How To Turn Back Your Body’s Clock 20 Years | Capability Amplifier

Welcome to the Capability Amplifier show with your hosts, Dan Sullivan and me, Mike Koenigs. This program is all about giving you practical, tactical strategies and systems to increase and improve your impact, income and lifestyle, elevating and amplifying your value in any industry, anywhere in the world, so that you can command the highest prices and get paid for who you are, not for what you do. And Dan Sullivan and I talk about interesting ways you can install an upgraded operating system in your brain to increase your and impact, reminding you that as an entrepreneur and business owner on the entrepreneurial roller coaster, you're not alone. The craziness. Feeling out of balance with your family and body. The highs and the low lows. Running out of money, time and resources and bouncing back all over and over again in the quest to live more, give more, while pursuing freedom of time, money, relationship and purpose. So let's dive into this week's show with the always interesting and intriguing Dan Sullivan.

Mike, you live in a part of the world where you can't really develop any character. Like San Diego's got the greatest climate in the world. I'm in Toronto, however, and I every day get a chance to develop characters. So I feel that I'm holding up the hard end of this deal right now.

All right, well, maybe I'll challenge that in a little while because today we're going to be talking about body optimization and capability amplification. And I will challenge you that there is in fact several ways that one can develop charact depending on how you treat your body and how you upgrade it. So I thought I would frame this a little bit and say that both Dan and I were getting older. So I'm 52. Dan, you are right now 74. There we go, 74. So this is going to come from two almost old guys. Not really, but our bodies do not match our physical age and it's because of the commitment that we've made to each other. I know for myself personally, I feel like I'm 30 right now. I don't know about you, Dan. What do you, what do you think you feel like if you would compare and go back in time?

There's a website called RealAge that you can go to and it's got a whole series of questions that it asks you. And I would say based on habits, just regular habits, mainly things that I haven't gotten myself into ever in my life, like smoking. I have a better age than my chronological age and my exercise and my testing and how I live my life, what my work looks like, what my Relationships look like probably late 50s, somewhere around then. Oftentimes people are surprised when they find out how old I actually am on the calendar. So anyway, and then they say how you do it. And that's always the beginning of a really good conversation.

And that is the conversation we're going to have. Because I think the way we're going to approach this today is we will get practical and tactical. We're going to cover everything from our fitness, our diet, supplementation. I will definitely talk about hormone replacement therapy. Is one of these things how you actually turn back the clock and other specific hacks that we both use, including some of the equipment you have some very specific equipment. And then we'll talk about our brushes with death and disease that we both experienced. The other thing I think we really do want to spend some time talking about is the integrative side. And that can mean both functional medicine, where that enters in our world besides the traditional as well as energetic medicine. Because I know you work with an energy healer. I also work with high performance accelerators that have completely shifted my internal mindset and my game, which has dramatically affected my body. So with that, Dan, I thought maybe we'd begin with you. Why don't you describe a little bit of the day in the life of Dan and what your habit or your ritual is that you stick to and why?

Well, for most of my life I've been pretty active in kind of a normal way. Was a three sport athlete throughout my schooling, when I was up to graduating from high school and I've hiked a lot. I really enjoy going hiking. There was a drop off, I would say from my 30s to my mid-50s where I said, you know, I'm really active and I walk around a lot and I'm in motion a lot. But then I really, really started getting some real news because the real testing world really started to appear about 20 years ago where the level of testing you could do, you know, a normal medical that indicates to a doctor that there's no disease that he can make money on. So that's usually what comes back. But it's not about not having a disease. It's about actually having health and fitness. And that requires other kinds of testing. We can get into a little bit of detail about the testing because several other factors that you talked about, like the specialized exercise equipment that would come out of specialized testing, supplements, hormone replacement, everything, you wouldn't know what to take until you got the test that indicated where the new things are actually needed most. But for the past, it'll be two years in February. I get out of bed and I take a green drink that's got some protein in it and then I immediately go down to the gym. I have one in Toronto where we live most of the year, and then in Chicago, where our second headquarters is for coach in Chicago. And I have a goal of doing 1000 hours of exercise calories before I eat breakfast.

And by the way, that is an insane amount of calories. Most people don't do a thousand calories of a workout in an entire day.

All in. Yeah, yeah. And generally it's in the 80 minute mark. You know, you're averaging about 10 calories. I can do it in 80 minutes. Okay. And it's combination of intense interval training, stretching, weightlifting and other things. And I really vary it. I've got about five or six routines and I try to not repeat the same routine the next day. So I always am doing something new to get my calories. And I'm on day 660 as of this morning when I did it. And I know when to go easy, I know when to go hard. But what it does for me, Mike, is that I don't worry about food for the rest of the day. I eat what I need to eat to keep my energy up. And, you know, nothing fancy about the eating. I eat a lot of greens, I eat a lot of fruit. But I'm a meat eater. So I have meat, I have fish, I have fowl. But I don't do anything special on that front. I do on the supplement front, which is a whole different character. And we take a special hormone additive which has come through my specialized fitness and health coach whose name is Jeff Gladden and Jeff is from Dallas. He runs a program for high optimum health and fitness called Apex. I can give a link where people can go and find out about that.

We will definitely add a link for sure at the website. But I'm going to interrupt you just one bit here. And that is about your food. How careful are you about it being organic and farm raised and the source of the food? Are you careful or careless about that?

We have a housekeeper who does our shopping for us both in Toronto and Chicago. So the raw stuff that comes in is coming in from supposedly organic sources. And actually Toronto is a terrific city for that. Much more so than Chicago. I find. The only place I've found is as good as Toronto is like Sedona. Specialized places like Sedona, probably the Bay Area, I would say probably San Diego more than la. I don't freak myself out about that stuff. I grew up on a farm as you did, and by the time I was 10 years old I had eaten my 10 pounds of dirt. So I've got a very good biome that's a whole nother area of testing which has just become very recent is your gut bacteria. And a lot of the incidence of allergies is that people don't have sufficient gut biome to handle certain kinds of foods. Well, I don't have a single allergy food allergy and there's not much else that bothers me either because I hang out among entrepreneurs mostly and you can't get serious infections from entrepreneurs, so funny.

Well, how about what do you drink? You're drinking water as we speak here, but I know you're a coffee drinker and I'll see you have an occasional glass of wine. Why don't you talk about your intake of non water substances and how you regulate, control or monitor that.

There's a great green drink. So I've really shopped around for green drinks that come in powder form that you can just add to water. And there's a good one out there called athletic greens, which Peter Diamantis has introduced me to. And it's got about 85 different green supplements and it's actually an appetite curver. When you have it in the morning, I find I can take it at 5 or 6 in the morning and I don't have much hunger. You know, I eat breakfast mainly so I can get some protein in me because I just did a big exercise hit. I don't want my body eating muscle. If you do a lot of exercise, you got to make sure there's a lot of protein replacement to get in or your body's going to start eating muscle rather than fat. So that's it. And I have a rule about alcohol. I only drink alcohol when I'm with someone else, so I don't do any alone alcohol. So basically, and it's usually wine, periodically I'll have a beer. I have a preference if I'm going to drink a beer. Make it worth it. So I start at 10%.

I mean, what's the point of drinking 3% beer? You're drinking beer, but you know, there's no fun to 3%. 10%, you get a serious buzz really fast, you know. But I tell you what, earlier in my life I was drinking a little too much and I just knocked it off for 25 years. I just didn't have a drink for 25 years. It wasn't the alcohol it was the sugar. All the drinks that I was drinking were sugar. You know, wine has a lot of sugar in it. Well, alcohol is just pure sugar. It's a very, very purified sugar. But if I have a sense, like I'm really busy and I'm going to a lot of functions during the week and I'll drink three times, then I'll knock it off for a couple weeks and just let the system clear itself out. But throughout the rest of the day, then I've handled my exercise. In the morning, I meditate. I've meditated since 1972, just learned TM Transcendental Meditation. And, and I did it. And I have probably done it almost every morning for 40. It'll be 47 years. Afternoon, not so much because my schedule in the afternoon and early evening is not as controllable as it is in the morning. But I highly recommend it. I'm generally pretty, even pretty calm. Things don't bother me too much. And we'll talk about the energy coach a little bit after this. But you know, everybody's got their own thing, you know, you can learn from other people's practices, but they're hard to imitate because as we do them for very particular reasons.

You're right. And I think one of the ways that I really want to bring this full circle once we've gotten through some of the tactical stuff are the habits that surround it. I mean, the mere fact that you've worked out 600 and some days in a row and you didn't drink for 25 years or you've been meditating now for how long did you say?

47 years? Okay, 47 years. Yeah. I would say almost every morning over the last 47 years, I've meditated for 20 minutes.

Okay. That's in itself is I think what's really interesting and will be interesting to our listeners. So I'll give you my workout routine. And I've been doing this pretty much for an hour and a half or a year and a half rather. And I've gone through cycles in time just because there have been so many different techniques, strategies, or at least times in my life. And some of it honestly was I just had so much going on, I sacrificed my health. And you can see that if you follow photos of me over time at this point, I'll look at photos of me from 15 or 18 years ago and I look younger now. I have been lately getting a lot of people giving me this comment that's like, holy cow, you're anti aging. I Want to know what you're doing? So my morning routine, what I just did this morning, and I try to make it my daily routine right now and then also do something a little bit different on weekends. And I might also do a double up too. And that has to do with. By doing what I'm about to tell you, I've actually created more time in my life. So I think that's the thing of the old excuse I don't have time to work out is nonsense because you do get rewarded after about 40 days. Your body just works better and you feel better and you get more done. So my standard routine is I'll get up, I'll throw on my swimming trunks because we have a place on the beach in La Jolla. Then I will run downstairs and it's cold outside right now, a California cold. Meaning, I mean, it'll be in the 50s. So I'm out there in a Speedo, basically running down, and I hop on monkey bars and I hang myself. I hang by my arms and stretch my back and my neck and kind of contort my body around just to get a full stretch. Then I'll do pull ups in the monkey bars and then I'll do some gymnast exercises, which I actually hang myself upside down and I pull my legs through the squares and the monkey bars, which creates an enormous amount of core strength very, very quickly. It only takes a couple minutes a day and your upper body just pops. When I started doing that, within three months, my entire upper body just turned into a V because it's body weight. It's this easy, natural, no equipment, strategy. And then I do jumps on a boardwalk where I do basically squat jumps. I'll do 15 or 20 of those. I also got two really cool gadgets recently. One of them is the new Apple Watch 4, which I haven't worn a watch in 25 years. It now measures just about everything you'd want to measure, including your ecg, which is pretty amazing, even though they say they can't. But it can detect pre heart attack behavior or heart arrhythmia. So it's gathering an enormous amount of data about your workouts. It's waterproof. And then what I'll do is I'll get on the beach and just totally barefoot, I run through the ocean where the ocean water might be up to my knees. And again, it's cold. And a quick oh, by the way is six years ago when I had cancer, I was treated with chemotherapy. I still have neuropathy, which means my fingers and my toes are very cold and I can't really feel the tips of my fingers and toes. It's just one of the byproducts of that. Historically, I'm very cold, sensitive, but I do it anyway. And by running through the water, my body gets used to the cold. And I'll run about a mile and a half to two miles through the water, which is great resistance. And then when I get back to what is sort of home base, I have a pair of goggles with me, I flip them on, I swim out several hundred yards, flip over on my back, and I do a meditation. I call it gratibiguity. So it's a combination of gratitude and ambiguity simultaneously, which according to our friend Benjamin Hardy, it's being in a state of ambiguity allows you to not grip or grasp onto a sense of security. It's effectively a way to release your ego, your attachments and be completely still. Also, when I'm sitting there in gratitude, I am literally thanking God for being in this amazing place, which I think it turns out scientifically, according to Ben. I haven't verified this. Being in a state of gratitude and ambiguity is the most powerful states for manifestation. So what I am doing, of course is manifesting more of the same and giving thanks for this amazing lifestyle. And then I also do wim hof breathing exercises because it is a cold plunge environment. So I do 50 very rapid deep breaths while I'm laying on my back. And when I come to, I swim back to shore, get out of the ocean, rinse off, take a shower, and then from there I'll take my supplements, eat, drink a bunch of water, shower off. And then I also very recently started hormone replacement therapy, which if there ever was a silver bullet, a safe silver bullet, this is it. And so I say this for any middle aged man or woman after the age of 30 something, in fact, your hormones start to drop and there are in fact very safe ways to get replacement therapy. And you will almost immediately feel less anxiety, your hair will grow back better, your skin will look better, your ability to melt fat away increases. As long as your blood is monitored, it lowers the probability of disease and your sex drive returns. You just feel more like you. You get your mojo back. So there's that. And from that point forward, I would say for the next three hours, my brain is at peak state. I literally could say I feel like I'm in my 20s in terms of concentration, focus, and I don't take ADHD medicine. I probably should, but it really gets the brain and the body in sync. And then for food, the rest of the day, I eat really simple meat. In general, I don't eat bloody red meat. That's a post colorectal cancer thing. So it's fish, poultry. I do eat some pig, but my body loves meat.

Yup, me too.

Yep. So I feed it what it wants, but I eat as many steamed vegetables as I can and I get a lot of like, in my smoothies, we throw in greens and chia seeds and lots of fiber and that kind of thing. Some decent protein, our protein. We get it from Designs for Health and JJ Virgin. So that's pretty much the routine. I did get one gadget just yesterday that I used it two times that I'm very impressed with and I'm going to continue. It's called a muse 2. It's a meditation band. I was really impressed. It really gives you direct, immediate feedback and helps you go into a meditative state. So if you're looking for a shortcut to get you there quicker for 250 bucks or whatever they sell it for, yeah, I think it's a good value. I've only heard good things about it. This was a brand new version with much better sensors, so that's what I got. Dan, how about you? Any reflections comment?

First of all, you know, there's a great deal of wisdom to this. So I always tell people what I'm doing. I do for a lifetime of stuff that happened before this and what I've hit upon in my 70s, I said, I can tell you what I'm doing. And the only lesson I would like you to draw from this is find the thing that really works for you. You know, there's no competition here for what works for you. There's just what uniquely works for you. And you know, I have people say, well, I just don't know how you could do that. You know, the thousand calories in the morning. And I said, well, it just has great meaning to me. I was a cross country runner when I was in high school. I was a quarter miler in high school and I like running. I've got a missing meniscus in my left knee and I can't take jarring exercise, so I do this all on elliptical. But I said, I love getting my heart rate up and I like the intense interval training. Very interesting. I test for VO2 Max, which shows you how at high intensity, your lungs are actually taking in oxygen and getting rid of carbon dioxide. Six weeks ago, Mike. I get tested twice a year for this at Canyon Ranch, which is a health resort. That Babs and I have been going for pushing 30 years. Right now we go twice a year. It's a full week of testing and exercise and massage. But I tested in November and I had the highest crossover number that I've had ever. And I cross over from aerobic to anaerobic at 170. Heartbeat, which is really terrific.

That's fast.

Yeah. And you know what the key was? I jumped from my highest previous one, which was around 165. And. And I concentrated on something new and I said, I've always talked about how I can pull oxygen in. So I said, I think I'm going to try it. The other way is how much CO2 can I push out? And there's a little mouthpiece you can go on. And it's exhalation training, so there's inhalation training, which is how much are you pulling in? But it's how much you can get rid of. And it's just a little mouthpiece and it's got a gauge on it, so it becomes more and more difficult to push out. And it's measured in the number of breaths you have to take per minute. And I reduced by nine breaths a minute between the 165, which had been my highest score previously to this last time. And the physiologist at Canyon Ranch, and he's been testing me for close to 15 years, and he said, I've never seen anyone over 70 improve in this area. And I said, well, I'm just working at it every day takes about two or three minutes, and you just push out as hard as you can for as long as you can three times, and then you just go in and out and in and out 20 times. A bit like your in and out exercise when you're doing your meditative.

Yeah, the Wim Hof exercise.

Yeah, the Wim Hof exercise. Yeah. And I really noticed it, and it was right on the test. You have sensors all over you when you're doing the VO2 max test. I was up about 8% in oxygen and I was up about 10% in getting rid of CO2. Okay. Because you have to clean out your lungs. A lot of people who are shallow breathers, you take in a certain amount of oxygen, but you don't completely get rid of all the CO2 that's in your lungs. And you want to get the CO2 out because the trees on the planet depend upon it. We have to have lots and lots of CO2 out there. In spite of what people say, Al.

Gore would be very Proud of you right now for that.

You know, it's really, really interesting, but the amount of green on the planet has increased proportionately to the increase of CO2 as we've gotten in there. And we're doing about 18%. It's been nothing but bumper crop yields and every area of green life on the planet since CO2 has gone through the ceiling. Maybe we can have a another discussion about that on a later day. But I always say, why do you hate the plants? Why do you want to get rid of CO2? I says, the plants love this stuff.

It's funny. Well, I'll tell you what, we'll pull up in our Humvees when we have that meeting. I got two quick things to ask you. First of all, you are a fan of the Vasper device. You just recently bought something called the Peloton. The Peloton is a exercise bike that has real time classes piped in, and it is an exceptional device. I bought it for my wife. But why don't you talk briefly about the Vasper and what that's done for you?

Yeah. This is by an inventor in the Bay Area who had very, very bad injuries in his lower legs and had developed very painful arthritis as a result of broken bones in his lower legs. And he found the only thing that actually helped him was going in ocean water. Very, very cold ocean water. And you're in the Pacific, and I don't care if you're in San Diego, the ocean is still cold.

It is.

And he found that for three hours after he came out of the ocean, there was no pain for his arthritis. And he lives in Hawaii on the Big island, and he does the same thing. Even in Hawaii, the water gets cold. So the thing that he put together is that there were three things that were known about physical fitness. One is that the best form of physical fitness from a metabolic standpoint is intense interval training where you go all out for 20 seconds or 30 seconds, and then you do a rest, not stopping, but just a very easy ride. And then you do it four or five times. If you do it at five times in 10 minutes, 20 seconds. So it would be a total of 100 seconds out of 10 minutes. It's equal to one hour of just regular exercise where you're running, but it's worth one hour. But it's also the one known activity that offsets any kind of mental deterioration. It's oxygen and blood to the brain is the key to offsetting faltering mental functions. And I'm really sharp. I mean, at 74. My memory is great. Long term, short term, I've got great memory. My concentration is really good. I think I have pretty good equipment to begin with. But as you get older, you have to keep giving more and more support. So that's the one thing. So he's combined this in one machine. It's a sit down elliptical machine. You're sitting down and you're pushing off with your legs and with your arms. You know, it's the counter thing with an elliptical machine on your upper legs and your upper arms are cuffs, like blood pressure cuffs. And except it's not air in them, it's cold water. So there's a reservoir that comes with the machine. It's about 43 degrees Fahrenheit water. You get on, put the cuffs on, you push, get ready, and they fill up with cold water and they compress just like, you know when you're having blood pressure. And then you start doing the interval training. You do 10 second, 15 second, 30 second, and then you rest and, you know, you just go easy. What happens, Mike? The moment you start and the body feels this compression, this cold, and it feels exercise, it starts pumping lactic acid as if you've been working out for a half hour or for an hour. Because what lactic acid is.