World Champion Bodybuilder's Biohacks 🏆 Wade Lightheart on Dr. Joy Kong Podcast

So you have lousy genetics for whatever. Maybe you have unfortunate blood sugar outcomes or heart disease outcomes. Well, okay, that's the card you got dealt. But that's not, has to be a death sentence. You can use science and lifestyle modifications to get desirable outcomes.

I've actually been a vegan at one point and then, you know, because I thought there was something inherently inflammatory about animal protein. But later on I wasn't convinced because of the modern, you know, livestock, you know, that the sources are so contaminated. So it's not animal protein per se, it's how they were raised.

Natural foods in a whole state are generally better than processed.

Hello, welcome to Dr. Kong Show. So I'm so excited to be back here. And so, as you know, this show is about enhancing people's health, you know, body and mind. For me, all that's important to our existence. And the show is an opportunity for me to share all the things I find exciting so I can share with everybody else so we can all live a longer and more vibrant life. And so today I have a very, very special guest, extraordinary person, Wade Lightheart. And so just a little bit about Wade. So first of all, thank you for coming on the show, Wade. So Wade is really an extraordinary person and everybody I've met loves him. Just briefly, he's an advisor to the American Anti Cancer Institute and three time all natural bodybuilding champion, he said, despite his lousy genetics and vegetarian diet. So we're going to talk about that. And he also studied exercise physiology and nutrition at college. And he's a coach and the president and co founder of Bio Optimizers, which is a fantastic company. And he has helped over 50,000 people to achieve bio optimized health for the last 25 years. So I'm so excited that you can be here to share your wisdom.

Thanks. Great to be here. Yeah, I gotta upgrade that. I gotta upgrade that.

Why did you say. Why did you say you had lousy genetics? What's up there?

So when it comes to. And this is actually one of the components that we identify in our new book and I think it's the thrust of where we are today as far as producing health outcomes. This is something that's been well known in athletic circles for a long time and it's kind of trickled into mainstream medical science. And I'll share where the gaps are. So if you are competing in any particular sport, there are predispositions that would allow you to be successful in that sport. So for example, if you are a gymnast, you don't see 6 foot 5 gymnasts. Why? Because the laws of physics don't work really well with that type of height in some of the acrobatic components. Conversely, if you were talking about the distribution of muscle fiber types in endurance, runners versus sprinters would determine outcomes or certainly at the highest level. So when you're competing at national level and above to world championship caliber, which is put you in a very high percentile of the population, then you generally are going to have a predisposition for high capacity in that area. When it comes to bodybuilding, that would be you would want a considerable amount of capability to build muscle that has to do with muscle belly insertions. There's hormonal profiles as well as the distribution of fiber types, nervous system capacity, bone structure, you know, shoulder to waist ratios, also symmetry, for example, high calves, which is some common in some people versus, you know, you know, thicker, longest. All these type of things are going to factor into the, the, the length of what you can go then there you can get even to even like if you want to go deep into the science. For example, some of the greatest bodybuilders don't produce mtor, so they don't have the normal physiological limits on their bodies that ordinary people because to build extraordinary amounts of muscle is not conducive to survival. However, there is an optimal band that you would go to, same thing as being a Tour de France cyclist, which is, you know, just absolutely unimaginable levels of VO2 max capabilities and endurance. There's, it's not necessarily the best idea to go to the highest level when you're looking from longevity outcomes. So going back to my own question, my genetic predisposition for muscle bellies, muscle growth, hormonal profile, all that sort of stuff is not ideal for that sport. I just happen to like doing it. And the good news is, even if you don't have ideal profiles in your individual genetic makeup, you can leverage technology to offset what could be a limiting factor in many people's case in your world, what fatal factor or something that certainly compromises life. So we know that you can change your neurological capability through things like neurofeedback. You can offer nutritional supplementation to offset variances in gene methylation about how you absorb and utilize nutrients in the body. Or you know, maybe you have detoxification pathways that are suboptimal. You can use biohacking devices to do that. You know, there's all sorts of these things now, now that DNA testing is going, we look at, that's, that's just the setting. So you have lousy genetics on for whatever. Maybe you have unfortunate blood sugar outcomes or heart disease outcomes. Well, okay, that's the card you got dealt. But that's not has to be a death sentence. You can use science and lifestyle modifications to get desirable outcomes. And so I was able to do that in bodybuilding. It just captured international contests at 50 years old. We're going to the world championships as a grandmaster, like I'd never imagined that. So I've literally lasted long. I've lasted longer than some of my competitors. They came out of the gig and they've fallen apart. But through all of this continuous growth in this area which we advocate in our company by optimizers, was able to do okay and, and then now cross correlate that with longevity outcomes because muscle's a part of that. So that was a long drawn out answer. But I think it wanted to get that to our listeners to paint the picture of what we're moving towards, which is a very exciting future. And I do believe that a 20% extension of our human lives should be readily available for people who are looking at that now as modifications to their lifestyle and to offset their genetics. So for example, if you have a, we'll say 80 years old is your expected life expectancy. That's not. And if you go by the New England Journal of Medicine, the disability adjusted life expectancy in the United States is 60 years old. That means you're going to be on some sort of debilitating condition and dependent on an array of surgeries and pharmaceutical interventions that are going to compromise your life. Well, number one, you want to avoid that for quality of life first. But at the top end range, if you can do a Pareto's distribution of 80, 20 by offset the risk factors that you might have and augment your genetic strengths, I think it's reasonable say, oh, you can definitely get into that 95 to 100 years expectancy and live a very high quality life. And as we do that technology is going to keep developing. So we might get another Pareto's distribution that you could, you know, our goal is I think it's reasonable to expect you can live to a hundred healthily and beyond and ideally a high quality of life in that century. So I'm planning my second 50 years. I've just turned 50. I'm, I'm looking at the century club now. So I'm going to the next one.

And we'll do another podcast when you start your third one.

Correct. I'll be much more demand Then than I am.

Oh, yeah, you will say yes. So, okay, you know, I didn't realize that you felt that whatever you went into, the competitions, you know, were actually, you know, were not optimal for these competitions. So you. That probably started the biohacking for you. Right. So you had to hack into your own body. And how did you do that? Like, you know, what were some of the tricks that you used?

Thanks for asking. And what's interesting is you'll see this pattern, I think, in the greatest coaches in sports are seldom the champions. They're usually people on the bubble that had suboptimal capabilities in given sports that had to learn all of the other elements in order to be competitive. And from that, they then take that type of technology and thinking and apply it to people who are predisposed to excellence. And the ideal version is that you have someone predisposed and doing these things. So for me, my. Like, it took me 10 years to win my first bodybuilding contest. I'd never won anything. And during that journey, I began to learn the ins and outs of what could be done in dietary manipulation, length of time, training modalities, experiments. So I had to experiment with a lot of different things because not much worked. And so that gave me a wide breadth to work from to start. And then I started looking outside of that. And I think one of the challenges in today's world is that people are compartmentalized more and more in their thinking. And I think it's important to expose yourself to a broad amount of fields because oftentimes, by getting sort of a road understanding of an opposite field, you can start testing hypotheses in your own life and experiment. And every now and then, some of these things actually work. I'll give you an example. So hyperbaric chambers, which were used for strokes and had positive healing outcomes, were experimented on, I think, in the 1990s with a hockey player, Pavel Bure, for the Vancouver Canucks, who tore his knee and they were able to get him to recover much quicker. Now, that was 30 years ago. That was very novel. And hyperbaric chambers are used by virtually every professional sporting institution on the planet. Not they're great in a medical situation, but they had athletic implications as well. Same as detoxification pathways, maybe using steam, ozone, or some sauna effects. And there's metabolic benefits of detoxification, which could lead to better outcomes and lean body mass and heart rate variability, sleep outcomes, all these sort of things. And so now biohackers are using the combination of the twos. And I And I've just kind of. Bodybuilders are the original biohackers. I'll tell you why bodybuilding, you're trying to overcome two counter evolutionary developments in humanity. And what that means is starvation was the number one problem for humans throughout history. Really big problem. Starvation and exposure to like parasites and things like that. That's what kills a lot of people, right? So it's not a great idea to. To have a too much muscle mass because you require more calories in order to sustain it. So you want an optimal amount of muscle mass. Number two, having hyper low body fat levels, which is nice cosmetically maybe as we in today's world, that people want low body fat levels so they look attractive and fit their genes and all that sort of stuff. But in a bodybuilding world you're going into like suboptimal level. So you are fighting that. The ability to store body fat included your capability to preserve life in a starvation environment. Bodybuilding literally going against those two evolutionary developments, which is ironic. Why would you do that? And then it's seen as an ideal. So right off the bat, you're starting against the grain in the first format. And the common threads are most people who are recognized bodybuilders use, or I would say abuse a variety of hormonal agents in order to achieve their outcomes. You know, growth hormone, insulin, testosterone, anti catabolic drugs, painkillers, etc. You can just. The line continues to expand and it's like that in maybe in a different modality with say the endurance sports like the Tour de France winners and stuff like the kind of. They might be using different drugs, but they're using all sorts of drugs to put their performance. When I decided to go into natural bodybuilding, I was instantly cut off from those options myself. So that allowed me to work primarily on technologies that helped me with my outcomes, but oftentimes produced better outcomes from a health profile. Unlike my counterparts who would get faster and better results on the top side and, but would suffer the health consequences. And it turned out that worked out because here I am at 50 and many of the competitors who I admired who hit a higher threshold of muscle mass and lean body mass as professional athletes, you know, like the Dorian Yates and the Ronnie Colemans, which are extraordinary athletes. I'm not taking, trying to take anything away. Those people had to leave their careers due to extreme injuries. Ronnie Coleman, there's a great movie on him. He's completely compromised now. He's made the greatest bodybuilder ever. And Dorian Yates tore his Muscles extensively. He lives a more holistically health oriented style Now. Dorian's a great met recently in Dubai which was nice. And so their, their careers were cut short by just the sheer volume that they wanted to get into the mass and what they had to do to do that. I was planning well, I can't win that game. I knew I couldn't win that game because of my genetic limitation limitations. But I said, you know what, I can win the long game. And now we've turned the corner that that's proving to be true. So the biohack taking technology, I just wanted to set the page. I know a lot of people just want to go to the hack but I wanted to share the philosophy because I want to impart on your listeners that putting together a long term strategy of lifestyle interventions that become just commonalities is what's going to lead you to that longevity outcome that you're looking for. You can't shortcut your way through it. You can use tools but you need to have the strategy in place beforehand otherwise you're going to slip into that chemical response program. And I think that's, that has consequences that you can't always predict.

You know, I think most people may not want the body build but they certainly want certain attributes which is, you know, the leanness, that muscle tone and so, so for people who want to be really healthy. So what were the, some of the major things you learned in the process optimizing yourself. And I do want to ask you about the vegetarian diet. So are you still a vegetarian?

Yeah, I don't, I don't really like labels so much, but I haven't eaten any flesh since 2001. Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

So the whole controversy about, you know, vegetarian versus animal protein, every side has their. So we can, we'll talk about that. But let's talk about your hacks.

Well, first I'm going to because I'm going to put this also into the longevity profile.

Okay.

So if you're looking at longevity outcomes, muscle mass is one of the big factors for determining that you live long and live strong. So achieving. I like Peter Attia's model that he applies to endurance. I think it's also applicable in muscle mass. And I'm actually trying to get some data on this specifically. This is an inference I'm going to leverage. So it's not, I don't have this data to support it as of yet, but I don't know if anyone's done it. You want to look at the upper two and a half Percentile within your popular, within your age category of lean body mass, cardiovascular health, bone density and range of motion, that's what's going to let you allow healthy long and strong. So early on when you have optimal hormonal patterns, that's when you want to put as much muscle mass onto your body because that's going to diminish over time. And if that's most people, even a little bit of training will produce, produce really positive outcomes even if they've never trained before. So definitely need to be doing weights, weight training, that is a must. I would suggest you would want to distribute your muscle building efforts to anywhere depending on your age profile, between three to five, three to five times per week would be optimal for most people. You know, usually as you get older, six times is probably not as conducive unless you're really hyper focusing on your recovery. And two is oftentimes not sufficient enough. Two is enough usually to maintain it, not enough to really build it.

You think seven is too much? Because I actually do Pilates every day. I'm wondering, is seven too much?

Yeah, I believe so. And Pilates is a different type. Your Pilates is based on time under tension and range of motion. So I think there are other benefits that you are going than say straight resistance training. Resistance training like you would set out in a bodybuilding program frankly is the only type of exercise that can shape your body in a way that you would like. In other words, if you're building a statue, you would put some clay on the statue and carve out your shoulders like this and your butt like this and your arms like this. Bodybuilding is using exercise to create the stimulation in the nervous system and the correlation muscles that are being trained and the nutrition and life nutrition is feeding those muscles. And the recovery factors that you are activating through biohacking are going to determine how quickly you recover between sessions, therefore how quickly you can produce results over the long term. So the higher the intensity and the more volume that you do, the more attention is going to need to be put towards your recovery. And that typically diminishes as you age. That's why you don't see 60 year old Olympic champions or very often. And there are guys, I'll give a case in point. Tom Brady, who's 45 and probably one of the more famous athletes in the world, has been leveraging biohacking technology for the, you know, for a great part of his, maybe the last 20 years of his career and has extended the paradigm of what's possible as A middle age person and he's very meticulous about his diet, he's very, about how his training and his range of motion specific to the position that he has. And it worked. And so he set, he set a standard that I think will be echoed by many athletes to come and also the general public. So that's first thing. Second thing is cardiovascular health. And that's not an area that the good news is, is cardiovascular health, you can improve significantly in middle age. It's not as dependent on hormone profile as muscle building. So if you're having trouble muscle building, you'll hit a point. Especially if you're getting started middle age, you may need hormonal augmentation. Even though I'm a natural bodybuilder, I'm not against that. I'm just always trying to kick that can as far down the line as I can. Once you cross over that hurdle, you're pretty much in that mode and you want to keep your powder dry. I like to say, as you extend your life and then in your exercise program, you want to be concentrating on range of motion so that you can retain flexibility. Now I've had very good flexibility in my career relative to my sport without a whole, much, whole lot of attention on it because of properly developed training programs. But now over the last few years I've noticed, oh, I'm losing range of motion and key exercises build up and calcification of tissues. And so I've now added specific flexibility exercise on a daily basis. And I do way more cardiovascular now than I've ever done in my life because that's going to, I want to hit that state, go to that two and a half percentile that Atia talks about to, because the healthy outcomes are great. And he talks about strength and, and cardiovascular. So you always want to look.

What's the ideal frequency for the cardiovascular exercises?

Yeah, that's a great question. I'll defer to Dr. Attia. He suggests four times per week with one high intensity session. So for like level two, they call level two, um, which is a, you know, it's a fairly easy bike pace. You know, you're, you can talk, you may not want to, but it's, it's, it's relatively pleasant or it's a light jog where you can carry on a conversation if you wanted to, you might not want to. It's like a little bit of effort, but it's not too much. And then one high intensity session per week, which he uses the attack bike, I believe, five, four minute high Intensity pushes with four minute breaks in between. That's his recommendation. And he's at the top of the food chain as far as that side of things.

And I think he's a question about that. You know, certain things can simulate exercise, right, like sauna, because, you know, people's heart rate go up, blood sugar level go up, you know, as if you're having, your body's going through an exercise. So could you substitute those with some of the cardiovascular exercises?

Well, I think you'll get biochemical responses that would, if you're looking from a biochemical outcome, you might get biochemical markers that would be positive towards that. And I think that's where a lot of the medical science leans a little too heavy into. They're so concerned about what is the biochemical markers because that's what they're tracking. But that, let me tell you, you put that sauna person that's got to run down the street for their life, they're not going to make it to the person that's been running four times a week. And so there's a practical element that I think also needs to be, you know, you got to pull the, you got to pull the lab geeks out of the lab and get them on the bike or get them on the weights or get them, whatever. So I think sometimes research heavy. That's my pet peeve. The, the, the eggheads that's got all the brains, they overthink things and they get too hyper focused in that thing and can't step back and you know, like, wait a second. Yeah, okay, the chemistry looks good, but is the output there? You're not going to get big say on a. You're just not going to be able to run a marathon because you do saunas every day.

Okay, all right.

Right. Not saying that you could, not saying that you should, but I'm just saying there's a practical side to things.

Right.

And I'm definitely a big advocate of saunas. I have two different types in my house. So, you know, so, yeah, I think both.

Okay, so real cardiovascular by moving your body and some flexibility training and then weight training. And there's a fourth one, right?

Bone density.

Yes.

So bone density and some of that weight training is going to also improve bone density. So weight training covers. You can do. Actually you can also get cardiovascular benefit from weight training if you decide to do different styles. So if you were to get more bang for your buck, I would say weight training would outperform virtually everything out there on the market. And it's the least used one. So one of the. So I think that, and largely in part because there's a perception out there, particularly along the population, oh, I don't want to get too big and look like a bodybuilder. Believe me, it's way harder than that. Great results for three to six months and then it gets really hard after that. But that three to six months could change your outcomes long term. Radically.

Okay, so these are the four things that you can enhance.

Well, those are the markers. Yeah. For longevity.

Longevity. Okay. So you do all these and then I'm sure you do, you know, plenty of other things.

Yeah, well, see, that's not enough. That's just the physical side of it.

I see.

Right. So one of the things that we talk about when I have a course that I give away on my website called the awesome Health Formula, where I literally set Aside, it's a 12 week course where we start implementing all of these lifestyle components that will lead to healthy outcomes. So I would say proper breathing, proper hydration and daily exercise are non negotiable because we live in a technologically advanced world that we don't breathe properly and detoxification of the breath. We drink everything but great water. We need great water to maintain hydration levels, which everything functions off. And because of the technical innovation, we don't exercise like living. You didn't have to think about exercise for most of human civilization. It's only the last hundred years. Technology has actually had a counter a productive effect on the physical requirements of living healthy and living strong. So that's why those things are non negotiable. And then we get into the other stuff, then we get into, you know, we get into the kind of stuff that you do, you know, looking at, let's look at people's DNA and let's start offsetting what your cardiovascular risk and what your profiles for diabetes and cancer and things like that and building a dietary lifestyle around that.

Yeah, well, the dietary part I definitely think is one of the biggest part. Bodybuilding. Right. They're very meticulous about what they put in their body. Okay. I'm sure you being the space, you've looked into every diet there is and looked at pros and cons and it's a very controversial field right now with many, you know, almost, you know, people held on to their diet with religious fervor. So, so what in your mind, let's just say just to enhance body composition. What will be, you know, an ideal diet? Like what's a great diet for that?

Well, we have a book coming out next year on this topic. And my goal of the book is to eliminate diet tribes. So I'm going to give, I'm going to, I'm going to lay a little aspect of this out for your listeners because this is going to solve a lot of fights and a lot of confusion.

Good.

There's a thing called the bell curve distribution. Everyone knows it and you can move out a few standard deviations every time that you see a diet fat Paleo. It could be carnivore, it could be vegan, could be whatever they come in. I've been in this industry my whole life, so you see these trends and what will happen is you'll have these amazing testimonials, you'll have doctors coming on and we move them into carnivore diet. A great example would be Jordan Peterson, who's a psychologist out there in the world. He has nothing but meat and it solved all of it. A huge amount of the problems that he was suffering from. Now it may have potential consequences down the road but, but in the short term time that he's done it, him and his daughter who have a genetic condition, it's had tremendous outcomes both psychologically and physiologically for both of them and works now. There's also all kinds of people who were had diabetes and heart disease and cancer and they moved to a vegan diet. And all of a sudden, you know, six months, a year later their doctor comes on and says, wow, this person's heart conditioned their blood sugar. They got the exact same results or the exact same chemical profile. So kind of like I said that you look at the, what a doctor will, your GP will look at like, oh, these outcomes have been really right. I would say as a medical professional that switching from the standard American diet to the vegan diet or the standard American diet to the carnivore diet is actually right. And you're like, well, well, how can both of those things be right? And how does that apply to me? Well, the variance is your individual genetics, your individual genetics are going to determine what, where you fit on the bell curve and on the, on the testimonials are always going to fit on the, where that diet was the perfect diet for that person. And the haters who went the other way are the people where that diet was the absolute opposite for their heritage. And I got cued onto this. Back in the 1990s, Chris Aceto, who was a nutritional coach to a lot of bodybuilders, published what today would be a very controversial letter in our Politically correct world. And he noticed that people of different ethnic backgrounds metabolized different types of carbohydrates differently. So when he built out their diets, he would build diets that were more along the lines of their traditional methodologies that they had adapted in that part of the world to metabolize as opposed to others. So I don't think that's controversy, but it is now. You can't say these things, you know.

So it's like, I think everybody. There's so much variation even within the same culture. I mean, I found out that white rice, right, Rice, any rice, any Asian food, basically spiked my blood sugar when I did my genetic testing, nutrigenomics. So it did show that I don't process starch very well, and there's more potential for insulin resistance. So. So eating, you know, growing up in China, eating was very hard to keep a really good weight. And it's like fighting an uphill battle is a lot easier here. So, you know, eating for my tradition, yes, most Chinese eat rice, but doesn't mean that's good for this Chinese. So.

Yeah, well, that's the beauty today because now we can look at your individual genetics and we can see the expression. And oftentimes what we find out is we're not the ethnicity that we thought we might we were in the first place. So great grandma didn't tell us a few things, and we have these expressions that come out and, you know, most people don't know beyond their. Their grandfather, you know, their grandmother and grandmother is usually the extent of people's awareness. Very seldom great grandparents and beyond. And oftentimes these, especially in recessive genes, might pull out in an unusual format that really compromises somebody, but with a nice genetic test and someone who can interpret it. Guess what? You go in there and you go, oh, I'll give you an example. After the 2003 Mr. Universe contest, I was following a standard bodybuilding format. Top coach in the world. And I had great outcomes as far as getting muscle mass and losing body fat. But it destroyed my gut. And I gained 42 pounds of fat and water after that contest. In 11 weeks, I was just a disaster. And I ended up getting into enzymes and probiotics and digestive health and went down that way and started. That's where we started our company, because I had to solve the problem for myself. Well, it turns out when I did my genetic test years later, I don't possess the detoxification gene from my gut. So it wasn't so much that the diet was so bad for me, it was so bad or was so bad the detoxification component was the issue that I had and I had to cultivate these other elements. Same thing is people say well why a plant based diet? Well, I, I knew that there was high levels of cardiovascular risk in my family's history on one particular side of the family was extensive. So I ascertained, oh it's highly likely I have some of those genes present or some expression of those genes present in my own life. Well, the cardiovascular outcomes are directly correlated with the consumption of animal based fats that don't metabolize very well in relatives of mine and they're taking stroking out or taking heart attacks is taking them out. And I looked at the research around plant based diets and it's cardiovascular risk. You know stuff like the China says, it's like you see these really great outcomes and I thought okay, well I'm going to take the advantage of a plant based diet as for better cardiovascular outcomes even though it is a little bit more challenging on the muscle building side. And I'm going to develop technology to advance that on a plant based diet. So I'm, I'm, I'm extracting from two sense of words from a muscle building or from a, you know, general perspective or blood sugar profile. I might, it might be easier for me if I was just eating like chicken and rice and fish and potatoes or whatever. Like it was certainly from a bodybuilding side and a social side it'd be really easy. But the likelihood I would end up with the outcome that I don't want from a Cardiovascular risk at 70, 75 years old, very high. I can use my brain to offset that and then you know, work backwards from that. And that's what I've attempted to do. We'll have to see how the outcomes go. But so far so good the diet.

Was that that ruined your gut. It was because was it the, the toxins in the animal protein?

That was, I was so, so yeah, so I was actually using at the time I was using a hybrid. It wasn't a meat based diet but I was using a hybrid high processed protein. I was using whey protein at the time and I was using high glycemic carbs to create an insulin spike that would drive the amino acids into the tissue. So instead of like bodybuilder to you will use insulin as which is the most anabolic hormone in the body, not testosterone. And you can create enough of an insulin spike and then you lay over protein and you don't need protein, you need amino acids. But whey protein converts across the gut very, very quickly into amino acids. And you capitalize that with insulin and you do, you know, five, six meals a day, because you're going to ride a, a bigger insulin roller coaster than you would otherwise. You can hit really high levels of muscle mass and keep low levels of body fat because you're only condensing the amount of carbohydrates in very small amount to get the insulin spike, but not enough to be stored as body fat. So that was the technology that we were leveraging at that time, and it works. It was very effective in getting ripped and muscular. Very effective. It was not effective to being healthy. So I didn't feel good. I was tired all the time. My joints hurt. It was achy. I was pushing myself physically, but it gave me the cosmetic outcome that was desirable. But as soon as I let off the gas from that, my body was just falling apart as it was trying to, you know, recompensate. And one of the things about, I think that it's is not well understood and I have a lot of theories about it, is fat storage, I do believe is not just a calorie deal. I believe that fat storage is both calories, but it's also a way of the body depositing undesirable agents that it can't metabolize in a relatively safe place. So it's not. Fat is not that metabolically active. So if I got a bunch of toxins in my body, I can store that into some fat tissue and, and then my liver has the capacity, later on, we'll metabolize that. And I think that's, that's one of the areas that needs more exploration. And I also think that's why some people who go in a detoxification program will lose above and beyond the levels of fat that you would expect from a strict caloric model.

Hmm, I see, right. So from what you were eating, did you feel like it was in the whey protein? Like what, what was the combination?

I think it was the whey protein. I think it was the chemicals and the rice cakes that I was using, you know, all that sort of stuff. You know, I see, yeah. It was a performance. Only that was in my 20s and it was early, I guess it was early 30s when I go to the Mr. Universe. Yeah, I was 31.

And how did you fix your gut? Because, I mean, gut issue is so prevalent.

Well, I switched on to a. I, I went completely to a raw food diet at the time, and I used a whole pile of enzymes and probiotics, hydrochloric acid, took a triniols and things like that and, and six months later I had my physique back, my health back. But what was great is I felt way better than I did before. So that was my like, oh, you can be on a vegan diet, that's just absolutely garbage. Essentially that's what I was, I was a lacto, I was a lacto, lacto, vega, vegan, yes, performance diet. That's what it was and it had bad consequences. And so that turned me on to the idea, oh, there's trade offs, there's a trade off here, so let's address those trade offs. And so I went all plant now. I went completely raw food for a couple of years and then I ran into the, the vegetarian paradigm or conundrum that I noticed I wasn't able to convert enough, I wasn't able to get enough amino acids to, to recover from my workouts that I want. And especially because I was entering into my mid-30s and as I enter into my mid-30s, your hormone profile is not going to offset as much. Right. So when you're 20 or 18 or 19 or 20, 25, the. I had a more optimal hormonal profile naturally than I did when I was 35. And so I could bolster myself on optimal hormonal strategy. But as soon as that dipped below behind, the raw food diet was not supportive of that. So I had to come up with unique ways. That's what we got into developing our proteolytic enzyme blend so I could extract more proteins. Eventually we got into enzymes that break down plant based matter like cellulite level, various cellulases and hydrochloric acid and all these sort of things. And then proteolytic probiotics which would convert, would be the final stage of converting. So I can, I can extract more amino acids out of food than say someone who might be eating, you know, steak and chicken and stuff like that all the time. It's not what you eat, it's what you absorb from your food. So what you consume, digest and utilize. Yeah, and how efficient is that, is that you don't have leftover residues that can cause problems. I think the residues from the whey protein and the other, you know, fast type carbohydrates, simple carbohydrates I was using created a downstream effect. So it's like dirty gas. Right. Burns the engine out. If you put nitro in your car and you just keep the nitro button, you'll blow your engine much faster than you could drive it at 60 miles an hour.

I think one obstacle for people is, you know, enzymes seem a little bit daunting. There's so many kinds. So let's say, you know, I definitely, you know, I trust your company a great deal. And just, even just knowing you and knowing your philosophies and how you guys operate. So like the bio optimizer, if someone wants to extract more nutrients from food. What I know about mass dime. So that's a. That's really good product.

Yeah, that was the start. That was our starting product.

Okay.

17 different enzymes, which is kind of like an all encompassing blend that would apply to the most amount of people.

Okay.

Very high in proteolytic enzymes. It's got annalise, lipase, hemicellulase. A whole fight is all these other components that allow it as a is probably like the catch all. It's enzymes for the masses.

I see.

Then we have specific versions of enzymes based on diets. My business partner is a ketogenic guy, so he developed Capex, which is high in protease and high in lipase, as well as agents that helps with bile agents and things like that that would be more conducive to someone on a more. More keto ish or carnivore carnivorous dietary strategy. He does well on fats. I don't do so well on fats. Right. He doesn't do so well on carbohydrates. I do really well on carbohydrates. So then we developed a veggie Zyme product which is, you know, people have problems breaking down plant matter. Some people can't have plants. They're like, oh, my gut feels there. Well, we got that as well. Then we develop gluten guardian for people who are gluten sensitive. Right. And then we develop different types of proteolytic strains that address different issues in the microbiome. And we do a lot of this research with our research team, Birch International University. We have, I think now 13 or 14 PhDs and master students who are running tests literally every single week.

Wow.

Helping us produce the outcomes of what can we do? What nutrients will these things make? How do we make those formulations? And we can test to see it work in real time and like, okay, this actually is effective. And that can continually upgrades our information and our formulas so that we can address all the dietary needs of every person, regardless of the diet they select. The diet they select should be conducive to their individual genetic profile. And if they do that, that hundred mark is looking a lot easier to achieve.

Maybe you guys should offer a test to check what their appropriate diet is and then select the record.

It's funny you should say like the book is coming out and it's going to, it's going to literally be revelationary, I think for the entire industry. That's why I think Hay House signed, we had a book and that's our goal. Our goal is to get people out of that dietary tribalism. You can't build muscle as a vegan. You know, keto people are weird. You should only be Paleo. We're going to move away from all of those paradigms which are generalizations which have applications for certain segments of the population. What I can say is concordant through them, natural foods in a whole state are generally better than processed. Having sufficient amount of amino acids, essential fatty acids and slow digesting carbohydrates seem to be better than the opposite side. Less chemicals versus more chemicals, less additives. It's, it's you, you want whole natural food regardless of your process. And if you do that, it's much easier to maintain the outcomes we're looking for.

Yeah, yeah, I, I have actually been a vegan at one point and then, you know, because, because I thought there was something inherently inflammatory about animal protein. But later on I wasn't, I wasn't convinced because of the modern, you know, livestock, you know, the sources are so contaminated. So it's not animal protein per se is how they were raised. In animals body there are a lot of different proteins and peptides such also in plants. So when we ingest all these things, you can break them down into tiny pieces of peptides and they could be sending signals to our body. So they're not just, you know, sources of building blocks, they could be sources of signals. So that's when I was willing to get back to some of the animal sources. But it's always a question of how much. And you know, I think, I think being open to all, it's a good approach. But you know, what quantity. Yeah, that's always a bit of fun.

And then there's also physiological like philosophy aspects or spiritual aspects of how people by themselves. Right. And so. And that's where you start really muddying the waters from science. And unfortunately what's happened if we've created two camps and that's another paradigm that blocks people off. Right. Well, I'm like friends, I'm from, let's say Mike, a lot of friends from India. Right. You Know, the highest amount of vegans, I think, in the whole world. Vegetarians are in India and they have a whole spiritual philosophy that's been built around it and stuff like that. And the diabetic outcomes for that population are horrific. The cancer profiles are pretty good. Diabetes is rampant and obesity and all the issues that come with that and including poor cardiovascular outcomes. So if you have good vegetarian, you have positive cardiovascular outcomes, bad vegetarian, you have terrible cardiovascular outcomes, usually based on type 2 resistance. So the devil is in the details, folks, and by what happens at the kitchen table or with your friends over a shake at the gym. You get into these useless conversations because they're very low resolution and that's why they need an expert to step in and dial in that specific. And then you eliminate the arguments. You don't need to argue with anybody. You can share insights and add value to the conversation. And Matt and I being so far apart on our genetic profiles was the, you know, we fought for about 10 years and then we had to start to concede points to each other. Right. Great.

Love it. Fun to listen to you two talk.

Yeah, yeah. We're more in alignment now than we were in the first decade of our business. We've been working together for 20 years.

That's awesome. That's evolution. You're reflecting the evolution around the whole country or the world. You know, everybody's trying to figure out, you know, how do we reconcile this? So, so we have a few minutes life left. And I just, I want to kind of, you know, because I know you're very much into brain health and, you know, who, who don't want to have great brain health and it's a huge, you know, area of pursuit. So I want to see what you can share with people and how you're keeping, you know, yourself at such a top level because, you know, having a conversation with you is amazing. It's so fun. You hold a lot of information in your head and so I want to see what you can share with folks.

Well, I think there's a couple things that I think are going to be game changers moving over, especially with cognitive deposits decline being such a big issue in our society. Neurofeedback above and beyond is probably the best form I suggested to every single person who's looking at preserving their brain over the long time, the long term. Get into neurofeedback training. You can get your brain looked at, you get your brain mapped. You can see areas that are being light up and you can address those issues specifically. They do it in places like Pyramid, BioGovernock, 40 Years of Zen, there's various neurofeedback clinics and are springing up and I only see that expanding in the future. I personally love it. Number two, maintaining your detoxification program as well as an anti inflammatory diet. If you look at all the research on, you know, inflammation in the brain relative to gut dysbiosis, Harvard just came out with a paper said that everybody has a certain amount of leaky gut. We develop products to address the leaky gut. But you can't, you can't supplement your way out of a bad lifestyle. So you want to be able to make sure that you are managing the inflammation that can leak into the brain and start causing that breed degeneration. I do believe that daily philosophical aspects connected with a social community is also important. As we've seen the outcomes cognitively during the COVID time that's happened in the last couple of years, the effects on mental health were probably one of the greatest mass degenerations of cognitive and emotional health. I have a daily meditation practice along with the integration of philosophical and psychological philosophical ideologies married to psychological science with sociological interactions. So what does that mean? I have a philosophy about how I interact in my world, in the contribution to it. And I try to evaluate my own performance in my daily aspect against an idea using psychological principles. And then I want to connect that in a social environment so that I'm integrating with other humans, particularly in a way that leads to a life that has meaning, a life that has value, a life that has both an external representation and an internal practice. And toggling between the two so that I can be a more holistic human is how I address those particular areas. And then on top of that we address neurotransmitter depletion or deficiency, which are often correlated to dominance. Most people, the neurotransmitter that you become dominant, you can become depleted in because you keep hitting the dopamine loop, especially in the digital world, which is augmenting and leveraging dopamine pathways in a non productive way. It was the way to reaffirm life affirming processes. But scrolling on your phone for four hours a day looking at tick tock videos or Instagram stories is negatively hijacking that loop into something that's actually taking away from your life. And so I think that you want to be very conscious of what your predetermined neurotransmitter is on a dopamine acetylcholine pretty much 50, 50 so is this.

Something that people have to get a test for?

Yeah. So the easiest thing you can do, you can do, you can do a Braverman test. It's online and, and it'll give you, you can fill it out once you just. It's free and you'll get a good example. We do a little mini test in our sub brand new topia and then we help people fill up the depleted levels of whatever neurotransmitter they have and expand areas that they might not produce very well so that they can achieve different cognitive states. Then you can go beyond that. Some people like to experiment. I think it's becoming more common with various types of plant medicines which have been used around the world to expand self examination, awareness capabilities. They should be engaged on. I think they should need to be done under supervised. These are not recreational drugs. They need to have proper supervision. But those can also been very helpful. I've leveraged a number of different components in my life at various times for specific reasons and I've had very productive outcomes from that. But it's not something that, you know, I advocate to do recreationally or something. Do it with a reason, do it with a conversation and do it within a framework that is leading you to something that makes you feel good.

Yeah, interesting. So, so the Braver Braverman test that's going to give you what you're deficient in, what you're dominant in and then.

It'Ll show your dominance. It'll show your dominance so much. When you get into the next test, you're going to have to start getting in, you're going to have to get a good, you're going to have to have a good, like go to the doctor on human clinic or something like that where you want to dive a little bit deeper into your specifics neurochemically. This will also also, by the way, diets can have a massive impact on cognitive health. And so oftentimes you'll see this, people will change diets and they move from, you know, being, you know, hyperly depressed and anxious into feeling kind of really well and euphoric by selecting the right diets or the other way around. You feed me junk food for a couple of weeks, I'll like it for a day. Give me a big bag of chips and some ice cream. I'm excited about that. And I, and I carve pieces out for that. I want to be clear, but I carve those times out at appropriate times for myself and I don't have any guilt or negative associations about it. I don't care that it's inflammatory. I like it. I'm going to eat it, I'm going to have fun with it. I'm going to celebrate it. I'm going to have a great time. And the next day I'm going to go back to my. What I'm supposed to do.

Right.

So I can delay the addictive components of that. But if I did that every single day, I can tell you my cognitive health would suffer significantly. So you don't underestimate. I always tell people, don't underestimate the effects of your diet on your cognitive. Those are really important as well.

Right. And the mushrooms, the mushroom is almost like a form of plant medicine I guess. You know, we don't use it that way. You know, you don't get a, you know, from it. But, but yeah, for cognitive health.

Yes. I use, we created a product specifically it's like 1.2 pounds of mushrooms in every serving. Wow. All the classics. And it's awesome. It just puts you in an awesome state. I take that twice a day with my protein that I mix up a little Swede. You said it's called call it genius. So it's genius. Yeah. Call it geniuses from our company Utopia. It's amazing. Like you just feel great and when you start and that started. I'll give you a little story. It started from my interest because I'd started. I have a great memory but I started to experience memory loss. It's about, I guess it was going about five years ago and my business partner did as well and we couldn't figure it was. And I got into look at the research and the research suggests that if you took 3 grams of Lion's mane a day it had really positive outcomes. So I researched always and we decided we try it and within two weeks there was noticeable levels of short term memory recollection. And so that's one of the things that I check myself with is how good is my short term memory response will give me a very good indicator of how well rested, if I slept properly or if I've eaten properly or if I've maintained my mushroom dosage. So I take, I take, I take about probably close to 5 grams of wines main a day. All total in the day. Wow. Three grams first thing in the morning. And I take the collagenius a couple times a day as well. And it's, it's fantastic for your brain.

How do you check your short term memory?

Well, it's a great thing. I'll give you an example So I was at an Airbnb recently in Sedona, Arizona. It was beautiful. And a great way to tell is I read the check in number, which was a four digit number, and then I read it once and I go away and then I come back and see if I can remember that 10 minutes later.

Yeah.

And if I retain it, I know I'm in a good, good state. Or it might be the access code to a zoom call. I'll see that six digit number. Click on the thing. Can I type that six digit number? And if I can't remember it, I know that I'm not quite as sharp as I should be that day. I see and then I check back. What did I do in the last 24, 48 hours that has led me to this? And usually it's one of those things, I didn't sleep right, I didn't eat right, and I didn't take any mushrooms.

That's a cool little, little test. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very, very handy.

Yeah.

Okay. Awesome. Yeah. It's such an exciting time. You know, I just think, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're riding this incredible wave and I call this wave as, you know, going on right under the nose of traditional medicine. It's, it's going on, it's getting bigger and bigger. And unfortunately the doctors at Kaiser, doctors, you know, most, what most people see, have no idea it's going on. And that's what's funny. It's so ironic they don't know. So, but anyhow, people who are open minded, people who really want to, you know, want to think for themselves and want to have a better life and want to take some responsibility, I think it's, you know, it's an incredible time that we have all these great tools.

Well, and I think there's another aspect that we should align with and I think it's relative to the times of the world. And we'll wrap this up. And that is if you look at the Chinese model of medicine that's been practiced for at least 6,000 years and the Ayurvedic model that has been practiced for at least that long as well. Those two models which have worked extensively for populations for thousands of years, their meeting point has been specifically on the west coast. Now if you look at where the medical, pharmaceutical influence and surgery and kind of what we're building, our messenger that kind of emerged particularly out in northern Europe and then moved on to the east coast of the country and had less of that preventative model of health and now because of the Internet and our ability to access, I've noticed there's. When I moved from the east coast of the country to the west coast, I was far more exposed to these. And Chinese medicine had a big impact on my life, as did ayurvedic medicine. Had a big impact on my life early in my life. That early exposure allowed me to see flaws within the model that I had been exposed to earlier and with, and, and there's a place for both of them. And unfortunately, again, it's like these medical biases get built in. Oh well, it's only, you know, John Hopkins University or it's only, you know, Guru Purnomana Mana Manazana. Well, no, there's a, there's a place for both of those and the integration of those always makes us as humanity a better place. And that's what I hope for moving forward in this wonderful world.

Yeah, yeah. It's an exciting time. So. Yeah. Thank you for the work you're doing and, you know, the great energy you're putting to the world and can't wait to read your book. What's the title of the book?

I can't reveal the title, unfortunately. Isn't that, isn't that, is that criminal? Is that criminal? Am I doing something wrong? But we, we do have, we do have a great book for people to get started on that journey. It's called Sick to Superhuman. You can get a digital copy if you go to buyoptimizers.com you can get any of our products. They put enjoy 10 and they'll get a discount and also sign up for my 84 day course. It's free. I give it away for free. It's a basic understanding of the pillars of health and allows you to work systematically based on a person's budget, time, effort and energy to get the most out of their health without getting too deep into a dietary trouble. It's both the lifestyle hacks and integrations they can do on a daily basis to have a better and healthy life.

Look at that. That's good brain power right there. Thank you for that. Yeah. So I guess listeners that they will get a 10, 10% off from Joy.

10, Joy 10, anything, any of our products, they all have a 365 day guarantee. If it doesn't work and blow you away, we demand that you return it and we give you all your money back.

Amazing. Yeah, I love it. And yeah. And I need to try all your products, you know.

Are you going to the upgrade conference?

Yes.

We'll see you there.

Oh, really? You're going to be there? Upgrade. Oh, my God. Okay. Okay, I'll see you there. And yeah, so what was you guys are sold out for your magnesium breakthrough? No, no. Okay.

No, yeah, it's going crazy. It is. It is a great selling product.

I know.

We definitely have lots of stuff.

Okay. Okay, good. All right, well, it's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much. What an informative chat. And thank you for sharing your story and your, your, you know, your insights. And so thank you for everybody for listening. And if you like the video, please, you know, click like to support it and then so I can do more of these. And thank you, Wade, and I hopefully see you next time.

You bet. Take care, Johnny.

Okay, bye.

Bye.