Dr. Robert Whitfield describes attending a SXSW mini health summit in Austin where speakers discussed health optimization, regenerative farming, and nutrition policy (e.g., potential restrictions on soda purchases via SNAP). He recounts meeting other attendees and shares his personal health practices: he tried Brian Johnson's Blueprint (reporting a decrease in his HRV), prefers a higher-animal-protein diet with fruit for fiber, and emphasizes sleep hygiene, breathwork, avoiding microplastics and phthalates, and targeted supplementation (methylated B complex, D3+K2, liposomal glutathione). He also recommends tracking trends with wearables (Ultra Human ring, Polar, WHOOP) and using tools like the Seed Oil Scout app.
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Welcome to this episode of the drive. It's Dr. Whitfield. We're going to talk about south by Southwest. I attended a mini health summit this past Sunday afternoon in Austin and really impressed by the number of speakers and their passion about health, health optimization. There are a number of speakers, including Mark Hyman, Brian John Dell, Big Tree, Bergen, Bueller. It was a really interesting event, and as one of the. I was having a cup of coffee before the speaker started, and I had the pleasure of meeting Tim Kennedy, Nick Seal, UFC fighter, and Greg Tyler, Alan Brook of Game Day, and then Brigham Bueller of Ways to. Well, and it was just a really interesting group, and everybody's really motivated and excited to help all sorts of people, you know, with just an array of, you know, problems, whether it's, you know, helping them get a better quality source of food. There was a regenerative farmer who spoke about that process, and I gave an example of a regenerative farm in Indiana, really making a lot of headway. I believe it's Mr. Clark's farm in Indiana they were referring to on how much effort they had and progress they had made in a very small amount of acreage. So it's a really broad spectrum of discussions and great conversations about, you know, trying to get more and more people out of metabolic disease due to either problems with the food or the consumption of fluids. For instance, I know. This past week, actually in the news, it was discussed that cutting the ability to get soda on the SNAP program was discussed. And then Dr. Hyman discussed some different ramifications of doing that. If you cut all of that out of the SNAP program. And obviously in this country, over a long period of time, there have been different concessions and subsidies made for farming and the production high fructose corn syrup and that's used in the soda, like I was discussing. And obviously that is coming under scrutiny personally, you know, when we're taking care of patients, we don't want them. I don't want any of my patients, any of my surgical patients, any of my friends or family drinking soda in general, of the contents in terms of sugar. But I would say, you know, concentrating on improving your fluid consumption by not drinking out of plastics, important to avoid microplastics, avoid phthalates, bisphenols, and then, you know, always trying to improve the quality of your air and your food. It was just. It was really interesting to be there and hear so many people passionate about improving health across the board, because it should be not a question of, you know, it's not a political Issue really about health. It's just trying to improve everyone's overall health. So it was a really interesting time. I had this conversation at a table actually a very group of young guys approached me and were asking me what I was doing at this event. And just like them I was there to learn like everyone else what's, what's coming up and what options are going to be discussed in the future for the country. But they had a lot of questions of me and about my program Sharp and many of them were actually running Brian Johnson's blueprint program which I also had ran. And for everybody listening, I ran the blueprint according to Brian Johnson and I did not take any of my own supplementation. I pause all of mine and you know, I track my HRV and I know it's inside and out either through ultra ultra human ring or a loop strap or I have a polar beat, a polar 10 strap. So I told them that my HRV actually went down doing the blueprint. And that's not to say that the quality of the supplementation, the blueprint is not good, that's not the point of it. But everybody has differences and I know my genetic differences extremely well and supplements around my enzymatic capabilities. So for all intensive purposes I don't methylate well. So I take a lot of methylated B complex which is just best for me. I take D3K2 and I take vitamin and I take glutathione, I do all those liposomal. So there's absolutely no absorption issues. And the blueprint is a capsule based, like many, you know, supplement based programs are capsule based. So it's not, you know, probably anything other than an absorption issue which is basically how I want everybody to understand it. You know, trying to avoid absorption issues with supplementation has been around forever that people keep, you know, working on the problem and supplementation I think that's, it's a necessity to get that process you know, further. So that one we're getting a more of a cause and effect relationship with the supplementation like at a cause and effect probably not the best, a more predictable absorption rate. So if we're trying to supplement above enzymatic activity for methylation, we know taking X amount of methylated B complex will help you because it's going to be consistently absorbed. Other questions they had were like, you know, very specific, you know, dietary questions, what diet's the best and you know, how best to avoid metabolic disease. And I just, I prefer a higher protein diet. I have for a long period of time and Mine is just more animal based protein. I do eat a lot of fruit and that's my main source of fiber. That's just my preference. I like it. I don't eat a ton of vegetables anymore. I don't have good sulfur metabolism. So sometimes if I overeat on cruciferous vegetables, I probably don't get the best benefit from that. So I like, I eat a lot of fiber via fruit. I don't eat a lot of nuts anymore. Nuts have a lot of problems with aflatoxins as I've discussed on my show in the past and other shows. So I'm more careful about that now. And I drink a lot of black coffee. Always try to get and source your quality. So there's mold free with brands like Danger Life Boost, Gion. Just always make sure on the back it says mold free. And then your water like I said, you can filter. We use echo tabletop water purifiers. I have a home purifying system as well. But everybody's got to figure out how best to control that. You know the easy things you can always work on. And I told these man hours I can sit here at the table, easy thing you can always work on is concentrate on your sleep three hours before really trying to back down and conclude eating and drinking that two to three hour window before you go to bed. So you give yourself ample time. And if you're paying attention to Brian Johnson's blueprint, he's doing it and shutting down. Eating really, really early in the day so he can have longer, longer periods. Digestion, absorption because you don't want to go to bed on a full stomach. It's just really always going to impact your hrv. The thing with people getting up in the middle night to go to the bathroom, that's a common, common complaint of my patients. So one of the ways to avoid that is obviously stop drinking fluids a couple of hours before bed. That will get you out of that habit. If you're not sleeping because you're getting up to go to the bathroom, that's a behavior issue you can control right off the bat. You got to get yourself in more of a parasympathetic state. And I recommend reading the book about hrv. The, the one I like about just breath work and everything is. And the breath work I like to do is not exactly the typical, you know, breath work that. Because we don't want breath work that's going to make us hypoxic. Actually I would prefer breath work always that from a something that's going to put you into a parasympathetic state is best. You know to me I think those are my somewhat of a cheat. If you can do the book by Leologos and it's called Heart Breath Mind I utilize it. I actually utilized it before I went to bed last night and before I got out of bed this morning. So you can do some simple breathing in and out through your nose. So deep breaths into your nose, hold for a count of five and out through your mouth using your belly to breathe. So you lower your diaphragm more, expand your lungs more. That will help you get you in a better, you know, parasympathetic state. If you want to use a wearable to track your I currently really like using the ultra human ring. I've used all sorts of things Polar watches. I've used. I've used the Garmin watches. I've used the polar bead strap. Like I said, I take that I use that more occasionally now. I did it routinely for a period of time and now I just do it occasionally. I have a whoop strap because I operate you have to wear my whoop strap up on my arm or down on my leg and those will give you different readings of course. So you're looking for trends always not exact probably readings. The sleep though is paramount to really getting you to recover in a more efficient manner. The you know, first and foremost you have to sleep. If you can't sleep, you have zero chance to recover and perform, you know, daily. So first and foremost prioritize your sleep. And that's what I told this group of men I was speaking with at south by Southwest. That's oh also ran into the inventor of the seed oil Scout app, which is great. A big shout out to him. Ran into him. The Seado Scout is a great app that you can use so that wherever you are certainly in the United States you can pull it up. I'll use it out of the country when I when I go out of the country. I'm leaving shortly to go on a trip and you're but definitely use that app. I'm trying to think are there any other take homes from south by it's really a fun event. Big shout out to Brian Sanders at the Sapien center for getting me invited to the event. We'll get him out to the Austin FC match. Yeah. So it's a good event. So check it out. This will be up today.
