Has The Medical System Betrayed Women? How To Take Back Control of Your Health

There are two big things happening at one time that I've never done before. I'm going on a book tour for my new book, Make Money Easy, and I'm doing a podcast tour at the same time. It is going to be big, and I'm going to seven cities in 10 days. Get your friends, get your family, bring everyone you know to these cities. I'm coming to Austin, Texas, New York, Boston, we're going to Nashville, then we're going to Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. Make sure to get your tickets right now. Go to lewishouse.com/tour. Again, bring everyone you know. If you're looking to create more financial freedom and abundance in your life and you want to see a massive guest live on the School of Greatness Show, get your tickets. I can't wait to see you there. It seems like the medical world has failed women.

I would have to agree with you. The medical system, I don't think the individual doctor goes out in the world and thinks, I'm going to fail a woman. I think the way we've built the system was for this, the basic white guy, you know, like, and, and at least in the US. And so all of the studies, you know, women were not even required legally to be in studies until 1993 from the NIH. Okay, so we have an entire gener, now that happened because thalidomide was being used in pregnant women for nausea and it ended up causing birth defects. And that freaked everyone out, understandably. But they removed all women from studies after that just in case they might get pregnant. Then when you talk to researchers, it's much more expensive and harder to study women because of their cycles or because of peri or post menopause. And men are just predictable. So they just study mostly men and just take those things and infer them to women when we don't really understand the gender differences and the sex differences. and how cardiovascular medications affect. So greatest example, statins, right? We use statins left and right to treat high cholesterol. Most women will have significant elevations of cholesterol through menopause. So here she goes through the change, boom, her cholesterol goes up, goes to her PCP, you need a statin. Statins have never been shown in women to decrease the risk of a heart attack or decrease death from cardiovascular disease.

So why do we do it?

Because it worked in men and we just do it. So there is no evidence to support that it will lower cholesterol, will not decrease the risk of a heart attack. Because we develop disease differently and for different reasons. And it's, you know, this is published by the American Heart Association in Circulation Magazine. I didn't make this up. And so yet there's no studies right now. So now it's like us fighting, getting NIH grants, getting Congress on board. It's what the Menopause is doing is advocacy. is fighting on a legislative level to force these things to happen, force these American College of OB-GYN, American Board of OB-GYN, the all. And why should all of women's health fall in the lap of the poor, busy OB-GYN who's trying to deliver babies and prevent cervical cancer, right? That's, I did that job. It's a hard job. This should be required in medical school. I got one hour of menopause in medical school. Every clinician who touches a woman, should have required menopause training, not just hot flashes, night sweats, and what HRT may or may not do for you, but how our sex differs in disease and how we need to treat women differently. I mean, if you read Eleanor Cleghorn's, on the Unwell Woman, and you look at the Invisible Woman just came out, and Invisible Women, just looking at how in science women are just kind of ignored because we're harder.

Part of the study.

Yeah, and so we're not little men. We're more than just a man running or a short man running around with a breast and a uterus, you know, breasts and uterus. So we're actually the way we present with disease, the way we're treated with disease is vastly different. Yeah. So what started out with like hot.

Flashes and weight gain is actually a much bigger, bigger picture. And what are the biggest, I guess, risk factors for disease with menopause? Are there higher risk factors for diseases.

Like breast cancer or other types of so menopause? you see the cardiovascular disease risk starts rapidly accelerating. Yeah. So that's because our insulin resistance goes up and our cholesterol goes up. So the risk factors for heart disease go up once you go through menopause. So you take two 50 year old women, one is premenopausal, one is post, and she has like a 50% increased risk of cardiovascular disease once she's postmenopausal. Yeah. So estrogen is incredibly protective for the lining of those vessels in the heart where those plaques start building up. So in being on HRT early, really, if you start early enough, and menopause is actually will decrease your risk of cardiovascular disease 50% per year if you start early enough.

Hormone therapy. What is the hormone?

What's the art?

Replacement. Hormone replacement therapy. What if women don't like the idea of taking drugs or therapies?

That's okay. So it's going to be harder, but it's not impossible. So you're going to have to double down on the other pillars of health. So your diet, your exercise, your stress reduction, you know, really staying on top.

Of the risk factors. So you can still prevent- yeah, absolutely.

The increases of disease by doing the other things correctly.

Right.

But not holding, you know, the discussion around HRT, which most women aren't getting. So 85% of women will go and talk to their doctor and mention the cliche symptoms of menopause, right? Only 10% right now is in 2023 be offered treatment. And it's usually an antidepressant.

Not HRT.

Not HRT only. Four to six percent of women are on HRT, right? Interesting.

Who are menopausal. What happens when you give a woman on menopause, experiencing menopause and antidepressant?

So, well, if she's really depressed, sometimes her depression gets better. But again, everything has side effects, including HRT. So I don't wanna like make like, you know, but her libido goes down. She can gain weight. It depends on the, on the, on the specific SSRI or SNRI. So there are side effects that can be pretty debilitating, but a woman is like four times more likely to be given an SSRI right now. for the treatment of her menopause than hormone therapy, which is the gold standard. Certain SSRIs have been shown to somewhat decrease hot flashes, but they're not great. And they can help with depression symptoms, which can be severe, you know, in menopause. Right, right. But- There's side effects. But yeah, but then there's side effects. So, you know, every discussion around medication.

With a patient is risk-benefit ratio and discussing possible side effects. And it's also like if HRT, if it sounds like it could be right.

For you, it doesn't mean you should stop.

Eating fiber and sleeping well and stopping.

It doesn't mean it's like, okay, I can do this. Right, right. And now you're negating, you know, a trip to Wendy's that, you know, and those frosties are good though. So, yeah, so it's like, it's not perfect. It's a tool in your toolbox. So when I approach menopause care with.

My patients, it's a toolbox and we have tools in here and they're all important.

I think I saw one of your.

Videos on Instagram that was like, this is my daily menopause routine. Yeah. But it was like 17 different things. It was like a cream and pills.

And this and that. I was like, that can seem daunting.

It can.

It can.

So I'm on. I'll tell your followers. I'm on systemic estrogen replacement. I do that with a patch. So that goes to my brain, my bones, you know, everywhere. But I still have extra estrogen locally. So I have top and bottom. So I have facial estrogen to help with thinning skin. So we lose 30 of our collagen, which women know, every menopausal woman knows she has lost some collagen in her skin, especially her face. So I do a little topical estrogen here, and then I also use some in the general urinary area as well.

Wow.

Okay. and then I have progesterone, so. And that really helps with sleep. So it's magic, I'm telling you. Like, if nothing else, especially in perimenopause, progesterone could save a woman's life. So if she's not sleeping, so love my progesterone at night. And then I do testosterone as well.

Wow.

But, I mean, 100 years ago, women.

Didn'T have these options.

They also died. They just died. Yeah, they died in their 50s, 60s. So we, you know, 150 years ago, the average life expectancy, they died before menopause was like a thing. Really?

Yeah.

And so we, you know, there was the occasional, but someone my age 200 years ago was very rare to be alive. And so sure they had the occasional one, but the average life expectancy, you know, we are now because of modern medicine, modern plumbing, modern technology, hygiene, just everything, are living 30 years outside of our menopause, way longer than most humans lived as females.

How can men, whom black potentially the emotional agility to navigate anyone else's emotions beyond theirs.

Yeah.

Let alone, you know, once a few days out of a month, like they're maybe used to with the partner they're with, to now what could be any day of the week for years.

Years.

Of emotional uncertainty.

Flabillity. Yeah.

How can a man you know, how can a woman send this to a man in their life and say, I'm not crazy, I'm just going through this season of life. I'm trying to do everything I can to navigate and manage it and balance everything. But what would you say to men who maybe don't have the tools, don't have the experience, don't have the emotional capacity within themselves to look at emotions, be there for the women that they love.

Yeah.

Without, you know, making them wrong, shaming them, telling them like figure your life out. I can't help you. Like what can a man do with their capabilities without telling them to go learn a million things. I don't know, like they still have their lives, their responsibilities, their stresses as well. What can men do to help women in menopause?

So the best office visits I have are when their partners come and they're there to help understand. And I do a lot, that's a long visit, 'cause I'm educating two people at once. Yes.

Right?

And so those are the couples where I know they're gonna make it. You know, like he's really here for the right reasons. Spot in, he's-- He wants this to work, and he wants to understand. And so this is gonna happen to 100% of us who live long enough. This is not optional, and it is gonna rock her world. So be aware, I mean, I think education is everything. And so if not my book, there's other books out there. Like pick up a book and educate yourself. You know, read the book together, get it on audio, whatever, you know, so that you have some grip and understanding which will help you have more compassion and help you lean into this time for her so that, and help her navigate and help her get her to the doctor, you know, facilitate these things so that she can get on the path to going back to who she used to be.

Yeah, well, it's probably a journey for men too in this phase. What do you think is the biggest challenge that men go through? in terms of watching the woman they're with, hopefully they love for years, see the woman transform into something different. What is the biggest challenge that men go through after, I guess, post menopause?

I think most of us go through, we're not the same people we were 20 years ago. No one is, right? And so most relationships that stay together, you kind of ebb and flow and grow and change together. You're on this kind of tangential thing together. And what breaks up most marriages is, I think in the early days as you grow apart, and then all of a sudden she's doing this and you're still on your little path. And just understanding that, it's like, how did you deal with teenagers, you know, and all of the hormone changes in puberty that you had to like go through with your kids? You love them, you're not getting rid of them, you're committed, you know this will end. There are probably things you can do to facilitate, but that's going to look different for every couple.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow. Have you seen it?

It's happening.

It's either way, whether you like it or not, it's happening.

It's happening.

So be along for the ride.

Yeah.

And you know, some women kind of, I mean, they'll quietly tell me and they're kind of embarrassed, like, I'm actually like my period stopped and I'm okay. Now, maybe they've had joint pain or some headaches, but like they kind of skated through the worst of it.

Is that more of a mindset, like approaching it with a positive mindset or an attitude?

When you look at there's some data on cognitive behavioral therapy. But man, that's hard to do and hard to access, at least in the US. But there are some studies in Great Britain looking at cognitive behavioral therapy and menopause. And those women did better and really felt like they had less symptomatology and were doing better. But I don't wanna say that CBT is a replacement for hormone therapy or whatever. I think it's a tool and a toolkit, especially if you're having the mental issues that can be very, very powerful and help address some other issues. So women who have good nutrition or healthier in when they start the perimenopause journey, do better. Now, I don't want to shame any woman who's living in hell who had perfect nutrition and was working out, you know, doing all the things.

But overall, they do better.

But overall, they tend, the healthier you are when you show up is how you'll kind of go through it.

What is the age again for pre-menopause to menopause?

Sure.

So average 51 for menopause period stops 45 to 55 still normals. seven to 10 years. So let's back it up. So around 35 patient. I really think patients should be screened for perimenopause and getting the education system going in their 30s. Like this is coming. These are the things to look for. Don't be scared.

You know, what is the, I guess, what is the oldest woman who had menopause? Do we know? Like how is there, and is there a way to prolong menopause? To push it in the future?

So that is where the most exciting research is. So there, there's the occasional woman who will kind of go into her 60s. you know, it's pretty rare. And have a child then or 95 of women will be. No, no, not without help because they're. The quality is poor. So that they might get pregnant, but it doesn't survive. Yeah, yeah, I got it. So they miscarriage.

But having the period still in this.

Yeah, but still having a period. It's pretty rare, but it'll happen.

So.

But 95 of women will be through by the age of 55. So then we have our stragglers. So we don't know what can. push out the life of the ovary other than good health and nutrition. We know things that will cut years off the life of the ovary. So chemotherapy, anything that'll like disrupt the over, you know, chemotherapy, radiation in the abdomen, yes. Surgery, so hysterectomy, which a lot of women have, you lose four and you leave your ovaries behind, you're gonna lose four years off the life of the ovary. Okay. In the book we talked about a study that was done Specifically looking at women who had childhood sexual abuse, whose children were then sexually abused. And for whatever reason, they looked at their age of menopause, and it was nine years.

Nine.

Wow.

Earlier than the average.

Nine years earlier.

So we know that stress- Early 40s or- that kind of stress will take off the shelf life if you're overweight, you know, 'cause you're inflamed and autoimmune, you know. We know that smokers do go through earlier. African American women tend to go through about a year, year and a half earlier. you know, genetics plays a huge part. Asian women tend to go through a little bit later than, than Caucasian. Then we have, if you have a bilateral tubal ligation, so tubes tied from, you know, you lose a year and a half. Yeah. So anything that disrupts blood flow or the health of the abdominal cavity, ovaries, endometriosis, you go through sooner, you know, because of all the inflammation in the abdomen. So there's lots of things that can lower the age of menopause. How many kids you have? so if you are ovulating all the time, you lose more eggs each month. So women who've never had children and weren't on contraception go through a little bit sooner. Women who are on birth control for a long time get a few more months in, you know, like, it's really interesting. But the best research I love, love, love coming out right now, there's a couple of companies that are looking at amh, which is a kind of bizarre hormone in, in our ovaries that can extend the life of the ovary.

Really?

So they're really looking at technology and pharmacology that will make menopause optional?

Come on. Yeah.

You think it's possible? Not for mine or dead. They're gone. But you'd have to start young, but it would basically like decrease the signals that are causing the atrophy and the.

Atresia of the ovarian follicles. What would life look like for a.

Woman that never had menopause and lived until they died? Well, like a man. You just age and die. I think we'd live longer. I think we would have a longer health span.

Interesting.

So, but what these people are saying is that, what these researchers are saying that it won't extend your ability to bear children much longer, but it will give you enough estrogen for protection.

Interesting.

To maintain that protection. You're still going to age and die of something.

Right, right.

But we're not going to see that acceleration. So women will just live a lot longer right now, which is longer than men.

And then we'll go through those emotional changes.

Right.

Dramatic changes. Taking that, that, you know, what it would do for women's mental health and their resilience and their ability to function and work, you know, through that, I think. What is this? Is this available now for women or is it? No, no, no, it's all experimental right now, but there's oviva is one of the company, Daisy Robinson. And then there's one, I can't think of the name of the company right now, but there's two I know because I've been on panels with them and I just sit there. Oh my God, that's amazing. So like for my daughters who are 23 and 20. It might be possible. That might be possible. I mean, my 23 year old who's going to be a doctor, she's first year med, well now second year med student. She's like, Mom, menopause really should be an option. Like, I should not go through all these things. You know, like, I might get on hormone therapy and parry and just skate on through.

What is the most interesting thing you've learned in the last year while working on your book and working with women who have gone through all these different.

Complicated, you know, emotions that I totally misjudged the women. of our age, I totally bought into the line that this is the end and that, you know, I just wasn't going to be as much of a person. Menopause scared the hell out of me. And I felt, when I finally realized I was menopausal, I felt old. I felt like it was the end. Oh, I felt, you know, and how wrong that was and how I am killing it right now.

Let's go.

You know, I am like, let's go. And I'm bringing my daughters and I'm bringing other physicians and I'm, you know, I'm just trying this. no, I'm saying no, I'm not accepting what the status quo, the old menopause, because this should be the best time of our lives.

Wow. All right.

I like that.

Yeah.

That's exciting.

Yeah.

Wow. What are you most excited about in your life?

I just love my kids and my family. You know that I don't worry about paying for college. And, and, you know, I I'm. I'm not worried. And now I can help out my nieces and nephews, like. that level of stability that I didn't grow up with. You know, my parents went bankrupt when I was a kid and just kind of living through that, which made me who I am, but I don't want to repeat that for my kids. It's like, how do you create just enough hardship for your kids who are resilient, not giving them every, just enough to be successful, but not enough to do nothing. So I'm always walking that line with them. But, and just really like celebrating my siblings, and I have lost three brothers. to two to cancer, you know, one to the HIV and hepatitis. And just life is short and you got to smell the roses and do the things and climb the mountains and do the travel. And if I don't take care of myself, I'm not going to be able to have fulfill all those goals. And there's so much cancer in my family, like two brothers, five aunts on one side, you know, like multiple, multiple, multiple cousins. I've got a gene. There's something not okay. And it is my job to take care of myself. And if I don't eat the foods and do the work and live the life and do the stress reduction, then I'm not going to get that option that I really, really want.

I've heard you talking about the loss of your three brothers who you've lost, right? How do you navigate being a mom when you, lost three siblings in your current family, but then you have kids.

Yeah.

How do you just navigate life with the loss, but also the love that you have?

Yeah. So you lose them one at a time. So it's not like you wake up and they're gone. So I was a little girl, I was nine when Jeff died. And it really kind of redefined our family. Mom was pregnant with number seven. I have, there's eight of us. And then she had another baby two years later. And then she had hysterectomy and there was no more kids. So. you know, watching them watch me grieve was really hard. And because I was so close to my brother Bob when he died in 2015, and he was like, you know, he had the same partner for 35 years that he and Randy came for, like, every Mother's Day and, and Easter, and, you know, we decorate, and he's just so talented. And so he'd do all these wonderful, special things with my daughters and, you know, dress them up and make them fancy things. And so that was a tough loss. And then when Jude died, Jude got sick right after Bob died. He was diagnosed with cancer. And it was COVID and we were sneaking over the state line to go see him and try to take care of him. And his travel was embargoed for good reasons. And just trying to spend time with him and take care. And then in the end, I was able to do his end of life care too, so, for the last week or so.

And.

It just really, you know, they were older with Jude and watching them like celebrate the wins is really cool. And we have like a little thing in the kitchen where all the boys, we have the little church cards, you know, from their, with their pictures. And then my dad died like nine months after. But he was old and right around the time, you know, still. And he had a broken heart. So, Broken heart from... Well, he buried three of his kids.

You know?

You think he died of a broken heart?

I, you know, he just kind of like, once Jude died, I just saw him just kind of go quickly. And that was a blessing that he didn't have this long, drawn out, you know, horrible thing. But, you know, now here's my mom. She's been alone without my dad since 2021. She's buried three kids. She now has dementia and she just, it's really hard. It's hard for her.

Yeah.

And so me just openly talking to my kids about my feelings about that and like what I'm doing in my life to try to prevent, not that you can't guarantee everything, but like I'm just trying to limit their time of dealing with me like that.

Right, right, right, right, right.

Yeah.

Do you have any advice for people who are grieving a loss of life? on how to also take care of themselves so they don't decline.

So I did it wrong the first time with Bob, you know, and I didn't give in to the grief. I fought it. I would only cry on my drive home from work. I didn't get therapy or counseling, you know, I did everything wrong.

And so- Try to push through it.

Right, I'll be fine. And then with Jude, I said the things to him, like Bob, I didn't say, I didn't have the closure. And so with Jude, I said the things, I said all the I love yous, and I said the goodbyes, and I said everything wonderful. And then I really leaned into it, and I let myself be sad, and I let the kids see it, but I didn't want to be overly dramatic about it. But it was such a different experience. I ate well. I knew it was coming. I worked out. I made myself do the things. So I was so much healthier through the process, mentally and physically. I still grieved, but I just came out of it so much better. Yeah.

So don't lose yourself in the grieving process.

No, you've got to grieve. You've got to let yourself go there, but the days you can't get out of bed, that's okay. But the days you can, you need to go and eat the right things and go to the gym, and keep those pillars of health going because you're just going to get through this so much easier.

Wow. I'm curious in a moment for you to share the biggest thing that's opened up for you or the most important thing from this conversation that you want people to take away from. For me, it was how men can be educated and informed more. And so that when the time comes, even if they don't know how to navigate it, at least they can say, I'm here for you. Yeah, I'm here for you. I'm going to learn the best I can, and I'm going to do my best to be here for you. And I think if a woman sees their partner, their male partner, Even do that, it should help them feel a little more safe. They may not understand everything. And they're never going to because they're.

Not going to see the world the same way.

But now you can put words to it, right? And there's a thing happening and it's okay, we're going to get through this together.

So women watching, send this to your men so they can understand the gist saying, I understand you're going through something and I'm going to do my best. It's a good start. the next thing is the five keys to kind of taking care of your health pre-menopause and during it so that you can optimize the experience and you don't have to suffer as much and hopefully not suffer at all through these different kind of five keys that you laid out. And then I would also say, like, just the, I think sex is really important in, in keeping a relationship healthy. So doing the things sexually, specifically with, like, the creams and other things, that could be an easy Relief.

So easy.

Making it still work for you.

It's not painful.

So those would be kind of three things that stuck away from me. But what would you say is the number one takeaway for you that you share that you want everyone to be reminded of?

It's just that this is an inevitable process, but suffering through it is not. And it can be, and hopefully for you, it's an entryway or your partner or your mother or whoever's listening, you know, whoever that you love in your life is going through this. that she is going to be okay. She might need some extra love and support and things are changing for her and it's not her fault. And, you know, be there for her and, you know, get her an appointment, help her find a menopause informed provider and, you know, help her get on the path to being okay.

That's great. That's beautiful. As someone who's been studying this for two decades plus, what has been the biggest shock for you in the last few years around how to live longer and anti-aging that you thought 20 years ago, this is the way, but actually you're starting to wake up and see new research or studies or personal strategies that you're like, oh, that's not the way. This is actually the way.

Well, the answer to that would, my real answer to that is kind of like more hardcore science. And I don't know if you want that or not, but it actually has to do with like 20 years ago, I thought aging was caused by an accumulation of damage that we're just getting over time. And so damage just in general to our DNA, to our proteins, to our mitochondria, you know, and you have these hallmarks of aging and you have to go and fix each hallmark like a surgeon. And it's like you have to fix your genomic instability and you have to fix your mitochondria and you have to fix everything, right? Now I think aging is a program. Fast forward 20 years. I think aging is a program. And it's something that is in our, it's in our DNA at the level of our epigenome. So our epigenetics, these are things that are sort of kind of on top of our DNA that turn our genes on and activate them or turn them off and deactivate them. And it comes down to this concept of Dr. Steve Horvath's biological aging clocks. You've heard of these? Uh-huh.

The biological aging clocks.

Like chronological aging versus biological aging. Biological aging, right. How do you test that? There's a variety of tests for it. Blood work, is that what you're talking about? There's a blood work test and they test, they're called methyl groups. Essentially they're just carbon with three hydrogens and there's a pattern of them on our DNA. There's a pattern of them and this pattern I think is the aging program. I'm following the leading scientists, but now this is now my belief 20 years later that there is a program of aging and it's these patterns of these methyl groups on our DNA that change with time that makes us age. And the reason I think that is because if you think about reproduction, so if you think about like a sperm and an egg, I mean these aren't young, In the best case scenario, I mean, you got like a 20 year old, but like, you know, a lot of people are reproducing at 30 and 40, right? So these are older cells. I mean, they're still older even at 20. They're older, they come together, they recombine, their epigenome completely resets, and they make a young organism with no sign of aging.

That is interesting.

No sign of aging.

How is that possible?

The epigenome resets, completely resets. and there's no sign of aging.

It's kind of fascinating, isn't it?

It's very fascinating. So how do we reset it within ourselves? That's the question. And so now there have been over the last, I would say, oh gosh, five to seven years, there's been a, so, okay, let me take even a step further back. Okay. Back in 2006, Shinya Yamanaka, a Japanese scientist, won the Nobel Prize for discovering four different genes that are very specific type of genes. They're called transcription factors because they can regulate a lot of different genes in our body. He discovered that if he could took four of these transcription factors and took any cell from the body, any old cell from a 80-year-old woman skin cell, and he put these four transcription factor genes on them, on that old 80-year-old cell, he could revert it into an embryonic stem cell. Come on. With no sign of aging, right? It's an embryonic stem cell that now can form any cell in the body. this is a, it's called induced pluripotent stem cell. So it resets the epigenome completely. The cell loses its identity. It doesn't know it's a skin cell anymore. It's an embryonic stem cell, but it can now form any type of cell, right? And so that is also evidence that resetting the epigenome, at least to the very extreme case, right, all the way to the embryonic stem cell state, is a way of reprogramming the cell into a very youthful state. and there's some more lines of evidence. Cloning is another one. So you take a nucleus from like an old cell, put it in a young cytoplasm of an egg, and the epigenome is reset and you have a young organism, right? So there's other lines of evidence of this. But in the last five-ish years, there's been some research that have been done by a variety of scientists where they've taken those Yamanaka factors, they're called the four transcription factors. and they've given them to mice, older mice. And they don't want to make all the mice cells become stem cells, right? Like, they don't want the cell to lose its identity.

It'll just be like a blob, right?

It's like, you know, almost like a big tumor cell or something.

Right.

What they want is to reset that epigenome in a way to make it, to return it to a more youthful state. And so they've been able to sort of pulse it on, not, you just kind of like, You gotta find the right timing, the right timing. And so they're making progress with this. And there's been some studies that have shown, you know, you kind of, it's called partial cellular reprogramming. So they're not doing the full on reprogram, but they're partially doing it. And it does rejuvenate a lot of aspects of aging in these rodents. There's a lot of hurdles to overcome. And I know that this was the answer you were looking for, but I'm super excited about it. It's a very interesting interesting. I think that we are very likely going to through, I think there's this process of epigenetic reprogramming and Altos Labs, they're doing phenomenal research. They have a lot of the top scientists, Dr. Steve Horvath, Dr. Morgan Levine. I've had both of them on my podcast. They're both really good. I mean, Dr. Steve Horvath is the one who, he's the pioneer of the Horvath clocks, the epigenetic clocks that can identify this biological age, this molecular age that really identifies how old you are versus your chronological age. But I do think that if they can figure out some of these hurdles, that we might have a tune-up where we go and get rejuvenated.

Like, what, reverse the clock 10 years overnight or something?

Right, exactly.

Or more. Really?

Yeah.

Come on. How far away are we from this?

I don't, you know, I don't, I could say a couple decades, I could see for sure, like, because things are really growing. Things are growing. And then gene engineering, you know, there's a lot of exponential growth in some of this synthetic biology world where they're doing all this gene engineering and it's like they're just really kind of, it's kind of phenomenal.

Are you testing any of this stuff on yourself? Are you doing any stem cell injections or like going to these labs and trying these things or you just researching and noticing?

I am very cautious when it comes to some of that stuff. But it's not that I don't think some of it works. Also, I just, you know, I'm a little bit of a security cat, but I stick with the exercise. I'm just researching food, exercise, sleep. Yeah, and so those are the big things. And, you know, to kind of maybe go back to your question, I would say that, you know, I used to think that, you know, limiting protein was probably like, oh, you're better off being more plant-based, like now I think exercise is the king. I think exercise is the longevity drug that if you could pill it up, we'd all be taking it. We all should be taking it. And I think that the protein is important for fueling our muscles, for improving muscle mass, and for repair as well. And so that would be a bigger thing. And also, intermittent fasting as well. I still try and I still think that it's important to do a type of it, time-restricted eating.

Because even on your speech that you had with Dr. Valtolongo, he was saying people thought it was 16 hours, now it's actually more 12-hour time-restricted, is that right? I don't know if that's the new research.

Yeah, I don't know exactly what endpoints that he was talking about, but I think the way I sort of think about it is you want to have a fasting period while you're sleeping because if the repair processes that we were talking about to kind of go back to the start of this podcast is that we were talking about, you know, your DNA is repaired when you're sleeping. You're cleaning out stuff inside of your cells, pieces of DNA that from, you know, cells dividing that have just kind of fragmented off or gunk, you know, cell just pieces of the cell, like there's all this gunk in our cells. And that process is cleared out.

When you sleep.

When you sleep. However, if you had just ate a meal before you hit the pillow, your digestion, all that stuff, that goes on for like five hours. There's a lot of stuff happening.

Ooh, man, it's so good to eat.

Shunts energy away from, the energy shifts from repair, it's still in digestive mode.

Oh man.

So repair mode needs to be, fasted.

So when should you stop eating before you go to sleep? How much time should you have before you go to sleep?

I think typically it's like three hours are what a lot of the experts like Dr. Sascha and Panda have sort of come to the conclusion. Because if you think about, if you had, if you finished eating three hours before you go to sleep, then for the first two hours you're going to be finishing up the digestion process, right? And then the rest of the time, it's repair mode, right? It's repair mode. So you want to give your body repair mode. And that's where I, Is that no.

No like treats, not even a little snack, a couple of nuts?

I mean, that's not going to be as big as a meal. Okay. Right, like let's be real. So some people really take it serious, like they don't want to take a vitamin or anything. Like, don't worry about that. You drink water or whatever. I take my vitamins like close to bed, you know? But yeah, you don't want a full-on meal. I mean, now of course there's times that I've been so obsessive about it where then I go to bed hungry and I'm cold because of my metabolism. You don't sleep well. And then I don't sleep well. Exactly, I wake up cold all night and I'm like, well maybe I should have had a little something to eat.

Because that was-- But isn't it good to sleep cold?

Isn't that like dark room, cold, sleep.

It's a different kind of cold when--.

Get your bones cold. Get your bones cold. Yeah, it's not like, you can put the blanket on and feel- It's eternal cold. It's like, yeah, it's like that cold that you can't, you just can't fix.

Another blanket won't help me.

Yeah, so, that's, so yeah, I will say that I've decided I'm not gonna be so obsessive about it. But like, with the fasting thing too, what's interesting is I do think that a lot, you know, there's the problem that people could come across is where they, they're skipping so many meals that they're not getting enough protein.

Right.

And then are they working out to make sure they're at least getting that aspect of increasing, you know, getting that muscle protein synthesis? Because so if you are going to be doing some intermittent fasting and there's an argument to be made to kind of like do a little once in a while sort of just clean out, right? Where you kind of stress your body a little bit and do that. But I feel like, I mean, that's what exercise does. And in fact, exercise activates vigorous exercise activates a lot of those same repair processes like autophagy. That's one of the things that's happening when you're not eating. It also happens when you're sleeping and not eating. So, again, it comes back to exercise, forgives a lot of sins. Not all of them, but I mean... A lot of them. It really does.

I mean, food plays a big part of it. What would you say would be a few foods that you would recommend to help with optimal sleep? With optimal like what three to five foods should we be eating to support us in sleeping better and what should we remove to help us sleep better?

So there's a lot, there's been some studies and this isn't, you know, I don't remember the details like in great detail, basically. There have been studies that have looked at like if you eat a high carbohydrate meal for dinner versus a high fat meal versus high protein, and I don't remember all the details. All I remember is that one would improve deep sleep, but the other would improve REM. And so it was with this kind of mixed bag where it's like, okay, well, if I am going to do the higher carbohydrate meal, then at least I'm going to get one of those other ones. I don't know. I forgot which one it is. It's been a few years since I read those studies, but if you're looking at the macronutrient level, I would say that it seems as though different types of foods are affecting different stages of sleep.

That's interesting.

It is interesting and it also is sorry to all the people out there that want to say it's the one or the other. Let's, I'm just going to tell you what the data says is that it's like, I don't remember which one improved the deep sleep and which one because honestly, I don't know that, you know, I, yeah, eating your meal right before bed also kind of disrupts your sleep. And I think that might be even more important than like what you're eating, as well as getting that physical activity earlier in the day makes a difference. And then the other thing that I think is even more important than the food is heat stress. Like doing a hot tub or a sauna. That if you do that pretty close to bedtime, like not necessarily right before bed, but like maybe a couple of hours before bed, it really seems to improve sleep.

Really?

Yeah.

And there's a lot of potential reasons for that. But, you know, like growth hormone being one, you know, and also, like, It increases what are called somnogenic cytokines. So when you get in a hot tub or sauna, you're actually increasing some inflammatory markers that are also called somnogenic cytokines because they induce sleep. And so there's a reason now you want to be able to cool off. You're talking about being cool. You don't want to like get in the sauna, then get right into bed and you're sweating in bed and then you can't go to sleep. But usually if you take like a shower, a cooler shower after that, You know, or some people like to get in their cold plunge. If you don't have a cold plunge and just do a shower. Cold shower.

Yeah.

And then it really does, in fact, my husband is religious about it. Every night he has to do, he.

Does the hot tub.

And then cold. And then cold, cold plunge. And then- He sleeps like a baby. He sleeps like a baby. Like, because I don't have as much trouble falling asleep. Like, I get, he's more of a night person. Like, I can go to bed at.

9, 9, obviously, but 9:30, no problem. So the cold doesn't keep him awake?

No, it doesn't. I know a lot of people use the cold to kind of get that norepinephrine burst where you wake up in the morning and you get that hit and you feel good and you start. No, I'm sure while he's in it, but it's like maybe the combination with the heat does something. It's where he starts. He doesn't just do the cold.

Yeah, it's hot and cold. It's hot and cold. All right, I'm tired.

But he does the hot for a while and then gets into the cold. Probably he doesn't want to be sweating.

Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, if you could create an optimal day protocol, let's just say you have all things perfect in life and you can wake up, go to sleep at a certain time, eat what you want, train the way you want, do hot, do cold, like you have a perfect day all the time in the world. How would you set up your perfect day protocol? with sleep, food, workouts.

Perfect for, for like being healthy.

For optimal human protocol for longevity, for optimal strength currently. Like what would that perfect day look like for you? What would you eat? When would you wake up? How would you train? Would you do any like heat, cold, you know, any of that stuff? Would you do a All the time. All the time.

Anything you could do. Okay. So what I would do is wake up when I would naturally wake up. I typically naturally wake up around 7:00 a.m. And- no alarm though. Just wake up naturally.

No alarm.

I don't, yeah. I mean, the only time I use an alarm is if I have to wake up before 7:00, like I'm doing a sunrise hike or something, or I'm in another time zone or something and I have to use it. But I would wake up naturally. which is usually around 7:00 AM. I personally like to have coffee, so I have my coffee and then sometimes I'll do a little bit of maybe a protein shake or I'll have some egg or something very light, that's protein, and then I'll go outside because I want that early morning light exposure. to reset my circadian rhythm so that I again fall asleep at the right time. And it's really that light exposure early in the morning is very important for that resetting of the circadian rhythm. I would go outside and I work out. I work out outside, actually almost all the time.

Really?

I work out outside. I do my lifting outside. So I would go out and I would do my sort of CrossFit training protocol, which I love. And so this was, it's like an hour long workout and I do some Resistance training, depending on the day, maybe I'll do some squats, some deadlifts, mix it in with a workout, maybe some rowing in there, burpees, a little push-ups, you know, I'm getting the best of both worlds. I'm getting the hit and the resistance training. I do that for an hour. And then I would probably have the sauna already on. And it would be about 175. I don't like to go too high. these days, like about 175, especially after a workout. And I go in the sauna and I would either listen to some music or maybe a podcast that I'm interested in listening to or maybe read a book or read a science study. And so I'd be in there for about 20 to 30 minutes, depending on how I'm feeling. And sometimes I'll put some water on the rocks to get steam. I like the steam as well. So I do that, then I'll get out and then I'll have my bigger protein meal. So I'll have- so a little bit.

Of food before the workout, then more after.

I like a little bit because especially if you're going a little bit harder and you're doing some high intensity, I find that it helps me not get so dizzy.

Yeah. Gives you more energy too.

Yeah, so I mentioned I'll have a protein shake. Sometimes I'll also have a half an apple. I'll cut half an egg frittata. Something like I like a little bit of something. And then after that I'll have my meal. I'll have a frittata, egg frittata that has broccoli in it. I'll have a big serving of it. And then I'll have some, I like my Yerba Mate tea. So I don't drink too much coffee. I certainly don't, I usually only have one cup in the morning. Sometimes I'll have two, but most of the time I go to the Yerba Mate hot tea, loose leaf tea, and I'll make that after I have my meal. And then I like to sit down and do some science, read some science, like what's the latest. I get into all that. Cognitive stimulation is very important, right? It's very important to keep the mind sharp. And cognitive stimulation is also very important for brain-derived neurotrophic factor. We're talking about exercise increasing it. Well, cognitive stimulation does as well. Novelty, learning something new, all those things are important. having a podcast like the School of Greatness where you're constantly learning new things, it's very good for the brain. So I like to do that while I'm drinking my Yerba Mate tea. And then the afternoon, I will get hungry again and I will have two homemade turkey burgers. I'm really getting big on the protein. But then I also have some kale and blueberries in a shake together. And that also really kind of gives me a Brain boost, I don't know what it is. I think it's the polyphenols and the blueberries, but I'm not alone in that. Other people talk about it, where it's like instead of having the caffeine that mid-afternoon, I get the blueberries. And there's studies showing that it improves cognition and memory across the lifespan. Young children, adolescents, older age.

Boom. So I do that. What's the next best thing besides blueberries.

That will give you that? Cocoa viA has been shown that, so it's a type of cacao powder that has very similar polyphenols.

Cocoa viA?

Yeah, that's the brand name I use. And because their powder has been shown in clinical studies to improve blood flow to the brain, to improve cognition and memory in older adults, and also blood pressure, it's been shown to improve blood pressure. In fact, I've gotten my mom, and people in my family to use it and have improvements in their blood pressure as well.

Really?

Yeah.

So it's like a cocoa powder.

It's a cocoa powder. It's smooth. Unflavored. You can put it, I usually, I don't usually put it in my smoothie. You could. I usually put it in, I usually drink like a, especially in the wintertime, I do like a, like a cocoa. So I'll put cocoa via with some water and then I'll mix in a.

Little bit of like monk fruit or.

Stevia and I'll just drink that. There you go. So, just water, blend it in or mix it in.

Right.

Okay. Yeah. You don't want to put milk or dairy in there because it blunts the polyphenol. It binds up the polyphenols and then you're not going to get the same effect. So if you're going to, if you like- Almond milk or no? Almond milk's fine. If you like creaminess, almond milk would work, but you don't want like dairy. Interesting. Okay. So that would, so that- I forgive you, okay. So you're telling me that, I'm telling you like my perfect day that ice, you know, can do, right? So turkey burgers and then, you know, Then I would say on the ideal day, then I like to go out and do just a couple mile run in like, this is about, I would say, 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Usually I do it when my son's at soccer. It's like, what else am I gonna do? Yeah, but I'll- Jog around? I jog around the trail. And this is like, I love it. I feel when I get that second exercise thing in, and it's not like a long, you know, it's 20 minutes or whatever, I'm doing like a 5K. It's not like a long, And I'm not going hard. Yeah, it's like a zone two type of, I could have a breathy conversation. I'll do some intervals. I'll run a little faster. So I will do a little bit of intervals in there sometimes. But I like to get that, those are the best days when I get that second hit of exercise in.

That's cool.

About three o'clock, and then it's time.

To.

Let'S see, did I do any supplements in the morning? No, I usually do my supplements Sometimes I'll take an omega-3 in the morning as well. These days I've been only doing it at night. So then I get to dinnertime and dinner I like to have some nice protein and then I like to have either roasted vegetables or a salad. So I like to get some more vegetables in there and salad. Also, sometimes I'll have an orange or an apple or something for dessert. And I know people are skittish about it. I think fruit's great. I just don't eat nonstop fruit. So I'll have that as well. And then I'll get my, this is when I get my supplements. So I do a lot of vitamins. So I do about 2 grams of omega-3. Usually it's about 2 to 1 ratio EPA, DHA. And then I do, let's see, so the omega-3 then I do vitamin D. I take around, I total around 4,000 IU's of vitamin D a day. So I get like 2,000 in a vitamin D supplement plus 2,000 in my multivitamin. So I take a multivitamin as well. And then I take magnesium glycinate and then I take another product called Magnesium, which is like a powder I put in my water that I take all my vitamins with. And it's got like a mixture of some other magnesium, organic magnesium salts as well. and then I take alpha-lipoic acid. Are you wanting all the perfect stuff? Alpha-lipoic acid, which has been shown to blunt the advanced glycation end products. So it's been shown to lower those in clinical studies. In fact, people with type 2 diabetes, it's been shown to improve their ages. So I take that and then I take benfotiamine, another vitamin that's been shown to help with advanced glycation end products. That's an important aspect that I'm focused on. And that's just a fat-soluble vitamin B1. Take that. And then I take lutein and zeaxanthin for my eyes. I take CoQ10, and then I take, I'm probably going to miss something. I take sulforaphane. Sulforaphane helps detoxify a lot of terrible things that we're exposed to, like plastic chemicals like BPA, but also air pollution factors as well. It activates a very powerful detoxification. system in our body. So I take that. And then... Where do you think you'd.

Be without taking supplements? You think you'd still be as healthy and optimal as you are? Or is it just more of a psychological boost for you?

No, I mean, so look, I'll tell you, the omega-3 one's critical. So there's studies that have now shown that having a low omega-3 index is like smoking.

Come on.

Yeah.

Wow.

It's like smoking. So, Omega-3 levels as measured by the Omega-3 Index. So, this is like measuring it in your red blood cells. It's a long-term marker of Omega-3. It's a beautiful study that was done by Dr. Bill Harris. It was a Framingham cohort published a few years ago, and he looked at people's Omega-3 levels of high or low. High would be 8%, low would be 4%. He's the pioneer of the Omega-3 Index. And basically, people that were non-smokers but had a low omega-3 index had the same life expectancy as smokers with a high omega-3 index.

Wow.

I mean, if you look at their life expectancy curve, they're overlaid. I mean, it's like, I wish I could pull up the figure. It's mind-blowing.

And the only way you can get omega-3 is that from fish?

So, no.

Yes.

Seafood is the major, that's what's gonna drive your omega-3 index. It needs to be EPA, DHA, that's from fish. from the marine sources. ALA, the plant source of omega-3, can be converted into those two other omega-3 fatty acids very, very inefficiently. And so really you need to get the marine source. For people that are vegetarians or vegans, microalgae is the source of microalgae oil. You have to take a lot of it. But studies have found that so people with 4% omega-3 index, that's low. That's the actually People in the US, the average Omega-3 index is like 5%. If you take two grams of Omega-3, so supplemental Omega-3 per day for, was it like three months or so, then, or three or four months, then you can go from a 4% low Omega-3 index to an 8% high Omega-3 index. And people that have an 8% Omega-3 index have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to the people with low.

Come on.

If you think about Japan, Japan, they have a five-year increased life expectancy compared to the US on average.

They live a lot of fish in their diet.

Their Omega-3 index is 10%, ours is 5%. So their average Omega-3 index is 10%, our average here in the US is 5%.

And that's just connected to fish.

It's connected to fish intake.

Right. Oh, wow. But you can't eat too much fish.

Because of mercury, right? Yeah, I mean, it depends on the type of fish you're eating too. Sure. So the best types of fish to eat would be Salmon, mackerel, sardines. These are high omega-3 but low mercury fish. And there's actually even studies showing that the omega-3 fatty acids protect against the mercury to some degree. I don't want to eat swordfish already. Swordfish is very high. That's a very real thing. If you can get really high mercury levels, it can be bad. But if you're eating, I eat salmon three times a week. Maybe four sometimes. I eat salmon a lot. But I also take my omega-3 supplement. So it came back to that question is, do you think you could get away from all the supplements? I mean, I do think that there's a few that are really important, omega-3 and vitamin D. You can make it from the sun. It gets converted into a steroid hormone. Very, very important. Very important. It's a steroid hormone regulating 5% of the human genome. without it, lots of stuff's going wrong. But, you know, there's a lot of things that regulate whether or not you can make vitamin D, right? Where you live. How much melanin you have in your skin, that's a natural sunscreen. If you wear sunscreen or if you have a lot of protective clothing, as you get older, you're four times less efficient at making it. So lots of things, right? So that's where the supplement does help. So I don't, you know.

I would.

Say, no, I would want those couple of supplements.

Do you have a list on your site anywhere of all the supplements you take?

I don't have a list on my site. I do talk about it on my membership. I have a lot of Q&As I do once a month. Gotcha. I'm thinking about something like, you know, having some kind of maybe list because other people have lists of the supplements. Everyone's got the list.

They're not necessarily right. Really?

I want your list then.

That's what I want. Yeah. But my list changes a lot.

That's the thing. It's like what you took two years.

Ago is different than this year.

It is, it changes a lot. Like sometimes I, you need a rolling.

List, you know, you need an accessible list.

Yeah.

What do I, like, is this really, like, I used to take NAD, like, you know, precursors.

If you could only take three supplements a day, and this would, you're only allowed three right now, what would you take consistently?

I would take omega-3, vitamin D, and sulforaphane. Okay.

To simplify it for people, if they're like, I can't take these 30 supplements and I don't know what, you know, Which brands are good?

Which ones are not good? But I would definitely make sure I'm getting my magnesium for my food because.

I left that one out.

So magnesium. I left that one.

Well, if I only had three. Right, right.

But then you'd be focusing on the magnesium. I would be getting my leafy greens and my nuts, like almonds, a very high magnesium.

Right.

Because I want to make sure I'm.

Getting, you know, meeting the RDA. Okay, top five supplements. What if you could only get five supplements a day? What were those top five? Okay, omega-3, Yep. Vitamin D, Sulforaphane, Magnesium, and the Multivitamin.

Okay. That seems more reasonable.

That's the top five.

People are living longer because of the advances in medicine and technology. None of us question that. But something happened in '96 that did start questioning that. By the mid-2000s, it was an established research that we don't live longer anymore, that the trend of people living longer has actually reversed, and that we have a pandemic of deaths of despair, where people are dying from preventable lifestyle diseases and the age group most being affected are between 24 and 65. So people at the beginning of their career and the prime of their career and through that age group are dropping down dead like flies. And it's considered deaths of despair by preventable lifestyle diseases. So we have to look at the bone lifestyle disease means that there's something in our body that's weaker. Why? Lifestyle, which is mind driven. How am I eating, drinking, sleeping? But more than that is what's my mind behind all of that? How am I actually managing the day-to-day moments? How am I managing the patterns, the traumas, the established toxic habits? What am I doing about that stuff? And that's when we ignore all of that, because this current trend of science is saying, oh, those don't matter. What matters is the symptoms. Let's just look for the symptoms. Checklist, diagnose, label. When you label someone, you chop up to 10 years more of their life. You know, it's like it's adding on, they've shown studies of people with a mental health diagnosis have chopped their 20 years off, up to 20 years off their lifespan. People on psychotropic drugs because of all the complications and the changes in the brain and the body. chopping up to 25 years of their life. I mean, this is serious. So here we have this already existing. Then the pandemic hits. Now another years, they say that there's an additional year being chopped off people's lives. But there's such a contradiction because they're saying, hey, there's this adverse circumstance, grief of loss of people, uncertainty, medical and, you know, not knowing if you're going to live or die. And how long is this isolation going to go on and economic impact and whatever the whole lot that's trauma. and they say that when they say but, this is the way to treat it. Let's label it, let's diagnose it, let's medicate it. So here we've come into COVID with a problem with that stupid philosophy that's created such a lot of problems. And scientifically, this is all being researched and shown. And now we've got the pandemic and now they want to carry on that system that didn't work to this, which is going to make it even worse. So we've got to shift our narrative completely. and we've got to stop saying that mental illness is on the rise and that there's one in four people on antidepressants who are depressed. 100% of people are depressed and anxious and concerned about this COVID pandemic. 100% of people in the world at some point in their life have and will be anxious and depressed and in grief and sadness and terror and despair and one of the others. A large percentage of the population, and I'm not sure the exact percentage because no one's really done this this kind of research. But estimates, it's probably 30-40% of people will have extreme trauma from abuse, war trauma, that kind of stuff, where they'll go down the continuum to sort of the -19, 8-19, if you look at a continuum of 0 to 10, 0 to -10, and have things like psychotic breaks and hearing voices and extreme states of distress, mental distress, which are still not diseases. They are actually in that traumatic situation, you're having a traumatic response. Think of someone who's a war vet. I just interviewed a Navy SEAL the other day who was trained snipers. And, I mean, the things that he had to do and that his teams had to do, you know, they come back and try and. We all know the problem of trying to, you know, reconcile back into civilian life after you've gone through. I mean, you know, this is what they'd be experiencing all day long, stuff that's completely against survival, completely against. our human nature. And now they, instead of them being allowed to process this trauma, they're coming back and being told that they're diseased. And he would tell me that what they do with a lot of, we don't hear this sort of thing, but he told me this, they will inject things like risperidone, which is an antipsychotic, into the spines of war vets because they're a bit psychotic and they psychotic for a reason. It's their coping. How do you deal with this? Of course you're going to be angry, you're going to be frustrated, you're not going to be able to love like you did. You have to be able to embrace process and reconceptualize, giving them a drug's not going to make it, not going to help it. In fact, it constrains the brain. It restricts the brain. You can't, there's no chemical cure for that. That's just going to add fuel to the fire because your mind's got to work through the brain. So now you put chemicals in and now that's not going to facilitate change. We have to do something. So it's like a narrative.

Do you feel like there, I mean, is there such a thing as a chemical imbalance in some people? you know, when they say, oh, I have a depression, it's a disease or bipolar, or I have this mental health disease, or I have a chemical imbalance, I was treated with this. Don't try to say I don't because this is who I am. Is that, do some people have that or is that.

That's a result of go ahead. The narrative of I have a chemical imbalance and my depression is from chemical imbalance is a narrative that is the only explanation that people are being given. They're not given an alternative reaction. I mean, an alternative narrative. so the most important thing is that anyone listening to this podcast, I want to validate your depression, your anxiety, your grief, your despair, your PTSD, whatever label you've been given. I want you to, I want to validate that that doesn't need to be validated with a disease label. You're not diseased, you're not a broken brain. You aren't, your brain isn't defective. You are going through something. So you aren't something you aren't that.

You are going you're experiencing something.

You're experiencing something. You're experiencing something and you're experiencing and you've coped in the only way that you could cope in that moment. So it created this adverse response because it was an adverse situation and you were just trying to cope. So what we have to do is go through a process of embracing and processing and reconceptualizing. So the important thing here is to recognize that chemical imbalance isn't the cause of your despair. The cause of your despair is what you've gone through. and what you're going through and learning how to, not knowing how to manage it and how to deal with those thoughts that are driving you crazy and those flashbacks and the trauma of the flashbacks and going back into those situations of the rape or the abuse or the war trauma or the, that it can drive a person crazy. And that's not crazy in the sense of illness. It's crazy in the sense of your mind is like this erratic tidal wave around you and it's going through your brain and you've got these and your immune system and everything screaming out to you and saying, hey, let's fix this. So a disease label invalidates it. And for a moment, it might be nice to know, okay, well, there's a label to how I feel because it kind of gives us a bit of, feels like we've got a bit of control. So initially, that gives you comfort. But don't see yourself as that. It's better to say, I'm experiencing post-traumatic stress issues because of what I've been through versus I and PTSD or I have the sickness of PTSD. It's better to say I'm experiencing symptoms of bipolar, these intense swings because of my whole story than saying I have bipolar, I have a chemical imbalance. I mean, just research is coming out the other day showed that we've got to stop saying this. The top psychiatrist that lead this field will tell you we've got to stop saying this, that there's no ways that serotonin imbalance, you can't even measure that. there's no gene for, there's no genes or serotonin imbalance causing it. It's what you've experienced. That's the cause. And then that moves through your brain and your body. So obviously your brain and your body responds. So we will see changes in the brain and the body. We will see neurochemical chaos, not necessarily serotonin imbalance. That's just one. Sometimes it's dopamine. And if dopamine's down, serotonin's often then in anandamide's often then, I mean, I can give you a list of big chemical terms and that's going to change every function in the structure of your brain and your, your DNA in your telomeres and 1400 neurophysiological responses are off. So, you know, that's the response though. And that doesn't mean that you have this thing hidden inside of you, the scary thing that's controlling you. And that invalidates. If someone comes back from war, someone's had a sexual trauma, to tell them that the depression or anxiety they're feeling is an illness is an insult to what they've gone through. But if I say to you, Gosh, that's terrible. Tell me about it. I want to hear your story. I want to support you. Your depression and anxiety that you're feeling is a signal that there's stuff going on. There's an origin story. There's a source. So can I listen? Can I help? Can I support you in trying to recognize the signals and go through the process to find the origin story and then to reconceptualize it? and that takes time. It's not a 15-minute appointment where I can give you a label. That takes time. That's not also, and it's also not the conditioning kind of treatments that are in place that some of them work if they're used in the right place. But to try and to try and put a veteran who's gone through something back into the situation to try and condition them, you can't condition. You have to reconstruct. So it's kind of like an algebraic equation. X is is the situation. Y is how you should want, you want to function for mental peace. So you've got X plus Y. And so here we are in our X situation where we are the sort of human experiencing life. We're supposed to be at Y and you put the two together and what the current treatment says is that, okay, now we're going to create Z. We're just going to ignore X and Y. We're going to create a new thing and that new thing is you're diseased. But that doesn't work. It's actually X plus Y equals XY. X is what you're going through. Y is where you wanna find mental peace. And you wanna put the two together to live together so that you can change how the past plays out into your future.

Oh man, this is powerful. Gosh. I wanna go back to what you said when you were experiencing this traumatic event in the family you had recently, where you were wearing a glucose monitor and you mentioned that there was a process you realized like the amount of that went through the roof, heart palpitations, stress, you could feel your physical, your body changing into this stress response, this protection, tightness, whatever it was.

Yeah.

Fear, anxiety, all these, these things you were experiencing in the moment. What was the process that you broke down to bring it back to, to more normal levels for yourself of feeling more peace, groundedness, calm?

Okay, so it's the process of the neuro cycle. Excellent question. It's the process of the neuro cycle, which is in the second half of the book. So the neuro cycle is five signed- this is the five steps, right? Yeah, this is the five steps. This is what I initially developed for people with traumatic brain injury. It was my first time that I developed it and developed my theory. And then from there, I refined it to all the different types of, you know, situations I worked with. And then it's been refined over the years. This is the most updated research. So a good scientist should keep learning and changing and improving, which is what I've tried to do. So in this book is the updated version of the Neurocycle. The Neurocycle is how you get your mind, which is always working under control. If in a state of acute trauma, like I was in in that moment, acute trauma creates a red brain. I showed you that picture of a red brain. That red brain means that I have a tidal wave in my brain going on or that there is the left and the right brain will be out of harmony. I'll have a drop of blood and oxygen to the front of my brain. I'm going to have things like that Delta. We've heard of things like Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta, Gamma. All those waves are supposed to flow like waves in the sea. And if you think of the sea, you've got the big swells, which is Delta, slightly smaller swells, which is Theta, the build, which is beta, the crest, which is high beta, and the gamma, which is the ripple on the beach. And so we want that through the brain in this nice kind of even way. That's kind of the, the Y state. X plus Y. X is what happens to us. Y is that state. So X happens and then that Y state gets thrown off. So in that moment, that's what happened to me. So what we want to do is because mind works through brain and body and mind is experiencing this, this trauma, which is a mess. Our brain and body just do what the mind's doing. So then there's a mess in our brain and our body. But if I have that kind of chaos, I can't think straight. I'm not going to have any wisdom. I'm going to fall apart. And in this situation, I would have. And I have in the past, but now I've learned how to deal with this. And I talk about there that this neuro cycle can improve how you manage anxiety and depression by 81%. That's a massive claim. And I've shown it scientifically. Okay. So what I did was to try and get myself back under control. Now in that state, you don't know what to do in a in a tremendously acute traumatic state. But I knew from my science and from my knowledge. And so I'm proactive. So I could go into two zones. So I went into two modes. The one mode was the mental mess that I was in, which is the pilot, because I'm driving, I'm in this time. Imagine yourself being in a helicopter that's like a time capsule. And you're flying over this forest. And the forest is your mind with all these trees. And this acute trauma has just grown because it's instant. So here's this terrible, and your helicopter is drawn to this because you are in shock and terror and fear and deep panic and anxiety. That is all the smoke signals. So I, my pilot's going like this. The co-pilot is also me, but it's my wisdom because inside of each of us is our survival. And that's our instinct that, you know, when you give someone great advice and you just think, oh, wow, where did that come from? Or, you know, you get that, it's that deeps, like we know what we know. We know how much we can handle. We will say, I know this, that kind of thing. That's the co-pilot this wisdom. So what we want to do in those states is to get ourselves into the co-pilot remember the co-pilot and the pilot. And you use the you language. So here you flying this plane over in the co-pilot saying, okay, let's calm down. Let's land it at that tree. So you land the plane, you land this time capsule, whatever, and you get out, but you're with the co-pilot so you safe. So you've created a distance, and this is. I'm explaining in detail and obviously you train and it's all in the book and it's all, I've got an app that explains it too. But this is the mindset that I have trained myself to come into so I can go into an acute trauma in that mind. I'm still crying, I'm still freaking out. Right. But I'm freaking out in this zone where I now know, because I know that I need wisdom. I need to be able to tap into that and I cannot get through this chaos if this chaotic brain and body if and mind, unless I've calmed it down. so I have to get through this because I'm stuck in that black tree and I'm stuck in this chaotic brain.

So, would that be considered, would that be considered like fight or flight, whether it's someone cutting you off in front of you in the, on the street, in a car, or someone yelling at you or someone, whatever, an event happening which is causing you to react in fight or flight, whether it's a massive.

T trauma or a little T trauma. Exactly. Exactly. Or an acute trauma, which is the, and the blind signing stuff, the stuff you don't that just hits us out the blue. Yes, absolutely. So you're going into a level of fight and flight. So everything physiologically, 1400 neurophysiological responses are activated to help you focus, but they can't work for you unless you do what I'm telling you to do, which is to shift your perception. So this is the how to, because as soon as you shift your perception in an instant, because I told you within seconds I brought the glucose monitor down. And I mean, I didn't expect it to work that fast. I was amazed. And as it cycled through, through the 12 hours of the trauma, I was able to manage it more and more. So, I mean, it really, and this is not the first time I've done this my whole life, but it was just so interesting seeing it in real time. Sure. And seeing the reaction. Okay, so step one is to get.

The co-pilot state of mind to land the plane. That's the preparation.

We haven't even got to step one. So this is preparation.

Okay, land the plane first.

Yeah, so that's it. So recognize that you remember there's a co-pilot which is wise mind, you the crazy pilot going all over the place, land the plane. Let the co-pilot tell you, okay, land the plane. And you land the plane where you need to, which is at the issue. And what drew you in to land the plane to find the issue was your emotional. So this is step one. You're going to gather awareness. And gather means you controlling it. You're not sitting under the apple tree and all the apples are hitting you on the head. You are standing back and you're picking the apple. So there's control, there's a sense of autonomy, a sense of agency. so in the midst of chaos, you can create agency mentally, because your mind's driving it. So you stand back and you say, okay, I pick that apple. So that's my emotional warning signals. Terror, despair, utter, totally traumatized, like whatever they are. You pick those apples, you put them in your baskets.

You're gathering. Then you gather awareness. So this is gathering kind of your awareness. This is how I'm feeling.

This is what's happened. This is what's, this is the event. yes. This is gathering. It's almost. Yes, it is. But you're gathering in very four little distinct packages. Because the more organized you are, the more, the less chaos. We could be being very systematic.

So what are those four? What are those four things?

So you gather awareness of your emotional warning signals. So the despair, anxiety, whatever panic attack. Then you gather awareness of your physical bodily response. So here's your co-pilot saying, okay, how are you feeling? Gather that Apple. Gather that Apple. what is your physical? Fluttering in the heart, panic attack, tension, gut wrenching, adrenaline, flight, whatever flight and fright freeze mode you're in, then your behaviors. What are you saying?

What are you doing?

You know, I mean, how are you responding? How are you responding? Yeah.

Action. Yeah.

What's. What you're saying? What are you doing? Where you're, you know, what is actually happening? And I'm grabbing this. I'm grabbing that. Get this, get that, you know, so what is that? And is it working? I mean, like, you, just doing this changes how you do things. It's amazing. You immediately go into this different mode. Fourth one is perspective. What's your perspective? This is doomed. This is terrible. This is sucks. This is end. Or, okay, this is bad, but you know what? So gather, you gather. Then as soon as you've got those, you're then going to reflect. So it's very systematic. And then as you've gathered and done all this preparation thing, you've got the two sides of the brain. We've got coherence again. You've got blood flow back to the brain. You've got oxygen back to the front. brain. When you've got low oxygen and low blood flow at the front of the brain, which happens in a trauma, in an acute situation, in those sudden things, it drops, then you are impulsive. You're going to make bad decisions. You're going to react incorrectly. You're going to create incoherence. Your alpha wave in the brain drops and becomes more active on the right side. And that's on the right side, which is not great because that means that we now are not You're going to have insight. So by doing what I've just said, you change all of that. You bring back coherence, you increase alpha, and it may not be excellent yet, but you've started the process. Then as you move forward through the five steps, and I put all this brain stuff in the book and what happens, and so I'm just giving you the overview. So then you start now reflecting, okay, what have I got in my basket? So number two, reflect. Reflect is an incredibly beautiful word as is gather awareness. Gathering awareness, I just want to point out in the earlier on, said that we mustn't be frightened of despair and anxiety and trauma and, I mean, and the anxiety, depression, those scary, don't be scared of them because they are messengers. They're helpful messengers that are telling you something. And if you respond to them in that way, you then control them. But if you respond to them in fear, they control you. Ooh, yeah. Yeah. And then you're not going to move forward. You're going to get very stuck and then stuck in rumination and the patterns will just get worse. so get the control. Even though you can, you can be crying, screaming, swearing, I don't care what you're doing, but just get the control. You're at the tree, you're doing the stuff. So gather. Reflect is, when you think of light going through a prism, it reflects all the colors of the rainbow. So there's depth. There's that one thing means a lot. And so reflect is this process of being a detective. Okay, well, why am I having that reaction? Why am I. Now, when it's something in the moment, we pretty much know why. I mean, I knew why I was. so I didn't have to do too much reflection, but I had to the reflection in terms of why, because I knew the cause. But the difference was I needed to reflect to say, okay, if I react like this, this is going to happen. So it was, it was, it was questioning, what are you doing with that emotion? What are you doing with that behavior? Is that Behavior helping? So the reflect in that situation would be different to a reflect for someone who is having a complete and utter imposter syndrome attack. and it's a pattern and they keep doing it. So they're now working sequentially through the process. So they're going to have to start finding why, what does it track back to, what level, what sort of self-esteem issues are, what is the origin story of it? So that the reflect in that case would be, you know, ask, answer, discuss, why do I feel this? Why, why, why? And so it's a different, so there's, but reflect is to just, you know, get meaning, but in a very comprehensive way, because there's all these patterns of meaning. in that acute trauma, it's quick. I'm doing the five steps quick. If I'm working on a pattern over time, I'm going to spend longer. Third step is you write. And the writing step is obviously I was in the midst of a trauma. I couldn't write. So I visualize. So the quick stuff you can just visualize. Or if you can write, write. Writing, I recommend if you write, write, write in the form of a metacog. I teach you how in the book. And I have a video of a neuro cycle app that goes with this. What's a metacog? A metacog. pattern form of writing that stimulates, it looks like a tree. You start in the middle and you work on branches and you put words and you don't write whole sentences. You basically just pour information and you literally let it just come out in this pattern format. But each, the, one of the key things is to, is to group as you, as a thought, as something comes up, you put it on one area and as something else comes up, you put it wherever. So you have these clusters of information and every word's on a line and every line goes out of the previous this line. And that format is unbelievable. It just drags the two sides of the brain together, digs deep, and you start getting insight into what you didn't even know was there. And then the fourth step is to then go and sort out that chaos that you've just written down. So the fourth step is to, okay, I've gathered awareness, I've reflected, I'm writing, what does this mean? What's the mental autopsy? What's the pattern, the activators, the antidotes? How can I reconceptualize this beautiful word reconceptualize. And then you end off the cycle with a little action. And that action, if it's in the moment, like in that five seconds or whatever, it's okay. I'm going to actually take a deep breath and I'm going to act like this, or I'm going to say that, or I'm going to do this. So it's a little action that anchors you back in a state where you can function in the next moment, in that acute trauma or in that imposter moment and imposter syndrome moment. And you've now got to go and into a business meeting, you're feeling like you because you're in, you know, the imposter syndrome thought sort of set up. So doing it in the quick moment by moment, you're going to have a simple, quick action. In the big stuff where you're working out the pattern, each day you will have, you do your work for a limited amount of time. And I say do the work because it's not a quick fix. If you're looking for a quick fix, nothing related to greatness is a quick fix. All my.

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