WILLPOWER | CONSCIOUSNESS | PLACEBO EFFECT w/ Jesse Lawler (Smart Drug Smarts)

Wellness Force Radio.

Feelings are essential, but they can't dictate our actions. We literally infect each other with our emotions. We came here for a special purpose. Let the purpose unveil itself. Knowing without doing is the same thing as not knowing. They're not just trackers.

I'm gonna wear this, and it's gonna.

Help me do the right thing.

Wellness force radio episode 97 with technologist show host and speaker speaker on brain optimization Jesse Lawler.

It's a wide family that doesn't necessarily have, like, a common starting point when you talk about smart drugs. And I feel like that's a big misconception too. For people that are just becoming aware of the field, they think it's, oh, it's all one thing, or that there's like one common originator from which all the other smart drugs in the family sprang. That's not the case. Once you kind of build those neural pathways, whether that's neural pathway to say yes to something or a neural pathway to say no, I don't do that, it becomes a lot easier. And what, again, might look like willpower to an outsider doesn't necessarily feel like you're exerting willpower to yourself. One of the greatest advantages of experimentation is kind of just realizing that you can do it. It's a continuous reminder of our power to start changes in our own lives when you're just screwing with something to see if it works in your own life. Because, you know, a lot of people kind of get caught in, like, mundane ruts and they forget that, you know, it's within their power to change that.

Welcome back to another episode, my friend. I am your host, Josh Trent. Thank you for for spending your time with me here on the podcast. This is where every week I'm bringing you access to global experts in all things wellness, behavior change and new technologies. On this podcast, you'll learn from exceptional people who are dedicating their lives to being a positive force for our physical and emotional wellness. My intention with the show is that together we'll discover the connections between our emotions and healthy habits to live our best life and enjoy the process. This episode is brought to you by Perfect Supplements, a company I'm stoked to partner with who actually walks the talk with their values of non GMO, pesticide free, real food supplements that fuel us for the wellness journey. Head on over to perfectsupplements.com wellnessforce Enter code wellnessforce to save 10% off your entire order. What's up, my friend? If you're still buzzing from the episode last week. It's probably a combination of the incredible show with Daniel Schmachtenberger we had discussing Qualia and Neurohacker. If you haven't listened to episode 96, make sure you put that in your queue. I think you're really gonna love what we talked about on the show with Daniel as it directly relates to the expansion conversation we're with Jesse Lawler. We're understanding smart drugs, consciousness and our brain's usage of willpower. You know that reason why the chips seem so attractive at 9pm when you're tired and had a long day at work. Today, Jesse is returning to Wellness Force Radio. I was so stoked to interview him because when I started this podcast in 2015, his show was a big inspiration for me in the beginning stages of my education on how brain health, productivity and cognitive enhancement relates to us living a life well. So if you enjoyed our last episode, you're in for a double dose and a treat if it's your first time tuning in. This episode is all about understanding your mind, why it does what it does, how it uses the placebo effect, how that relates to us having or not having willpower, how to avoid decision fatigue, and why Jesse went from eating a vegetarian diet to Paleo after seven years when he found research from Harvard that led him to learn about the energy pathways that help us digest our food. We'll also Talk about my 10 day silent Vipassana meditation last year and how exploring different states of consciousness can improve health and creativity not only in executives from Silicon Valley, but also in war veterans that are coming home with Post Traumatic Stress disorder and beyond. Jesse and I went into a few really deep corners and also some engaging, fun pathways that made me laugh out loud multiple times during this conversation. I think you're really going to enjoy his energetic and fun personality A little on Jesse. He's a podcast host of a widely popular show, Smart Drug Smarts. He's a technologist and a key speaker on smart drugs and brain optimization with a passion for health, wellness, fasting, cognitive enhancement, smart drugs, meditation, altered states of consciousness, and basically anything or any anyone that supports human and brain optimization. Let's get into this lively and thought provoking conversation with Jesse Lawlor. Jesse, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me back last.

Year, this time 50 episodes ago. Plus for both of us. We came on the show, we talked about the power of the brain, we talked about nootropics and smart drugs. Since then you've put out some incredible content, man. I've Been really, really just loving the stuff you're putting out there. And so today I'm twice as stoked as we were last time because there's twice as much information and we're talking about not just brain health, but altered states of consciousness, how smart drugs can help us in our life ultimately to be more well man. So thanks for coming back on.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm kind of wishing that I'd gone back and listened to our conversation from a year ago to see if there's like any asterisks or disclaimers or things that we want, like. No, no, no, forget what I said there.

Well, on that same note, a lot of the things we're going to talk about today are very high level. Jesse interviews a lot of medical and a lot of pharmacological experts. So he is not a doctor, but he is an expert in the field of what he does. He's the founder of Axon Labs. He's the host of Smart Drug Smarts. This is one of my favorite podcasts. I have 15 podc on my phone. I don't think it's possible to listen to more than 15 quality shows at a time. Jesse is one of them on my iPhone. This is a show that explores world leading experts in not just neuroscience, but psychopharmacology. This is what enhances and protects our greatest asset, which is our noodle, our brain. So, Jesse, tell us something fun that's happened in a year since we interviewed last.

Oh my gosh. I've probably gotten more religious about certain areas of like my diet and lifestyle. And probably one thing that I'm really trying, I'm trying to become like a born again good sleeper. I've had probably pretty crummy sleep habits and it's slowly starting to sink into me that like shifting time zones and being kind of cavalier about that and going to sleep when the work's done rather than when my body is starting to get tired is probably, it's short term sustainable, but it's definitely not short term optimal. And so yeah, I'm trying to kind of go back to basics with some of the stuff which isn't necessarily smart drugs or new technologies, but kind of the mother's nose. Best wisdom that you probably should be applying in your life but might not.

Be the past you've had is really unique because it's not like you just woke up one day and you're like, you know what? I'm gonna be a host of a top ranked show on smart drugs. This was a pathway to get There you were a programmer in one part of your life. You also were in film. You were in Hollywood for a minute, or maybe for years. Tell us about that. Like, what was that road to where you actually launched smart drug smarts?

Yeah, well, I mean, I guess, you know, it's a long story, but the quick version is that, like, I have always loved movies and media and kind of like movies were the media that I really, you know, cut my teeth on, like, you know, making films in the backyard when I was a little kid. And luckily those skills transferred pretty well to running a podcast and doing this kind of stuff. Editing audio, it turns out, is like, you know, half of editing video and kind of the easy half of that. So a lot of that stuff was like a good skills transfer that I had. But I knew that, you know, going to Hollywood, you know, straight out of university, there was, there was no guarantees there, and that I didn't want to necessarily be, you know, bussing tables or whatever for my whole life. So I got a computer science degree, which it turned out came in really handy. And I have been and continue to be a software developer. I mean, not a week goes by that I'm not writing code even as I'm making the podcast and stuff like that. That's an ongoing part of my life. But yeah, the software development, there's like a big demographic overlap between software people and smart drugs people, which is what got me down this particular rabbit hole probably about 10 or 11 years ago when I first sort of heard of smart drugs as even something that exists in the world. And yeah, it was probably about four years ago that I was curious enough about it and I was getting intrigued by the podcast medium. And I kind of, at that point I was out of Hollywood, but I kind of, I felt the creative itch to produce something and just a bunch of things came together. It was like I was interested in the podcasts, I was interested in my brain and these drugs that I was considering putting into them for my software development. And I also knew that I just had like a long term interest in science. And despite the fact, like, you know, my degree is technically computer science, but I always felt like a technician, not like a, a research scientist. So I'm like the little, the yappy dog, like, you know, bouncing next to the big scientist, saying, hey, tell me something new. Hey, tell me something new. And. And, you know, doing the podcast gave me sort of a context to do that in where I wasn't just being an annoyance.

And when you're a programmer, you read an article about Modafinil or Provigil? Is that when everything shifted? Is that when you started to go down this road of becoming an influencer in the smart drugs and nootropic space and having a podcast that reaches so many people?

I can definitely, like, remember reading the article. So, I mean, I guess it was sort of a turning point. Although, like many turning points, it wasn't obvious at the time that it was going to be one. It's kind of, you know, in 2020 hindsight, looking back at it from, you know, a decade later. But. But yeah, it was just like this little sidebar article in. It was like, I think Maxim magazine. It was just like, did you know that there are computer programmers that are taking this anti narcolepsy drug? Because that's technically what Modafinil is alleged. So supposed to be prescribed for, to be able to sit and code longer? And I'm like, well, I'm interested in sitting in coding longer and enjoying it while I'm doing it. And, yeah, that kind of sent me down the path.

You're such a great truth seeker. I'm wondering if it's in your genetics because your grandpa was a lawyer. Is that where you got kind of a healthy way to spark debates?

My grandfather was a very argumentative lawyer. And I guess, yeah, maybe some of my questioning comes from that. I'm probably a lot less belligerent than my grandfather was. He was pretty much my favorite relative. But, yeah, I beat up on my guests a lot less than he beat up on the people he was prosecuting.

What do you feel right now when people listen to smart drugs? Smarts? I mean, what's your greatest mission with the podcast? Tell us about the podcast. And then also, what do you want someone to feel or take action on after they've listened to your episodes?

I guess one of the things I really like trying to do, you know, everybody likes getting people to think and think about things in new ways. One of the drumbeats that I try to hit with this show because one of the most common questions I get is, you know, what's the best smart drug? Which is kind of a false paradigm in that you don't want your brain to be doing one thing all the time. It's like we are these cyclical creatures. We have day and night cycles, we have monthly cycles, we have annual cycles. And of course, we have different things that we do throughout the day. So I kind of think of all the cognitive enhancement stuff that we talk about on the show as being akin to Batman's tool belt. If Batman tried to use all the tools in his belt simultaneously, he would hurt himself badly, even though he's Batman. That's not how the tool belt is supposed to be used. The tool belt is like, you know, you know what I've got available. And when you come across a certain situation, you're like, aha, this thing's handy. I'm going to reach for this bat gadget. Then you know it's there for you and you know how it's going to behave.

I feel like each episode of Smart Drug Smarts is a virtual masterclass. But for people that are fuzzy about smart drugs, give a few examples of misconceptions. A, what is a smart drug? And then B, what do people think it is? That's not true.

Yeah, well, I guess, you know, one of the big things is because we're there's this umbrella term smart drugs, people think that they're all one thing and that maybe they operate in the same way. And that's it'. Really Smart drugs is kind of a term made up by marketers, certainly not by pharmacologists or scientists. Because some of the things people consider smart drugs are the drugs that people for ADHD use like Ritalin and Adderall are probably the big two there. And they are amphetamine based stimulants, have giant effects on the dopamine systems, have addictive potential and are really strong and are going to motivate you, but maybe at the cost of some other aspects. Then there are other things like, like L. Theanine is a good example. Naturally occurring compound is the stuff that's in green tea, that's not caffeine and it promotes the release of a neurotransmitter called gaba, which kind of smooths things out a little bit in green tea. It's what keeps you from getting kind of the same fidgetiness if you drink that than if you just drank a Starbucks Venti or something. Just a couple of examples there. It's a wide family that doesn't necessarily have a common starting point when you talk about smart drugs. And I feel like that's a big misconception too. For people that are just becoming aware of the field, they think it's, oh, it's all one thing or that there's like one common originator from which all the other smart drugs in the family sprang. That's not the case.

We'll link part of the other show we had a year ago. We talked about the seven different blocks that you have from your site and I'll make sure I put that in the show notes today. So if people want to dig deeper, they can go there. But why I'm so interested in your show and in smart drugs is how they optimize the human condition. How do these nootropics, how do these different things that we can consume actually aid to our better wellness and make us show up more powerfully with our families, with our job? What are some of the things that you talk about on the show in that regard to our wellness and our cognitive capacity?

Well, memory is probably a big one that a lot of people ask about both in short term memory and long term memory. Just being able to where did I put my keys again? Or being able to grab that six syllable word that you're like, I know the word, but I can't quite get it. Or remembering somebody's name in a party, all that kind of stuff. And there are a lot of compounds that have been shown to significantly help a person's memory. Both natural things like Bacopa moneri, an herb from India, is a pretty well known one. And then also ones that are completely man made and synthetic. The Racetam family of chemicals is well known for that. One of the other things, actually, if I can go down a side path for a second that I think is really interesting is the connection between memory and creativity. Creativity is something that people also ask about. It's like, how can I have more great crazy ideas? And really when you think about what creativity is kind of like breaking down that process, it's coming up with a bunch of original ideas and then correctly selecting which ones are going to be applicable, like which ones are good crazy ideas versus the bad crazy ideas. Because generally you're going to get a whole lot of haystack for any one particular creative needle. The way that short term memory, or what's called working memory, those are synonymous terms, plays into creativity is kind of. You've heard how they say that your average person can keep about seven ideas in their mind at one time, in their working memory at one time. And for some people it's lower, it's as low as 5. For some people it's higher, it's as high as 9. But it's kind of in that range for everybody. And it's a pretty tight bell curve when you look at the population demographics there. So basically the creativity, when you're coming up with new ideas, you're juxtaposing these seven ideas that you have in your head against one another and seeing does that stick. Does that stick? Does that stick? And so you've got, like, this combinatorial thing, whatever seven factorial is, it's a big number. But if you could bump that up to eight and be combining eight things instead of seven, all of a sudden you've got a plume, more possibilities. And that's kind of where doing something to improve your memory, which you wouldn't necessarily think directly ties into creativity, it actually really can be a creative boost.

Well, why does somebody learn how to play the guitar effectively? I mean, this, like, working memory piece that allows them, if they have the working memory that's completely solidified, and one channel, one groove, one synapse is really burned in. You can play the guitar blindfolded.

Right.

You can do anything in your life so much better if you've trained the mechanisms in the brain to do that. How do smart drugs and nootropics kind of help train that groove?

Yeah, I mean, it varies, I think, from one to another as far as, like, the mechanism of action. And in some cases, they don't necessarily know how things work, but only that they do work. Different compounds are different. Like, for example, fish oil, which is something that we've talked about on several episodes, that actually helps with what's called a myelination of the neurons. Omega 3 fatty acids are. If you think of your brain as a brick wall. I mean, they're some of the bricks. There's some of the major components of the bricks that physically build the brain and having, well, myelinated neurons. You've probably seen a picture of a neuron where there's kind of like a bulb. You can almost think of it like an onion bulb. And then this long sprout that goes off of it that connects to some other neurons that's called an axon. And that's what sends the message outbound to the other neurons that it's connected with. But there's this stuff called myelin, which is sort of a fatty compound that is a sheath that wraps around the axon. It keeps it from, like, losing its electrical signal out to the rest of the brain. It kind of keeps that electrical signal all bottled up. And just by having more myelin available to, you know, make sure your axons are well, coded, you lose less signal strength and they conduct faster. So, I mean, that would be an example of, like, one mechanism of action that is pretty well understood. But then there's other things where we know that they work, but not necessarily how they work. I was speaking with a pharmacologist about modafinil recently and he was still kind of scratching his head saying it affects about seven or eight different systems in the brain. We're not sure necessarily which one is the dominant one. If we understood it better, it might be an over the counter drug. But because we don't really understand it, it's still something which needs to be prescribed.

Now coffee is, I think used by almost everyone. 64% of Americans drink three or more cups a day, which I looked at before I show. I could not believe that it's three cups. If I do more than one cup, I'm like Jitters McGee. It's just craziness. Now, coffee for you. Combining coffee and nootropics. Let's talk about this because I think a lot of people are interested in bulletproof coffee. I mean, that's all over the wellness industry, right? How do I get butter in my coffee and things like this. But when we combine nootropics and coffee, it takes 12 hours, sometimes more if you do a lot of caffeine for it to leave the body. The half life, you know, is quite a bit of time. What are the ways that we can combine smart drugs, nootropics, with the coffee? And what kind of benefits could that have? And, and could it be also bad for some people? Kind of a multifactional question.

Coffee is a stimulant for most people. There are the oddball people, and I've met them, that caffeine acts as a sedative for them and which is weird. I mean, it's exactly the opposite of what you'd expect.

Drink coffee, go to bed. My sister in law does that. I don't know how she does that.

It seems like, you know, 3, 5% of the population has this totally inverse reaction to coffee. And the same is really true with a lot of other drugs too. You know, doctors see this when they prescribe things is that you prescribe what you think is going to be best and then you see how the patient reacts to it. And sometimes it's exactly not what you expect. And there really is a lot of personal variation, which is again, why answering that like what's the best smart drug question is a really tough one. People do kind of have to see what sounds like it might be a good fit for them, try it and then see if it actually is. But back to your question about caffeine and nootropics. Just sort of recognizing that it is a stimulant, the question becomes, how many stimulants do you want to stack on top of one another or do you? It's like, if caffeine is your stimulant and you're getting as stimulated as you want to feel off, that you might be interested in looking at some other things, which, you know, maybe they have memory benefits, maybe they have mood enhancing benefits. Maybe you don't need to layer another stimulant on top of that. You know, mixing coffee and phenylpiracetam or whatever might be completely overkill. Yeah, right. But then again, for other people, it might not be. It just kind of depends. Like, it sounds like you're a strong responder to caffeine. Like, a little bit of caffeine goes a long way for you. So you might want to just be aware of that and be aware of some of the other nootropics you might be considering taking and say, is this really something I need?

What I'm hearing from you is that it has to be kind of an n equals 1. You have to go through some kind of a phase where you see individually how it applies to your life. There's no blanket statement when it comes to mixing caffeine and nootropics.

Yeah, I think that's pretty safe to say. And I would kind of extend that almost to anything that you. Yeah, you just. You got to give things a try. I mean, not to say that everybody should give everything a try. I mean, I'm a big believer in finding out, like, what the worst case scenarios are, what the best case scenarios are on any particular compound. Like, you know, I've done a couple episodes on Adderall. I think it's, you know, it's fascinating. And it's kind of like I feel the devil on my shoulder saying, hey, Jesse, you ought to try this. And I feel the angel on my shoulder saying, jesse, you don't really need this. What the hell are you thinking? It's like, you know, sometimes you listen to the devil, and sometimes you listen to the angel. But, like, despite my curiosity on that one, I've still never tried Adderall.

This word curiosity, it's come up quite a bit. Daniel Schmachtenberg came on the show, and we talked about curiosity and how that relates to wellness. And I'm feeling from you that you've had for a long time in your life. I know. I have just this overwhelming sense of insatiable curiosity. How do you think that fuels you for your show? I mean, how do you stay curious in a world where you're doing so much?

Yeah, I mean, great question. I mean, I kind of Feel. I'm not sure if you can dial up or dial down your curiosity or if that's just kind of something you're born with. I mean, I've always been a curious person. But one thing, you know, when I was selecting a podcast topic, like, I kind of was like, I wanted to play in this medium, but I wasn't exactly sure what to do. Okay, a topic about that, that was kind of one of the things on my checklist is like, what is a topic? That I am not going to get bored of the topic after 10 episodes or whatever. And I knew psychology and brains and neuroscience and stuff like that were things that my whole life I'd been curious about. So it felt like a very safe gamble for me in that sense. To me, curiosity kind of like is the driving force more than money. I mean, probably more than personal comfort. Certainly sometimes. I mean, I've done some pretty uncomfortable things in the name of curiosity. So, yeah, it's a big personal motivator.

That is a great point, because I think what's fueled me in the show and I think what people can connect to you listening right now is that curiosity piece. I mean, everyone that's doing something they love is just genuinely curious about what they do. And a lot of exploration about curiosity can be in different states. So on your show you've talked about exploring these different states of consciousness. And there was one episode, it was with Dr. James. Is it Fadiman? Dr. James Fadiman. And it was on psychedelics. This is not just some hippie phenomena.

Anymore, not at all.

The focus, the creativity, the health benefits. People in Silicon Valley, high powered executives are microdosing on lsd. Why are they doing this? Do you feel like we're in the middle of a psychedelic renaissance for corporations and high performance?

It's funny. I mean, I really think that among the many repercussions that Steve Jobs had on Planet Earth is his openly crediting LSD for being a major influencing factor in his life. And the fact that right now Silicon Valley billionaires are kind of these lionized cultural hero types. And that'll probably continue to be the case for quite some time. The fact that a lot of these people are, are kind of openly poo poohing the antipsychedelic drug laws and just saying, hey, this stuff has worked for me. Look at any computer screensaver. It's like if you've tripped out and you've seen a computer screensaver and you haven't noticed the similarities, it's like you're not looking at your screensaver carefully enough. So yeah, I think psychedelics have been a big part of Silicon Valley and the programming underworld for a long, long time. And I kind of feel like in the past last five to 10 years people have sort of come out of the closet about psychedelics use. Yeah, it's nice because that's percolating into being able to do more research studies into these things. There's some big LSD studies going on in the UK now and yeah, microdosing. The idea of taking sort of a sub perceptual dose of a psychedelic substance or like a barely perceptual dose is something that a lot of people are experimenting with.

And these different states of consciousness, I mean we're not telling you by the way, to take lsd. That's not what this show is about. What we're trying to understand from Jesse is he's interviewing some of the most powerful people in cognitive health and in altered states of consciousness. One of the shows that I loved was with Dr. James Ironman. I think we talked about this the last time we interviewed. It was about holotropic breathing. I had done a holotropic breathing session in Venice, California here. And it was a four hour experience with speakers and it was just, it was the most intense thing. And at the end of 2016 I was at the Unbeatable Mind Retreat which is run by Mark Devine and Sealfit. And we did some warrior breathing. And after 30 minutes of doing this kind of Stan Grof method where we were doing heavy inhales, heavy exhales, I was in the corner like crying and I didn't know where it was coming from. And I just kind of let my body feel it. And for the next week or so I just felt this like lightness in my step. And that was achieved, that altered state was achieved with no pharmacological intervention at all. I mean this is just something where I was my breath doing it. What did you learn the most from that episode on your show with Dr. Ironman?

Well, I mean oxygen gets you high. I mean, I think that's a quote from Tyler Durden in whatever that movie is, Fight Club. Oxygen is a drug. So just because it's not something that is coming in by way of, of a pill or a needle or whatever, I mean we shouldn't take it any less seriously. And there are a lot of quote unquote natural means of getting into some extremely altered states. I mean supposedly long term tribal, kind of heavy dancing to the point where you're exhausting yourself and probably sweating more fluids out than you're drinking in and things like that. People can get into some ecstatic states that way as well. So there's a lot of options there that aren't necessarily pharmacological. I would almost defer to you on because you've done like the. According to Hoyle, here is how a holotropic breathwork session is supposed to work, which I have not. I've not gone into a sort of an organized thing. I've had it described on the show and I've done it in the privacy of my own home a couple of times, but I've never done a four hour session. I mean mines were like 45 minutes top.

Dr. Arman treated over 11,000 patients in 12 years. We'll definitely link that in the show notes. What would you say, based on your research, what's the difference between WIM Hof and the Grof method? Is there really a difference or are we just talking about hypoxia here?

You know, honestly, I've got a punt on that one because I'm not up to speed on my Wim Hof.

Got it. Well, there's another way we can achieve different states of consciousness. There's many, there's probably thousands of ways actually. You interviewed Dr. Rick Strassman, who is the author of the Spirit Molecule, about DMT and that state of consciousness and dmt, this is something that's naturally found in every living in small amounts. It's not like it's pouring out of us. But ayahuasca, it's kind of one of these topics where people don't want to talk about it, but then some people talk about it with reckless abandon. Where do you stand on ayahuasca and people experimenting?

Yeah, I guess overall I stand in favor of experimentation in general because I feel like all that being said, I haven't done ayahuasca myself yet, but I feel like people should probably in general be more open to experimentation than many of us are. What is it? What's they say that there's nobody more like talkative than the newly converted or something like that. And I kind of feel like a lot of people who have just done ayahuasca, they want to talk to their butcher. Everyone's got to do it, everybody about it. It's the first and only thing they're interested in talking about. It's a really interesting one. People talk about having extremely profound experiences on it, which I have no doubt is true. So I do. I recognize the fact that It's a poison. I mean, you know, people say purgative as if that is somehow makes it okay. But like the fact is your body is puking and shitting because it's trying to get something out of you that it really feels like physiologically shouldn't be in there. Which does give me a bit of pause. I mean, I consider myself a pretty experimental guy, but the fact that like this is like eject on all systems makes me a little bit concerned about doing it. Especially because there are other psychedelics which can be extremely strong that don't have these same press all the eject buttons at once effects on you, LSD mushrooms. And actually pure DMT also has none of that. It's the vine, I believe it's the ayahuasca vine that's mixed with the DMT containing vine, which is what the body is reacting to. The ayahuasca vine is the one that has the stuff in it, the MAO inhibitors that keep your stomach from being able to break down the DMT as they normally would.

Right. And I think a lot of people are interested in this just because there is some healing that gets to take place in this world. Specifically for the cases of war veterans that are coming back with post traumatic stress disorder. Well, plant medicine psychedelics have both been used to cure PTSD through the MAPS organization and others that are really helping these war veterans to heal. Tim Ferriss has gone on record talking about, about his experiences. Ben Greenfield is on record talking about his psilocybin experiences. So whether it's plant medicine or whether it's some kind of other psychedelic, what are your thoughts around people using this for healing? Obviously you're not a doctor, but you interview some of these most powerful doctors in the world about these topics. So what have you learned from these shows?

Yeah, I mean, I feel like if you have a condition like ptsd, then, you know, almost nothing should be off the table as a potential therapy. That can be dangerous sometimes. And I feel like if people have a big problem that they're trying to solve, that opens them up sometimes to quackery. And I mean, there's certainly, you know, there's historical examples of that with people, you know, being sold false bills of goods to cure cancer or whatever it is. But yeah, I mean, there seems like there's nothing but not nothing, but, but there are plenty of success stories with people treating depression, ptsd, things like that, with psychedelic therapies. And given that psychedelics have, they're very well tolerated by the body, it's like nobody Overdoses and is from mushrooms. It's like it doesn't happen. It's not there in the literature. If you've got a significant problem that you're trying to solve, it seems like it should be one of the things that you certainly consider.

Yeah. And another form that we can get through a different state of consciousness is obviously meditation. Last year I did a 10 day of a passion. I did 10 days of silent meditation, which I honestly don't think I'll ever do again. I think if anybody asks me, I'd recommend doing a weekend. The 10 day is for people that really want that introspection. So. So the phase that I was in in my life, I was seeking that and there were moments where I had kind of like 32nd, 62nd times where I felt out of body, where I was watching myself meditate. And this is. I was not taking any kind of drugs or any kind of pills. You actually only eat two meals a day. It's a vegetarian diet. There's no speaking to anyone, you can't look at anyone. You just sit and meditate from 4:30 in the morning all the way until 10 at night. And people do this because they want to achieve this union, this communion with, with a higher power. And everyone's got their own definition of what that higher power is. But what are your thoughts around meditation? What have you learned through some of these interviews? I mean that's just one. There's also transcendental, there's kundalini, there's mindfulness, there's all different ways to meditate. Yeah.

Well I guess if I can pitch a question back at you, it's like what was your meditation experience like prior to doing that? 10 days?

Yeah. So before it was 10 to 20 minutes with an average of 15 minutes using the Muse meditation headband. I'd use it in the morning or the afternoon or midday to fight some stress with occasional weekends and having those be longer sits of around 45 to 60 minutes.

So I'm actually like just this past Monday. So like two days ago at the time of our talking, I just started a six week meditation course to do it in a small group here in my community. Just kind of like have a little bit of public accountability to actually stick with it because it's been one of these things that I've started and stopped at various points over the course of my life. And the doctor who's leading this course, he's got like full on like a QEEG system in his office. So he's going to do before and after brain scans of the people. So it sounded like there was enough of sort of some scientific candy to go along with it that it sounded like a good fit for me. But anyway, on the first day of class on Monday, he made the great point that a lot of people sort of try to go too much too fast with meditation. And it's akin to if you've never ran around the block trying to run a marathon, it's like you're just going to hurt yourself and you're not going to be effectively running. Your form is going to be bad. By mile number three, you're going to be getting shin splints and all that stuff. And I kind of feel like there's probably a lot of wisdom in that and that it might. I don't know if 20 minutes a day of meditation is enough to go in for a week of eight hours a day if your capacity for sort of staying in that headspace has been built up enough by that point. Point. But I mean I know that I wouldn't be able to go eight hours and like I might be able to sit quietly for eight hours but it wouldn't be meditating.

Yeah, it was the most, it was one of the most challenging things I've ever done. And the reason I ask is because I did have some pretty incredible journaling sessions after that. And I'm curious if you've ever done anything from your own perspective or if you've learned about from these experts in regards to meditation, knowing there's many different facets of meditation that you seem be really effective for people, people getting more in touch with their inner self. And when I say inner self I just mean the part of them that's.

Well, yeah, well, I think that there are probably several different schools of meditation that are doing different things within the brain. Some meditation seems to be based on focus. Like there's a single. You're focusing on your breath or you're focusing on a candle flame or a particular mantra. I can sort of see where that is going to be beneficial if you have adhd, a hard time concentrating things like that. Whereas other, other meditation styles like, like I think it's called open focus, you're kind of like listening to the sounds of the cars going by or birds twittering and you're like, you're just trying to be aware of everything at once and like kind of like non judgmentally aware not to get too interested in it, but it's kind of like, you know, all your radar screens are up. So it's almost like the opposite of focus. You could kind of see where both of those are probably going to be useful, but you're training your brain to do different things. And still other forms of meditation are much more about quieting the mind, maybe getting rid of those inner voices that might be judgmental and things like that. That kind of style of meditation can be really helpful if somebody's depressed, because sometimes depression is. You've got a little nagging voice that's telling you you're not good enough. And if you can just get that voice to shut up, then half your depression's gone overnight. So I feel like the style of meditation that a person chooses is really going to affect what they're practicing and getting their brain better at at. And so to be aware of that, like, what is your goal for the meditation? What is your goal for your own personal betterment at the time that you start, as you're picking the style of meditation that you gravitate towards?

One of the things that I feel we've been going around that I want to go straight into now is the placebo effect and willpower. Because a lot of people might have something in their head where they say, I'm a great sprinter. And they are, and it could be possibly placebo. A lot of people might say, I'm great at willpower. I can totally say no to Dorito chips, or I can obviously just have one cookie. But then there are some people, people that just cannot deal. It's either yes or no. And Gretchen Rubin calls this personality types. Right? You're either an abstainer or you're a moderator. Do you think that with placebo effect and willpower, that willpower is this finite muscle that can get fatigued? Or do you think some people are just born with more willpower based on these interviews you've done?

Oh, boy. I mean, that's a tough one, and I'm gonna punch to the experts a little bit on that. But I. I think that willpower is probably something that does get exhausted in a person, But I think that something that looks like willpower to an outsider, like, wow, that person's got a lot of willpower. He just walked by a bag of Doritos and didn't even bat an eyelid, you know, might not be willpower to that person. He might have trained himself to avoid Doritos 17 years ago, and it's just. It takes zero willpower now, and it's just. It's not even an option. Whereas, you know, today he's like, you know, I've got to go make myself, you know, swim five miles or whatever. It's like his willpower is being applied to something else in the present moment. Because once you kind of build those neural pathways, whether that's neural pathway to say yes to something or a neural pathway to say no, I don't do that, it becomes a lot easier. And what, again, might look like willpower to an outsider doesn't necessarily feel like you're exerting willpower to yourself.

This past week I was listening to the placebo effect with Dr. Tor Wagner. He's the director of Cognitive and Effective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Colorado, Boulder. It's episode 164 in Smart Drug Smarts. I'm gonna link that in the show notes. I'm gonna link like 15 of your episodes.

That's awesome.

Yeah. I hope you don't mind because this is actually one of the shows that I listen to on the regular now, this episode. What I loved is that the exploration of why some people think that things are true versus what is actually happening. You know, what's going on in the mind about someone's knee or their gut health or their shoulder or whatever it might be. What did you learn the most from that episode?

Always amazes me when I think about placebo effects, is that like I said in the show, they kind of get a bad rap. You talk to the man on the street about place effects and if you say, oh, you know, such and such thing causes a placebo effect, they think, oh, that means the thing's not real. That means it's all in the person's head. And what I think very few people outside sort of the scientific research community understand is that things that actually have physiological effects also have a placebo effect. Kind of like a second layer on the cake. Because once you come to expect that something is going to work, you kind of get this extra layer of expectation power on top of whatever the physiological power underlying that is. You know, if you take aspirin five days in a row and it works for you, then on day six, you know, you have the expectation of aspirin working in addition to the aspirin actually working. And we see that all over in our lives. So the power of expectation, it kind of gets pooh, poohed, I feel like, by some of us that are kind of, you know, the hard headed rationalist set of which I count myself one. It really shouldn't be.

Hmm, what is the truth about placebo? Are there long term studies that correlate the results from A sugar pill, pill versus the actual medication, and then what the patients came back with with the result. Can you tell us more about what you dove into on the episode? From a scientific perspective?

There's some interesting things. For one thing, it seems like, at least in the U.S. placebo effects are getting stronger over time. He said, like, over the past 30 years, it's gotten harder to, you know, get new medicines past the fda because one of the hurdles that a new medicine has to get over for whatever it is that they're applying to be able to be prescribed to for, is that the medicine is significantly better than a placebo treatment. And it turns out that although medicines might not have been getting worse over the past 30 years, placebo effects are getting stronger. So it's kind of like they're catching up in the race in a way. And one of the things that drug companies are really trying to do is identify ways of screening out people that are prone to placebo effects. Like, I might be wrong about this psychologically, but if you're somebody that could be, like, talked into anything, like, you're just. You're gull. Gullible, like, I assume that gul. Placebo responders probably have a pretty strong overlap. I could be wrong about that. Let's just go with it and assume it's true. Yeah, so, so. So if you're a drug company and you're putting, you know, your, you know, billion dollars of investment towards trying to get some drug through the fda, you want to get rid of all the people that are really, really gullible, that are going to throw your numbers off and make your new drug look like it doesn't do anything. Just because these people tend to respond strongly to, you know, anybody in a lab coat that says, hey, this is going to work for you. That was really interesting. And the fact that there is kind of like this, this arms race between the pharmaceutical drug development industry. And I'm not like, talking about them like twirling mustaches and black hats at this point. I'm just, you know, these are people that are trying to make medicines to make people healthier, but there's kind of an arms race between them and people that might be. Expectation has a lot of power for them. And if they can figure out how to weed those people out of their studies, their drugs will look more effective and be more likely to, you know, become available to people because. Because the FDA says, yes, this is an actual viable drug. Another really interesting thing that was mentioned on that episode was that people who are optimists tend to be stronger responders to placebo. And a question that I asked him, which we didn't have the answer to, the data is not there yet, but I think would be an interesting one, is the opposite of the placebo effect is something called a nocebo effect. It's basically the expectation that things are going to be bad and get worse, worse. And if I stub my toe, I think, oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to amputate my leg, things like that. And I'm wondering if pessimism might be positively correlated with strong response to nocebo effects the same way that optimism is for placebo effects. We don't know the answer to that one, but it seems like a reasonable guess.

That is so fascinating because whether you're an A type analytical kind of strong, healthy skeptic, or you're someone that just believes in smoke and mirror, there's kind of a corollary between, hey, the law of attraction versus negative positive thinking versus scientific data that's actually showing placebo or nocebo.

Yeah, yeah.

That is fascinating, man. Well, one of the things that also interests me too, about the health of the body is the power of our thoughts and then how those thoughts relate to our actions. When we look at cognitive decline, people's ability to have less decision fatigue at the end of a busy day, why do we think there are candy bars that are stacked right there, there when people check out and bags of chips right there when you check out? It's because at 8:30 at night, our willpower is depleted, our strength of our cognition is depleted. So with smart drugs, how do they boost the cognition? We've dove into this last episode a little bit, but this is a unique case. When it's the end of a day and you're feeling super fatigued and you just have no more choice. Willpower, how could a nootropic actually support that to where you'd be like, no, I don't want the chips.

Anything that enhances executive function is sort of what they call it within the brain. The ability to make smart decisions and not be run over by your instincts is executive function. And I would say that that would generally go hand in hand with something that's going to improve motivation. Because if you are motivated to listen to the angel on your shoulder versus the devil on your shoulder, that's going to help you out. I could see that maybe going the other way too, though, like, extra motivation might motivate you towards the Snickers bar. I hesitate to answer on that one with authority, because I could see something that promotes dopamine. I mean, maybe going both ways, but I would generally say a dopamine promoting, focus enhancing, stimulant type substance is probably gonna help power you through those sort of fatigued moments.

A big part of our emotional health comes from how we feel in our body and how satiated we are throughout the day. I mean, it's hard to treat other people well and think good thoughts if you're walking around hangry. One of the best ways to cure satiety and satiation is to add in powdered collagen to your drinks, your waters and into your foods. I use perfect supplements collagen. It's sourced from 100% grass fed cows. That means there's no hormones, pesticides or synthetics because these are healthy cows that eat grass while the sick cows eat corn. So beyond these healing powers of collagen for digestion and joint health, it also has 20 grams of protein in two scoops, which helps to curb appetite and increase that satiety. One of the cool things about this collagen is that there's individual packets you can mix in water and you know what it tastes like water. I mean, all of a sudden my glass has 10 grams, 20 grams of protein and all the health benefits of having this non GMO pasture raised collagen in my bloodstream. So don't walk around hangry. Pick up your grass fed collagen. Feel better in your emotional body and your physical body every day. It's part of the Wellness Force radio bundle and it's heavily discounted just for you. Click over to perfectsupplements.com wellnessforce to save 10% off the already discounted package. Package and get more wellness in the process. How many years total have you been experimenting with nootropics and smart drugs? What's that span been?

I think I'm at 11 years now. I mean, I didn't write down the exact date that I came across that article in Maxim magazine, but it's somewhere on the order of 10 or 11 years.

Have you noticed when you've mixed certain types of nootropics, we'll talk about Nexus and Mitogen, but when you actually combine these nootropics with certain dietary sources, whether it be a higher fat diet or a higher carbohydrate or lower carbohydrate, do you notice that you feel better or worse when you take nootropics with certain kinds of foods specifically for you?

I do find that when I eat carb Heavy meals, and that could be early or late in the day. That's probably a diminution of my cognition more than most nootropics are going to be able to counterbalance. I could definitely just get the, oh, I just had a big plate of spaghetti. I'm going to go into a slump for a while. Not that I eat big plates of spaghetti anymore, but back when I did, that was definitely, definitely something that I would notice. I've been doing intermittent fasting pretty consistently for better part of two years now. It's like, I don't do it every day, but I probably five days a week, I'll go till three or four in the afternoon before I eat any real food.

So what's your feeding window time?

Well, it's kind of like whenever I feel like starting, but that's typically about 3 or 4 in the afternoon. And I'll eat until maybe 10 at night. I'll have whatever passes for dessert that night and then start again. So, I mean, you know, six, seven, eight hours. I'm not super religious about it, but one of the kind of nice things about intermittent fasting as a lifestyle is it's very forgiving. It's like if somebody offers to make you a great breakfast on a certain day and you're like, well, I'm not going to do it today. It's like the sky doesn't fall. So I found intermittent fasting to be really useful. I do sometimes have a little bit of fat with my coffee in the morning, whether that's. Or even like a half an avocado or something like that like that, just to help with the digestion of any pills that I'm taking, which might be lipophilic. I've kind of found that the intermittent fasting is a rhythm that works well for me. And once I found that, I haven't strayed from it all that much in the last couple of years.

Last time we interviewed, you talked about a book you read, Catching Fire, How Cooking Made Us Human. And it changed the way you ate because before that you had a specific way. Right. Were you doing veganism or vegetarianism?

Yeah, I was vegan for seven years before, so not just vegetarian. Did we talk about the difference between the word vegan and vegetarian?

Go for it. I don't think we did.

Okay, so this is just. It's a funny story. Good to know. Like, what we now call vegans, people that do not eat any animal matter, are what used to be called vegetarians. Vegans in the old days called themselves vegetarians. That was like the original term, but then there were so many people that were like, well I'm vegan, but you know I'm going to eat a little bit fish. Well, I'm vegan, but you know I'm gonna have a little cheese vegan, but I drink six glasses of milk every day. And all these, all the vegetarians, quote unquote, the old school vegetarians were like that. You're not a frickin vegetarian if you're having this stuff. It comes from animals. You can't call yourself this. But they just got outnumbered and eventually there were so many of these people that were like had the little asterisks next to their vegetarianism that the vegetarians, like the core vegetarians just gave up. They're like, we cannot defend our territory on this term. And so we're gonna have to make up this stupid new word vegan and call ourselves that. And they kind of circled the wagons around this word vegan, which they've staunchly protected ever since because yeah, they just got washed out by the posers.

Man, I did not know that. Thank you for that cool history lesson.

That's where it came from anyway. But that has nothing to do with your question. But yes, I was an actual vegan vegan for just about seven years. And then I read a book, actually I read a book probably partway through that seven years by Dr. Richard Wrangham from, he's an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, wrote a book called Catching Fire How Cooking Made Us Human. Really laid out a very. What I found to be a persuasive theory of human evolution showing some big jumps sort of in our hominid ancestors that there are only a few things that probably could have caused them, could have caused like the tripling of our brain size over the course of a few hundred thousand years. And kind of the likely candidates are things like when did we start hunting? When did we gain use of fire? When did language develop things like that? And anyway, he makes the case that kind of, you know, fire was the first domino to fall and a very important domino. And once we started doing that, it allowed us to. It's kind of the. You've heard of the expensive tissue hypothesis where there are certain biological tissues in our body that just take a lot more calories per pound. Like the brain operate like the brain is one and then also is the gut. It actually actually kind of like revving up the engine on the gut to get it to start processing your food takes a lot of power. It's kind of like you need to pull the chain on the old lawnmower to get the lawnmower to start. It takes effort there. Once we were able to kind of outsource a lot of our digestion, the breaking down of the food to fire, something that could be done externally and didn't require our biological effort to do, then all of a sudden, digestion became a lot easier, easier. And so we didn't need to have these giant guts. Like, if you look at most monkeys, they've actually got. If you saw it on a human, you would say, well, that person's got a big pot belly. It's not a pot belly on a monkey. It's just they need to have a lot of intestines in order to break down their uncooked food. Once we started outsourcing our digestion partially to fire, all of a sudden we didn't need this giant intestine. So this expensive tissue that takes a lot of energy to run, all of a sudden, we kind of were running at an energy surplus plus. And so, you know, evolution, clever beast that it is, it's like, okay, well, we got this extra energy. We'll try it here, we'll try it there. We'll see which parts of the body makes best use of it. And apparently that led to sort of a runaway growth in another very expensive tissue, which is brain tissue. And, you know, probably of all the various mutations that evolution might have tried out on our ancestors, of what we could do with this sort of evolutionary energy surplus, the brain was where it came in most handy. And so we got this massively growing brain.

This is why I think it's so fun to talk to you about topics, because I never know where we're going to go. That was a fun little cul de sac we ended up in. And I think what's unique is that every single person tries on the sweater and see if it itches or they don't. Some people just trust. I feel like this is the third or fourth time during our talk where the placebo or nocebo effect, what we think versus how we feel versus what is true, has come up again. And whether you're eating vegan, vegan or vegetarian or paleo, or however you're eating, if it feels good and you're getting the results you want, isn't that the most primary indicator of success?

Yeah, well, I mean, the funny thing is, people ask me, when I switched from eating vegan to eating paleo, which is what I do now, like, did you feel super better? Did you feel you Know what changed? And the answer is a lot of things changed. I didn't necessarily feel better day to day we can talk about some of those changes. But I mean, I felt good as a vegan also. So the thing is, I kind of feel like the standard American diet is almost like the worst of all worlds. And that like any direction you sort of pirouette off from that standard American diet, whether that's veganism or carnivorism or whatever, it like just stay out of the middle. It's like the middle is not the place to be.

Same thing with the grocery stores. Hug the edges, right? No matter what you're doing. So one of the ways that I think people figure this out, this process out is N equal to. So n equals 1. I talked about it in a blog post last week on Wellness Force. It's understanding what really works for you through a process of elimination and a process of strategic testing. How have you felt in your life that you've used n equals 1? What are you doing right now maybe? Or what is something that you've tried where you've actually recorded things in an N equals one fashion?

Yeah, well, first of all, I mean, I think that one of the, one of the greatest advantages of experimentation is kind of just, just realizing that you can do it. It's a continuous reminder of our power to start changes in our own lives when you're just screwing with something to see if it works in your own life. Because, you know, a lot of people kind of get caught in like mundane ruts and they forget that, you know, it's within their power to change that. And by doing the little, you know, the one week experiments or the 30 day challenges or whatever it might be on a semi regular basis, it's just, it's kind of a constant reminder that we are always in flux. Flux is the one thing that you can't change, but you can at least direct it and you can try different things and see what works and hopefully make continuous improvements. I mean, I guess one interesting N equals one experiment that I did, which is an example of a total crash and burn. But yeah, I did a sleep experiment. Have you heard of the, what's it called now, the Uberman sleep schedule?

No, what's that all about?

Okay, so again, this is. Do not try this at home. I tried it. I would not recommend it to anybody. It was a disaster. Basically break up your sleep into little bits throughout the day and you sleep in 20 minute blocks separated by about three and a half hours. And you need to do these 20 minute blocks throughout the day, every three and a half hours, you, like, you need to get that block in. But if you add that up over the course of 24 hours, it's a lot less sleep. It's something like three and a half hours of sleep versus eight hours of sleep, total contiguous sleep over the course of a day. So if you're trying to be a super productivity hacker and you want an extra five hours, like this is a way to get it. If you sleep on this ridiculous regimen. And then the idea is that you train your brain to drop into REM sleep, drop into that dream stage sleep really, really quickly, because like that's the one stage of sleep that you need to keep you from going bonkers. And you don't get necessarily as much restorative sleep and all that stuff. But technically you can train your brain to do this and you know, survive, if not thrive this way. Although there are people who claim that they thrive this way. I mean, there are, people claim a lot of things.

There's always these fringe people, isn't there? I mean, it sounds like, for the mass population, it sounds like an incredible way to get fat. I mean, when you look at leptin and ghrelin and how that works in the body, right?

Like being a productivity freak, I just saw this claim of here's a way of getting an extra four and a half hours in your day sustainably and with a smile on your face. And I was like, it sounds too good to be true, but Jesus, I gotta try it. It was just was. And you know, there's some like well written articles that seem like maybe this is true. And so I tried it and completely zombified myself for about nine days. I wound up finding an article by a sleep researcher that kind of debunked the whole thing saying like, look, this is probably physiologically possible, but if you're doing it for like, if you're a bricklayer and your job is just to lay one brick after another, yes, you might be more productive because laying one brick after another doesn't take any cognitive capacity. But if you use your brain during the hours that you're awake, you are not doing yourself a net positive by gaining these extra four and a half hours. Because for the 20 hours that you're awake every day, you're going to be operating at 60% below your normal waking capacity.

Do you have any tools or any ways that you track now in your current or future? N equals 1 experiments? Do you have any apps or wearables? Or devices that you use.

I'm actually wearing something right now called the Oura ring. I'm not sure if it's pronounced aura or aura, but I'll find out about that soon. I just got it a couple of weeks ago to be interviewing one of the scientist creators behind it. But it is a gadget to track pretty much everything that you can track. The reason that it's a ring rather than like a wristband or something else, is because the blood vessels on the inside of your finger, kind of where your fingers touch one another, are very close to the surface, and it's able to get better data there than it would be in another position. And, yeah, so, I mean, I'm a really big believer in the trackers, the wearables. I will be the first to sign up for an internal device when they. You could just have something sitting somewhere convenient in my bloodstream to be pumping data out.

You'd go transhuman, huh?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I feel like that's a. It's a slippery slope, but we're kind of. We're already there, whether we like to think of it or not. I mean, you're wearing glasses right now, and I mean, if glasses aren't transhumanism, then what is? As far as N equals one stuff? I feel like there's a lot of tech geeks probably in your audience. There certainly are in mine. And we can kind of sometimes, I think, lose the forest through the trees of like. Yeah, I need to be able to track everything perfectly. I like the rapid iteration on experiments. And typically my tracking will just at least start out being just a Google sheet. All I need is a spreadsheet and a couple of columns and just write stuff down. Maybe a reminder on my phone that beeps at random intervals to make me check whatever it is I'm checking and just put a row in the sheet. And if it's something that I want to stick with long term and it doesn't become a habit of its own accord, then maybe upgrade your Google sheet to something more dedicated. But. But I kind of feel like the quick and dirty solution, just to kind of get you going on things, is sometimes the best option.

Yeah. The easier. The less barriers to entry, the better, whether it is a tracker. You know, I'm using this Fitbit, and it has the LED lights that shoot through my skin. I have done the research on that. The interesting part about this is that our cell phone emits 10 times the radiation. And the. If that this would. That the watch would. So I'VE done the research for my own self, and I feel confident that this isn't going to have any deleterious health. I think that's the big key, though, is I took a breath and I did the research, which took a chunk of time, but it was important to me. If I'm investing my energy, my resources, my finances into anything at all for health and wellness, I want to do some research. I want to know two things. A, does it apply to me? Is it safe? Is this something that I can trust? And B, will it impact me for the long term, for the long haul? And I think most people that are doing research, especially people that listen to podcasts, are really savvy. They know they can hear it in someone's voice. We all can understand in someone's voice if they're full of it or not. You can hear it in someone's voice if they're lying. But anybody can write an article.

The frustrating caveat to that is, even when you do research it, there's going to be mixed signals. On the 100th episode of my show, I interviewed a guy who's like a super genius, like, 190 IQ. Like, really, really, one of the world's smartest guys, you know, measuring by IQ and, you know, he takes something like, you know, 50 or 60 pills every single day for his health.

Sounds like Ray Kurzweil.

Yeah, it wasn't Ray Kurzweil, but. But same order of magnitude of intelligence. But he takes these 50 or 60 pills, and he said, honestly, Jesse, I'm sure that probably 60% of these pills aren't doing anything for me, but I don't know which 60%. So I take them all. And if this is a guy with 190 IQ saying that, I mean, he's clearly done the research also and is in a position to synthesize probably better than most of us are. The opposite's probably true, too. It's like with all of the things in our lives, there are probably things where we are hurting ourselves, whether it's our cell phone emissions or, you know, am I too close to my wi fi? You know, are these earphones I podcast in, you know, destroying my ears? I mean, who knows? But some of them are horrible. We don't know, horrible ideas. And 10 years from now, we'll be kicking ourselves. But, you know, unfortunately, we just don't know yet.

This has been such a fun conversation, and I want to wrap this up. This is seven fast questions. Whatever comes up for you first. Are you ready?

Sure. I'll see what I can do.

The first one is what you value. If you look at life from a 30,000 foot view, what are three or five things that you most value and why?

I guess I really do value aesthetic beauty. I value curiosity. I'll come back to that one. Free time and books. As much as I like things like podcasts, I really like books because I feel like I put out a hundred podcasts in my life, but if I write one book, it's like that'll be like the distillation of everything. I kind of feel like when you read a book, you get like the best of that person's last five years all in one cognitive object. Object.

What does your morning look like now compared to a year ago? Have your habits or your rituals changed in that morning?

Wow. Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I've moved, so some of it's like city move stuff, but. But yeah, I'm getting up quite a bit earlier. I'm exercising in the morning rather than in the afternoon, which has been a change.

Why did you make that change?

It just kind of worked out that way. It was, it was like something I started experimenting with and it felt right and it was kind of nice to get it out of the way. I mean, it's not like I don't like exercise, but there's a certain, you know, you don't like exercising every day. It's like, even people that do like exercising.

Jack lalanne didn't love exercise, he just loved the benefits.

Yeah. So, I mean, it's kind of nice just to like tick that one off the list and like not need to worry about it until tomorrow and not be like, it's already 6pm and I haven't exercised yet. That's kind of, you know, we've all been in that situation and it's a crummy, crummy one to be in. So, yeah, just getting it out of the way early has been nice over the past year.

Is there one or two guests? Kind of a really difficult question. I know because you have so many awesome people on the show.

You do it.

But was there one or two that really sparked, sparked this, this curiosity? We've gone back to even more so when you were done interviewing them than before.

I, I feel like I might have thought about the interview with Dennis McKenna maybe more than a lot of the others, possibly because there's like an element of hero worship there that, you know, I'd read his work and his brother's work before I'd spoken with him. And he was. He was. He's somebody that I'd known about for a long time, and I. I kind of view as, like, one of the great living experimentalists. It's like, you know, talking to somebody that, like, both went to the moon and designed the rocket ship to get there, and. Such an interesting guy, because in addition to being an experimentalist, he's also a scientist. I mean, he really studies these things from, like, an analytical level, too. And I just really like his style of, like, I would consider him like, a rationalist. He's not, like, talking a bunch of heebie jeebies, you know, fairies and moonbeam beam stuff. And yet he's also, like, deeply curious and realizes that the world might be quite a bit weirder than we know about. But he draws a firm line between what we know and what speculation. He's willing to speculate, but he calls it speculation and doesn't ascribe feelings more validity than they really deserve.

We've talked a lot on Wellness Force about presence, emotional presence. Is there something that you pull from or is there something that's been really good for you to practice? Presence? How do you be present in your. Your life?

I feel like actually being around young children is really good for that because. Because they are very present themselves and kind of. Kind of drag you down to their level. You know, in a way, it's. It's. It's hard not to be present, or at least, like little kids call bullshit in a way that adults won't if you're not paying enough attention to them. And, yeah, it kind of does pull you down to the present.

They're the ultimate beacon of truth. Nothing's more raw and real than a kid's perspective, right? Yeah. So inspiration and motivation, rather to be motivated. Inspiration is something that wells up from inside of us. What wells up from inside of you about what you're doing for your community.

Getting emails from people talking about the different ways that, like, the podcast has affected their life. Some. Some of which are really surprising. And, I mean, they're just, you know, people from different parts of the world and not necessarily like, you know, the demographic that I would have expected to be the listeners, you know, people that, on the surface of it, don't sound much like me. I'm like, well, how the hell did you find me? That really is sort of a weird source of inspiration, knowing that, you know, by doing the publication that I'm doing, I'm casting a much wider net than I'm even aware of at the time.

If somebody's curious right now about smart drugs. What are one or two steps they could do to begin the process of implementing smart drugs in their life?

We've got a getting started page. I believe it's smart drugsmarts.com get-started. If I'm not mistaken, that kind of is a little bit of like a best of of some past episodes and kind of a starting point for exploring the website and the podcast as far as like, you know, what, what to rush out and order. I would listen to a few episodes and kind of, you know, assess your personal, your motivations. Like, are you, are you more interested in like creativity, focus? Is it like mood? And just kind of like if you, if you thought of, you know, your mind or intelligence is like, you know, fractaled out into lots of different things. Like what, what specific aspects do you want to improve? Not necessarily just be smarter, but does that pay better attention? Is that sustain attention longer? Is that having a better memory and just sort of. I would start actually by like the identification process of what you're after.

Get really clear on what the result you want first, rather than just trying something for the sake of trying it.

Yeah.

Last question. In 2017, compared to what you've gone through in the past year, what is wellness to you? What is your definition of.

Well, for 2017, I would say feeling satisfied with my day when I go to bed at night and excited to whatever I'm going to be starting in the following morning. And the reason I chose to sort of tie that to a day is because I'm trying to again appreciate that sort of cyclicality of day in, day out. And not that it's a marathon, not a race. I guess a race is a marathon, but anyway, you know what I mean, a marathon.

Not a sprint.

Not a sprint. Yeah.

Well, I'm signed up for Jesse's Brain Breakfast. You can sign up for that@sports smartsharksmarts.com Jesse is the founder of Axon Labs, an amazing company offering two cognitive enhancement supplements, Nexus and Mitogen. Jesse was kind enough to give us 15% off by using code WELLFX from both Nexus and Mitogen. Jesse, tell us about these cognitive enhancers and give us some insights into what's coming for smart drug smarts and you this year.

Yeah. So Nexus and Mitogen, we had two different stacks because we sort of wanted to approach two different things. Mitogen comes from the word mitochondria. And mitochondria, as you probably know, are like little cellular intracellular powerhouses. You have thousands of them. In almost every cell of your body. But they're what kind of builds our energy system. Something called ATP is sort of the basic energy currency of the body and your brain as we talked about is a very energy hungry organ. So Mitogen is kind of a cross purpose. It's going to be helpful like I take it before workouts, it's good for everything in your body, but because your brain is so energy hungry it can be a cognitive enhancer. It's as well. And then Nexus is based around something called Aniracetam which is a man made synthetic chemical, but it's been around for 30, 40 years. Been prescribed in Europe as an anti Alzheimer's drug and an antisenal dementia. Helpful with short term memories. Been shown in lots of studies and I personally find it to be a pretty big creativity enhancer for some of the reasons that we talked about earlier, that tie between short term memory and creativity. So yeah, those are the two stacks we have there. There's more information of course on Axon Labs IO. Yeah, go to the Wellness Force, grab the coupon code that we've got there. I'm most excited about kind of smoothing some wrinkles out in our podcast production just workflow so I can devote a little bit more time to writing on things like the Brain Breakfast and actually have some non audio content that I would also like to squeeze in there.

Well man, I want to thank you because this podcast has been such an inspiration since I began Wellness Force. So thank you so much for what you're putting out there to empower people to have a stronger brain, a healthier life and just a better experience in this thing that we're doing spinning on this rock in outer space. Thanks for what you do man.

Cool man. Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it.

You made it till the end of episode 97. Tell me you did not laugh out loud a few times and enjoy this process about learning what really makes the difference in our brain and our ways of being. From Jesse, if what we talked about on the show today made you laugh or smile or just spark some curiosity in you, send me an email joshellnessforce.com don't forget to check out our show notes today@wellnessforce.com Jesse J-E-S S E Use the discount code WellFX to get 15% off your cognitive stack from Axon Labs that Jesse was so kind enough to offer us. So I have five different takeaways from today's show, but I promise they'll be brief and bold. The first One, how grateful can we possibly be to live in such an incredible time where we have these types of conversations and we get to use smart drugs to enhance our cognition? I mean, let's just take a moment and be 10x grateful for the 2017. We live in where this type of tech exists. And the second point is around meditation. There is no one size fits all. And the key aspect about meditating is that you just do it. So whether it's mindfulness or vipassana or transcendental meditation, it's the number one mindfulness practice for the majority of corporations. They're team teaching in their wellness classes. So at the end of the day, just find something that works for you and meditate. Next up is placebo effect. Jesse talked about how science is showing that people with a pessimistic mindset will believe less in their own health and wellness than people who are overly optimistic. Which in my opinion, I don't think it's ever a bad thing to be overly optimistic. So having this mindset of optimism is so going to impact you and the people around you and the way that your brain perceives if something is actually working for you or not. Have you ever met these people where nothing works? They go from thing to thing to thing and nothing ever works. It's probably not the thing. It's probably more about the mindset. Fourth was self experimentation. This N equals one that I had mentioned. Becoming your own citizen scientist. Remember, it's not about the app or the device or the bracelet or anything you're using as far as it relates to the intention. It's the intention behind the tool. As we talked about in episode 96 with Daniel about Qualia, the reason you would take a supplement in the first place is because you have that clear goal of what you need to perform better for. That's the most important thing. And the fifth and final takeaway from the show is just stay curious. Be open to exploring consciousness and different states of consciousness, but also any and all ways that are going to impact your health and wellness for the long term and the long haul. Just stay open and stay curious. So now there's one, one final thing left to do when you click the phone down or turn off the radio, and that is to go and step out into the world and create a great day for yourself and the people around you you care about. Now, it's not always easy, but today, hopefully it got a little bit easier when you're inspired from people like Jesse and all the other guests we've had on the show. That are teaching us, step by step, little by little, brick by brick, on how to live life well. So until I see you again real soon, I'm wishing you love and wellness.