863 The Science of Biohacking for Optimal Health

This is episode number 863, the science of biohacking for optimal health. Welcome to the school of greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

[Speaking of the foreign].

Jim Rohn said, Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live. And Gandhi said, It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver. I'm so excited about this because there are so many days where I forget to take care of my health. I'll eat a lot of bad foods. I'll stay up late. I'll have bad thoughts, I'll have bad emotions, and I don't take care of my body in the ways that I know I should be doing it. And we all know what we should be doing. We know we should get the right amount of sleep. We know we should be drinking more water. We know we should be eating better. We know these things. We know we should be working out and moving our body and stretching and all these different things. But for whatever reason, we choose not to because it's easier not to. It's easier to just eat a box of donuts like sometimes I do. It's easier to have the candy bar, it's easier to stay up late and watch TV all night as opposed to getting into optimal routines and really optimizing your health so that you can feel better, live better, live longer, all these things that we want, but it's the energy and the effort and the consistency that holds us back. Now in this episode, I've had some incredible guests on really biohacking for Optimal Health, people who have done years and years of studies on themselves, who've tested these things to really figure out what works for their health. And they've helped millions of people around the world on their health as well. So I want to introduce to you an all-star cast of individuals who have brought this wisdom together for this single episode. Now, Aubrey Marcus is the founder and CEO on it. And he's done incredible things through all of his different research and studies that he's done on his own body, his own health, but with tons of athletes and members through his on it community. Kelly Leveque is a holistic nutritionist, wellness expert and celebrity health coach, and she's done consulting for so many big individuals and celebrities to help them truly be in the health they want to be in. for their roles, for their lives, for everything. Dr. Stephen Gundry, he's worked in medicine for over 40 years, and he's the director and founder of the International Heart and Lung Institute, as well as the Center for Restorative Medicine in Palm Springs in Santa Barbara. And he's written a few bestsellers, including the Plant Paradox and another book all about anti-aging. We've got Dr. Mark Hyman, who's a practicing family physician, a 10-time, I think it's 11 time now, New York Times bestselling author and director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. We've got Dave Asprey, who's the creator of Bulletproof Coffee, host of Bulletproof Radio and author of the New York Times bestselling book, the Bulletproof Diet. And in this episode of these All-Stars, we talk about the pervasive root cause of disease and how self-awareness can transform our lives. the importance of having a close relationship with your body to intimately know what you actually need. And what you might need is different than what someone else might need. The science behind fasting and how it strengthens the immune system. The surprising things nature does to signal what we should and shouldn't be eating and how your body and brain process energy like a battery. So excited for this because I believe that when we optimize our health, when we truly crack the code on how to have a functional, healthy, living life, then we can manifest what we want in our life. The relationships, the wealth, the career, those things start to fall into place when we truly optimize this point. Let's dive into the science of biohacking for optimal health right now.

I'm a functional medicine doctor, you know, run the Center for Functional Medicine at Cleveland Clinic. And so we look at the root causes of disease. and there are many, right? There's environment, there's lifestyle, there's genetics, all affect these systems in your body, right? So we always say there's five causes of all disease based on how they influence your genetics and combine with your lifestyle. Toxins, so environmental toxins, that's not your fault. That's just the fact that we put 80,000 chemicals in the environment without testing them. We have 3,000 food additives we eat every year. As Americans, about three to five pounds of it, which is frightening. And there are heavy metals and pesticides everywhere. So we're exposed to a lot of toxins and they make people sick. Infections, which we can get, whether it's viral infections, bacterial infections, Lyme disease, tick infections, allergens, which are increasingly common, or food sensitivities, things where your body is creating an immune response, whether it's gluten or dairy, those are big. And then poor diet and stress. All of those are contributing to disease. But by far, the biggest cause is food. Really? By far. What's amazing is it's not like a little bit. It's like people say, oh, my migraines or my arthritis or my irritable bowel. People don't connect the dots between how they feel and the food they're eating. And then when you switch, people have transformations very quickly.

Yeah.

You know?

They notice it quickly.

Quickly, yeah.

I mean, and- Pain goes away, the weight goes off, all these things. Yeah, I mean, I always say food is medicine. It's not just like a medicine. It works faster, better, and cheaper than almost any drug. I mean, we have people who are off insulin, who are type 2 diabetics, within a week. Wow. You know, and get off all their medications. I mean, there was a huge study just published on a ketogenic diet intervention for type 2 diabetics. And I don't think ketogenic diets are right for everybody, an extreme situation where your metabolism is so broken, it can help reset things, basically reducing carbs to 30 grams a day, 70% fat, and in the context of a healthy plant-rich diet. And they were able to get 100% of the people in a year over diabetics off of the main diabetes medication and 94% off insulin or dramatically lower with an average weight loss of 30 pounds, about 12% of body weight. And this is unprecedented in the research. Because food, if you know how to apply it in the right way, at the right dose for the right person, it's the most powerful drug.

Yeah, here's the thing, you talked about in the book that you've been studying food for 35 years.

40 now, I can't, 40 years. I was like, oh, I did the math. It's 2018, I was started in 1978 in college, and I'm like that old.

Here's the thing, you've got 11 New York Times best selling books, you've probably done how many books total?

14.

14 books, 11 New York Times including this one, food, what the heck should I eat? and for 40 years, you've been studying food and you say even the experts are confused by the science.

They are, they are.

So how come you're- How can my.

Father, you know all the answers? I don't think- After 40 years, I don't think I know all the answers, but I don't have a bone to pick. In other words, I haven't spent my life dedicated to the low fat diet. I haven't been dedicated my life to- Paleo. Veganism. I mean, I'm looking at like what works. And the other thing I know is that I'm not an academic. I do research, but that's not how I started. I'm a practicing doctor. So what's happened over the years is the latest thing comes in, I try it, see what happens, see what happens to the patient. So seeing tens of thousands of patients doing thousands and thousands of lab tests over the years, seeing what happens when people change their diet and how their biology responds, that's the best laboratory you'll ever see. And I even noticed on myself, I was a vegetarian for 10 years, and I see pictures of myself when I was 28. and I am so scrawny even though I ate really healthy, I ran five miles a day, I did yoga all the time, and I look at myself now doing far less exercise and I'm far more muscular and have more muscle mass than I did when I was 28 because I learned how to change my diet. And we know that the right kind of high fat diet and adequate protein actually increases muscle mass.

Wow.

Yeah.

I mean, I literally just got off the phone with a friend who says, you know, I went on a vegan diet and three days into it, like, I can't lift anymore.

Yeah, but then you see some, like, you know, athletes that are all vegan who, like, gain muscle mass and gain strength and you're like, what is maybe they're taking steroids. I don't know. Who knows? So you think living a vegetarian or.

Vegan, fully vegan or vegetarian lifestyle, that it's hard to gain muscle mass? I think it's hard. It's hard. It's not impossible. I mean, if you really work at it and really work out and there.

Are great vegan athletes out there, but.

There'S never been a historically voluntary vegan society ever. And when you look at the blue zones or- no, they were never exclusively vegan. Really? They always had some animal food. Right, the ocean.

Fish or something.

Yeah, and you know, as hunter-gatherers, we ate 800 species of plants. So we had a very plant-rich diet. But we also included wild animals when we could catch them.

Right, exactly.

It's part of our evolutionary history, and our bodies are well adapted. And the protein in vegetables is different. So for example, There's something called leucine, which is an amino acid that is the rate limiting amino acid for muscle synthesis. In other words, in order to build muscle, you need this amino acid. And it's very low in plant proteins.

Very high in animal proteins. So why not just live a plant-based.

Diet and then have the supplements you could. You could. And I, you know, I have patients who are vegans, monks. I mean, I'm not going to force people not to eat it, but it's much harder to do and you have to know what you're doing. And I see people over time, initially, when they switch from a processed American diet to a whole foods vegan diet, they are gonna get so much better. Of course, yeah. But the real issue is compared to what?

Right.

Right?

And they've looked at over time these big studies looking at animal and plant proteins and stuff over time, looking at what people do. There's a vegan, vegetarian omnivore study, which was 245,000 people. It was an observational study, but they didn't find any difference in outcomes. Another study, 42 country study, looking at food pattern consumption over long periods of time, showed actually the people had animal fat and protein did far better than people who focus on cereal grains in their diet, less heart disease. Another study, the PURE study just came out recently, 135,000 people, it was five continents, I think 18 countries, 10 years, and there was actually an improvement when people had more saturated fat and more good fats and less cereal grains and more animal protein.

More animal protein or more animal protein?

More animal protein, yeah. It was not a risk factor. Now, these are difficult studies to interpret sometimes because they're observational, but you look at interventional studies where you intervene by giving people high fat protein diets with lots of plant foods, people do better metabolically.

Really?

Yeah, it's very hard to eat a low glycemic diet if you're a vegan. You can, but it's very hard. I have a friend who's a keto vegan and she's a type one diabetic and she's rocking it. But you have to know what you're doing.

And so disciplined.

Yeah, super disciplined, super smart about it.

That's challenging.

And I say a serious relationship because I think we often have turbulent and casual relationships with our body, you know, where it's sort of like an arm's length gentle truce where we don't really trust our body. Our body doesn't really trust us. We don't really know, like, what the hell's going on today? I don't know. I'm tired. This thing is going on. But champions demand performance on all aspects and they demand like unified performance from their, but their body's got to support what their mind's doing, no matter what's going on. And their mind has to support what their body's doing.

Right.

So I've noticed with these champions, they know their body. It's like that long-term 25-year relationship where these people know each other inside and out and champions have that relationship with their body. And I noticed that when I started hanging out with Bodi Miller. And Bodi Miller, he does all of the different tests. He'll test his lactate level, check his ketone levels, he'll check his heart rate. But he's done that so many times that he's like a human biometric. He's like, yeah, I'm pushing lactate numbers around like eight. I'm like, what are you talking about, dude? I'm not just gasping for air, you know? And he's like, yeah, I've been in this, you know, heart rate band of about, you know, 220 to 220 for this, which is optimal for this. And he just knows his body that way. Like, he knows when it's time to go on a ketotic diet and do this kind of. He does, like, a ketotic cleanse every now and then. And he's just so amazingly in tune with his body that it actually allows him more slack than a lot of other people because he likes to party, he likes to hang out, too. I mean, that's part of the Bodhi Miller Legend. but he knew his body so well. He knows when he can push his body in all aspects. He knows when he can take time off and when it's time to go because he just has that kind of relationship where he can ask his body, like, we're gonna be all right here. Like, how much sleep do I need, body? And body be like, well, man, I mean, six would be great, but if you got four, we'll do it. And he's like, okay, body, I got you.

So they have that kind of intimate relationship. How can we start understanding how to have that relationship with our own bodies. What can we do? What tests? What, you know, on a basic level. So we feel like we have a general understanding, maybe some of these extreme things we won't be able to do right away.

Yeah.

What can we do? Well, it depends on your field. You know, if you're an athlete, yeah, lactate numbers are going to be important, you know, knowing your heart rate, knowing these different thresholds, but, you know, knowing different central nervous system markers and things like that. But for most of us, it's going to get a lot more simple, like knowing what creates those energy resources, what causes the brain fog, you know, so really. understanding on a fundamental level how the input equals the output, what you're putting in your body, what kind of foods, you know, paying attention to like when you have that kind of foggy, tired feeling, diagnose it like, okay, what did I do? What was different? Was my sleep different? Was my food intake different? Did I eat something that perhaps caused the inflammation which then traveled into my bloodstream and is clogging up my brain? Was my digestion working too hard? So, really, that's a big piece of what the total human optimization picture is. It's just identifying these different correlations between the input and output in your body. And, it can also be mental too, like what kind of frame of mind is best for my body because so much evidence is out there that mindset is crucial to physical health.

Yeah. And Aubrey actually has an exercise we put in the School of Greatness book. So, for those listening who have the book, In the chapter on mastering your body and your health, there's an exercise at the end to find out what's missing in your health, to figure out how to optimize it. So you guys can also go through that chapter and that exercise and figure out what's missing in your health right now to optimize it to take it to that next level.

So, yeah, our bodies are like cars. We gotta look at them more just objectively. It's like your car is going off anytime you're tired or anytime something's weird, think of that like an engine light. And then you're the mechanic though, so you got to go fix that shit. Sometimes a doctor can help, you know, those are like the master mechanic, but.

For daily maintenance, it's on you, buddy. Like you got to figure that, you.

Got to figure this shit out. You got to go make sure you're putting gas in the engine, the right type of fuel. The oil change, you know, doing everything you need to fix. Yeah, all of it. You know, we talked a little bit about Kane Waselenchuk, one of the most dominant athletes, maybe the most dominant athlete in the world in any major sport. And racquetball may not be a major sport, but it's enough of a sport to count. It's a hard sport. It's a hard sport. It's physically demanding.

Yeah.

And the dude just hasn't lost in seven years. And so, as I said, he doesn't have anybody that he practices against because it would only make him worse. But his ritual then, because then you would think, man, how do you even practice? Like, what's what causes him to, you know, what does he do at that point? And he has a very specific ritual. He grabs six racquetballs, brand new. He gets as many racquetballs as he wants. It's not a matter of cost, you know, doesn't have good sponsorship there. So he gets six racquetballs. He puts on his headphones and he puts on his headband. and he comes into the racquetball court and we have a racquetball court and on it. So I've watched him do it many, many times. And he's like, racquetball court's gonna be out for a couple hours. I don't know how long. And he plays and he just hits corner shots full speed and practice serves until all six balls are popped. Oh my goodness. He does not stop until all six balls are popped. So sometimes that takes two hours, you know, sometimes that takes four hours. But he will not leave that court until all six racquetballs are popped. And that's his practice session. He just comes out dripping sweat, you know, after, and watching him just hit the same shot.

Bang.

And again, it goes back to relentless. Bang, corner, bang, corner, kill, kill, kill. Same thing over and over again until all the balls are popped. And he walks out, big smile on his face, like, all right, practice is over for today.

Insane, man. It's insane. It's unbelievable.

You'd think other athletes in racquetball would start trying the same thing.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, that's the, that's the thing that separates, though. Like, would, would you be really willing to do that for four hours a day with by yourself? By yourself. It's not that much money in the sport either, you know? I mean, he's not like, he's doing well because he's the best of the best. But, you know, you really have to want it, and you really have to create some kind of ritual that'll get you there. And, you know, I think a lot of athletes, every athlete has these certain rituals, these certain things. I was no champion in the grand scheme by anything, any means of basketball, but I had a good career, particularly in high school and got a lot of honors. And I remember I had even a little ritual where I would not, if I touched a ball, if I touched the ball, I wouldn't leave the court until I hit three three-pointers in a row. Like I would just wouldn't do it. It was like that was my ritual. And so what ended up happening is, you know, through sophomore and senior year, I was one of the best three-point shooters in Central Texas. that ritual created a result. And it was just like this thing, this code that I didn't break. And that's the beauty of these rituals. You don't have to think about it anymore. There's no mental fatigue associated with it. It's like, okay, now it's the three three-pointers. That's what I got to do so I can leave this court. I don't care how hungry or thirsty or some girl I'm supposed to meet. It doesn't matter. I don't break the ritual. Exactly. Kane doesn't leave the court until the balls are busted.

It's crazy. So I think that's an important attribute of a champion. What do you think are maybe three or four rituals rituals that all champ, most Champions do in their daily life that we could apply as normal human beings to get there. Yeah.

Yeah.

I think you got to come up with, like, the most important Health ritual for you, for sure. You know, like, what is that thing that you. That you must do, you know, every day. And, you know, for me, that's a. That's really been a focus on mineralization, you know? So I know that every day. as a ritual, I'm going to wake up and I'm going to drink lemon water with salt.

You know, like that's-- Like Himalayan sea salt.

Himalayan sea salt.

Yeah.

To get the mineral-- get my mineralization and alkalization going at the start of the day. And that becomes like a health ritual. And, and I think all athletes will have their kind of specific thing and all entrepreneur, everybody who really wants performance have something where they know that that's how they're going to get things going.

Okay, so that's one.

That's one, I would say. And, I think there's certain practice rituals that all of them have, you know, whatever that may be, whether that's writing in a journal if you're in that or whether it's one of the practice actual sport rituals that we have, something kind of practice that you do every day, I think is pretty crucial.

First of all, I think they all.

Work and I think a lot of them are really the same. Like if we take paleo, we take Mediterranean, and we take Atkins, and we take keto. Same thing. If you really look at the biology of it, or the beans or the cheese or whatever. Yeah, you can look at the biology of it and simplify it to the inputs, which is what I do in my book, is I talk about protein, fat, fiber, and greens, like green vegetables, things that are deep in color and phytochemicals and nutrients to fight basically oxidative stress. But it really comes down to like ditching the drama and saying, okay, Louis, would you rather have bison over wild salmon? Cool, you can have that. It's going to break down to amino acids in your body that are going to be used for muscle growth, that's going to be used to synthesize collagen, that's going to turn off four hunger hormones in your body. And cool, let's not go tit for tat over what's better and why. They both have omega-3s, and if you're sourcing good quality food, We don't need to have a fight about it. And I think that's where people get caught up, is they look at health in a silo and they read one article that says they need to add turmeric or acai or matcha to something, and then all of a sudden they're having all these weird tonics all day long to get it in.

Especially here in LA.

Yeah, exactly. So for me, it's really, I worked with people to turn off hunger hormones and we do that with- what does that mean?

Being craving food all the time?

Yeah, because the new research is showing... I'm so hungry all the time.

Yeah.

And then you're starving.

Okay, well we can fix that. Not all the time, but yeah.

Yeah.

So how do you fix it if you're hungry all the time?

Is it called a hungry hormone? Yeah, you have actually have about eight hunger hormones in your body and they're regulated by different things. So, for example, when you drink fat, like in your Bulletproof Coffee, it triggers the release of cholecystokinin, which calms hunger if you- Right, when you have fat, it releases that. Yeah, and then if you have fiber or something that stretches your stomach, like the physical stretching of your stomach, it calms the production of ghrelin, which is.

Another really strong hunger hormone.

So you have fiber and fat combined. Yeah.

Then you can not eat for a.

Week and you're fine.

Right.

And then there's protein, and protein turns off a number of hunger hormones. And for example, neuropeptide Y, we crave carbohydrates when we don't have enough protein. Then we add protein and we're not craving donuts and pizza.

I love pizza and donuts though.

I mean, they're great, don't get me wrong.

The challenge is, here's my challenge.

I just will have like a whole pizza and then I wanna have more because it's never satisfying enough.

Sure, I mean.

I can eat like unlimited donuts.

Well.

Until I get sick. And then I'm like, why did I just do this? Because I can't just have a few.

Because I'm not full. No, but it's also, you can't, there's no off button with those type of fast carbohydrates. You just have. the release of dopamine, which, okay, you're gonna have that release of dopamine if you do illegal drugs like cocaine or have an orgasm or eat a sidecar donut. Or have a hug. Yeah, or dopamine from a hug or laugh or looking at pictures. So you think about the other ways that you can release dopamine. But yeah, I mean, if you're having donuts or pizza, there's really no off button. But if you sit down to like a Texas barbecue, you'll probably stop at some point or your body will start sweating.

Right.

So, you know, to each their own. But yeah, I just keep it simple. I say protein, fat, fiber, and greens. Those four things, if you put them on your plate together... Greens or grains?

Greens.

Greens. Like green, leafy greens. There's a sulfur-based sugar in leafy greens that feeds probiotic bacteria in the gut. And there's been some 50-50 research on whether probiotics on the market are actually inoculating into gut bacteria. We think that there's a belief that the acid in your stomach is completely obliterating that bacteria and it's not staying alive. But we do know that resistant starch and the sulfur-based sugar and leafy greens feeds it. So you are just a walking ecosystem of gross bacteria. Wow. Let's keep it thriving and flourishing.

Now, cooked or uncooked, does it matter? It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter how you consume it.

Sauteed, cooked, fried. I mean, maybe not fried.

But hot or cold or anywhere in between doesn't matter.

How do you eat your food? Yeah, well, I mean, it depends on what you're getting. Because people will say, oh, well, I'm going to eat the vegetables raw because there are enzymes and enzymes help to break down and unlock the natural nutrition in that food or I'm going to sprout it or soak it because that gets rid of anti-nutrients like phytates and helps me absorb those nutrients better or I'm going to cook it because I don't have the stomach acid or enzymes production because I'm always stressed out and it's hard for me to digest that kind of a thing and eating raw vegetables makes me really bloated. So really, I mean, this is what I do with my clients all day long. I can make a case for why you should do all of those options. So let's just get down to like what you like to eat and go back to the basics. Because we don't, yeah, like why you should be refocusing your energy on building your business, seeing your family, you know, like being with your friends and obviously like putting high quality food on your plate is super, super important and not having to worry and think about when is my next meal or crashing into lunch and trying to make a good decision, but you have low blood sugar so your going for the wrap or the pizza or something as opposed to making healthy choices.

Right.

Get out of your own way. Turn off the hunger hormones, balance your blood sugar and live your life.

Should people be testing things, blood tests or anything else, or do they not.

Need to do that to be able to do this? I mean, if you want to optimize, I'm a big fan of being a lab rat. So, I love a Cyrex food allergy test. You can do 180 foods and it's actually a blood and an antibody test. So, it's looking for antibodies, your immune system, what it's fighting in your blood versus a prick test. Yes. ALCAT and MRT testing is the thing with labs is they just have to be reproducible. They don't have to be efficacious. So the doctor decides whether the lab is useful for them. The lab doesn't have to prove that what they're giving you is correct. So like an MRT or an ALCAT test is actually putting like a dried food product on a slide, dropping a like a drop of your blood on it, looking through a microscope and saying, what's happening to the blood cells? I mean, that is Absolutely reproducible, but is that telling me if I'm allergic to coffee or gluten or peanuts? Absolutely not. But that's accessible to a lot of acupuncturists and Eastern medicine docs and people want testing done, so they do it. But do I think it's the best? Probably not. What's the best? I like Cyrex. Cyrex. Yeah, Cyrex. They're looking for antibodies in your blood, so they're not putting it on the slide and looking at what happens to the to the cell, they're actually looking for markers on immune cells for specific food groups. And they can break it down, I mean, they can break down gluten to, or like wheat to gluten and gliadin, they can break down dairy to casein whey, lactose, I mean, it's specific. You give a vial of blood and it goes to a lab.

So you have to go somewhere and get the blood.

Your doctor can call for the test. I mean, I have phlebotomists that can go to my client's home and take blood at their house and we could be here, let's bring them in.

Now know that you can take bacteria from young animals guts and put them in old animals guts and the old animals will become young again.

No way.

I mean like, it's the fountain of youth.

No way.

So they'll like, their cells will get younger or they'll have youthful energy or what?

All of the above. They will actually extend their lifespan by about 30%.

What?

Yeah, because here's the deal. What, what, what I'm trying to get people to understand is this is not about you and me or what we conceive as us. This, we're just a condominium for the people who really run us. And these are all these little one cellular organisms. And what we're beginning to realize is we're a condominium. for these bugs. And we're their home. We've exchanged them living in us and actually taking care of us for food and shelter for them.

That's crazy though.

I know.

And the really cool thing is, so we can take bacteria from young animals, you know, and put them into old animals. And the bacteria say, man, this place is decrepit. You know, I need to do a complete total renovation here because this is where I'm stuck and I better make the best of it. And I want everything to be nice. You know, it's like, you know, yeah, gentrification of the neighborhood. And this actually.

So what do they do?

So they actually instruct, here's, here's the take-home message. They actually send text messages to the mitochondria. And you probably know all about mitochondria, the little energy organelles in the brain, right? In every one of you. But the brain has the most of them. and these produce energy. These mitochondria are actually engulfed bacteria. And as strange as it may seem, the bacteria in your gut send text messages to the mitochondria that say, guys, new sheriffs in town. Clean up your act. We want you guys working and humming on all eight cylinders. It's kind of like General Kelly coming into the White House and total disarray. And it's going, okay, guys, no more of the silliness. And so we now have discovered some of those compounds that the bacteria in your gut signal the mitochondria to regenerate themselves. And it's, I mean, it's opening up whole new areas that we never even dreamed of.

Wow. So you're really like 170 years old, huh? Yeah.

Well, people.

You've just been manipulating all this for the last 15 years.

I'll show you a picture when we're all done of me and memedoz standing together when I did a show a few weeks. weeks ago. And one of us is 12 years older than the other person. And you would not guess by looking at our skin who's the old person and who's the young person.

Wow.

And I was showing this picture to David Sinclair from Harvard, who's one of the great anti-aging researchers in this country and actually in the world. And we were discussing some ways to manipulate mitochondria in the brain and I said, let me show you a picture. And he's looking and he says, okay, so Mehmet's a lot older than you, right? And he said, here, let me show you my driver's license. He said, wait a minute. How old are you? And he said, can I have this picture? And I said, yeah. He says, I'm gonna put it in all my talks. Because what I've been doing for the last 17 years is giving my bacteria what all the research that I've done and many other people have done would predict that my bacteria are pretty doggone happy with what I'm doing for them. And they're exchanging that happiness to say, man, this is a great place to live and we're going to keep this place nice and just happy. And so, yeah.

And so you, you lived in a blue zone. Is that right?

Then Loma Linda. Yeah, Loma Linda is a blue zone. That's correct. But when I was living in that blue zone, I was eating a low-fat vegetarian diet. I was running 30 miles a week. I was one of these Clydesdale Runners.

I weighed 70 pounds more than I do now.

Really?

Yeah. I was a lot of unhealthy people in blue zones, too.

Oh, yeah.

And they have the vegans that just are overweight, and you're like, how are you overweight? Well, it actually is because you're giving your bacteria the wrong stuff. And that's really part of the plant paradox. The plant paradox is that there's certain plants that absolutely positively do not want us to eat them.

At all. In any circumstance.

Under any circumstances.

You can cook them or chop them or slice them or skin them, doesn't matter.

They were here first and they had it really great before animals arrived. because nobody wanted to eat them. And my research at Yale was in human evolutionary biology. So plants have the same evolutionary drive as animals. They want to grow and they want to have babies, seeds.

They want to protect themselves.

And they want to protect themselves.

They don't want to die.

Exactly. So when animals arrived, they had a problem because animals can run, they can hide, they can fight, but plants are stuck. But plants are chemists of incredible ability. so they can turn sunlight into matter like around your wall here. And so what they use is chemical warfare to actually defend themselves. Defend themselves and to even make animals do their bidding. Because, for instance, just throw an example, most plants want you to eat their fruits because the fruit can reseed to go reseed them. So you'll eat their fruit, the seeds in the fruits are inedible and you'll either spit them out or if you swallow them they'll survive going through your intestines and you'll poop them out someplace else.

Fertilized.

Fertilized. It's perfect. And they're away from mom and dad. So for instance, if an apple falls underneath the apple tree, that poor kid doesn't have much of a chance because mom or dad is going to shade them the next year. but if it gets carried off, you know, even 100 feet away and then gets dropped, the plant does this on purpose. And in fact, you and I love fruit because you and I were designed to eat fruit once a year in the summer to gain weight for the winter. So it was a really good trade-off between, for instance, great apes and plants. But the fascinating thing is manufacturers, food chemists know this and we are drawn with color vision. And only animals that are fruit predators actually have color vision because you want to know when the fruit is ripe, when it has the highest sugar content. And the plant wants you to know when it's ripe because that's when the seed finally has an impenetrable shell. and it doesn't want you to eat it before that time. So it tells you, okay, now's the time.

Shiniest object, it's time to eat it.

Yeah, yeah. So what colors does it use? In general, it uses reds and oranges and yellows to denote ripeness. So the next time you're going down the snack aisles looking for all the great munchie stuff, you'll be shocked that most of the companies use Oranges, reds, yellows to get your attention because it goes direct into the deep center of your brain and says, Ooh, ooh, that color means I should eat it. I'm going to get a lot of calories and I'm going to be the big winner for the winter.

We have these things called mitochondria and these are things that were bacteria a couple billion years ago and we somehow incorporated them into our cells and there's this all sorts of like tens of thousands of pages of academic debate about how this happened because this is the genesis of all life on Earth. Somehow we became able to carry batteries around with us so that we don't have to have roots in the ground like plants do. Well, those little batteries were red rod shaped bacteria. We incorporated them into our cells or they invaded our cells, which is probably more like what happened. They took us over. and these little bacteria, there's about 15,000 of them per cell in the brain and only 1,000 of them per cell in the rest of your body except the heart. So the eyes, the brain and the heart have this incredible density of these little things that control everything about you. They give us energy. They give you energy, but they also.

Decide if cells live or die.

They make hormones. It's not the only part of you that makes hormones, but they're actually in control of the hormone factories. They decide whether or not you'll get cancer. They control cellular aging and literally those little guys call the shots and they don't really care much about what you want, they care about what they want. You're a walking Petri dish for them and they're going to make sure that the Petri dish stays alive. Wow.

What are these called? They're called mitochondria and they're in your brain, they're in your whole body.

Yeah.

They're cells. Well, they're inside your cells. Inside of cells. Each one of your cells has all these different components in it, you know, kind of like a carburetor or a battery inside each cell. So about 10% of your body weight is your battery. And these things are the battery in the body.

They charge the body, they give you energy.

They give you energy. They keep you awake. Yeah, they take the food and they take the air and they take light even, and they turn it into electrons. The same electrons that power your iPhone power your body.

Wow.

And it turns out these little guys are semiconductors. We didn't know this until about five years ago. And that's why they're affected by electromagnetic fields, by light, by electricity, and by temperature and all these other things that you can manipulate. and since they don't listen to you very well, but they listen to the world around you, you just change the world around you and all of a sudden your brain has more energy. And when you get these guys hacked, you feel it first in your brain and you feel it second right in the chest, like in your emotional center. You feel it in your heart. You put your heart into something. So by doing this, of course your muscles are going to benefit because they all have battery needs. It's just they don't need very much to move. Thinking is actually a harder work than moving. So, what if you were to give yourself a battery upgrade? You'd be a better athlete, you'd be a better lover, you'd be a better spouse, and frankly a better human being because you have more energy to say no when you have one of those urges to go out and do something you shouldn't do.

Right, right, right.

And so this helps you, but it all starts from the brain first. The brain muscle and mass is not optimized and you're saying that the rest of our body will not have the energy. Is that what I'm hearing you say?

Well, if your brain isn't working, the rest of your body won't be working and vice versa.

So it, you, so can't feedback loop. Yeah, you can't start with the brain. It starts with the brain. If you're, if you're have no sleep and you're eating horrible foods and you're not getting any sunlight and you're stressed out all the time, but you're working really, really hard, you're working out really hard and you're trying to build your.

Body, the brain is not gonna have the energy to recover or you're not going to be fully optimized or something. There's gonna be breakdowns. It's gonna be what will happen is these little bacteria throughout the body, these mitochondria, they're gonna sense that you're stressed, they're gonna sense they don't have enough recovery, they don't have enough energy, like they aren't getting enough food or enough light or enough of the other things that they rely on to be a healthy colony. When they don't get that, they're gonna communicate with each other, life sucks. Get ready for a famine, like there's a threat, there's some ominous threat, and they're bacteria, they're stupid, they don't know what a threat is. So they're going to change your physiology to have higher cortisol, lower testosterone, less focus, less energy. You're more optimized to fight and to.

Run away and you're going to be crankier.

More reactive. Yeah, your blood sugar's going to swing because like, what do I need to fight? What do I need to run? And here's the thing that comes out of this research that just fascinates me. There's only three things you need to do to stay alive. If you're a cat, if you're a bacteria, or if you're a possum or a tree, it doesn't matter. It's always only three things. run away from or kill scary things. And plants do that by making poisons or spines and things like that. And they can't run away because they're plants, sorry. And then let's see, you have to eat everything to make sure you don't starve to death. So I've certainly done both of those behaviors. You eat all the donuts and oops. And then the third thing is have sex with everything that's left to make sure the species doesn't die out. Reproduce, yeah. Right, so Louis, can you think of anything you've ever done you're ashamed of that didn't come from one of those three behaviors?

I mean, I've been ashamed of a lot of things I've done, but those three behaviors. What was the first one again? It was run away from or kill things.

Run away from or kill things?

No, I mean, I was gonna say getting angry at something, but that's in that category.

That's right.

It is right. Like lashing out or being reactive or being frustrated that I didn't get what I wanted or something. The second one is eat everything. I've done that a lot. I've been ashamed of all this. I mean, I was a sugar fiend my whole life. Totally. And, you know, I cut out sugar. for the last 45 days and what a transformation in my mind and my body and my health just by not having sugar. And then wanting to reproduce? Yes, I've been there too.

Yeah, did I really go on that day?

Exactly, right?

The thing is, we take responsibility for those things and those are things we're responsible for, but they're not you. They're emergent behaviors that come from what bacteria want, 'cause the bacteria are the puppet masters in our bodies. and when you realize that, you better take care of those little bastards because they have control over you in some way. But when they give you enough energy in return for this symbiosis they have, you can then have enough energy for the human adult parts of your brain to easily take over and easily control things. We call that willpower. So when you feel the urge to flip the guy off in traffic or to yell at your spouse or to eat all the donuts, if your battery is charged all the way, you're like, oh, I got this. It's not even that big of a deal. I'm just gonna say no. And it's those times when you're browning out a little bit, like, wow, you know, it's the end of the day, I'm a little tired, you know, fine, I'll just have half the donut. And you dive in and you- you- have no willpower.

Yeah, there's, you know, there's frosted stuff all over your face and colored sprinkles on your shirt and you- oh, man. Or you say the thing you wish you didn't say or whatever happens. Exactly. Yeah. Fascinating. So how did you, how have you applied this into your life? what are the main things that you've done on a daily basis that you've seen a transformation in your life? Because you've done a lot of biohacking and mind hacking for years.

For years.

So what is this new stuff that you've been doing? Just to be honest, we've probably seen each other maybe 10 times, like in person. I've known you for a while, but we've probably been interacting 10 times in person. This time, you look younger than I've ever seen you. And we mentioned when you came in, you look stronger, you look like you have more energy, you look clearer. Like you never looked as clear as you do now. For some reason, you look very clear. high energy and youthful. Not that you did them before, we just look like even more youthful. So, what are the things that you're doing that is allowing you to have this energy of abundance that you've never had before?

I'm doing a lot of stuff. And one of the things that a fair criticism of biohacking is how do you know if it works? Well, like you just said, there's evidence that something is working. Can I tell you that one of the 45 things I'm doing is the one well, no, because it wasn't the one. There's something called synergy and there's amplification. And if you do A, it doesn't work very well. You do B, it doesn't work very well. And shockingly, if you do A and B, it works. But the double-blind reductionist, like Western medicine thing, I swear there's like some guy in a white lab coat. He's like, there was no such thing as bread. Here's why. I baked the water and nothing happened. I baked the flour, nothing happened. I baked the yeast and nothing happened. Therefore, there is no bread. And you're like, maybe if you mixed them and then baked them, there would be bread. Right, but no, that's more than one variable. I can't do it. I have to test single variables. Our bodies are incredibly complex systems. So what I do and what this program in Headstrong, the two-week program is, is let's do many of the things that make your mitochondria stronger all at the same time instead of messing around with just one thing.

My friend, I hope you got some value out of this. I hope you got one thing from one of these experts to help you optimize your own life, to optimize your health. Again, we have thousands of problems in the world that we face on a daily basis. But when we are sick, when we are unhealthy, when we are injured, we have one problem. And you all know when you've gotten sick one time, you've been on the couch for two weeks, you're like, if I just can get healthy again, I promise I will eat healthy, I promise I'll be consistent working out if I'm just not sick anymore. And then somehow we get healthy again, we get consistent, and then we fall off. I've been there. I know you've been there. Now is the time. It's time to start applying these principles and doing something daily that's a non-negotiable. And when you make a non-negotiable, you'll do whatever it takes. to make it happen. So you just got to get to that place to make it a non-negotiable for you. If you enjoyed this, share with a friend, text one friend today who you think would be inspired to optimize and biohack their health in a better way. Just send it to a friend, text a friend, and you can really be a hero for someone in their life. Think of someone who might be struggling or stressed out or overwhelmed or just isn't as consistent as they should be in their health. Send them this. and say, Hey, I'd love to get your thoughts on this. Let's work on this together. Let's be accountable together. You can text the link lewishowes.com/863. You can text them that link right now or just copy and paste the link on Apple Podcast or Spotify or wherever you listen to the podcast and share with a friend there. You can tag me on social media @lewishowes and follow me on Instagram and watch the full YouTube videos over on YouTube. YouTube as well. Your health is the most important thing in a life. And if you don't have health, it's the biggest problem that you're faced with. It's the thing that you think about the most, more than finances, more than anything else, because that is the safety of your life. You were born with one body. You have one body. That's what Jim Rohn said. Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live. And Gandhi said, it is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver. Fall in love with yourself and fall in love with your health. I hope you enjoyed the science of biohacking for optimal health. I love you so very much and you know what time it is? It's time to go out there and do something great.