Biohacker Special: Healthy, Happy, and (Naturally) High (feat. Niraj Naik) #555

What if you could achieve peak health, mental clarity and euphoric happiness all without external stimulants or quick fixes? Basically, is it possible to get healthy, happy and naturally high? This is a Biohacker special today on Biohacking News.

Hello and welcome to a festive Biohacking news special. I'm Tony Wright and before we go any further, please do like and subscribe. Wanted to do something a little bit different in this Christmas week. A little bit different from the normal biohacking news format. And we've got a special. A Biohacker special. The last time I did one of these was in the summer with Kate Shanahan on seed oils and it was pretty much my most listened to podcast in the last six months. I'm hoping you're going to absolutely love this special as well. An in depth deep dive with Niraj Naik, also known as the renegade pharmacist. He's been on the podcast before. He's a transformational leader who has helped thousands tap into the power of their own biology to unlock natural bliss. So welcome to this Biohacker special. We're looking at natural highs today. In this episode, we explore the fascinating story behind Neeraj's journeys, his philosophies on achieving a naturally high state of mind and how to get there. Breathe deeper, think clearer, feel better. It's really fun to do these Biohacker specials occasionally. Bit like the old zestology. We go really deep on one topic and let's then uncover the secrets to living healthy, happy and naturally high. I recorded this a few months ago and it is brilliant to bring this out at this special time of year for you. This Biohacker Special with Neeraj Nikerius.

Great. Great to be back.

Yeah, it's been a long time. I mean, so long. And which shows how long I've been doing this podcast. And you've been doing what you do. What is. Because you do do quite a lot of different things, which I really like about you. How do you describe yourself when you meet someone at a party?

I'm a pharmacist.

A pharmacist.

Well, that's what I did as my previous job. And then I decided I need to find a better way, a better system because I got really sick with the disease myself. And going through that healing journey, I realized there's so much more to healing and getting better and being healthy than popping pills all day long. So I set about my mission to find what is the real secret to getting healthy, happy and high, you know, naturally high. Because I used to get very high as well, but on other things. Right. Like more of it, legal varieties. So as it's quite common in the uk, people.

They'Re kind of being misled when it comes to what really constitutes being healthy and happy. Right. But also when it comes to like the culture of recreational drugs, alcohol, people getting off their heads is so normal, it's so ingrained in culture, but each time you're doing that you're destroying yourself a little bit. Right. And it's a coping mechanism for many people. So I can totally understand, I've, I've been there, I've done it. So I had to find another way and turning to my own culture where I discovered the power of the breath, the special tantric yoga techniques, the power of the mind, visualization techniques.

It changed everything, you know, Ayurveda to understand like what's the right kind of food lifestyle you should be leading based on your own unique bio individuality. Because we all have a unique to us, we all have a bio individuality and this ancient system tells you that. But the problem with a lot of approaches to healthy, being healthy, happy is it's a one size fits all. And that's where there's a big problem. Even the medical system is a complete one size fits all. It's like that's a problem that we're saying right now why there's so many side effects. Because a drug, a pill, all it does is it influences the chemical, you know, like chemistry of your body. And everyone has a unique, different chemistry. So you, one drug for one person might create very harmful side effects. Another one, it might work, but there's always a risk associated all pills. But when you really get in touch with your own body, your own physiology, you can do this holistically and be self sufficient, at least to a point where you.

Stay away from, you know, the medical system as much as possible because they're really designed for emergencies. If you have to end up in a hospital, it's like you left it way too late. Right. So my, my job is to get people before they get anywhere close to end up in hospital. I'm all about prevention.

Yeah. And we, we chatted about breath work when you came on before and I think I didn't really know what it was then and I do a little bit more now and I have found that I think and I've. There's got to be a lot of people like this. I think I must not breathe very deeply normally because when I do breath work I feel so good that it just sort of completely energizes me and I'm really interested to talk to you about. So firstly, what happens. And then I'm quite interested by that natural high bit that you were talking about.

Yeah. I want to get a bit more involved in that.

So how can I do that? Great. So actually this is another one of those misconceptions. So deep breathing heavy, like by deep we have to define what deep means. So I think deep meaning diaphragmatic breathing is not always what is considered deep breathing. Right. A lot of people think deep breathing is just deep volumes of big volumes of air in and out. Right. Yeah. That's actually not very good for your health.

Because we only should be breathing as much as the body needs to. Right. That's, that's a very important thing. So if you're, if you're not breathing like in a deep way, it's probably because you don't need that oxygen. I'll tell you why. Just if you have a pulse oxymia, you know, during COVID everyone had those devices. I don't have one with me right now, but I would show you normally just a little sniff of oxygen of the air like that, you'll be fully saturated, 98%, 100%. Right. Most people okay, unless you got some serious illness, but majority of people, just a little sniff of air, you're fully saturated oxygen. Right. But what really matters is not the blood oxygen level. I mean, that's important, but it's not as important as the body tissue oxygen level. And that's two different things. So you have the body tissue cells, which is your muscles, organs, joints, all the important organs of your body. Right. Your brain, your heart. And.

That actually is like the most important factor for health is proper, efficient body tissue oxygenation. When there's problems with that process of getting oxygen from your blood cells into your body tissue cells. This actually happened a lot during COVID where people were not able to get that gaseous exchange happening. So they were getting very. Well, it was actually more from the lung into the bloodstream. But anyway, the gaseous exchange from the blood to the muscles and organs stuff is extremely important. And it all depends on carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide, we've been told, is this toxic waste gas that's going to kill everyone and the planet is going to cause global warming and all this. I know. There's this weird article that I saw recently about how breathing is now bad for climate change. I think everything's now bad for climate change.

So anyway, CO2 is actually plant food is really important. There's only a very tiny percentage of the oxygen of the atmosphere. So anyway, that's another rabbit hole if you want to get on. But let's bring it back to the body. CO2 is what allows oxygen to come from the red blood cells and go into your body tissue cells. If you're deficient in CO2, you get low body tissue oxygenation. And what causes deficiency in CO2. Heavy breathing, deep breathing. All right, let me give you an example, right? We're going to do an exaggerated version of deep breathing for now, right. Where you're going to breathe in through your mouth. Full, full lung. You can go into your chest as well. Because this is what common commonly a lot of people do when they over breathe, they have ventilate is they breathe into their mouth, into their chest.

You're going to do that for 20 times in a row. All right? Okay. And I want to see how you feel after doing that. All right, let's go. Three, two, one, go.

That's all right.

Could take it even deeper and heavier if you want.

Okay, you can stop.

Yeah.

I always find when I do breath work through the mouth, in and out through the mouth, it doesn't feel that great. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, breath work when it's deep and heavy like that, it. Unless you do a few other techniques with it, it doesn't always feel that great. It's actually a technique for getting people out their minds.

Right.

I feel like that.

That'S happened.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lightheaded. So what happened was you just got less oxygen to your brain, not more, because you just breathed out CO2. A lot of CO2.

Right.

CO2 is this signal. Right. So anytime we deep, heavy breathe and unfortunately throughout the day, a lot of people are unconsciously deep breathing, heavy breathing throughout the day and they don't even realize it. Like times like when you're talking for long periods of time, you tend to be breathing out a lot of CO2 at fast rate.

Overeating if you eat too much food, overheating, especially at night, or if you sleep with your mouth open and you snore. That's another cause of this deep breathing.

And sleep hyperventilation, it overheating at night. So when you hold it in the.

Room, then you breathe, you want to keep it cool. Yeah. You want to keep the room cool.

Yeah.

Because we pan like dogs to cool down. We also do our breathing goes a fast rate. So all this does is it gets rid of CO2 at too faster rate and then you get low body tissue Oxidation, which is primary cause of disease. Right, right. And you also get a problem of oxidative stress. That's the other cause of the disease.

So, I mean, just to clarify, I was saying I didn't think I breathed deep enough. And you're saying, well, maybe you breathe too deeply.

Maybe you. You breathe okay. Maybe you're. You're right.

Yeah.

So the symptoms will present themselves. If you've got. If you're suffering from low body tissue oxygenation, you'll be. You'll have some kind of chronic pain. You might have asthma symptoms, you might have headaches, migraines. You might have foggy brain fog. There's a bunch of different symptoms. And that will signify that you're starting to go off balance. Right. And lose your train of thought and things like that. So. So it's all the symptoms of low body tissue oxygenation. So imagine what you just did there. A lot of people are doing a mild version of that throughout the day, but if we can slow our breathing down. Right. This is what pranayama is all about, is slowing breathing down, making your breathing so efficient, using oxygen. So why. Nasal breathing, as you mentioned, is a way forward mouth breathing is the most inefficient way to breathe. Right. Nasal breathing is key. You're going to change someone's life just by. If somebody's been a chronic mouth breather for years, Right. And usually they snore at night and things like that.

You change their life completely, like literally overnight by switching them, training them to have nasal breathing. Right. When you do this, all right, and you sew people's breathing rate, and there's various pranayama techniques that we use that trained you to be so efficient with oxygen. You hardly look like you're breathing. Your breathing rate comes right down below 10 breaths per minute. Most people breathe 15, 20 breaths a minute on average. Yours, if I. If we did something together, if you wanted to work on it, we get it down below 10 breaths per minute. You start to raise CO2 and get it in the right balance. And CO2 is a relaxer. Makes you feel calm, it calms the brain down, actually makes you feel naturally high.

Yeah.

You're optimized with the oxygen. So just with breathing techniques, we can manipulate the CO2 levels and give you, like, that kind of a buzz, like a high feeling. Some people do the opposite. Very fast hyperventilation, holotropic breathwork, rebirthing. What that does is it reduces blood flow to the brain in certain areas of the brain, and it creates a disconnection between the conscious mind and the unconscious. And it works like hallucinogenics.

The holidays are upon us and you know what that means. It's a crazy, stressful time of year. There's shopping for gifts, hosting family, attending endless parties. Why is it that the Christmas season, the holiday season, always seems to be stressful rather than relaxing? I love it, but I'm knackered by the end of it. That is why I want to tell you about Magnesium Breakthrough from Bioptimizers. They are my podcast partners this month and they have been for a long time as well. It's not your average magnesium supplement. It contains the full spectrum of seven proven forms of magnesium to target every system in your body. Every once in a while my body just tells me it needs magnesium and magnesium is essential for managing stress and maintaining a calm, balanced mood. This unique blend of magnesium, citrate, glycinate, taurate and more ensures maximum absorption and utilization by your cells. For an exclusive offer, you can go to bioptimizers.com Zestology and use the promo code Zestology10 during checkout. That's bioptimizers.com ZestoLogy use the promo code ZestoLogy10 wherever you are in the world. If you go to the UK site, that will work as well. You get 10% off Zestology 10 if you subscribe. Not only will you get amazing discounts and free gifts, but you will make sure your monthly supply is guaranteed with the discount as well. So Zestology 10, whether you're in the UK or dot com, go to biology.com zestology use that discount code and sort out that poor stress response, the fatigue, the poor sleep quality, all the sort of things that we talk about on Biohacking News by Zestology. And yeah, get it sorted with this comprehensive. It's easy for me to say it's too much Christmas stress comprehensive formula. Now back to the show. I'm quite interested by that sort of calming the body down, calming the breath down, you know, I mean, I wear the, the URA ring and an ultra human ring now. Real, really tragic. Got one on each thumb and quite often I feel like I know why my heart rate variability is better. Better being higher overnight and my heart rate is lower overnight. Yeah, Quite often I can't figure it out. And now I'm thinking maybe it's partly because sometimes I'm just getting hot or the air quality isn't very good in the room because there's not a window open or whatever it is, and therefore unconsciously I just what, speed up my. I'm like a dog.

I pant maybe.

Wow.

So. So the, the thing with the HRV monitors is they're not. I don't think they're 100% accurate. Right. So there'll be times. I got rid of mine, by the way, because there'll be times where you'll wake up and it might give you a bad score and you freak out, you get a heart attack, and first thing in the morning. This happens. My business plan all the time.

Yeah.

And then. But then sometimes it'll give you a great score where maybe it shouldn't. So people get this like full sense of security. And then.

I think that's right. I mean, that's why I wear two.

You wear two for.

Just compare the two. But the thing is, you are right, because you can allow yourself to. But generally speaking, they do sync up. They do agree with each other mostly on heart rate variability and heart rate not exactly the same.

HRV is so.

Subjective as well. Like what influences it. There's many different perspectives on hiv. So I think the best health tracker of all. Right. Is your breath.

Especially your breath hold time in the morning. So there's a little exercise you can do, right. Which it's based on the Buteyko method, where you measure your oxygen capacity, your body tissue, oxygen levels of your organs, muscles and tissues and stuff. So basically first thing, and you wake up for about two minutes, you just become breath aware. You don't control your breath, you just allow your breath to just be by itself and you become relaxed. Then what you do is you do a normal inhale, normal exhale for your nose, hold your nose and hold your breath until the first sign of stress, which means you might get a twitch in your diaphragm, a contraction. Right. The first bigger. Should breathe. Yeah. Not too much, not too long and not too little, but just the right amount where you get that first kind of urge to breathe. Right. A strong urge to breathe. You measure that time and that gives you, in my opinion, a better, more accurate score of your sleep quality and your overall health than any other school that I've seen. Because what it's measuring is your body tissue oxygenation levels. So you find it is really affected by poor quality sleep by drinking alcohol the night before, eating processed foods or anything that you do that disrupts sleep. You'll notice it first thing in the morning. You can also do it before you go to sleep. Right. Because your nighttime score is going to be the best score of the day, usually. Yeah. And if you find there's a massive disconnect between nighttime and daytime. It means something's going on in your sleep. You're not sleeping very well. You know, you're not clearing all the brain junk. Yeah, yeah. And you're not breathing efficiently in sleep. Yeah. Hyperventilation and sleep will really show up with a low morning breath hold time.

Yeah, yeah. Now I just do that. Well, that's great. And then you don't have to pay anything for your wearable, do you? Exactly. That's great. Yeah, yeah.

The.

Now my mate down the road loves going to the odd breath work session and he swears to me that it's better than taking psychedelics.

Yes.

So what's that all about? And can we do something safely?

Yeah. So actually Pranayama, if you look at it, it's like a pharmacy. So we have like breathing tannings for almost anything you think of blood pressure, you know, heartburn, chronic pain, blah, blah, blah. There's loads of techniques, cooling down, heating up. Then there's the, the recreational drugs.

Okay.

Or the plant medicines. So there's an alternative to those as well. So these are the more spiritual practices.

Yes.

And actually in Copang and Raised to Live.

I would do these very. I do, I do them here as well in Ibiza now, but really full power breath work, journeys with music. I produce all the music and it takes you on a trip. And then I also made a dance version called Breath Raves which I've done in a few clubs here in Avifa, which people love.

Yeah.

So the way it works, okay, is it's. I mean not Anyone, no one's 100 certain on exactly how it works. But this is a proposed mechanism. Cambridge University actually have done a study with me to figure all this out. So that will come out soon, in the next couple of months.

But basically from all the research I've done, what I've realized is that.

So the way psilocybin works. Let's look at psychosybin mushrooms. Right. And also DMT does the same. What it does is it suppresses blood flow to certain areas of the brain, certain regions of brain, like the default mode network that's associated with your sense of self, your ego. Right. When you quiet the activity of this down.

Your other than conscious mind becomes more awake and you go into auto states consciousness. Yeah. Right. And it can act like a defrag for the brain as well. If you do the right type of breathing techniques, you can. It's like having electroshock therapy. It's like your brain gets Zapped and you clear old traumas and you know, beliefs and things that hold you back, you know, like cause depression and stuff. So when did a study with 20 for 22 minutes where they compared this scientist called Jeff Taren, he compared my 22 minute journey with music, breath holds and stuff with psilocybin and MDMA and one or the other, I think it might have been dmt to compare the brain map studies for a dose that's used for severe depression. They found that our 22 minute session had the same changes in the brain right. As the, the dose used for severe depression.

Wow.

So he was blown away by it. It was like, wow, this is crazy. So, and we, we get the same kind of feedback from even just a 22 minute session. Some people feel like they've gone on a mind trip, you know, like a whole cosmic voyage. And then Cambridge University got so inspired by that study that that's why they've expanded on it. So they're expanding on that study right now to go deeper, to really figure out what's going on. Why is it that breathing is so influential to all the states? But there's one thing, so in.

Rapid eyeball movement sleep, when we're in that dream mode where we're having those kind of strong dreams and visions, the breathing pattern in that stage of sleep, that's when we dream the most. It's actually fast breathing. You hyperventilate a little bit and then you stop. We have these series of apnea episodes. It's not like the same as sleep apnea, but it's. Sleep apnea is like a much worse version of what I'm talking about. But we all do this. Cyclical hyperventilation followed by holds, cyclic ventilation followed by holds. And this I think is what we're mimicking. What we do in Soma breath is what I'm mimic. I'm mimicking that state of when we're in our dream world. And so I think the thing with the breath is that you can model behavior just by changing the way you breathe. If you were to like close your eyes and step into a moment, if you think back to when everything that you wanted came into fruition, like you had a big desire, like a lust factor of 11, really wanted to make this thing happen, but you made a plan to get it. And all those steps you took, realize that plan. And if you go, go back to that moment and you stand and make your posture like you would have been in that moment and you start breathing like you would have done in that Moment. Just by modeling states, emotional states of how you breathe in an emotional state, you elicit those emotions. Same thing like what we just did with that example is you hyperventilated.

Yeah.

Right. So when we're panicking, we breathe like that. And then you feel like if you kept doing that for a little bit longer, you'd probably have an anxiety attack. Right. So we can mimic behavior from breathing. This is, like, known in NLP circles, and this kind of somatic therapy kind of, well, transformational.

Modalities, how the breath models emotions and states of consciousness.

Right, right. Wow.

So, yeah. So there's one other breathing technique which you can do throughout the day, which is modeling a calm emotional state. So let's say you're stressed. Let's say you're anxious.

This is what we do in nlp. This is great.

Yep. Yeah. Really cool. So very simple. If Lao Su said the perfect human breathes, like they don't breathe at all. So when you model that, you end up getting into a very Zen, calm state. Clear, clear mind. Right. It's very simple. You just breathe in with a silent, subtle inhale, very relaxed exhale through your nose. Then you hold your breath for around three to four seconds. All right, let's try that right now. You want to try it?

Yeah.

So in silent, subtle exhale, relaxed, hold, three, two, one. In silent, subtle exhale, relax, hold three, two, one. In Silent, subtle exhale, relaxed, hold, three thousand two, one. In Silent, Subtle Exhale, Relax, hold three, two, One. Okay. If you just do that for a minute or two. Yeah. You'll be super Zen, calmed out.

That's lovely. Yeah, yeah. And then just finally, on the sort of ecstatic nature of some breath work, I've been doing some guided breathwork sessions where you sort of take a deep breath in, hold, which feels good. And then release. And. Oh, my God, it is like. It's such a good feeling.

Yeah.

On there. But it surprises me how amazing it is.

How do you. How does it work? Like, what do you do?

So this is. This is the Guided breathworks on Other Ship, the app that I've been using, which. Which I enjoy. And really, they'll do every once in a while, you just do a deep breath in, hold it a little bit, and then you release it. And at the bottom of the breath, you'll hold there as well. And there's.

You mean you do. You do. You do breath work? You do, like.

Few minutes of rhythmic breathing first?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you're doing some breathing, and then you breathe. Breathe in, and then Release. And on that release. Yeah, it's lovely. It's like.

Yeah, it feels good.

It's really very nice.

Yeah, yeah. So that's in Pranayama. That's called Antara Kumbaka.

Okay.

When you breathe in and hold. And Baya kumbaka is when you breathe out and hold. So what happens is the real accurate way of doing it. The way if you want to take it up a notch.

Yeah.

What you need to do is breathe in through your nose.

And pull up the sphincter muscles. So the. Is this called the mulabandha? You contract up the sphincter muscles up, pull up, tense. And then imagine you're being like kind of pulled up through your. Like a string in your crown. So you're really.

Straight back.

Right. And you hold, you hold, you hold. And then you hum at the end. Hum.

Let's do like a one round of that quickly.

I'll show you any podcast with the word sphincter muscles in it. I feel is going to be a good one, you know.

Nice.

Okay, let's just do like some rhythmic breathing. So just make like a wave like this. So.

Try and do it all out for your nose. Keep going. I will do.

Keep going.

We'll do another 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And now take a deep breath all the way in.

Pull up those sphincter muscles up. Pull them up.

And at the end when you can't hold it longer, just hum.

Oh.

Oh.

Feels great. It's good, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a good one. Yeah, yeah. So you can do that whenever you need a wake up.

Yeah. Where can people find out more about you? Everything you do, the breath work, living in Ibiza.

Yeah. So the best thing is just to my Instagram message the word breath on Instagram and so DM me it and I'll give you a free masterclass. So that's the best thing. Follow me on Instagram. And Our website is somabreath.com we train instructors on how to deliver these techniques. We make breath work fun, accessible, scientific. And we have a YouTube channel, Soma Breath, with tons of content as well. And also our Facebook as well is very buzzing.

All right, brilliant.

No, it's really good to see again.

And hope to catch up soon.

Cheers, mate.

That is it for this podcast. Thank you once again to our podcast partners. Magnesium breakthrough. Please do remember to go to bioptimizers.com Zestology it's bioptimizers.com ZestoLogy claim your 10% discount and deal with the stress of the holiday season, especially if you're struggling with sleep or just wrapping presents. I mean, that in itself is stressful. Or just the party season just getting a little bit too much. It's such an interesting time of month because it's the time of year that we should be going inwards and doing less. And what we're doing, going crazy. Bioptimizers.com Zestology use that code Zestology10 for 10% off. As always, reach out with any questions. And all my podcast partners, and especially the Bio optimizers products that we talk about, I've been partnering with for such a long time, and that's because I use them myself and I've got them in my cupboard in the kitchen, right next door to where I'm sitting right now, recording this. Thanks as always, for listening to Biohacking News. See you next week.