so for those, you need to get something that is called a dirty electricity filter. And these are made by a company called Greenwave. Greenwave. You can order them on Amazon. All you do, you plug them in the outlets, and they have an outlet in the bottom, so you can still use the outlet. And they filter that signal and completely, like, blanket it out. So for people that don't want to go all in, you can just do your bedroom. And I can tell you it's below the conscious level. But when you walk into the room after you put these in all the outlets, it just feels more still. It's the best way to describe it.
How do they know that there's this cloud coming off this outlet? How have they tested for that?
You can measure it. I have a meter.
Yeah. There's electricity meters, for sure.
Yeah.
Electricians have all that.
Yeah. But I mean, and my electricity meter isn't like, you know, firing off, but if it's just near an outlet, it only fires off if I, like, you know, stick the prongs in the outlet.
Yeah, yeah, no. Oh, do you have, like, the one that shows the ground?
Yeah, yeah, I think.
Yeah, that's.
That's it.
It's because it's not measuring the right frequency. Like, I have a. This company, Greenwave, actually sells a meter that. So you can actually, like, measure the before and after. So for instance, like, when I did my office, it was measuring over 1500 and the value should be under 50.
Oh, okay.
Yeah. There's so many electronics Plugged into the grid at my office. Right. So there's this reverberation going on that's dirty electricity, and that company's Greenwave.
Okay.
And so those. And then as far as, like, you know, Bluetooth, I mean, dude, that's a 2.4 GHz signal. It's the same as a microwave. It's just a lower amplitude.
I mean, it's literally a microwave signal. So.
It'S not good. And so I researched this really intensely, and here's what to do about the cell phone. If you turn it off or put on airplane mode, it actually still produces a signal and it's weak, but it's still there. I learned this from the privacy guys because.
I really like online privacy and stuff and kind of used to research that through the cryptocurrency world and whatnot. And there's a company called Terrace T A R I S S and they make what's called a Faraday bag. So if you're using your phone as an alarm, which a lot of people do, you need to put it on airplane mode and then you put it in a Faraday bag, and that completely cuts off any EMF from the phone whatsoever. And it. It's not made for the. The health and wellness or biohacking market. It's made for, like, privacy fanatics. But it works really well.
Yeah, yeah, that's. Well, I listened to a little bit of the Edward Snowden podcast actually with Joe Rogan. He was actually talking exactly about all this stuff. Yeah, kind of like all the, like.
Yeah, yeah.
Turning off your phone even is like, nah, there's still a little bit of signal there.
There is, yeah. So. And if you use your phone as an alarm, that's going through your skull, and the thinnest part of your skull is your temple, so it goes right through that and in there. And the research on the harmful, you know, effects of cell phone is unequivocal. I mean, the manuals that come with cell phones tell you to not hold them up to your head. So I think. I think in the future when this comes out, it's going to be as big as the big tobacco thing was. And if people are wondering like, oh, hey, what should I do for my phone day to day, there's a company called RF Safe, and it's RF Safe, just exactly what it sounds like. And they're pretty OG. They've been in the game since the 90s. And I would say this guy's technology is best for shielding cell phones.
So, okay, so RF Safe for that. How would you. Because here's, I mean like Matt's got the AirPods, I have the Bose sound, you know, freaking comfort over ear headphones that are all Bluetooth.
I have.
Yeah. I mean, are those like no go in your book? I mean you have them.
So depends. Yeah, so it's a two part answer. So one, it depends how well hydrated you are. And two, with the Bose headphones, if you use the cord it comes with, then you plug that in, it actually cuts the Bluetooth signal out, but you still have the noise cancel.
That is smart. And I forgot about the cord.
Yeah. Yeah. So for me, this is gonna sound crazy, but I had a extraordinarily intense Ayahuasca experience. And I know that that's trendy right now. And for people listening, I didn't just wander into it. I did three years of work on myself to get ready for this. And then at the end of my physical and mental journey of recovering from burnout, then I decided to go in there to deal with some repressed emotions. But ever since I did that, I'm really sensitive to Bluetooth, so I pretty much can't use it anymore. And for people that are like that, you can get something called air gapped Bluetooth headsets. And so they have a Bluetooth signal, but it moves the Bluetooth kind of further away from your skull because that's where you want it, far away from. And then it transmits the sound through tubes.
Yeah.
I have a question. So you said that ever since that experience you've been more sensitive to Bluetooth. How has that sort of manifested itself? Have you realized you're more sensitive to it? Do you getting headaches from it?
Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. I threw on those Bose, the big Bose headphones, and I got a headache from it. And I was like, okay, maybe it's just those. So then I also have the little Bose ones that are the in ear. Got a headache from that. I'm like, okay. Then I tried it around my phone. Same thing. So as far as the mechanism of action there, I don't know, I like, I literally have no idea how that works.
Interesting.
Okay, this is fascinating, man.
I have like, I think you know what I think it is. I do have a theory though. So I think it's about signal to noise ratio, right? So if you look at me as an entrepreneur when I was like going at breakneck speed running a business and making good money, but like dealing with 50 phone calls a day, 60 emails a day and just stress, my Signal to noise ratio is very poor. I couldn't feel anything going on in my body. I might as well have been carved out of wood, you know, But I think after you get healthy and then you do. You know, I hate to use the term energetic cleansing because it sounds so new age, but emotions are directly measurable by brainwaves, and brainwaves are frequency, and a frequency is energy. So let's just get past that and just say it's an energetic cleansing. With ayahuasca is. I think it clears all the crap out energetically. And I think your signal to noise ratio is really good. So you can feel things in your body that you previously couldn't. And so I think with me is I. I felt a more stimulating or excitatory effect from the Bluetooth that was really close to my skull, whereas before I couldn't feel it because I had things like repressed emotions or kind of trapped energies in my body that weren't there before.
Yeah. Okay, that makes sense.
Wow. This is. Yeah. I mean, I've done that whole ayahuasca thing. I definitely did not prep like you did, but I can. I can see what you're saying about it. Like a cleansing of sorts and you're starting to feel different vibrations or sensing from other people, even around you. Yep.
Yeah.
I mean, I've never done the ayahuasca thing we did. I have been involved in. What was it? San Pedro mescaline, basically, and very, very, very similar sort of experience. I felt afterwards I was much more in tune with my body and emotions and what was going on around me and, you know, signals coming in that I hadn't noticed previously, I guess you could say. And it's really hard to explain to anybody who's never experienced it, but we all know what I'm talking about.
Yeah, it clears out your signals. Signal to noise ratio. So neural feedback for people that they're like, okay, I'm not going to go do psychedelics. Totally understandable. Neurofeedback does the same thing.
Okay, let's talk about that then.
Yeah, yeah. So that was kind of the first thing when I was an absolute wreck. And I was like, I have got to fix my brain. I'd heard somewhere in the grapevine that neurofeedback can help people that had brain injuries, which. Which is what I had, except they were old and I was told they weren't fixable. But neurofeedback, what can fix it? So neurofeedback is like biofeedback for your brain. It's your brain looking at itself. It's not putting anything into your brain. It's your brain looking at itself and learning which brainwave states are beneficial and which are not. And so I ended up doing 42 appointments, and it was the most expensive thing I did. It's also the best thing I did because it's permanent. It actually rewires your brain.
What does something like that cost, just out of curiosity?
15 grand.
Oh, for the whole, like, 40. Whatever you did.
Yeah, yeah. You're looking at 15 grand if you go hard. And I'll tell you what, man, if you had looked at me back then and said, yeah, you're gonna spend that amount on this, I would have said, no way. But I had such profound results from it that I could not go. It was literally worth a multiple of that, because when you can wake up and you have your energy back, which gives you willpower, and then you can have the drive and the motivation to get things done. And for me, the biggest thing was, is I could sit at my desk and I could sit down, and I could write a sales letter or I could write an email without stopping and without ritualizing my work. When I was very burnt out, I had to have a very tightly controlled environment to work. I had to be in there at the right time. I had to have a coffee. I had to have nicotine, usually. I had to have the lights turned a certain way. I had to have the right music playing. And then I had to go through these rituals, like, okay, I had to check Facebook, and then I had to check this, and I had to check that. And then finally, after all of that, I could actually work. But then I would stop every 10 minutes. After neurofeedback, I could sit down and write an entire sales letter without stopping for two hours.
Wow.
No stimulants, nothing.
I was just chuckling a little bit because I can see myself not as far to that extent, but definitely maybe halfway. There is kind of me. And I feel like that for a while.
Oh, my brain was essentially in a wheelchair when I was burnt out, because I used to go through a tin. A tin of Kodiak Wintergreen chewing tobacco a day.
And then I would follow that up with, like, a, you know, pint glass gin and tonic. And then. Then by then, I was about ready to work. Wow.
Yeah, I guess I'm not doing that part, but yeah.
So what actually, what is the neurofeedback? I'm not actually familiar with what the actual process is that they do with.
You, so like, the overview of that.
Yeah, yeah. So what it looks like is.
First of all, they're gonna check your brain and kind of see what's working, what's not. So for me, my left prefrontal cortex was dark. So that's.
So like an MRI or something like that?
Kind of. But. Well, no, not kind of. It's definitely not like an mri, but it's basically through sophisticated software. It's. It picks up your brainwaves, and a computer looks at them, and then the clinician can say, okay, this is what we got going on here. Okay, we're going to work on this. So my work was all custom, and you definitely want to go to somebody who can customize it for you. So the first thing my clinician did is said, you are stuck in fight or flight mode. We've got to bring you out of that. What was interesting was my first eight appointments, I kept falling asleep, and I said, this is. This sucks. Like, I don't want to do this. Like, I need to be awake. I have work to do. And she said, you're not actually tired. It's just you haven't been relaxed in so many years that you are mistaking the feeling of being relaxed for being tired, and your brain needs to relearn that. So. And that's called Alpha Theta training. It's kind of the first thing that they do usually. And so it took about 20, 22 appointments to get me out of fight or flight mode. And that's when I could go sit down in my office and I could just work. Somebody could say something to me that in the past would be very inflammatory towards me, or not towards me, but just in general. And I would have a visceral reaction to it that was gone. It was just like a cloud scudding across the sun on a summer day. You're just like, okay, whatever. And then after that, we worked on Gamma, which is. Entrepreneurs like to talk about a flow state. I think Dan Kennedy called it the phenomenon when he did that seminar in the book where everything you touch turns the gold, and you can sit down and write a sales letter or talk to someone on the phone, and it just converts. And that's called. That's a flow state. And so Gamma is a flow state. And so the rest of my appointments worked on getting into Gamma.
Gotcha. To me, what you just described actually sounds very similar to experiences that I've had through microdosing, psychedelics.
That's right.
Very similar.
It's the same.
I've microdosed psilocybin many, many, many times. I don't have a regular routine of it. I'll do it for three days here and there or if I know there's, when I go to conferences and stuff like that, I will definitely do it because I want to feel on my game and in flow. But it sounds very similar. So comparing your experiences with psychedelics and the neurofeedback, is the outcome fairly the same between the two?
Yeah. So I would say the aftermath is the same.
Because I've microdosed LSD and psilocybin and and.
It depends on the amount of dose you take but the aftermath where everything just clicks and it just works. And.
I would say the most similar thing is that it unites the analytical side of your brain with the creative side. And that's why it is so helpful for those of us in the direct response marketing industry is because you can sit down and write a really good sales letter or you know, solve a problem in a creative way and that effect is the same. I wouldn't say it's the same directly because depending on the how many micrograms you take like you can definitely be like, you know, really kind of like woo, you know, like oh yeah, with the, with the LSD it's, it's like, it's kind of like the aftermath, like maybe like the next, the day after that.
It feels like that it's almost like.
A very connected with the analytical side but also with the empathetic creative side. It feels like a really good balance.
To be quite honest. I actually get some of those sort of things with very, very, very small doses of thc. Like you can actually take sort of a sub perceptible dose of THC where you're taking maybe 5 milligrams of THC. And I've noticed that when I do that and I need to go do some sort of creative writing, I actually get that sort of meld of the creative brain and the analytical like I'm analytical by default but the micro dosing of like thc, I will actually see some of that creative side seep in even though I don't feel high, you know.
Yep, you can do it. The high dose of lion's mane as well.
Do you have a preferred lion's mane? Like go to brand or type it.
That's a tough one man. You know, it's, it's hard to go wrong. Paul Stamets Co. Host Host Defense I don't know if his are grown on grain or not. That's kind of what you have to look for in the mushroom industry.
Yeah.
Is the medium they're grown on. I. That has been what I've been using. But I'll tell you what, man.
Have you guys heard of essential oil wizardry?
No.
Dr. Nick, this guy is completely out of control in a really good way.
I know him quite well. He'll probably be a speaker on my next summit. But he is an ex pharmacist and he is extraordinarily smart. And he left the pharmacy industry because he was disgusted by what he saw. And he became an essential oil manufacturer essentially. And I would say he has probably the best tincture for lion's mane on the market. So if you want to use lion's mane as essentially take a high dose of it. So you're simulating a microdose of psilocybin.
You probably would want to use his because it's, it's. I mean, they grow it the right way up there in Oregon. And his tincture is really powerful. And what's good about a tincture compared to a powder of the mushroom is you have to remember your nervous systems. Exquisite. And it's designed to work in a certain way. So when you swallow a powdered capsule, it cuts off your nervous system from tasting it and it just goes to your stomach and you never taste it. So it never cues your nervous system for what's coming and kind of preps it. Whereas if you take a tincture, there's two benefits to it. One, you taste it. So your nervous system says, hey, this potent substance is coming your way. Let's prepare for it. And it starts to create a biochemical cascade early to kind of get ready for it as you taste it and kind of roll around your mouth. And then when you put it under your tongue, that's very vascular and it gets uptaken by your mucous membranes and it'll actually cross your blood brain barrier and go right into your brain. So for me, if I'm at a conference or I'm writing a sales letter, but I'm like, oh, hey, I forgot to take.
My microdose today.
I'm like a little steep hit.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just happen to have it on me. It's kind of funny how casual it is in California. Now I'll take the tincture and I'll roll it around in my mouth for about a minute. And I'll tell you what, man, if you follow that with a teaspoon of MCT oil, like a high quality MCT oil, that'll help transport it through the blood brain barrier, and you get quite a cognitive hit.
Dude, that sounds amazing. I mean, partially the whole. Because Matt and I have listened to all the Paul Stamets. He's on Joe Rogan a couple times. And the thing Dr. Rhonda Patrick talking about sleep, like, for me, there's a lot of. There's dementia in my family, in my DNA. And that's what specifically. While the mushroom stuff really hits me. But then also obviously all the other stuff we're talking about with stress and anxiety and whatever.
Yeah, yeah, the mushrooms are great. They're great neuroprotectives. There's also, if you're worried about neuroprotectives, obviously you know about, you know, cbd, which is a wonderful neuroprotective. But there's another one that not a lot of people know about. It's one that I use almost daily and I have a product based on it too. And I'm, I'm not talking about this a Penta product. I'm just talking about this in general. It's called molecular hydrogen. Have you guys heard of that?
No.
Yeah, so molecular hydrogen is pretty wild. The easiest way to describe it is so the health benefit of eating vegetables and fruit. You know, everyone thinks it's the micronutrients and the vitamins. Well, you know, of course there is an aspect of that, nevermind that our soils are depleted about 70% less of those micronutrients and vitamins than they were Pre World War II. But really the main benefit of eating it is that the fiber is broken down by specialized bacteria in your gut to produce hydrogen gas. So if you eat a vegetable rich diet, you're going to endogenously produce about 6 to 8 liters of hydrogen gas in your body a day. And what that is is a signaling molecule for your body to produce more of the master antioxidant called glutathione. And glutathione goes everywhere. It's a very powerful antioxidant. And there's been a ton of studies on molecular hydrogen, specifically what's called hydrogen rich water. And one of the reasons I wanted to mention on this podcast is because it's one of the quickest ways to bring your brain inflammation down and start to reverse some of the effects of depression. Because certain forms of depression can be caused by oxidative stress on the brain. There's a lot of studies on that. And what's interesting is hydrogen water can restore the natural growth of brain cells and it will reverse stress induced brain cell damage. And so it has a very clear effect on reducing brain fog and improving symptoms of depression. And so there's different ways to access hydrogen, but the easiest way is you can go online and you can just Google hydrogen tablets. And there's a couple different companies that make them, and you can drop them in your water, and they're effervescent. They use magnesium. It reacts with the water and it produces trillions of hydrogen molecules. And you drink it, and then it goes into your bloodstream, and your bloodstream delivers it deep into your body throughout all the major organ systems. And then because the molecule is so tiny, it's really, really, really small, it crosses your blood brain barrier, and it goes through the cell membrane, and it goes actually through. Through the mitochondrial membrane and inside the mitochondria, and it revs up the ATP cycle because it's an electron donor. And ultimately your mitochondria work on electricity below the chemical level. And so what people notice that are really stressed out, they're dealing with chronic stress, is they feel a sense of calm, clear focus. And so when I built a product around it, I was like, all right, how can I take somebody that was me, like, several years ago and is at their wit's end and is super stressed out? Well, the first thing you have to do is you have to stop the inflammation where it hurts the most, which is the brain, and then you can provide the body the right conditions to begin to repair itself and to begin to heal. And so that's what molecular hydrogen does. Now, it's not well known in the west because most of the research has been done in Japan and Korea. Both countries lead the world in water research. Outside of Austria, which, which would be the other country, it leads in water research. And so most of the research isn't in English, but groundbreaking study on it in English was published in 2007 in the journal Nature Medicine, which is. I mean, if you're published in that journal, that's it. That's where the buck stops. And so there's a lot of that. So I use hydrogen tablets as a part of my daily routine, but especially if I'm doing cogn demanding tasks all day. And I know I'm creating a lot of oxidative stress in my brain, I'll definitely have a few glasses of it.
What tablet do you use? Or do you have your own product? Is that what you said?
I do, yeah. Yeah. It's called Burnout Detox, and it's a program. So for people that just want to try the tablets, honestly, I would say, just jump on Amazon. Or, you know, because there's only two manufacturers in North America and the technologies are similar. One's called an open cup, and that's a slightly different technology than the other kind, which is pressurized. So if you imagine how they pressurize a carbonated soda where they bubble the carbon dioxide in it, it's kind of similar to that.
Okay.
But the burnout detox, it's literally. It's just. It's a program. But for somebody that wants to just try the tablets to see how they work, you just jump on. Just Google hydrogen tablets or go on Amazon.
Cool. Okay.
But it's a. It's a very potent antioxidant. And what's cool about it is not a lot of people know this. It's really important to know about antioxidants because you have these guys that are going. They go work out, and then they take a bunch of vitamin C. Well, you just wiped out the benefit of the workout. So.
There. You have to remember that not all free radicals are bad. Some free radicals are signaling molecules, and they provoke a hormetic response in your body. So basically like a response to stress that is beneficial. So when you go work out and you create these micro tears in your muscle and stuff, there's all these signaling molecules, these free radicals are released, and then your body grows in response to that. You want that. If you take a bunch of vitamin C, it's like a blanket antioxidant that wipes all that out. The thing that's cool about hydrogen is it only takes out the hydroxyl free radical, which is just bad. There's no good about that one, but it leaves the other ones alone. So it's selective.
Wow. Okay.
There's one other sort of little rabbit hole I want to go down, and I know we're kind of getting tight on time.
Yeah.
So how are you looking on time? We have, you know, probably only a good 10, maybe 15 minutes before we got to jump off. But I'm curious, are you good on time still?
I'm so stoked to talk to you guys about this stuff.
Well, kind of what I'm thinking here is, like, we make this kind of a regular thing. Like maybe every other month, we bring you back on and we have like a sort of biohacking sort of ongoing thing that we talk about every couple months.
We haven't even talked about the Flexner report or bioenergetics, which is. Which is a part of US History. Most people don't know, but hit me with your next question.
Open loops for next time. Right there.
Yeah, I know.
Now I'm debating what my next question should be.
No, no, no, stay in the same vein.
So the last thing I actually want to talk about was procrastination because, you know, it's obviously something a lot of entrepreneurs deal with. We have a mostly entrepreneur listener base. What are some of the techniques and mechanisms you use to help push beyond procrastination?
That's a really good question. So I would say the first thing with procrastination, if you're procrastinating a lot, then you're not interested in what you're doing and consider changing it.
That's a fact. I used to procrastinate so bad with my previous company because I didn't like what I was doing. And it's an avoidance tactic. So you might have to adjust or pivot or change course a little bit. But if it's just kind of day to day procrastination, maybe you're scrolling on Reddit or something and. But you know, you really should be getting that money magnet out that day, then that's totally understandable. And so there's a few different things that I use for it that I think would be useful for your audience.
So.
One, there's a company. So just bear with me, guys. I'm not veering off into feathers or crystals here. This is actually for real. It was works on your brain super fast.
Cool. I love this stuff, man.
Even if it was crystals and whatever, we still go down those rabbit holes from time to time too.
Whatever works is best.
Great. So this cuts to the chase super quick.
And believe me, I'm an expert on nootropics and we can talk about that too. But something that's a little more gentle, that can help.
There's a company called Organic Aromas. They make a battery powered essential oil diffuser and it doesn't use water. So it works by the Bernoulli principle. Just it basically atomizes the essential oil directly, so it's really potent. And so there's two essential oils that you can use that will give you more cognition and drive and motivation. So basically you want to take 10 drops of peppermint and about 5 drops of rosemary.
And you throw that in the nebulizing diffuser and you put that right next to your desk. It's battery powered, it recharges by USB and your cognition is going to go right up. And it'll help dampen some of that procrastination because it really makes you alert but also increases your memory and cognition.
Do you have a brand that you like for the oils?
I do, yeah. I actually, I use the wizards. Man. He's the best. He's arguably the best on the planet. Essential oil wizardry.com. Dr. Nick.
Dr. Nick.
Hey, Dr. Nick.
He's the crazy guy from the Simpsons.
When you say Dr. Nick, all I think about is the Simpsons.
This guy. I've met Nick in person a few times. I mean, he actually dresses like that in real life. And he is smart as and whit. He knows the biochemical reactions really well. And the cool thing about essential oils is that your limbic system, so it bypasses a bunch of your nervous system, and those molecules actually go straight into your brain, and they help you do that. Now, second thing about procrastination, I used to use something called the pomodoro method. I don't need to anymore because I don't have to ritualize my work. So for people that are kind of in that jumpy kind of fight or flight mode, and you end up kind of procrastinating because your attention jumps around, you may have to consider neural feedback, or you may have to consider microdosing psilocybin or microdosing LSD or taking high doses of a tincture of lion's mane, which will help kind of focus you, too.
Now, if people are really struggling with it and they're like, dude, just give me something that's going to work right now. I got you covered for that, too. So a lot of people's neurotransmitters are going to be out of balance. They're listening to this because cortisol is going to decrease that. And also, I don't know what's going on with, with their diets. It's very hard these days to actually get all the micronutrients you need to manufacture the right neurotransmitters. Another thing that a lot of people don't know is that if you have. If your gut health is just crap and you're eating crap or you're eating pretty good, but you're under a lot of stress, that actually creates a leaky gut. And also, most people don't know this, but serotonin, 90% of your serotonin is manufactured in your gut. So if you're trashing your gut health, you're also trashing your neurotransmitter health because you're not manufacturing enough serotonin. And what you do manufacture doesn't make it to your brain. It goes. It goes Right through your leaky gut. So let's not even worry about gut health. We can talk about that on another episode. But what they can do is go to this company called Natural Stacks. These are great guys. I've worked with them in the past. I trust them implicitly. I don't have a financial relationship with them. I'm just giving your listeners a resource that they can take and use right now. And you want to get their neurotransmitter stack. So they're gonna. It's acetylcholine, dopamine, serotonin, and gaba. And you're gonna. What they are, is they're not adding those neurotransmitters directly to your brain. They're giving your brain the building blocks to then make those. And so I have an older friend of mine, my friend Pat. He's a piano teacher. He's 62, and he had a surgery last year, and his brain just wasn't firing. Right. A lot of people don't know this, but about 20% of people that go under general anesthesia have microstrokes, and it causes cognitive damage for a couple years afterwards. And so I said, dude, I got you covered. Um, I gave him acetylcholine because it. Based on his symptoms, it sounded like that was what he was lacking in. Cause he's reaching for words. And so acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter, can prevent you from reaching for words. You're just going to have it. And all of a sudden, he could actually see colors more brightly. He was much more alert. He started being able to compose music again. And so you're going to want to try those four and kind of rotate through them. Serotonin and gaba, you're going to want to take at night because they're kind of relaxing. Remember, serotonin is a neurotransmitter. It gives you that feel that all is right with the world. GABA is the same pathway that if you have, like, one beer and you kind of have that nice, warm, relaxed feeling, that's the GABA pathway. And then dopamine is drive, motivation, and acetylcholine is mental processing. Like linear mental processing. Like, I'm clicking through tasks right now. That's acetylcholine. So I would recommend people go to naturalstax.com and check out. They have a deal. I think you can. I think it's actually a separate site, but, like, they offer a deal on those and. And you can get them for, I think, pretty significant Significantly off if you buy all four of them.
That's awesome.
This is so.
It's hitting on so many points. Just all these things here.
Yeah, I mean, I would say the natural. The neurotransmitter stack is for if someone's like, yeah, I'm super procrastinating right now and I have to get this project done. You got to go do that right now for people like, yeah, I procrastinate, but, you know, it's not terrible. Get that organic aromas, portable diffuser. Throw in the peppermint and the rosemary. Get that going. And, you know, long term, kind of think about what you're doing. Because if you're procrastinating really tough, then, you know, you might not be unconsciously aligned with what it is you're doing now.
Have you found, like, microdosing or anything like that to help with procrastination at all, or is that kind of operating a different portion of your brain?
Yeah, I have. I think it's really good. I don't think it's something that should be relied on as a crutch. But, like, you know, I had to write a sales letter a while ago and I was like, oh, God, man, I'm, you know, physically, I don't know if I'm up to it. I'm tired. I'm this, I'm that. So I microdose. I think I took 5 micrograms of one PLSD, the LSD analog.
Waited for it to kick in, and I had all my. I did it Eugene Schwartz style. I don't know if you guys know how he used to write his copy, but he'd take all his research materials and he'd spread them out on his desk so they were open to the different pages, and he would look at them and then he'd sit down and he would just start reading. And he'd grab the books and the research materials and look at it. So I did that for the sales letter and I sat down and I wrote that sucker out over four hours and it was great. So I think that is another excellent opportunity for people who are struggling with procrastination. You should really look at that because oftentimes the procrastination is not your fault. It's not a willpower issue. You're not going to think your way out of it. There could be a physical challenge in your brain related to micronutrients or deficiency in neurotransmitters. And as we know, psychedelics work on the serotonin network and it's Going to help parts of your brain that don't normally talk to each other, talk to each other. And you're going to become a better problem solver.
Yeah, no, I'm just. I'm just so happy that all the taboos are sort of starting to fade away now and the government is actually allowing, you know, scientists to actually study this stuff. Yeah, it's an exciting time for mental health, I think.
Yeah, you can go. I think it's called the Shroomery.com or something like that. I mean, it's a Clear Net site and you can order. It's not illegal to order the spores. You can, you can grow them at least in California.
And.
Yeah, it's. Brave new world here, guys.
Yeah, that's definitely something. I was telling Matt yesterday. I was like, I really think about maybe growing my own. I'm just curious. I'll check out the shimmery because we're in a good state for that.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, hey, there's one other thing I want to leave your listeners with because it's funny and kind of cool, but also useful. As we know, when you go to these online marketing conferences, there's a lot of drinking. Right?
Right.
And sometimes you take part, sometimes you don't. What are some things you can do to detox from it? So the nuclear option. And a lot of people don't know this, but this was required for military pilots in the 50s and 60s because there's much more of a drinking culture back then is they would drink O3 or ozonated water.
Yeah. And it immediately oxidizes the alcohol in the bloodstream and it cures a hangover like that.
Is that like the IV type stuff? No.
So here's what a lot of people don't know. You can buy ozonated water machines.
Anywhere online. They're made from fish aquarium equipment. Basically, it's the same exact thing that they use to detoxify fish aquariums and ozonated water. Like, I have one from a company called Soda S O T A. It's a corona discharge model. And there's other reasons why you would want to use ozone. It's actually a good nootropic too, because it's basically you're just pushing a bunch of oxygen into your body, but.
It.
Immediately gets rid of the alcohol effect. And then. And the second thing people can do is you should always have activated charcoal on you.
We know that trick.
What's that?
I said we know that trick.
You do it?
Yeah, yeah, we do activated charcoal whenever we know There might be a few drinks consumed in a night.
Such a good idea, man. And Natural Stacks used to make a supplement that worked really, really well. But they don't anymore, unfortunately. But. But yeah, that activated charcoal thing, man, that works so good.
Yeah. So I wanted to ask one question before we completely wrap up, and that's what does your daily stack look like?
You know, it's a lot less than it used to be. I used to take a gang of nootropics every day. Like, I have a huge cabinet at home that is just nootropic after nootropic after nootropic and after the neurofeedback, I have found myself using them less and less until the point where I don't use them at all anymore unless I have a very cognitively demanding day. So I take the base supplements that everybody should be taking because our food supply doesn't have anymore. So I take vitamins A, D and K together always.
I'm not very familiar with vitamin K. What does vitamin K do?
Vitamin K works in conjunction with vitamin D, A and D. And it helps prevent.
A lot of people just shotgun vitamin D by itself. If you do that, it increases calcium deposition on your arteries, which is not good. So you need vitamin K to kind of, kind of work around that. I would say that expert in this space who's also in our space, he's a direct response entrepreneur, would be Chris Masterjohn. I interviewed him for one of my Summits. He's a PhD nutritionist and he has something called the. What is it? It's the one.
The ultimate cheat sheet. And what's really cool about it, it's only like 35 bucks or something, but. Or don't quote me on that, maybe he changed the price, but it's not expensive. But it has a symptom guide on it. And you can look, you can scan the symptom guide and then relate it to the micronutrients. So like, like. Or you can look at vitamin K and see what symptoms that it relates to. So like, a lot of people don't know this, but like, dry eyes are caused by a lack of vitamin A. So okay, you can. So I would check out Chris Masterjohn, PhD dude, and get that cheat sheet. It's. It's. Would. Would have you covered on getting into the specifics, but you want to take AD&K together.
And then.
After that I take a B complex. I use Thorn.
Thorn Labs. Yeah. Thorn is really good. And it's got the folate in the B9, the B3, the B12. And that's energy production. So that's basically you take that for.
Energy and that's typically what's in the IV drops when you get a hangover, right?
Yeah, they use a large dose of B12. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Because drinking can, can deplete that. And then I take copper with zinc. That's for mood and immune. You want to take those two together. There's various brands out there. I would actually say Bulletproof has probably the best one, has the exact right proportion of copper and zinc. And then at night I take 1,000 milligrams of magnesium. Magnesium is, it's now estimated well over 70% of North Americans are deficient magnesium. Magnesium is using over 300 different enzymatic processes. And you know you are deficient in magnesium. If you take 500 to 1,000 milligrams, you become very relaxed and tired.
So everything's interesting about my magnesium is I started taking magnesium maybe a year ago. I take it almost every night before I go to sleep. There has been some nights I forget because I'm not super consistent with my supplementation. But one thing I've noticed is when I do take magnesium, I have crazy vivid dreams. And when I don't take magnesium, I don't seem to dream as often.
Just because your brain. Yeah, nobody knows for sure because the research is so complex, but it's thought that your brain is using that for various enzymatic processes at night. Because your brain, when you sleep, your brain is, when it, it does all its self cleaning functions. And so dreams are a part of memory consolidation and stuff. And so you're literally providing the raw fuel for your brain to be able to do what it needs to do.
So and then I take usually 2 to 3 grams of vitamin C. Now everyone's like, oh, vitamin C, that's boring. Well, no, not at all. One, I take it at night because I'm not working out or whatever, so I'm not going to damp down the signaling molecules that I actually want. But vitamin C is used in collagen production and collagen production happens mostly at night. So for your skin it's really beneficial for that. And just in general it's a great direct antioxidant for the body and it kind of diffuses through your body at night and helps with that. And I have a lot of sun exposure, so it's good to have, have that collagen production. And then I take one that I take five htp, which, have you guys heard of that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that's a building block of serotonin. And when I did self decode, which is basically like, you take your 23andMe, you know, SMP file, and you upload it to self decode. That's Joe Cohen's company. Yeah.
Yeah.
So I needed. Basically, it told me, it said, hey, you should be taking 5 HTP because you don't produce enough of it. And I take that at night because it helps to sleep. And then I take one that a lot of people probably haven't heard of, which is crushed freshwater pearls. You guys know about this?
No, I haven't heard of that.
Yeah, so it acts on the GABA pathway, so it's quite relaxing. And it's also, like, really, really good for your skin. I surfed for many, many, many, many, many years. And so I was kind of trying to reverse a lot of the sun damage I had to my skin. And it does work.
With that. So that would. That's kind of my basic stack. And then I supplement that during the day, depending on. On what my activities are, with cordyceps, which increases your oxygen saturation in your bloodstream. So that can make you more alert if you're feeling tired in the afternoon. And then all chaga, which is. Yeah, for immune. And then I always take chlorella and spirulina.
Those are kind of like. It's basically like. Spirulina has a very tight coil shape on a microscopic scale. It's very good for detox, and it also helps with oxygen production, and it has a lot of micronutrients that your body needs. And spirulina is basically the same thing. It's just a different version of it. Chlorella is better for cleaning out heavy metals. If you eat a fish diet, spirulina is better for a couple other things. And that's. That's pretty much it, man. I mean, right now I'm. I'm working on, you know, fixing a leaky gut, so I take some colostrum, and I have a pretty intense, like, morning tonic that I make. But maybe we'll talk about that in the next one, because that one's got a lot of stuff in it that's.
Yeah, I do a. Well, maybe we won't. I do a little morning tonic as well, and that was taken from Aubrey Marcus and.
Oh, I'd love. Man, I wish we had time. I'd love to know what his is.
His basically is. It's water, a little bit of salt, so sea salt, Himalayan sea salt. And he uses apple Cider vinegar. So that's. That's pretty much what I do. And just mix that up in like a, you know, 32 ounce thing and chug it.
Oh, wow.
That's. Yeah. My wife thinks I smell like crazy. Like crazy, man.
Because all the vinegar and if you guys have two minutes, I'd love to tell you what my morning tonic is because I think it would help the listeners. Yeah.
So let's do it quick. Yeah.
And then I want to.
Our next interview is literally in 11 minutes.
Now we're good two minutes on this. And I want to shout out your summit just because it's so relevant.
Yeah, you know what, let's just leave it for the next one because I would want to get into what the actual ingredients do because it's pretty remarkable.
So let's curve that because there's a list of stuff we'll just go on for days. So let's do another episode soon. Cool. Yeah. Let's talk about your summit just briefly here and tell us how folks can kind of dig into not only more of you, but more of experts that you've gathered as well.
Yeah, that's great. So, yeah, I did a summit where we had 25 interviews and the entire focus was on recovering from burnout. It was the beat your burnout summit. And basically what I did is took the top five people that deal with the most common problems that you run into. Burnout, the things that everybody struggles with, and.
Created like an evergreen summit that people can go and check out. And the.
The URL for that is www.burnoutsummit.com.
Beatyourburnout. And if you go there, it's free. You can just jump in there and kind of see. I pulled the top five because it was 25 videos. So I'm like, okay, no one's gonna watch three days worth of this. So I took the top five, the absolute best that helped the most people, and made that into one video. It's the top five experts and put that in there. And we had some really, really fascinating stuff on there that we learned interviewing all the experts on burnout and chronic stress. And you know what's wild is.
It'S a real problem, man. And a lot of people don't know that psychological stress creates actual physical damage to your body through oxidative stress. That's a big deal.
Yeah, that's. Yeah, we're on the page now. I want to definitely opt in for this because I didn't have a chance to go through the summit, but I know the people you had on there. I was just like, holy moly. Oh, you got the guy from natural stacks on here, too. Cool.
Yeah. Yeah. That is amazing. Interview his neurotransmitter knowledge specifically on procrastination. So that entire episode is about procrastinating, beating, procrastination.
Perfect.
Well, that's quite timely. So burnout summit.com. beat your burnout. Yeah, we'll link that in the show notes.
Yeah, and we've got Gina Brea on there. She is about to be on the Bulletproof podcast, if she hasn't been already. But she wrote a groundbreaking book on hydration. And I know that's a boring subject for a lot of people, but it's a big deal. And I'll leave you guys with this. Just real simple. From a performance aspect, if you are not properly hydrated during the day, you're not as smart because the synaptic gaps in your brain actually physically move further apart as your brain shrinks in size from dehydration. And it takes more mental effort and energy to think, hold on, Ted.
We gotta get this.
Joe and I are both taking sips of water right now.
Cheers.
Yeah.
Drink more water, damn it.
Yeah.
And she gets in into what are the most bioavailable types of water and how to do that, and that was a really, really good one, too. So just from a performance aspect, it's. It's worth it. But, man, this is. This is killer, guys. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, anybody who's listening into this episode, I'd love it if you wanted to, you know, shoot us an email, give us some feedback. I think this should be like a regular segment.
That's a good idea, Matt. Yeah. Anyone listening, email us. Just infovergreenprofits.com, fill out the contact form, whatever it is. We'll get your info. And if there's specific topics that you're dealing with that you think Ted is. I mean, Ted knows everything. I don't know. You blow me away, dude. Absolutely.
Hey, if anyone wants help with stuff or they're really struggling with chronic stress or burnout, I'll help them directly, man.
For sure. Yeah.
I have people from my list email me all the time, and I literally just help them. Like, we'll cover this in the next episode. But we didn't even discuss Dr. Platt and adrenaline dominance, which I would guess most of your listeners probably have.
Oh, that's. That's the thing that you were texting me and you're like, you know, you got it, Joe. I got it. Most people have it dominance.
This blew my mind. And I've been doing his program and it's like that, man. So nice.
We'll get it on the calendar to do a round two, because I do think we need a follow up to this to just. I mean, it'll probably be another long episode again, too, where we just kind of unload all this cool stuff. But we've already got the story out of the way, so we can just get right into the meat of it all.
Yeah, we'll just do tactics and tools next time. I have a lot more stuff on sleep too.
Good. Ted, what's the best way people can get ahold of you if they want to find you directly?
Yeah, they should just shoot me an email at theo t h e o@burnout detox.com.
Theodore is my real name, so I just. I use a version of that online, but it's Theo T H E O@burnout detox.com and I'll be happy to answer any questions. I'm not trying to shove anything down anyone's throat. Look, I've been there, man. If you. If you're hurting and you're like, I just need to get out of this Burnout just. I can. I can definitely give you some tools and tactics to use.
Red.
Sweet, man. This has been awesome.
And I can't wait to see the notes because I'm already like, I've taken two pages of notes.
Yeah, a note taker's probably gonna charge extra.
Probably.
That's that on. On recording.
Oh, yeah, I had the. Oh, man, my poor note taker for the Summit. She did 25 of the. Those, man, and they were like, hour and a half long.
And I mean, it's some pretty heavy, heavy conversation, too. I mean, there's. There's a lot of words you've said that I've never heard before, so.
Yeah, I didn't follow the copywriting rule, man. Which is. Which is keep it simple, stupid.
Yeah, well, cool, man. I hate to rush you off, but we only have a couple minutes before we got to jump on another call, so.
No worries, man.
We totally appreciate you hanging out with us and sharing all this stuff. And we're definitely going to do it again. We'll get something on the books, like, pretty immediately.
Yep, we got our marching orders for now. I'm going to go buy a bunch of stuff, so thanks, my man.
We'll see you guys.
All right, buddy. Take care. Bye.
Okay, bye.
Hey, thanks so much for tuning into that episode. I hope you loved it as much as we loved recording it. Now, before we wrap this up completely, I want to give a quick shout out to Austin, our supporters of the show. These are some companies that have really helped us and have supported the show, and we just like to give a big thank you to them. And they also are offering some cool free gifts for you as the listener. So, number one supporter, Podcast Magazine. Podcast Magazine, the preeminent publication covering podcasts, podcast culture, and the podcasts that fans love. It's launching in January of 2020. Prior to launch, you could grab a free lifetime subscription over@podcast magazine.com that is a free subscription. A free lifetime subscription to Podcast Magazine, where they are talking about everything. Podcasting, podcast culture. The podcasters you love behind the scenes of podcasts, they're ranking and reviewing podcasts. And guess what? Joe and I are actually going to be regular contributors to Podcast Magazine. So if you want to hear more of our insights around podcasting and the shows that we're listening to and some insider tips about what's going on behind the scenes of our show, we're actually going to be one of the featured experts inside Podcast Magazine. So if you love podcasts, if you're a podcaster, or if you just want to stay on top of what's going on in the growing medium, subscribe now because. Because you can get the free lifetime subscription until it launches. So make sure you do this early. So once Again, go to podcastmagazine.com free subscription to this magazine. Go do it. Get on that now. Another supporter that we really, really want to thank is EZ Webinar. Now, this is the webinar platform that we tend to use when we run webinars. If you go to easywebinar.com hustle, you can actually try Easy Webinar for free right now. And what I love about Easy Webinar personally is that it's got both the live options. So you can just go live with a webinar like you would normally, but it's also got automated webinars where you can make a webinar feel like it's live, but it's happening on a recurring basis. Then they have what's called, you know, hybrid webinars, where portions of it are live, but then it goes to a prerecorded and they do encore webinars. I mean, they've got pretty much every feature you can ever want from a webinar. Now, you probably know that webinars convert better than any other marketing tool, but if you thought, you know, webinars, easy webinar is going to surprise you. So with Live Automated, all these different functions of webinars, you're going to be using the best onboarding customer platform. You're going to be able to create automated courses. You're going to run automated sales funnels. So much cool stuff that you can do with Easy Webinar. It is our preferred choice of platform for webinars, so make sure you check out Easy Webinar. You can get it for free right now. Get a trial of it over@easywebinar.com hustle and check out our episode with Casey Zieman, the founder of Easy Webinar, where we dive into a lot more cool stuff that you can do with webinars. So check it out again. Easywebinar.com hustle to get a free trial, go to podcast to get a free lifetime subscription. Both amazing products, both products that we use we're subscribed to and we support and can't thank them enough for also supporting our show. So go check those out. We appreciate you and thanks for tuning in to Hustle and Flowchart.
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