Robb Wolf | Electrolytes: How Sodium, Potassium & Magnesium Help To Beat Brain Fog | Wellness Force

All of these problems that people usually ascribe to low carb diets, the fatigue, the brain fog, the inability to get a pump while training, adrenal type issues, hormone dysregulation and whatnot. Most of that is resolved with adequate sodium intake. Sam.

Welcome back to Wellness Force, man. I'm so happy to have you. We're going to cover a lot of ground today. We were just chatting about something super timely and that was what's top of heart for you? So before we get into this incredible product, which I love, that's called Element and the backstory on that, please, man, share with us what's top of heart for Rob Wolf, one of the leading voices in our wellness world. What's top of heart for you right now?

Watching the. You know, I know everybody's done with COVID and it's kind of interesting. If we didn't have social media, I don't know that anybody would know that we're still in a pandemic, per se. You know, it's mainly the fear porn that kind of keeps all this stuff going. But I've been watching two stories emerge. One is the lab leak hypothesis gaining significant traction and despite the best efforts of virtually everybody from World Health Organization down to local public health officials trying to stuff this idea, which is fascinating from a scientific perspective, we should kind of throw all credible hypotheses on the table and we should definitely have a vigorous debate about efficacy and whatnot. But this thing was attempted to be stamped out. But really second to the Ivermectin story, which is emerging and could potentially be like a crimes against humanity type deal like Nuremberg type trial. And this sounds absolutely crazy, but it was March of last year in my podcast when I was talking about this stuff, and I don't want to derail this into all of that overly, but God damn it, I'm going to pat myself on the back a little bit on this, where I said the way that this is being approached. I have a good friend of mine, David Dooley, is very successful in life and in business, and he asks great questions. And one of the questions he always asks is, what would we need to know to make the decisions that we see this person making or that person making or group of people or whatever. And the way that Covid was being tackled, that a vaccine was going to be the one and only solution to our problems in a class of viruses that have never, ever had a successful vaccine made in history, and a bunch of other things like it just didn't make sense, like There were a bunch of things here that didn't make sense, that the end goal, in my opinion, was not to eradicate Covid and stamp this thing out. There was some other end goal. And I'm not gonna go out into what my theories are about what that may or may not be, but this stuff is starting to get some airplay and I am happy about that. It is a repost day to the last year of Cancel Culture, where like the media platforms at various points, if you just mentioned the possibility that Covid could be of a lab leak origin, you could be deplatformed. Mentioning Ivermectin would get you removed from YouTube. Dr. Pierre Cory, who's one of the world's leading experts on basically emergency medicine in general, but real expertise and like pulmonary medicine and whatnot, he spoke before the United States government, imploring them that we needed to investigate the potential that Ivermectin could be this really remarkable prophylaxis and treatment around Covid. This was a public statement to our government and YouTube took this down. This is the world we live in, you know, so those things are really top of mind right now. And I'll be honest, I've tried to say and do as much as I could around this topic without getting my head lopped off. And it's been very frustrating. I feel like it's important enough that folks should be willing to take a bullet and do what they need to do. And I know you've been like, absolutely out there beating many a drum on this topic. So, like, hats off to you for your courage and your tenacity in just talking about this stuff. And we may end up being wrong about 8 out of 10 of the things that we bring up. And that's where being careful about, you know, how we couch these things is critical. You know, like, here are some thoughts that are on the table now. Let's see where the legitimate science and data takes us. And we're seeing some vindication there. And I hope that it's a wake up for at least some people that we've potentially been driving this boat down a very, very dangerous course. And so I'm both angry about what has happened, but also guardedly optimistic that maybe we're going to round a corner and we're going to have a little bit more sanity injected into this stuff. Because if the tech platforms are going to designate themselves as the sole arbiters of what science is and is not, then they need to be responsible for making this huge mistake. If Ivermectin proves to be this prophylactic treatment that could have prevented potentially all deaths or most deaths. If it could have been a viable alternative to vaccination, particularly in people who have known pre existing conditions that make it dodgy for them to take the vaccine, and these people have suffered death or illness or injury due to that, then these tech platforms should be held accountable for that. Like, if they want to get in and start arbitrating the truth, then they'd better fucking have their ducks in a row and be 100% certain that they know what they're talking about or take a step back and let the free exchange of ideas occur the way that western liberal democracies have typically done things. And it's messy, but it also gets us to the most beneficial point for everybody. So, wow, that's the shit that's top of mind for me, man.

What an amazing way to start this podcast. Because a lot of what you're doing with Element and what I've known about you since day one back in 2009, 2010 when I read the Paleo solution is just you stand for health, not just like being angry and trying to get the fire out there about what's going on. And I feel your anger because, Rob, I feel it too. And I think a lot of people in the Wellness Force community and also in the healthy rebellion world were upset. Yet I just did a Native American vision quest. It was a 10 day experience, four day water fasting in nature. And I don't think God is a bearded dude in the sky, but I did have a connection with a higher power out there that was profound. And the message I received when I asked what do we do with this absolute, utter fucking nonsense of mind control and really psychopathy from people in power. And the message I received, Rob, was less anger, more truth. Less anger and more truth. And the truth that I want to share with you today and that I want to share with the world is already what we've been experiencing. And that is how do we fortify our own health? How do we bulletproof our immune system, how do we take care of this vessel? We only get one home to live in, right? So all the different things we're going to chat about today really buttress with what you just mentioned, because the anger is something that can really hurt us, you know, if I allow myself to steep in the anger. And I've had moments, I've had moments where I've been really, really angry and upset and I don't feel good afterwards. You know, really that stress of the anger of what's going on with, let's be honest, the people in our communities giving away their power, believing the deity that is the CDC and the who. This is the point in our conversation that really hits my heart because so many people are focused on the fear and the anger and really they forget about their breath and coming back home to this body and making this body a healthy, vital piece that it really is, you know, this vessel. So let's begin with the topic of brain fog. Because one of the big things I know with element and with sodium, potassium, magnesium, just electrolytes, I think it's easy. We all can forget we're an electrical being. Just like a battery in a car, we need electricity to flow through our body. So brain fog, with all the arbitrage of social media and fear is a big one right now. I think most people that write in, or maybe in the healthy rebellion community that talk brain fog is big because our energy centers are under attack and really our prefrontal cortex and our amygdala is being hijacked by social media. So to start us off, Rob, where do we begin the conversation about brain F and electrolytes specifically? What's the corollary there? How do those two interplay?

Yeah, that's a really good question. Your question is probably going to be better than my answer, but I'll do my best to hash it out. I've been noodling on this topic of electrolytes a lot. Clearly I'm a co founder of Element and so it's kind of self interested to paint all this stuff in as favorable a light as I can. But we can be really honest about the fact that what are the most tightly regulated physiological processes in our body? I would make the case that ph is arguably even more tightly regulated than electrolytes. If your ph goes up a little bit, if it goes down a little bit, and that maintains it can make you very sick or you can die. Only secondary to that is electrolyte maintenance. If one were to find themselves unconscious entering an emergency room, one of the primary thing that an emergency room physician would do is check ph and electrolytes because these are some of the things that could kill you or could be a real hallmark about the problems that we're facing. And on that electrolyte story, it relates to blood volume, it relates to literally every thought we have, every muscle fiber contraction. You know, for us to think requires a gradient of sodium and potassium that is part of our energy production system. And you already alluded to that. So Literally every element of our life is driven by these kind of battery powdered sodium potassium pumps where a gradient is created and then the resolution of that gradient generates ATP. So a little off on that and things can start becoming problematic. A little off in the sodium potassium ratios. We tend to have more sodium in the extracellular fluid of our body and more potassium in the intracellular fluid of our body. And we burn a lot of energy to maintain that gradient. But if that changes a little bit, we can get edema, our hands can swell, our brains can swell. And interestingly, too low of sodium is a much more dangerous situation than too high of. So generally somebody is in like stage four renal failure or something like that. Although even in that situation, too high of potassium is ultimately the more dangerous thing in that situation. But one will feel horrible if those things are off and one can have a whole host of symptoms, including this brain fog. I will mention that other common features of brain fog are immunogenic foods. Like, for years I thought that a bunch of my brain fog was due to blood glucose dysregulation, which is another brain fog kind of inducing problem. I was intolerant to eggs. I had overeaten eggs throughout the course of my life. And I finally just pulled them out and reintroduced and I would have this kind of 8 to 10 hour kind of brain fog deal because I was suffering kind of an immune response to these eggs that I just don't do well with.

Was it the egg or the white or both?

Definitely the white is worse. And like if we, if we do some sort of like a baked good or like, you know, something where there's a little bit of egg yolk mixed into something, I can get away with a little bit, but I can't do a lot, but at least levels in the dose. It really is for me. Yeah, yeah. And so there are some other things that influence brain fog at that kind of immunological level and then also at the blood sugar level. But at the end of the day, both of those things also tend to impact our electrolyte status because kind of inflammatory nature of a gut response with an immunogenic food and then with the way that high and low blood sugars alter our electrolyte status. So those end up being some features in that too. So it has been really interesting and it's honestly been really cool from a business perspective that if somebody is feeling off and you give them some electrolytes and then they feel better five minutes later and, and then they do that again the next day and again the next day. Like, it's a really tight feedback loop, like, you know, and that's like kind of the holy grail of, you know, like, selling people's stuff, you know. My friend Kirk Parsley has this amazing sleep remedy product. He's a retired Navy SEAL, a physician. He worked with the West Coast SEAL teams for nearly 10 years, dealing with all the challenges that they face due to the type of work that they do and disordered sleep was one of the biggest things that they face. His sleep remedy product is awesome, and it works rather quickly, but you still have to go home, go to bed, take the sleep remedy, and then assess whether or not you feel better in the morning or not. And, like, it's a successful product. He has a great company. It works really well. So that's all a bonus, but if somebody gets the electrolyte status right. And this is where on, like the Element website, we're like, drink pickle juice, do chicken bouillon cubes. Like, do anything you need. Eat a bunch of olives. Like, we have lists of higher sodium food so that you can ideally get a lot of your dietary sodium intake from actual whole food sources and not necessarily need to supplement with it. Our goal is really to focus on this health via hydration. And the hydration piece, the linchpin, is electrolytes. But really, when. When folks shift to any type of a largely whole food, minimally processed diet, the sodium intake typically that they experienced previously just disappears because processed foods are where we mainly get. Get sodium from.

But that sodium was bleached and baked and cleaned with chlorine. That's not real sodium. That's like lab sodium.

Wow.

Totally different kind.

Yes. As a chemist, I would push back on that. Like, I, I don't see a lot of chakra balancing happening with our sodium and like that. So there are folks that. And maybe I'm missing something on that. But, you know, as. As more of like approaching this from just like matter energy, protons, you know, I would push back on that a little bit. The main thing though, that I would really lean into is that whether you're paleo or vegan or what have you, people generally agree that highly processed foods are a problem. Like that there's not. You won't start many fistfights over that, you know, I mean, in our modern world, somebody will get bent about something. You know, they'll say, well, you just need to limit the amount of processed food you eat. And yeah, people are amazingly good at that. Like opening a can of Pringles of Course you're only going to eat two of those. You're not going to eat the whole sleeve of them. They're not engineered to be hyper palatable and the sodium plays a major role in the hyper palatable nature of that food. So people tend to get scared of sodium because it is a common feature of processed food. But then when we remove processed food from our diet, what we find is the sodium intake drops and our sodium need may actually increase because our insulin levels are lower. We're not retaining sodium the way that we historically did. And this again can feed into the brain fog and all the rest of that. And I know I'm kind of bouncing around a lot of different places, but it is worth mentioning that this is such low hanging fruit for people to tinker with if they are having energy issues, if they're having problems. Sticking to a dietary plan like inadequate sodium ends up addressing these problems so beautifully. And it is like a five minute downrange deal where, you know, you take a swig of pickle juice or you do some element or you eat some olives or whatever, and that mid afternoon slump that we typically have and you're like, man, do I want another espresso or do I do some, some electrolytes? And you do the electrolytes. And the funny thing is so many of the mechanisms and you mentioned like the stress and the amygdala and all that type of stuff, a lot of the mechanisms that occur from stimulants ring that adrenal cortical axis. We get cortisol release, epinephrine release. One of the things that those, those hormones do. One of the primary things that they do is cause us to retain sodium. So, you know, and so there's all these different angles where sodium and electrolytes end up being these really key features. And so do we really need that espresso? Maybe, maybe not. But we almost certainly probably need some, some additional sodium. Yeah, yeah.

There's so much to unpack there. Two things. First, you had mentioned that having like refined just sodium that you might get at a restaurant compared to sea salt. Are you saying there's no difference in the bioavailability or the quality there? Yeah, I love it, man. Well, can you unpack that just a little bit? Because I've always been trained and I've always read and I've always experienced that like a really, like a Celtic sea salt or a Himalayan pink is much more healthy for us than just, you know, a baked, a baked salt, like an iodized salt that we find on a restaurant table. But you're saying that's not the case.

So the ideation is another issue. And Guillermo Ruiz, you should definitely get him on the show at some point because he is like this thyroid Jedi and he. I can talk about it. He knows it. Like, this is.

If he's in harmony with Obi Wan, let's have him on the podcast.

Yeah, I highly recommend that guy. And it's. It's interesting. So when you look at iodine, specifically, iodine was introduced into foods because early 1900s, because a lot of people suffered goiters because of low iodine diets. You know, people didn't eat seafood and people that live more interior to the US which is coming around now. Rob.

People saw that dolphin Netflix series and now they're like, no one's eating fish anymore. It's so crazy how people's opinion can be shifted by the media, which is exactly how we started this podcast.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it's interesting. Putting iodine in salt alleviated most of the problems around goiter, But Guillermo makes the case that it's quite hazardous from the perspective of Hashimoto's thyroiditis and some autoimmune related thyroid disease. I am not an expert in that. That's as deep as I would feel comfortable getting into that. So the iodine thing is something that is a little bit concerning. And he would make the case that generally you wouldn't want iodized sea salt. You should try to get more sea vegetables. But even there, you need to be careful because the dulse flakes and stuff are super high in iodine. And he's actually worried that people get too much iodine in some circumstances. And again, he's really the expert on it. But when we break down what is really in say, a pink Himalayan sea salt or something like that, the mineral composition is not super impressive. Like, there's just not a lot of other stuff there. It's still mainly sodium and chloride. The other stuff there for me is kind of unimpressive. And so I make a lot of people cranky and angry about that. But, you know, mineral sources, I like whole foods. I like, you know, some bone broth and, you know, just a wide variety of as broad a diet as one can consume. And I don't really. And I'm open to amending that, but like, I really dug into that because.

I'm sure you had to creating the product. I mean, you have to source great stuff to put in there.

So. Yeah. And also, like, like my position Here makes me very unpopular within a broad cross section of people. Like, you know, we dug into this on sacred cow. I really wish there was a huge difference between pastured meat and conventional meat. From a nutritional perspective, there's not a massive difference. And from the science that I understand it, again, you know, with the caveat good until further notice, like if I get information that compels me to change that my life would be a lot better if I could just say I could do the vegan move and like, grass fed meat is healthier, it's more nutritious, it's better for the environment, it's more ethical. Most of that is true. The one thing that's, that's not really as true is that it is qualitatively, massively more nutritious. The reality is that herbivore meat, meat from grazing animals is nutritious, period, full stop. Like, it's arguably the most nutritious food we could eat other than maybe like shellfish or something like that. So, you know, when this salt thing is another one of these things, you know, like within this ancestral health space, we could say that this is alternative health and this notion that there are really magical constituents and different types of salt is alternative. And so it would play way better for me if I just said, yeah, man, these magical salts have all these great things and have 18 different varieties. But I just, as a scientist, I don't see that much difference in them. And again, willing to amend my position at a later date, but and have really tried to stretch and torture the information available so that I could be like, oh, yeah, this stuff is good, but I sit on enough kind of not academic, but kind of science advisory positions that what I say gets kind of reviewed by a lot of people. And I get some stuff wrong for sure, everybody does. But some things like this are kind of a gimme, like somebody with a decent science background that does an afternoon of research on this. You know, if I'm really like, Celtic sea salt is, you know, orders of magnitude more nutritious than like bleached white table salt. Yeah, it's going to be a big lift to justify that. Yeah.

Well, Rob, everybody's got to have a value proposition, right? Like, what makes our brand so the pink salt, the Celtic salt. I get it. So thanks for the clarity on that. I bet you people will write in and be like, what is Rob saying? What is Rob saying about my Celtic sea salt? I totally understand.

Use it, use it. But, you know, for, for us with Element, we wanted to know exactly how Much sodium was in there, so we didn't want anything else. We. If the label says 1 gram, 1000 milligrams of sodium, we want to know what's in there. And if we source these things where, I don't know, maybe it's got some calcium carbonate or maybe it's got some magnesium carbonate or something like that. We don't. And these things vary. Natural products vary. So if we did that, then we would, we would have more error occurring there than what I'm comfortable with. If the label says, you know, a gram of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, 60 milligrams of magnesium, I really want to know that. And the two value propositions for elements. It tastes good and it's easy. That's it. There's no other magic. There is no other magic. You could solve all your problems with pickle juice. You could solve all your problems with, with bullion cubes. You could solve your problems a plethora of ways. Other than using element. There is nothing magical there other than it tastes really good and it's very, very convenient. Like, that's it. That's my greasy used car salesman pitch on it.

No, it's not greasy at all. And we can stack the odds in our favor by making all the decisions easier because we have decision fatigue, Rob. 150 high tension decisions every day.

Totally.

That's all we get. So if, like, you know I'm about to be a parent, right? You're a parent of two. Yes, two. And so. And so your decisions, you have to make sure that you don't make too many decisions that are really ancillary. You have to make primary decisions all day long. So that is a huge selling point for me. And thank you about the pickle juice too, because my lady has some pickle juice in the fridge, so.

Dude, that's amazing. But I do throw that pickle juice out, use that stuff. Yeah.

I do like the portability of these products and I like how they taste. And I have a sauna. So what I've been doing, just as an n equals 1, is I've done a couple sauna sessions and not done any element and just had water afterwards. My recovery time, just my general sense of well being compared to when I drink an element in the sauna and out of the sauna is completely different. I mean, it's night and fucking day. And I say that because I love your science background. It's one of the reasons I have respected you ever since I came across your work. But I Also like the way that you make things simple for people to understand. And I really enjoy that. And every single person, man, every single person I've introduced this to, they're like, thank you. We had a workout here with almost 60 guys here in Austin. And one of the guys, Cal, I believe he invested in Element recently. His name is Cal Callahan. And everybody had the element and people were, I would see them drink it and it was almost like they became electrified themselves. Right? And yeah, it's anecdotal, but I can tell when people drink this blend. And I want to ask you about the synergy in the blend. Is it just the sodium or is it the synergistic effect of the sodium, potassium and the magnesium? Like how did you guys iterate that? How did you figure that out?

The way we formulated it was looking at. So the other two co founders are Luis Villa Senor and Tyler Cartwright, the founders of Keto Gains. And these guys are brilliant and they're dear friends. And in my opinion they might be the best steeped clinicians in a properly formulated low carb diet for both weight loss and for athletics. Like they, they have a huge community. They work with lots and lots of people. And the interesting thing is the main demographic that they work with are women between the age of like 35 and 60. So it's not like a bunch of 20 year old meatheads. They have those dudes too. But it's interesting. It's.

Why is that, Rob? Why is that age bracket it so specific for them?

I think one, women are generally smarter than men and so they seek out effective things. They're just good at finding what works.

True. They care more about wellness. That's what I found.

They definitely care more about wellness.

Of our audience is women.

Women tend to not carry as much baggage with them when they're doing new things or like, oh, okay, I've never done this before, I'll just do it. Whereas guys are like, oh no, my football coach told me to do this, you know. And so, you know, there's all this bullshit and baggage that you've got to unpack with it. And also I'll say women became the marketing front. They have the, I have never seen more like 400 pound to normal weight transformations in my life. And I mean they just again and again in like 100 pound transformations just all day long. And so when you have those things and you're able to hold those up as kind of a marketing engine, like it has a feed forward kind of flywheel with it. So it Is, you know, and if you get a bunch of women who are doing it, then you get the guys show up too. We learned this when we ran the CrossFit gym. It was like, make sure to take care of the ladies, because if you have enough women in the gym, the guys will show up. And so that's what they did. They have this great success with people because they don't go too low in protein on their, their ketogenic diet. And also they're just like serial killer, consistent on making sure that people get adequate electrolytes, but specifically sodium. All of these problems that people usually ascribe to low carb diets, the fatigue, the brain fog, the inability to get a pump while training, adrenal type issues, hormone dysregulation and whatnot, most of that is resolved with adequate sodium. Most of that is reflective of a stress mechanism from both the low carb diet and the too low of sodium. Because when our insulin levels drop, the hormone aldosterone decreases and aldosterone causes us to retain sodium. And like we mentioned earlier, if we are under stress, epinephrine, basically adrenaline and then cortisol also help to retain sodium, but that's a really not great mechanism for sodium retention. So low carb diets, you definitely need more sodium. And so they've had all this success with these, these folks. And when we, when I really became aware of how critical sodium was to a low carb diet in particular, and then started becoming more aware of the efficacy more broadly, we decided that we wanted to put together some sort of a formulation. And what we did initially we just wanted to release a home brew recipe, but we needed some guideline around what the recipe would look like. So we looked at about 300 diet records from folks in their community that were eating a largely whole unprocessed low carb diet. So it would give you the protein, carbs, fat, and then the sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium. And when we looked at that, people were fine on calcium. And there's also little concern around supplementing calcium. There is some association with supplemental calcium and increased cardiac events. So I'm a little nervous about supplementing calcium. And also people were generally pretty good on that. People were pretty good on magnesium, but they were a little bit deficient there. They were more deficient in potassium, but they were just orders of magnitude deficient in sodium. So we formulated it literally as a patch against an otherwise well formulated whole food based diet. And you asked a really interesting question. Although we formulated it for this patch, honest to God, we could just Put salt in the product. And I don't think it would qualitatively work any less effectively because most of the issues that we are addressing are sodium related, not 100%. And it's good to balance your sodium, potassium and all that type of stuff. But I don't think it would take 5% off of the efficacy. But nobody would buy it because we've kind of been hoodwinked to some degree that, oh, man, we need some magnesium, we need some potassium. Definitely people are deficient in magnesium. That is an issue. And addressing that is important. But interestingly, if you are deficient in sodium, it's hard to keep your magnesium. So this is where this, you know, the flywheel keeps coming back to that, that sodium piece. So I don't know if I fully answered that, but that's kind of where it came from. And then on the efficacy position, really, the sodium is where the rubber hits the road. And so what we ended up doing is releasing a how to make your own home broom. We called it keto weight. And it was like this much table salt, this much no salt, which is potassium chloride, this much magnesium citrate, put some lemon juice in it, sweeten with stevia, shake it up and go. And we had like a half million downloads of that within about six months. Like, people were loving it. Really, really helping people. And then we started getting tagged on social media where people were like, hey, love the keto aid, but when I'm traveling, the three bags of white powder are a problem with tsa, you know, and I could imagine they'd get some weird looks. Yeah. And, you know, if you're looking for body cavity search, maybe that's, maybe that's a good thing. But if you're not, that could be a problem. And it was actually the folks that follow our work that said, hey, have you guys ever thought about doing some sort of a product? You know, and so it was interesting from like a business and product development thing. We didn't have this idea of like, hey, we're going to sell people salt. You know, it was, we recognized a problem. And really Tyler and Luis had been savvy to this sodium issue way before me, like a decade before me. I was never really worried about consuming salt. I understood enough about, you know, the disconnect between sodium intake and like hypertension that in my opinion is largely a insulin resistance driven story, the hypertension and blood pressure. But I also really didn't appreciate how critical sodium intake was, especially on these low carb diets. And so when I Became aware of that. I was like, dude, we need to tell everybody this. And they were like, yeah, of course. That's what we've been doing for 10 years, you know, And. And. And so we were able to do a freemium offering where it's like, hey, just. Just for the love of God, make sure you get your electrolytes on point in particular. So. And that was really popular. And then the folks following us said, hey, we would love a product around this. So it was cool, because I don't know how many people approach like a, you know, a fitness professional or whatever, like, hey, man, the world really needs another protein powder, or the world really needs another bar or meal replacement. And there's good stuff that spins up all the time. I'm not beating on those. But, like, if you look back through my history, like, I've never done anything, anything like that. You know, I did some stuff with Chris Kresser around some digestive enzymes that help, you know, with the transition into, like, a paleo diet and helping to digest fat better. The problem with that model is that once people fix their digestive issues, they don't need it anymore, you know, whereas something like this, like, people are going to need electrolytes as long as they live, you know, and they just have to get it from a source or another, you know, whether it's element or olives or pickle juice. Yeah.

Have you gotten big pushback from Western medicine about the hypertension piece? Because that is one thing you mentioned edema earlier. I'd love for you, Rob, pleased to contrast this one. In my prep for our interview, I just tossed out a question to the community, and a lot of people had some, you know, rational or irrational fears. I'd love for you to unpack this around the water retention story. And then after that, let's talk about pregnancy. As you know, my son's on the way. But first, first, let's talk about this intersection of, you know, the water retention, the hypertension, and what that really means when we talk about sodium intake. I think people express some fears around that, so I'd love some clarity.

Yeah, so we. We can kind of parse those out a little bit. Hypertension, it has several different vectors, but there really seems to be, for maybe 80% of people, an underlying issue of hyperinsulinemia. They have chronically elevated insulin levels. I think overeating in general is the primary driver of that. I think overeating refined carbs is a really easy way to do that. So I'm kind of in this, you Know, I think insulin can be problematic, but I'm not totally in the low carb jihadi camp where it's like insulin is the only problem. I think calories do matter. But when you get this, this mixture of hyper palatable carbs and seed oils and fats that have been engineered, God, it's a beautiful mix for making people overeat, you know, and when you overe, you become insulin resistance and it's kind of off to the races. What's interesting is there, there have been lots of very well conducted randomized controlled trials where hypertensive individuals are put on low sodium diets. And it doesn't really change your blood pressure. It's very modest, like a couple of points one way or the other. And so that's interesting and kind of the question there is, well, why is that? Well, they didn't really modify the diet itself other than removing sodium. And if the main mechanism of causation is elevated insulin levels, which elevate aldosterone, which cause us to retain sodium in the first place, it doesn't matter so much if you are very low in sodium intake. Whatever sodium you get, your body is going to retain it. And we will tend to see a hypertensive state, a high blood pressure state. The flip side of this is one of the most common features of low carb diets are really just any shift from a highly processed diet to a less processed diet is diuresis. People start peeing like crazy and people will diminish this process. Or like, well, you're just, you lost 10 pounds of water weight as if it didn't even matter. But typically people's blood pressure drops significantly, which is really good. From a cardiovascular disease risk profile. It can be problematic for exercise and just feeling good because people can get this kind of postural hypotension where they go from seated to standing and they can get the room spins. And actually there's a medical condition called POTS Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome where people will pass out and they can get head injuries. And the main recommendation within that POTS community is a really aggressive sodium supplementation. So, you know, and we've had really wonderful buy in from the POTS community around element, but it makes sense too.

Rob, Just to clarify that for the non scientific person, if you've gone in a sauna and you get lightheaded afterwards, you're low on salt. You're literally low on salt.

You're low on salt and water. And this is, you know, I maybe skip this in the Beginning somewhere along the line, hydration became synonymous with water. But it is not, if you look in a textbook of medical physiology, hydration is water and electrolytes, and the electrolytes in kind of specific ratios. And if you just add water, you end up in a hyponatremic state, a low sodium state. And this is actually a beautiful bridge for like the say, like your hand swelling and stuff like that. Most people will be familiar with like going hiking and they drink water. They drink water and they're sweating. They've got a backpack on, so you're sweating. Like, even if it's cool outside, you're sweating like crazy. At that interface between the backpack and your body, what do your hands do? They swell like crazy. And it's because virtually no one supplements with sodium. We are actually getting into a hyponatremic state. And when our sodium levels are low, we will tend to get edema and swelling. This is where the feet will swell, the hands will swell and the brain will swell. This is what kills people when they over hydrate. Like whether it's, you know, a fraternity or sorority, like hazing event where they have to drink a lot of water or a people are doing marathons or triathlons and they're mainly hydrating or, you know, consuming water or inadequate electrolyte levels. These people can get sick and potentially die because the potassium levels get out of balance with the sodium. And we start getting water infiltrating into the tissues and this is where we get edema. So this is one of these really easy experiments. Like if people are used to doing a hike or a run and they hydrate just with water and they get some hand swelling. The next time, do pickle juice, do element, do something like that. And notice how your hands don't swell. So this is that, that inner, you know, where we go from like hypertension and the mechanisms that are going on there and then take a bridge over to this kind of edema and swelling that we experience from really doing too much water and too little. Sod I, I could make the case that in general people would be better off just not consuming water or being much more conservative in consuming water. If they don't have sodium or adequate electrolytes around, you will disorder the electrolytes less than what you would otherwise. And also one, one quick aside. When we sweat, we mainly excrete sodium. We don't really excrete potassium. We don't really excrete magnesium. There is a little bit, but, but it's orders of magnitude different. High sweat scenario, a sauna, exercise ruck, marching, stuff like that, you need to mainly focus on sodium. We, this is where like over the time course of a week or a month, yes, we need sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, phosphates, bicarbonate, all of the electrolytes. But in that time course of like a hard physical event or sauna, the main problem is the rapid and significant loss of sodium. So that is another reason why you really have to target that.

I love that everybody rewind that. Listen to that again. Because question that came up for me was, does it matter pre peri or post when you take in the sodium, like let's say you are going to do like for example on the Vision Quest, Rob, we did the Native American sweat lodge and it's like hours of praying and singing. I mean, I definitely needed some element there. We weren't allowed to have it because it was traditional.

Right.

But it would have been amazing if I could have had some element in the sweat lodge. Does it matter pre peri or post, the timing of the salt for recovery?

It does, and for kind of different reasons. So interestingly, there's a lot of benefits for sauna in general. They're very parallel to exercise. Like, one of the interesting effects is if the sauna is adequately warm, like 180 degrees. And some of the infrared saunas can produce similar effects, but it's an elevated heart rate. Like the heart rate can be 140, 160.

It's cardiovascular health as well.

It is, it is doing low intensity cardio without physical exercise. And there are clear cardiovascular benefits to this. That works only if you have adequate blood volume and electrolytes to allow the heart to pump at a reasonable rate. When the blood volume drops too far, then the heart rate spikes and that's where you're done. Like you're, you're absolutely done. You get that panic response and you've got to get out of there. So like, if you want, want an effective sauna, you want to be well hydrated, which means body fluid and electrolytes because they're inseparable, you got to have both of them. So if you really want the most bang for your buck out of a sauna session, which is mainly being able to stay in there longer, longer periods of time because we get more of the heat shock proteins and we get more of that cardiovascular training effect. You want to be properly hydrated so that you can stay in there as long as you possibly can. When we do physical activity, if we want a training response, we need to Be able to stay in there as long as we can and to do as much work as we can at as low of a stress response is what we can manifest. So again, that's where like the pre hydration, the pre event, you know, getting adequate sodium and electrolytes is critical. The backside of that is really interesting. And you know, we've just only recently been getting some studies looking at this. But, but adequate post training or post stress sodium dramatically enhances recovery. And there's a ton of different, you know, mechanisms for why. But one of the things that that sodium, adequate sodium levels, what it affects is cortisol release because it's less of a stress. If our body's getting adequate sodium, it's kind of a signal that like we're cool, we're getting adequate nutrition, we have the resources we need to be able to recover. So that that pre event is really important. Depending on the duration of the event, being able to stay on top of that and stay properly hydrated, which again, can't emphasize enough, isn't just water, it's water and electrolytes. And then on the recovery side, you know, we're definitely looking at that too. You know, adequate sodium and electrolytes is a critical feature of this whole thing. And I'll give folks maybe a practical example. When I go to jiu jitsu, I have a pretty good sized tankard. I think it's 36 ounces of water. And I do two elements in that. And that is what I drink going to the gym. And that's what I drink during the hour of technique work and drilling, which will vary in intensity. It's usually, it can be pretty intense, but it's usually, you know, kind of variable intensity because there's Q and A and whatnot. But I'll work my way through that, through the drive there and I'll try to finish that by the end of the first hour of class. Then the second hour of class is open mat. And then in that second hour of class, I have about an 18 ounce mug that I put one packet of element in and I will hammer maybe a third of that immediately before rolling. And then maybe every third or fourth roll every 15 to 20 minutes I will go over and do about another third. Another third. Got it. And that will usually then get me home. And I'm almost 50 now.

And like that's hard to believe, man. You don't seem like you're 50.

They keep dipping me in formaldehyde, you know.

Young soul. Yeah. But.

When I was trying to do training like this 10 plus years ago, I was just crushed. Like, I was absolutely smashed, you know, and it was. I think it was mainly because I wasn't properly addressing electrolytes, you know. And the other part of this is, for a variety of health reasons, gut issues, blood sugar regulation, I do best at a lower carb intake. And so if I was eating more carbs, I maybe wouldn't need as much supplemental sodium because my body is retaining more sodium. So my sodium needs might not have been as great. But because I was low carb and high motor, like, it was a huge deal. I would be laid out for, like, two days after a training session. Whereas now, like, I was rolling with Andy Stumpf, you know, the retired Navy Seal, the cleared hot podcast fame. He's a big, strong dude, and he just, like, murders me. And I definitely feel it that day. But I play with the kids where, you know, the rest of the day I'm functional. Whereas 10 years ago, if I did a session like that, I was done. Like, I couldn't get off the couch. I was totally laid out. So this pre peri and then post supplementation is really important to be on point with if you want to optimize the whole experience.

Yeah, it's all three. It's all three. That makes perfect sense. I will do N equals one. I will do it. I always have some before, but I don't drink it in there. So I will definitely start doing it Peri. And that comes to training, too. It's really hot here in Texas, so anybody that's in humid environments, this could probably be even more important. But it begs the question, how would one know? Like, what symptoms would we be experiencing if we're overdoing it? I'm sure you've had a lot of questions, like, can I do five packets of element in a day? What's the symptomology? What will we feel if we're doing too much element or too much sodium?

One is the whoosh effect. Like disaster pants. Like, if you. If you do too much, you can get some loose stools. And particularly if you do it really concentrated. Like, if you're doing it in, like, 16 or 12 ounces of water and you're doing a whole pack, that can be a really. It's a hypertonic solution. It's way more concentrated in electrolytes than what our body fluids are. And so it will actually pull fluid out of the body to. To balance that in the gut, and then that can just kind of whoosh things out.

You have to tinker there's no like standard template. You have to play around with it.

Yeah, you do need to play around with it. And you definitely don't want to just like launch into this like you've never used it before. And today is like game day and you're like, oh, I'm gonna go all in. You know, like, I wouldn't recommend that. Like, I would definitely field test things first. Trying to think of what other. This is very anecdotal. I don't know if there's science that supports it, but many people have reported that when what they'll notice is as they're drinking element, it will taste sweet. It tastes sweet, it tastes sweet and then it tastes salty and almost kind of off putting salty. And I wonder if there's not a mechanism there where when we're low in sodium, then we don't notice the sodium taste as much. You mainly get the sweet from the stevia and the flavorings that we have. Yeah, I've dug and tried to find information on that and I can't find anything. So that is very hypothetical. But that is something where like, if it just doesn't seem appealing, then you're probably good. The flip side of that, what are the signs and symptoms of when you need it? Brain fog, lethargy. If you are already at the point of cramping, like in jiu jitsu, you get the toe cramps and, you know, calf cramps and everything, you're way far down the road. Like you've really, really under hydrated, you don't have adequate electrolytes. Like, cramping is kind of a late stage deal. And it's worth mentioning that, you know, a heart attack can be a heart cramp. So like, you don't really want to to mess around with that. This is another reason why stay point with electrolytes is critical. You know, there's a host of reasons, but the lethargy, fatigue, high heart rate is also, you know, relative high heart rate. Like if you're getting in and trying to exercise and you just feel like you're, you know, you're swimming upstream and your heart rate is really high, that can be low volume, low blood volume, and also low sodium. That is a problem there. Again, increasing blood volume appropriately can increase the stroke volume of each heartbeat. So it doesn't have to work as hard to pump the blood around our body.

That's so huge. I feel like this is a masterclass. Honestly. This has been so good for people to really get out the old wives tales about the dangers of Sodium as we know the Time magazine cover with the butter that made saturated fat evil and then salt was evil. And now it seems like in the diet industry that like every five to seven years something gets evil. Fat or salt or protein or carbs. It's just like I almost feel like we just enjoy novelty when it comes to the diet industry where we just want to receive like oh, the new scare, the new fad. What you're talking about, what you guys have created is so special because this is the way that nature intended it. I think about this paleo lens that you've looked through for almost, you know, 20 years plus. How does element plug into that ancestral lens? Because people could say, you know, devil's advocate, right Rob, Element didn't exist back in the day, you know, in the forest or the caves. So how does that plug into that? And then of course man, before we let you go, I want to talk about pregnancy and Element two. Yeah but talk about the lens of paleo living with this packet.

That is a really good question and this is kind of the answer. This is my coffee cup and used to it's my Texas little little. I call it my little mug of diminishing freedom. But we it again this is kind.

Of.

This gets out it's soft science arena. But I did a lot of poking around on like water consumption within the Hadza and the Kung San and different hunter gatherers and although they do manufacture different vessels to, to store water, they don't have this. This is a little bit more than 16 ounces. And I'll do a cup of coffee black and then I'll do a cup of coffee with a little bit of cream and some chocolate flavored element in it.

What this does hat tip on that one. I haven't tried that yet.

It is but what this is doing is it's causing me to over consume electrolyte devoid liquids until I put the, the, the element in here. So if I had that much coffee in the morning and called it good, I probably wouldn't need the element because I'm not massively disturbing my electrolyte status. And then you think about just like you know, we've been told to drink these, these eight, eight ounce glasses of water and all this stuff really the I think within that paleo lens we, we didn't consume so many fluids which if you think that people look at you like you're a crazy person when you say you should supplement sodium. You should really see the looks when I'm like well if you want to put on Paleo man hat. And look at it from this ancestral lens, we probably shouldn't consume so many fluids. And then people are like, are you shitting me? You know, but makes a lot of sense if we're much more judicious in the amount of fluid that we're consuming. You, like if you're at very high work output, you are still going to need to replenish that sodium. Like that is going to cat up to you. But if you are, are losing sodium but not augmenting your fluid status with, with sodium deficient water, then we're not creating that spread between sodium and potassium as powerfully like it's going to occur, but it's going to be a much slower process. So interestingly, the kind of like Paleo man answer to this is that we probably over consume fluids in general. And then that said, the way that we process animals, the way that they're killed and slaughtered and whatnot, they're typically killed and bled and the bulk of the sodium in the animal is in the extracellular fluid in the plasma clear. So we bleed all that sodium out. Whereas if we allowed so, a kilogram of meat, 2.2 pounds of meat, has about a gram of sodium in it. Just way that it's produced currently when you look at the total body sodium of an organism, you know, everything included and it varies like our hair has some, our skin has some, our teeth has some. We actually store a lot of sodium in our, in our bones. It's one of our kind of longer term reservoirs of sodium and why it's important to get enough sodium because then when you pull the sodium out of the bones, you also pull the potassium out. So that's actually an osteoporosis kind of vector if you don't get that. But when you look at the total amount of sodium in most mammals, it's about 4 grams of sodium per kilogram. So I don't know what the exact number is. But if animals are killed and butchered in a more traditional way where the sodium and potassium are allowed to equilibrate after death, then I think it would at least double the amount of sodium that you would get out of meat and whatnot. So that, that is another, another spot that we would have, fascinating without a doubt had a greater sodium intake. But really the, the most credible thing in my opinion around that is just simply that we tend to over consume water in the modern world. Like I'm, I'm guilty of that. I drink as many elements as I do because I just like Having something to sip on throughout the day.

Me, too. Me, too. Oh, two things. First is when I. When I eat bison, like, force of nature meets here in Austin, Fredericksburg. We went to this bison kill where Tim Kennedy shot a bison. We did a ceremony. It was super powerful. And when we tasted the meat, when I got the meat delivered to my house, it tasted saltier than cow, than beef. And so I could definitely see what you're saying there, because those animals are eating clover and grass, and they're eating as nature intended them to. So I love the contrast you made of the Paleo, man. Where, dude, maybe we're actually just drinking too much water, which could be quite controversial. It's like, Rob, what are you trying to do? Dehydrate people, People. No, you're not. You're actually just getting people back to this internal barometer that we have called homeostasis. And I think the more we get away from that because we're sucking in the new media narrative or we're ascribing to the new novelty piece in the diet industry, it's like, let's just take a breath. Let's just start tuning back into the mechanisms that give us that homeostasis. And I think that's what you've done a great job of, man. So. So when it comes to. And I know you may have to go, so let me know when you have to go, but I got.

No, no, we're good. We'll definitely get into the pregnancy. Deal.

Let's get into the pregnancy because my son will be here in two weeks or so, you know, whenever nature wants him to be here.

Right.

Which I'm so excited, man. And looking at the pregnancy path for women, what are the considerations? What are the things to look out for when we look at Element, you know, sodium, potassium, magnesium, and just unpack maybe the 1, 2, 3 steps of that for consuming during pregnancy. We'll also look. Link something from Element in the show notes down here for all the pregnant parents, because you guys did a really nice expose. I think it was a blog post about that, too. So let's just start that conversation about pregnancy and sodium, potassium, magnesium.

Yeah, sure. You know, there's one group of folks that are definitely not a good fit for Element, and these are people with hypertension with existing high blood pressure. They're retaining all the sodium and water they need. They don't need to supplement that generally. I will also say that what those folks probably need is some dietary modification which will drop their insulin levels and then will increase their sodium Needs, you know, so this kind of, this, this revolving door on that. And it's interesting, as women become pregnant and progress through their pregnancy, there's this tendency towards gestational diabetes. Like they weren't diabetic before pregnancy, but they become diabetic during pregnancy, or at least potentially, certainly women's insulin resistance increase during pregnancy. And the mechanism behind this is that you want the fetus to get first dibs on nutrients, you know, glucose, amino acids, all of that stuff. And if the mom is a little bit insulin resistant, it's almost kind of like a water going downhill. If the fetus is more insulin sensitive, then it gets primacy on the nutrient access. And that's the way it should be.

Through the placenta and through that.

Through the placenta, yeah, yeah. The problem that arises is virtually everybody has some degree of insulin resistance these days. And so, you know, if, if insulin resistance should be at effectively zero within like an ancestral living scenario, but under pregnancy conditions, insulin resistance in women goes to an arbitrary number of like 4 out of 10. What if women are already at 4 because of modern diet, lifestyle, stress, you know, poor sleep, all of that stuff, and then they go to an eight, then they're. They're in that, that gestational diabetes kind of, kind of scenario. So if somebody is experiencing gestational diabetes or, or is in that area, elements probably not a good fit. But again, I will circle back around and say I would also really consider something like a lower carb approach. And I can't recommend Lily N. She's a registered dietitian who specializes in this area. If you haven't had her on the podcast, like, you gotta have Lily on. She is a genius with this stuff. And she's written a couple of books, Whole Food for Pregnancy and Whole Food for Gestational Diabetes. But those are like, that's definitely a cross section of people that, like, if you know you're gestationally diabetic, if you pre eclamptic, like, those are situations where it's probably not recommended to supplement sodium all that much, if at all.

Question there, Rob, before you go forward, the gestational, like, you're talking about the period of pregnancy. So is it dependent on how the mom ate before pregnancy or during pregnancy?

Both, both, both. Which one's more important?

I mean, can you cure it during pregnancy or is that too challenging to do?

You can, you can walk that back. Yeah. And that's where Lily Nichols. You know, many women, women, they, they go do their oral glucose tolerance test, which I think is a horrible Test we should, we should do like a fasting blood glucose and an A1C instead of injecting the mom and the baby the most crappy.

It's like corn starch or something that they're drinking. I mean, that test is complete.

It's ridiculous.

Utterly nonsense.

Just ridiculous. Yeah, that's a whole another side deal. Yeah. And Lily will, will lose her mind over that stuff. But man, which one is more important? I mean, it would be great if people didn't end up gestationally diabetic at all. But that, you know, this is why you and I have the jobs that we do. We're helping people navigate this world so, you know, they get there. And so at least when they get there, we can do things that, you know, modify diet, exercise, lifestyle in a way that the gestational diabetes can be, be really minimized or maybe more or less put in remission. And the important features there, the baby has a tendency to grow too large under diabetic conditions and all kinds of complications can emerge from that. There are other complications to emerge. So it's healthier for both the mom. Shocker. It's healthier for both the mom and the baby that the mom is not diabetic during pregnancy. And in today's cancel culture, I know somebody's going to be like, like Rob Wolf hates pregnant women. And it's like, no, I want to help people and we have options and we have choices and so the better informed people are, we can help more people make, you know, well informed decisions. Beyond that, I think that, you know, ideally pregnant moms are active and they're eating well. And so like that, that baseline, you know, supplementation of electrolytes, again, like if they're feeling lethargic or brain fog or cramping or what have you, that's a perfect spot to drop in some electrolytes. The place that element really, really shines is once the baby is delivered and the mom is producing breast milk. Because so many women, my wife included, end up having breast milk production issues. Latching issues, which latching issues aren't immediately addressed by this, but getting adequate supply can help the latching. And we, this wasn't on our radar at all, but element was up and running maybe about six months and we started getting tagged on social media accounts from within these breastfeeding mom forums. So like some moms breastfeed directly, some breastfeed and pump, and then there's these other exclusive pumping communities. Like maybe the mom worked out of the house during the day and you know, There's a caregiver or something, but they pump milk so that they've got milk for the baby and all that type of stuff. The exclusive pumping moms, I think, see this stuff because like how much milk am I getting in the bottle? And I know I need this much amount, you know, for the kid to make it from the morning when I leave till I get home. And you know, they're really scrutinizing this. But we started getting tagged in especially these exclusive pumping forums where the mom would post pictures of like, you know, little bottle. It's like I had this much in the bottle yesterday and then I took element and I. And you see like five full bottles the next day and we were like, holy smokes. And I started poking around on this stuff. And doctors and lactation consultants recommend that moms stay properly hydrated, but they never fill in those details. People assume that it's just liquid means hydration and it doesn't. It's liquid water and electrolytes, you know, and if you just consume water, it doesn't necessarily increase fluid volume in your body. Your kidneys may just ramp up excretion. And when it ramps up excretion, absent adequate sodium, it will excrete both potassium and sodium. And so the person feels like even more garbage, garbage. And it's stressful. The woman ends up producing cortisol because they're under a stress response. And cortisol is directly antagonistic towards breast milk production. So when we properly hydrate with electrolytes and appropriate amounts of water in general, we see the breast milk production just go through the roof. This was significant enough actually that the dean of the school of epidemiology, she's an MD, PhD at Vanderbilt, built. She put together a feasibility study looking at electrolyte supplementation with element and breast milk production. And we were just getting this spun up right before COVID happened and so we had to pump the brakes on that. But we have no clinical data yet. But it was intriguing enough that there might be a really viable solution for enhancing breast milk production in this breastfeeding population that the dean of the School of Epidemiology at Vanderbilt took a allocated funding and you know, designed a study and put all this stuff together. We were in the recruiting phase when, when Covid hit.

That's so powerful because I think about, you know, over hydration for moms. They're already under a lot of stress, especially postpartum. You know, there's a six week period where there's their body's going through massive Hormonal shifts, they're repairing tissue, so they really need to be supported in all ways. And I think about what you just said, said if there's over hydration cortisol spikes, then the body signal is, hey, we're under attack. Let's not put out as much milk. So I could see that being like a very vicious loop that moms can get stuck into.

Right, right. Yep, yep. It's kind of heartbreaking because now not all situations fix all problems and all that. And like, you know, if there are going to be some people out there that they're going to supplement with electrolytes and that doesn't work. We're. And this is where we should all be grateful that we have fallbacks of other options. There's like breast milk banks. There are the formula options out there. Like we ended up shifting to a goat milk formula that we put like B vitamins and this and that and the other in. And you know, we're in this amazing time where we have lots and lots and lots of options. But there's oftentimes a lot of guilt associated with like, you know, well, I wanted to have a home birth and no meds. Well, it didn't work out that way. And then there's guilt with that. Well, I want to breastfeed for two years and you know, stuff happens and I just couldn't encourage people enough. Just like, do your best, do your homework, do your research. But sometimes like life just has an agenda other than what ours is and you just be comfortable with that and don't berate or beat yourself up and you know, and, and be happy that we have all these other resources and fallbacks that we can offer to our families.

It's called honoring the mystery. We can have all the plans, but nature's going to do what nature wants. We are one of the most powerful things. And as we close, I'd love to share this with you. We have a video that we're going to be putting out for our 400th episode as a celebration. And you're in the very beginning of the video. I'll send it to you. And if you feel like it's something cool to share with your community, great. And you talked about this, Rob, I'll never forget this, man. When we did our interview last year, you said, you know, we are. I asked you what wellness was and you said, you know, maybe it's not the whole wellness, but it's a derivative of wellness that, you know, our place. Knowing our place in the world, knowing our place in nature, that we are nature and just how incredibly loving and supportive that is to respect the fact that wellness is the understanding that we are nature. You know, we're not standing on the earth, we're from the earth. Everything in your and my body was created from the macro and micro that was here way before we arrived. And so just to honor you, man, just to honor you and just to follow your work and see how many different things that you put out and the way that you serve. It's fucking powerful. I really respect you and I respect this brand. I love this brand. I just want to thank you for this. And you guys, you're here with us. So if you see this little packet right here, you can get seven of these for free. So thank you. Rob, you're giving away a sample pack. I think it's like 4.95. You guys just pay shipping. You get seven different, different packs delivered right to your door. Just go to wellnessforce.com LMNT Rob, it's been a year or so. Has. Has your definition of wellness or has your understanding as a father, as a business owner, as a husband, as a human, how has that shifted from a year ago? Do you see wellness differently now?

No, and I, I'm glad you reminded me of that because I had, I had forgotten that. And I was like, wow, that's actually some wise words.

It was super wise. That's why we started the video with you.

You know, it's like where I am in my career now, getting much more selective where I put time and energy. And that's both a privilege and also kind of a responsibility. My daughters are 7 and 9 now, and so it's been amazing to be as significant a part of their lives as I have been. But they're hitting this point where, like, my presence is going to be doubly important, you know, and so really thinking about where and how and when I can be an effective, you know, role model and father and, you know, person in their life. So definitely doing some noodling on what I'm up to and kind of where I put my time, energy, focus and whatnot. I don't know that, like, I have anything worthwhile to say about protein, carbs, fat. At this point, like, the cat's out of the bag on that. Done a little bit of work on that. There are lots of people doing good work on that stuff. But, you know, this interface between the bigger picture of, like, our food production systems, our health care systems, our society at large. Like, I feel like I've got A little bit bit to say about that and maybe a little bit of insight. And so that's, you know, wellness for me now is really trying to build some bridges around that. And that's maybe the kinder look like it's honestly like building beachheads or trench warfare where the folks that want to have true wellness and access to good food and free exchange of ideas and whatnot, like kind of feel like those are the places that we have to fight for that to exist so that we have these little enclaves of hopefully kind of free thinking and it doesn't become an echo chamber. Hopefully. But that is kind of more my thought around wellness at this point as we hopefully regain our own health and develop our own wellness. We start. It's kind of like you're on the airplane and. And if the cabin depressurizes, put your own mask on before helping someone else. I see it a little bit like that. Like we kind of that maslow hierarchy of needs. We have to deal with our own stuff. But there is kind of this obligation to do a little something else. You know, it's a funny thing. I'm very libertarian in my kind of like personal dealings, but I'm kind of communist in my understanding that I am a part of a society and I have an obligation to do the best I can for or the people around me. I just think it should happen on my terms and undermine the stuff I really feel compelled to do. I don't really want somebody else compelling me to do that stuff. So long wandering answer. That's kind of my conception of wellness now is recognizing there are some other battles to be fought and hopefully some insights that I have to be able to facilitate that.

That's profound. And I was feeling when you were answering, I was just on a flight recently and they were like, hey, hey, you guys. Just as a reminder, take off the diaper. Take off the mask on your face so you can put the mask on. As if people couldn't think or feel for themselves. And that's one of the most troubling things that I sense in our society right now is people thinking with so much hubris that they actually need to direct the actions of us others is actually what's over hydrating us with information with not a real potency. Right. So we're being saturated with really just lukewarm water with nothing inside of it from an informational perspective. And we wonder why our intuition is blunted. It's because we have been drinking water information without any real fuel source inside of it. So dude. Thank you so much. Much for your work. Again, you guys, this packet right here, there's a bunch of different flavors. My favorite is the citrus. What's your favorite, man? What's your absolute favorite?

Probably orange. I waffle between orange and watermelon, but I would say probably orange.

Yeah, the orange is good. So. Wellnessforce.com LMNT thank you for supporting the show, Rob. Really appreciate you believing in us. We believe in you. And until we see you again, until Rob and I see you guys again, I'm wishing you love and wellness. We'll talk to you, to you soon.