How well do you think you’re managing your stress? If you work in a fast-paced environment, this can be difficult. We tend to power through our tasks and stress, but this can lead to burnout in the long run. Burnout can then result in anxiety and depression that can make it even harder to deal with stress. Stop the cycle by going back to the basics and learn to manage your sleep and support your body with ketones!
In this episode, Damian Porter shares how he has adapted to his busy and high-pressure lifestyle as a firefighter and former Special Forces operator. Even though his training made him relentless, he has also learned the value of working smarter rather than harder. When trying to manage stress, make sure that you’re getting good quality sleep. Ketones can also help manage stress and can reduce anxiety by as much as 40%!
If you want to learn more about managing stress in a fast-paced or high-pressure lifestyle, then this episode is for you!
For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://wellness.lisatamati.com/epigenetics.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
Are you struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world? Then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Still, I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third-party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful third-party tested NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
'Sleep is where we disconnect emotions from traumatic events. As if you've been up all night, not able to sleep, of course, you're gonna feel the same the next day.
'Getting good food, getting good sleep, bit of exercise, and having connection with somebody in some way is going to help you out.'
'You're just trying to do your best and then be better than that. Yeah, not just trying to hit a standard—trying to be better than that.'
'Driven people, they can achieve anything. And then they're asking themselves to do it by themselves. And that's where they fall over.'
'Connection is the cure...Build a team before you go. And the team just could be your wife. That's your team. At no point in the military and no point in the org base did you ever do anything by yourself.’
'I'm being self aware, being able to self reflect, and then apply something and if I can't do it, I'll ask someone that can help me identify it or help me throw it off, or get their advice, and then analyze that and then apply it to myself.'
'Your three year old: would you would you let them get by six hours sleep? If you possibly think on that, you think that's insane? Don't do it to yourself because we are the same as the three year old.'
Damian Porter has over 28 years of experience in the health and wellness industry. He is a career firefighter, champion national bodybuilder, exercise rehabilitation physiologist, former Special Forces Operator and a police officer with years of experience in both military and civilian applications.
Through his wide range of experiences, Damian is able to help clients achieve their optimal body, health, and performance-based on practical and educated perspectives.
Interested in Damian’s work? Check out his website.
You can also reach out to him on Facebook, Instagram, and email (porter.bookings@gmail.com).
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can include more amino acids in protein in their diet.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Even the most resilient and strongest individuals are not safe from the bone-deep exhaustion that cancer can bring. Treatment protocols will vary depending on a patient’s condition, but they may cause fatigue. While it takes an average of 17 years for medical research to reach clinical practice, it is beyond doubt that there are now better ways to treat cancer.
Did you know there is now emerging evidence that a ketogenic diet combined with standard cancer treatment may help patients? We often hear about the ketogenic diet from the fitness industry, but it’s more than just for managing weight, glucose and insulin levels. Research shows it can also starve cancer cells and eventually kill them off!
In this episode, Dr Dominic D’Agostino discusses how the ketogenic diet has evolved and how we can adopt a proper ratio for our lifestyle. He also shares the press-pulse control to manage cancer, which includes utilising ketosis, Vitamin C and oxygen. Don’t wait until you’re diagnosed with a disease to become more mindful of your lifestyle and nutrition! Prevention is key if you want to live healthier.
If you want to learn more about fighting cancer and several other diseases through the ketogenic diet, then this episode is for you!
For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://wellness.lisatamati.com/epigenetics.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
Are you struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world? Then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Still, I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third-party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful third-party tested NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘Oxygen is a stimulant to the brain, and if we get too high, it can actually trigger a seizure.’
‘...some of the anti-epileptic drugs, if they are given to kids, they can cause developmental delays. Whereas if you administer a ketogenic diet, it actually enhances learning and memory.’
‘We believe that it's very important if you're pre-diabetic, to get different wearable technologies that will tell you and coach you how to eat so you don't become diabetic.’
‘Warburg hypothesized that the cells were producing, were fermenting because the mitochondria were damaged, and they were defaulting to a more primitive form of energy production.’
‘The ketogenic diet is mimicking fasting and I think that the suppression of the hormone insulin, the reduction in glucose availability, and the elevation of ketones are all contributing to the anti-cancer effect.’
‘...nutrition is really about the patient's health and they should not be advised to just eat anything to gain weight.’
‘I think it's important to push the limit as well. I mean, I was always interested in fitness, and working out, strength training has been a form of self-medication.’
Dr Dominic D’Agostino is currently an associate professor with tenure at the University of South Florida where he teaches in the Morsani College of Medicine and the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology. He focuses on topics such as neuropharmacology, medical biochemistry, physiology, neuroscience, and neuropharmacology. He is also a research scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) where he researches optimization of safety, health, and resilience of astronauts and warfighters.
Over the last decade, Dr Dom and his lab have been focused on understanding the ketogenic diet and ketone supplementation for anticonvulsant and neuroprotective benefits. He was also a research investigator and crew member on NASA’s Extreme Environment Mission Operation (NEEMO 22) and has an interest in ways to enhance resilience in extreme environments.
Learn more about Dr Dom’s work on his website.
You can also connect with him on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can know how to optimise sleep.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
We often associate illnesses and pains with old age. But our guest today reveals that the real cause of health problems is how you’ve lived your life. Accumulated amounts of stress can change our bodies down to the cellular level. Luckily, scientific discoveries such as peptide therapy can help our cells function better. Age is not the issue. If you take care of yourself, being older can mean being at the peak of your performance.
In this episode, Dr William Seeds joins us to discuss how our cells function and how epigenetic influences can harm our bodies. He shares how peptides and peptide therapy play a crucial role in keeping ourselves healthy and treating injuries and illnesses! As we age, our bodies slowly lose their ability to perform specific functions, including growth hormone production. But with the right intervention, including peptide therapy, a 100-year-old can produce just as many growth hormones as someone a quarter their age!
If you want to learn more about peptide therapy and how to age gracefully, then this episode is for you!
For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://wellness.lisatamati.com/epigenetics.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
Are you struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world? Then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Still, I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third-party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful, third-party tested NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
[29:25] ‘If anybody tells you something is too complicated, you have to have a PhD to understand that, right away, you should call bullshit because it means [they] just can’t teach well.’
[29:48] 'We all have the same capability of understanding. So our job is to educate people of what they have out there and not to keep them thinking they can't learn this.'
[44:58] ‘The cell knows what to make when the body has the demand.’
[50:21] ‘Growth hormone has some tremendous downstream effects that are effective in so many ways, in helping people regain the ability to improve cellular metabolism in the brain.’
[57:32] ‘We can change a cell to be more protective, more efficient, and keep that cell.’
[57:41] ‘We’re not looking to live at 150 years of age… We’re looking to live every day of our lives at our fullest capacity.’
[58:13] ‘There is just so much that people deserve to know that they can be doing it, that they can change their lives no matter what state they’re in.’
Dr William Seeds is a board-certified orthopedic surgeon. For over 25 years, he has been a leading physician specialising in all aspects of sports medicine and total joint treatments. Dr Seeds is also the world's leading authority on peptide therapy, with training in advanced metabolic and nutritional medicine.
In his constant pursuit of medical research, he has published several research papers. Among his works is the first handbook on peptides written for practitioners, Peptide Protocols Volume One. He is the founder and president of the Seeds Scientific Research and Performance (SSRP), the training institute on cellular medicine and peptide therapy for medical practitioners.
Dr Seeds is also the Chief of Surgery and Orthopedic Residency Site Director for University Hospital, Conneaut and Geneva, Ohio. He has also been honoured at the NFL Hall of Fame for his medical services as a Professional Medical Consultant for the MLB, NHL, NBA, and NBC’s Dancing with the Stars.
Interested in Dr Seed’s work? Check out his website.
You can also reach him on Youtube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn more about peptide therapy and how cells play a critical role in our lives.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Losing someone we love is one of the most painful experiences we all have to go through. While we all grieve differently, and some people find it hard to heal even after years have passed. As they relive the suffering day by day, they forget that they have a whole life ahead of them. But at one point, you have to unburden yourself from this feeling and move on with your life. Once you do, you'll realise how amazing the mind to body connection is and how it works.
In this episode, Gunny Sodhi joins us to share a deep and intimate personal story on how he got into Ayurveda. He talks about getting diagnosed with PTSD after his brother passed from a car accident. Gunny emphasises the importance of processing your emotions and explains how Ayurveda helped him heal from his suppressed grief. He then delves into the essence of this medicine system and how its principles on the mind to body connection are ingrained in YouVeda's products.
If you want to learn more about incorporating the Ayurvedic techniques of mind to body connection into your life, this episode is for you!
For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://wellness.lisatamati.com/epigenetics.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Still, I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third-party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful third-party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘The true strength comes in feeling those emotions, being with your grief, letting your body become just overwhelmed with the sadness, with the grief.’
‘Emotions come up to be felt. It’s energy and motion. Once those emotions come up to be felt, eventually, they are released.’
‘I knew that what I was doing was not how the rest of my life was going to be, and I had a choice.’
‘If you've been through hell and your mind plays these tricks, and you've been in the deepest, darkest place, do you want nothing more than just to feel fine?’
‘In its essence, simplicity, [Ayurveda] is to live in balance, balance within yourself, balance within the universe, balance with nature.’
‘As the mind conceives and believes, the body follows.’
‘We need to understand how the body works. It's combining those lifestyle interventions with the right supplements, with some good nutrition, and voila, we have a much better chance of being healthy for a very long time.’
Gunny Sodhi is an Ayurvedic medicine practitioner, entrepreneur, and founder of YouVeda. His company offers premium Ayurvedic holistic solutions, including supplement kits. The foundation of the family-owned business is the 30+ years of combined experience of Gunny, his wife, and his parents. YouVeda's vision is to create a healthier and happier world through Mother Nature's intelligence.
Gunny is also the host of The Balanced Being Podcast. This show serves as a guide to a healthy and balanced lifestyle by incorporating the principles of Ayurveda.
If you wish to connect with Gunny, you may reach out to him on Instagram and LinkedIn. You can also visit YouVeda’s website or on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn more about Ayurveda and the mind to body connection.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
**The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show.
Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional**
‘Learn to live with your pain.’ How many times have you heard this statement? For people with chronic pain, this is common but unhelpful advice. Pain is more than just mechanical damage. Context and the expectations you have around it play a significant role in how you experience pain. Remember, it’s possible to recover from pain. But you must be aware of the proper chronic pain treatment.
Pain expert Dr Kal Fried joins us in this episode to discuss how pain is more complicated than we think. If we want to recover from pain, we must first understand how it works. He also shares the role of medication and lifestyle changes and how chronic pain treatments work differently for each person. What’s important is to become active and involved in your recovery process.
If you want to learn more about chronic pain treatment and how to break free from chronic pain, this episode is for you.
For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://wellness.lisatamati.com/epigenetics.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Still, I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘I like to think of pain in terms of not causes but contributors. The physical side is important… but it’s only one contribution of many.’
‘By just getting people to conceptualise their pain properly, we can make a difference.’
‘The best model exists for understanding pain is that anytime we feel pain, or for that matter, all the sensations we feel, which are essentially produced by our brain, there are a lot of things going on at the same time.’
‘When pain persists, it takes a lot less contribution from the physical component to produce the same pain. Sometimes, no contribution at all and people remain in pain.’
‘I think the key thing is to try and avoid being too passive in your own health because reliance on external fixes can be a problem. A lot can be achieved by lifestyle changes.’
‘The people who do well in things like pain or recovery from injuries are often the people who have elected not to listen to the things they have been told.’
‘If you’ve got a problem, you just need to create that adaptation pathway for yourself, which doesn’t just involve the injury.’
Dr Kal Fried is a proud member and Medical Director of Pain Revolution. Before being recruited, he was involved in the group's first Rural Outreach Tour in 2017. Dr Kal is an independent medico-legal examiner who has consulted with the Transport Accident Commission and WorkSafe as a medical advisor. He was admitted as a Fellow of the Australian College of Sports and Exercise Physicians in 1995. Ever since then, he's helped sporting teams at all levels and across disciplines.
From his experience, Dr Kal observed how the context of pain consistently predicted clinical outcomes. He often shares his findings and observations on pain science and chronic pain treatment on his website. He is also part of the Rehabilitation Medicine Group focused on creating re-adaptive programs for people in pain.
Interested to learn more about Dr Kal’s work? Check out his website.
You can also reach him on The Rehabilitation Medicine Group through phone (+613 9555 7769), fax (+613 8738 1504), and email.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn more about pain and chronic pain treatment.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Dr Thomas Levy is a cardiologist and a lawyer and author of more than 13 books including his latest "Rapid Virus Recovery." In this podcast, we discuss ways to boost our immunity and protect ourselves from viruses. Our bodies are more capable than we think. If it has the correct nutrients, the human body can simultaneously recover from viruses and/or protect itself from them. We just need to make sure that we are supporting its innate abilities and Dr Levy gives us a list of things we can do to protect ourselves.
He also shares that clinical recovery is often different from true recovery. Studies suggest that 40% of the novel virus-positive patients retain the virus — even after they think they've recovered!
If you want to learn more about how to achieve true recovery from disease and protect yourself, then this episode is for you!
For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://wellness.lisatamati.com/epigenetics.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
Are you struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world? Then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Still, I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third-party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful third-party tested NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘Here's something that just about killed my extremely healthy 50-year-old best friend, and when is it going to hit me? So I understand the fear. However, you should understand... you don't have to have that fear because we have the information and the techniques to deal with it across the board.’
‘The healthcare industry is not the slightest bit interested in spending millions of dollars on research on something that will generate them nothing. Quite the contrary to generating nothing, it will take money out of their pocket and take away prolonged expensive hospitalisations, and antibiotics and intubations, and you name it.’
‘Actually, it shouldn't come as a surprise because your body has a mechanism if you support that mechanism for dealing with killing any pathogen you encounter. I mean, if the body didn't have that, we'd all be dead and we would have never survived as a species’.
‘If you don't do the legwork, and study for yourself, and figure out what's best for you, but instead, just walk into the doctor's office and say, “Here's my warm body, do whatever you think is best”, it's only you that's going to suffer.’
‘If you have a physician that doesn't have the time or inclination to talk with you and discuss things that you want clarification on, don't walk — run out of that office!’
‘Unless you have a specific biofilm-dissolving pathogen-killing intervention, such as hydrogen peroxide, but it's not the only thing that will do that, you're going to keep that colonisation for life. And this is why people have bowel disorders for life.’
‘Not everybody has that ability to do that or their willingness to do that. But you have to take responsibility for yourself. Nobody else can take that away from you. You really do have to put in the hard yards.’
Dr Thomas Levy is a board-certified cardiologist and a bar-certified attorney. After practising adult cardiology for 15 years, he began to research the enormous toxicity associated with much dental work, as well as the pronounced ability of properly administered vitamin C to neutralise this toxicity. He has now written 11 books. Several of them address the wide-ranging benefits of Vitamin C and its capacity to neutralise toxins and resolve most infections, as well as its vital role in the effective treatment of heart disease and cancer. Others tackle the essential roles of dental toxicity and nutrition in disease and health.
Recently inducted into the Orthomolecular Medicine Hall of Fame, Dr Levy continues to research the impact of the orthomolecular application of vitamin C and antioxidants in general on chronic degenerative diseases. His ongoing research involves documenting that all diseases are different forms and degrees of focal scurvy arising from increased oxidative stress, especially intracellular. Furthermore, they all benefit from protocols that optimise the antioxidant levels in the body.
He regularly gives lectures on this information at medical conferences around the world. If you want to learn more from Dr Levy, you may contact him at televymd@yahoo.com or through his website.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you were inspired to do your hard yards, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they too can find true recovery from diseases.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional
How do you handle stressful situations? Everyone’s built a little different — some people can take their hits on the chin and come out smiling.
But not everyone can take those hits. The pandemic has taken its mental toll on so many people. Others might still be struggling with past traumas and dealing with anxiety. Their situation keeps them in a state of constant worry and hypervigilance. That state of mind doesn't only harm their mental and emotional health — it can make them sick and more prone to physical diseases. More than ever, it's time to begin mental healing from past traumas, so we can better cope with our daily stresses.
Dr Don Wood joins us again in this episode to talk about the TIPP program and how it facilitates mental healing. He explains how our minds are affected by traumas and how these can affect our health and performance. If we want to become more relaxed, we need to learn how to go into the alpha brainwave state. Since mental healing is not an immediate process, Dr Don also shares some coping strategies we can use in our daily lives.
If you want to know more about how neuroscience can help you achieve mental healing, then this episode is for you.
For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity, or want to take your performance to the next level and learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Still, I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful third party-tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘The purpose of an emotion is a call for an action. So the purpose of fear is to run.’
‘People who have a lot of trauma have trouble sleeping. Because not only is their mind processing what it experienced during the day, it's also taking some of those old files saying “Well, okay, let's fix that now. Right. Let's get that.”’
‘I was getting maximum restorative sleep. So an injury that I would have that could heal in two or three days, my teammates would two or three weeks. Because they were living in these, which I didn't know, a lot of my friends were dealing with trauma: physical, emotional, sexual abuse.’
‘There's nothing wrong with anybody's mind. Everybody's mind is fine except you are experiencing something different than I experienced so your mind kept responding to it, and mine didn't have that.’
‘That dysregulation of the nervous system. That's what we want to stop because that is what is going to affect health, enjoyment of life, and everything else.’
‘I talked about addiction as a code. I don't believe it's a disease. Your mind has found a resource to stop pains and your subconscious mind is literal. It doesn't see things as good or bad, or right or wrong.’
‘If there's a survival threat, survival will always override reason and logic because it's designed to protect you.’
Dr Don Wood, PhD, is the CEO of The Inspired Performance Institute. Fueled by his family’s experiences, he developed the cutting-edge neuroscience approach, TIPP. The program has produced impressive results and benefited individuals all over the world.
Dr Wood has helped trauma survivors achieve mental healing from the Boston Marathon bombing attack and the Las Vegas shooting. He has also helped highly successful executives and world-class athletes. Marko Cheseto, a double amputee marathon runner, broke the world record after completing TIPP. Meanwhile, Chris Nikic worked with Dr Wood and made world news by becoming the first person with Down Syndrome to finish an Ironman competition.
Interested in Dr Don’s work? Check out The Inspired Performance Institute.
You can also reach him on Facebook and LinkedIn.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn steps to mental healing.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.
Lisa Tamati: Hi, everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Today, I have Dr Don Wood who, you may recognise that name if you listen to the podcast regularly. He was on the show maybe a couple of months ago, and he is the CEO and founder of The Inspired Performance Institute. He's a neuroscience guy, and he knows everything there is to know about dealing with trauma and how to get the mind back on track when you've been through big, horrible life events or some such thing. Now, when we talked last time, he shared with me his methodology, the work that he's done, how he can help people with things like addictions as well and depression, and just dealing with the stresses of life, whether they be small stressors or big stressors.
We got to talking about my situation and the stuff that I've been through in the last few years, which many of you listeners know, has been pretty traumatic. From losing babies, to losing my dad, to mom's journey. So I was very privileged and lucky to have Dr Don Wood actually invite me to do his program with him. We share today my stories, how I went with that, and he explains a little bit more in-depth the neuroscience behind it all and how it all works. So if you're someone who's dealing with stress, anxiety, PTSD, depression, if you want to understand how the brain works and how you can help yourself to deal with these sorts of things, then you must listen to the show. He's an absolutely lovely, wonderful person.
Now, before we get over to the show, I just love you all to do a couple of things for me. If you wouldn't mind doing a rating and review of the show on Apple, iTunes or wherever you listen to this, that would be fantastic. It helps the show get found. We also have a patron program, just a reminder if you want to check that out. Come and join the mission that we're on to bring this wonderful information to reach to people.
Also, we have our BOOSTCAMP program starting on the first of September 2021. If you listen to this later, we will be holding these on a regular basis so make sure you check it out. This is an eight-week live webinar series that my business partner, my best buddy, and longtime coach Neil Wagstaff and I will be running. It's more about upgrading your life and helping you perform better, helping you be your best that you can be, helping you understand your own biology, your own neuroscience, how your brain works, how your biology works. Lots of good information that's going to help you upgrade your life, live longer, be happier, reduce stress, and be able to deal with things when life is stressful. God knows we're all dealing with that. So I'd love you to come and check that out. You can go to peakwellness.co.nz/boostcamp.
I also want to remind you to check us out on Instagram. I'm quite active on Instagram. I have a couple of accounts there. We have one for the podcast that we've just started. We need a few more followers please on there. Go to @pushingthelimits for that one on Instagram, and then my main account is @lisatamati, if you want to check that one out. If you are a running fan, check us out on Instagram @runninghotcoaching and we're on Facebook under all of those as well. So @lisatamati, @pushingthelimits, and @runninghotcoaching.
The last thing before we go over to Dr Don Wood, reminder check out, too, our longevity and anti-aging supplement. We’ve joined forces with Dr Elena Seranova and have NMN which is nicotinamide mononucleotide, and this is really some of that cooler stuff in the anti-aging, and longevity space. If you want to check out the science behind that, we have a couple of podcasts with her. Check those out and also head on over to nmnbio.nz. Right. Over to the show with Dr Don Wood.
Hi, everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Today, I have a dear, dear friend again who's back on the show as a repeat offender, Dr Don Wood.
Dr Don Wood: I didn't know I was a repeat offender. Oh, I'm in trouble. That's great.
Lisa: Repeat offender on the show. Dr Don, for those who don't know, was on the show. Dr Don is a trauma expert and a neuroscientist, and someone who understands how the brain works, and why we struggle with anxiety, and depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. We did a deep dive last time, didn't we, into the program that you've developed. Since then, everyone, I have been through Dr Don's pro program. He kindly took me through it. Today, I want to unpack a little bit of my experiences on the other side, s the client, so to speak. Talk about what I went through.
Dr Don, so firstly, welcome to the show again. How's it all over in your neck of the woods?
Dr Don: Well, it's awesome over here in Florida. COVID is basically non-existent. Oh, yeah. Well, in terms of the way people are treating it, that's for sure. Very few people you see in masks now, everything is pretty much wide open. You can't even get reservations at restaurants. It's unbelievable. The economy is exploding here. There's so much going on. Yeah, I know the rest of the country, a lot of different places are still struggling with whether they're going to put mask mandates back on and all this kind of stuff but Florida seems to be doing very well.
Lisa: Well, I'm very glad to hear that because any bit of good news in this scenario is good because this keeps coming and biting everybody in the bum.
Dr Don: I know. Especially down there. You guys are really experiencing quite severe lockdowns and things, right?
Lisa: Yeah and Australia, more so. Australia has gone back into lockdown. I've got cousins in Sydney who are experiencing really hard times in Melbourne and we've stopped the trans-Tasman bubble at the moment. Trans-Tasman was open for business, so to speak, with Australians being able to come to New Zealand without quarantine, but it's been shut down again. So yeah, we're still struggling with it, and the economy is still struggling with it but actually, in our country, we've been very lucky that we've managed to keep it out because they've had such tight controls on the borders. But yes, it's a rocky road for everybody, and it's not over yet, I think.
Dr Don: Looks like it's going to continue, and that's creating a lot of stress.
Lisa: Oh, yeah, perfect.
Dr Don: This is what I've said. I think we're coming up to a tsunami of mental health issues because a lot of people have gone into freeze mode as opposed to fight or flight. Some people are in fight or flight. You're hearing about that on airlines: people just losing it, and getting mad, and fighting with flight attendants and passengers, and you see a lot of that. But I think that's obviously not the majority. I think most people are in that mode of just get through this, do what they ask, don't cause any waves, and just get this over with. So that's a freeze mode, and I think when people come out of freeze, you're going to start to see some of these mental health issues.
Lisa: Yes, I totally agree and I'm very concerned about the young people. I think that being hit very hard especially in the places that have the hardest lockdowns. If you're going through puberty, or you're going through teenagehood, or even the younger kids, I think, they're going to be affected massively by this because it's going to be a big before and after sort of situation for them.
Dr Don: And just the social. When we were teenagers, social was everything, I suppose. Learning how to communicate, and talk, and get along with other people, and good and bad. There were always struggles in school with learning how to get along with everybody but that is just sort of squashed. It's going to be fascinating to see when they do a study on the real true results of this pandemic. It's going to be a lot different than many people think.
Lisa: Yes, and I think the longer you ignore stuff, is we’re going to see it's not just the people are unfortunately dying and being very sick from the actual COVID, but the actual effects on society are going to be big. That's why talking about the topic that we're talking about today, dealing with anxiety, and dealing with stress, and being able to actually fix the problem instead of just managing the problem, which I know you're big on.
So let's dive in there, and let's recap a little bit. Just briefly go back over your story, how you got to here, and what your method sort of entails in a helicopter perspective.
Dr Don: Yeah, basically how I developed this was really because of the life that my wife led first and my daughter. My wife grew up in a very traumatic household with a very angry father that created tremendous fear. So everybody was... Just constant tension in that household. When I met her, I just realised how this was so different than my life. My life was in the complete opposite: very nurturing, loving. So I didn't experience that. I thought when she started moving in and we got married at 19, we were very young, that this would all stop for her. Because now, she's living in my world, my environment, and it didn't.
She just kept continuing to feel this fear that something was going to go wrong and nothing is going to go right. She struggled with enjoying things that were going well. I would say to her, 'We've got three beautiful children. We’ve got a beautiful home. Everything's going pretty good; nothing's perfect. You have your ups and downs, but it's generally a pretty good life.’ She couldn't enjoy that because as a child, whenever things were going okay, it would quickly end and it would end, sometimes violently. So the way she was protecting herself is don't get too excited when things are going well because you'll get this huge drop. So that was what she was doing to protect herself.
I just had a lady come in here a couple months ago, who very famous athlete is her husband: millionaires, got fame, fortune, everything you want, but she had a lot of health issues because of trauma from her childhood. When I explained that to her, she said, 'That's me. Your wife is me. I should be enjoying this, and I can't get there. I want to. My husband can't understand it.' But that's really what was going on for her too.
Lisa: So it's a protective mechanism, isn't it? To basically not get too relaxed and happy because you've got to be hyper-vigilant, and this is something that I've definitely struggled with my entire life. Not because I had a horrible childhood. I had a wonderful childhood but I was super sensitive. So from a genetic perspective, I'm super sensitive. I have a lot of adrenaline that makes me code for, for want of a better description, I'm very emotionally empathetic but it also makes me swung by emotional stimuli very much. So someone in my environment is unhappy, I am unhappy. I'm often anxious and upset. My mum telling me she took me to Bambi. You know the movie Bambi? From Disneyland? She had to take me out of theatre. I was in distraught.
That's basically me. Because Bambi's mother got killed, right? I couldn't handle that as a four-year-old, and I still can't handle things. Things like the news and stuff, I protect myself from that because I take everything on. It's even a problem and in our business service situations because I want to save the world. I very much take on my clients' issues. I'm still learning to shut gates afterwards, so to speak, when you're done working with someone so that you're not constantly... So there's a genetic component to this as well.
Dr Don: Absolutely. So yours was coming from a genetic side but that's very, very common amongst people who have had a traumatic childhood. They're super sensitive.
Lisa: Yes. Hyper-vigilant.
Dr Don: Hyper-vigilant. That was my wife. She was constantly looking for danger. We’d come out of the storage and go: 'Can you believe how rude that clerk was?' 'What do you mean she was rude? How was she rude?' ‘You see the way she answered that question when I asked that, and then the way she stuffed the clothes in the bag?’ And I'm like, 'Wow.' I never saw her like that. She was looking for it because that's how she protected herself because she had to recognise when danger was coming. So it was protection, and I hadn't experienced that so that made no sense to me; it made perfect sense to her.
Lisa: Yeah, and if someone was rude to you, you would be just like, 'Well, that's their problem, not my problem, and I'm not taking it on.' Whereas for someone your wife and for me... I did have a dad who was a real hard, tough man, like old-school tough. We were very much on tenterhooks so when they came home, whether he was in a good mood today or not in a good mood. He was a wonderful, loving father but there was that tension of wanting to please dad. Mum was very calm and stable, but Dad was sort of more volatile and just up and down. It was wonderful and fun and other times, you'd be gauging all of that before he even walked in the door. That just makes you very much hyper-vigilant to everything as well.
Then, you put on, on top of that, the genetic component. You've got things like your serotonin and your adrenaline. So I've got the problem with the adrenaline and a lack of dopamine. So I don't have dopamine receptors that stops me feeling satisfaction and... Well, not stops me but it limits my feeling of, 'Oh, I've done a good job today. I can relax.' Or of reward. And other people have problems, I don't have this one, but with a serotonin gene, which is they have dysregulation of their serotonin and that calm, and that sense of well-being and mood regulation is also up and down. While it's not a predisposition that you'll definitely going to have troubles because you can learn the tools to manage those neurotransmitters and things like nutrition and gut health and all that aspect. Because it's all a piece of that puzzle, but it's really just interesting, and it makes you much more understanding of people's differences.
Why does one person get completely overwhelmed in a very trivial situation versus someone else who could go into war and come back and they're fine? What is it that makes one person? Then you got the whole actual neuroscience circuitry stuff, which I find fascinating, what you do. Can you explain a little bit what goes on? Say let's just pick a traumatic experience: Someone's gone through some big major trauma. What is actually going on in the brain again? Can we explain this a little bit?
Dr Don: Yeah, this is one of the things that... When I did my research, I realised this is what's causing the dysregulation: is your subconscious your survival brain is fully present in the moment all the time. So everything in that part of our brain is operating in the present. which is what is supposed to be, right? They say that that's the key, that success and happiness is live in the present. Well, your survival brain does that. The problem comes in is that only humans store explicit details about events and experiences. So everything you've seen, heard, smelled, and touched in your lifetime has been recorded and stored in this tremendous memory system. Explicit memory.
Animals have procedural memory or associative memory. We have that memory system too. So we have both. They only have procedural, associative. So they learn through repetition, and they learn to associate you with safety and love, but they don't store the details about it. But we store all the details about these events and experiences. So this is where this glitch is coming in. If you've got the survival brain, which is 95% of everything that's going on, operating in the present, accessing data from something that happened 10 years ago because something looks like, sounds like, smells like it again, it's creating a response to something that's not happening. It's looking at old data and creating a physiological response to it, and the purpose of an emotion is a call for an action. So the purpose of fear is to run, to escape a threat. But there's no threat. It's just information about the threat. That disrupts your nervous system and then that creates a cascade of chemical reactions in your body because your mind thinks there's an action required.
Lisa: This is at the crux of the whole system really, isn't it? This is this call for action to fix a problem that is in the past that cannot be fixed in the now. So if we can dive a little bit into my story, and I'm quite open on the show. I'm sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly. When I was working with Dr Don, I've been through a very, very traumatic few years really. Lost my dad, first and foremost, last July, which was the biggest trauma of my life. And it was a very difficult process that we went through before he died as well. And there’s a lift, as you can imagine, my brain in a state of every night nightmares, fighting for his life, he's dying over, and over, and over, and over again.
Those memories are intruding into my daily life, whereas in anything and at any time, I could be triggered and be in a bawling state in the middle of the car park or the supermarket. Because something's triggered me that Dad liked to to buy or Dad, whatever the case was, and this was becoming... It's now a year after the event but everything was triggering me constantly. Of course, this is draining the life out of you and interfering with your ability to give focus to your business, to your family, to your friends, every other part of your life. I'd also been through the trauma of bringing Mum back from that mess of aneurysm that everyone knows about. The constant vigilance that is associated with bringing someone back and who is that far gone to where she is now, and the constant fear of her slipping backwards, and me missing something, especially in light of what I'd been through with my father. So I'd missed some things, obviously. That's why he ended up in that position and through his own choices as well.
But this load, and then losing a baby as well in the middle, baby Joseph. There was just a hell of a lot to deal with in the last five years. Then, put on top of it, this genetic combination of a hot mess you got sitting before you and you've got a whole lot of trauma to get through. So when we did the process, and I was very, super excited to do this process because it was so intrusive into my life, and I realised that I was slowly killing myself because I wasn't able to stop that process from taking over my life. I could function. I was highly functional. No one would know in a daily setting, but only because I've got enough tools to keep my shit together. so to speak. But behind closed doors, there's a lot of trauma going on.
So can you sort of, just in a high level, we don't want to go into the details. This is a four-hour program that I went through with Dr Don. What was going on there. and what did you actually help me with?
Dr Don: So when you're describing those things that were happening to you, what was actually happening to your mind is it was not okay with any of that. It wanted it to be different, right? So it was trying to get you into a state of action to stop your father from dying: Do it differently. Because it kept reviewing the data. It was almost looking at game tape from a game and saying 'Oh, had we maybe run the play that way, we would have avoided the tackle here.' So what your mind was saying 'Okay, run that way.' Well, you can't run that way. This is game tape. Right? But your mind doesn't see it as game tape. It sees it as real now, so it's run that way. So it keeps calling you into an action.
And especially with your dad because you were thinking about, 'Why didn't I do this?' Or 'Had I just done this, maybe this would have happened.' What your mind was saying is, 'Okay, let's do it. Let's do that.' What you just thought about. But you can't do that. It doesn't exist. It's information about something that happened but your mind sees it as real. That's why Hollywood have made trillions of dollars because they can convince you something on the screen is actually happening. That's why we cry in a movie or that's why we get scared in a movie. Because your mind, your subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between real or imagined. So that's actually happening.
You were just talking about the movie with Bambi, right? When you were little. 'Why is nobody stopping this from happening?' So your mind was not okay with a lot of these things that were happening, and it kept calling you to make a difference. That's what I never understood my wife doing. That before I really researched this, my wife would always be saying, 'Don't you wish this hadn’t have happened?' Or 'Don't you wish we hadn’t done this?' What I didn't understand at the time, because I used to just get like, 'Okay, whatever.' She’d go, 'Yeah, but wouldn't it have been better?' She wanted to get me into this play with her, this exercise.
Lisa: This is going on in her head.
Dr Don: Because it's going on in her head, and she's trying to feel better. So she's creating these scenarios that would make her feel like, 'Well, if I had just done that, gosh that would have been nice, thinking about that life.’ And her mind seeing that going, 'Oh, that would be nice. Well, let's do that. Yes.' So she was what if-ing her life. And it was something that she did very early as a child because that's how she just experienced something traumatic with her father. In her mind, she'd be going, 'Well, what if I had to just left 10 minutes earlier, and I had have escaped that?' Or 'What if I hadn’t done this?' So that's what she was doing. It made no sense to me because I hadn't experienced her life, but that's what she was doing. Her mind was trying to fix something. It’s never tried to hurt you. It was never, at any point, trying to make you feel bad. It was trying to protect you.
Lisa: Its job is to protect you from danger and it sees everything as you sit in the now so it's happening now. I love that analogy of these... What was it? Two-thirds of the car or something and...
Dr Don: So goat and snowflake?
Lisa: Goat and snowflake. And they're going off to a meeting and they're late. And what does the goat says to snowflake or the other way around?
Dr Don: So snowflake, which is your conscious mind, your logical reasonable part of your mind, there's only 5, says the goat 95%, which is your subconscious mind. Who runs into a traffic jam says, 'Oh, we're going to be late. We should have left 15 minutes earlier.' To which goat replies 'Okay, let's do it. Let's leave 15 minutes earlier because that would solve the problem.'
Lisa: That analogy is stuck in my head because you just cannot... It doesn't know that it's too late and you can't hop into the past because it only lives in the now. This is 95% of how our brain operates. That's why we can do things like, I was walking, I was at a strategy meeting in Auckland with my business partner two days ago. We were walking along the road and he suddenly tripped and fell onto the road, right? My subconscious reacted so fast, I grabbed him right, and punched him in the guts. I didn't mean to do that but my subconscious recognised in a millimeter of a second, millionth of a second, that he was falling and I had to stop him. So this is a good side of the survival network: stopping and falling into the traffic or onto the ground.
But the downside of it is that brain is operating only in the now and it can't... Like with my father, it was going 'Save him. Save him. Save him. Why are you not saving him?' Then that's calling for an action, and then my body is agitated. The cortisol level’s up. The adrenaline is up, and I'm trying to do something that's impossible to fix. That can drive you to absolute insanity when that's happening every hour, every day.
Dr Don: Then that's taking a physical toll on your body because it's activating your nervous system, which is now, the cortisol levels are going up, adrenaline, right? So when your mind is in that constant state, it does very little on maintenance. It is not worried about fixing anything; it's worried about escaping or fixing the threat, because that's the number one priority.
Lisa: It doesn't know that it's not happening. I ended up with shingles for two months. I've only just gotten over it a few weeks ago. That's a definite sign of my body's, my immune system is down. Why is it down? Why can that virus that's been sitting dormant in my body for 40-something years suddenly decide now to come out? Because it's just becoming too much. I've spent too long in the fight or flight state and then your immune system is down. This is how we end up really ill.
Dr Don: We get sick. I was just actually having lunch today with a young lady and she's got some immune system issues. And I said, 'Think about it like the US Army, US military is the biggest, strongest military in the world. But if you took that military and you spread it out amongst 50 countries around the world fighting battles, and then somebody attacks the United States, I don't care how big and strong that system was, that military system was. It's going to be weakened when it gets an attack at the homefront.’ So that's what was happening. So all of a sudden, now that virus that it could fight and keep dormant, it lets it pass by because it's like, 'Well, we can let that go. We'll catch that later. Right now, we got to go on the offensive and attack something else.'
Lisa: Yeah, and this is where autoimmune, like your daughter experienced...
Dr Don: About the Crohn's? Yep.
Lisa: Yep. She experienced that at 13 or something ridiculous?
Dr Don: 14, she got it. Then she also got idiopathic pulmonary hemosiderosis which is another lung autoimmune disorder where the iron in the blood would just cause the lungs to release the blood. So her lungs just starts filling up with blood. They had no idea what caused it, that's the idiopathic part of it, and they just basically said, ‘There's no cure. She just needs to live close to a hospital because she'll bleed out if she has another attack.’ Only 1 in 1.2 million people ever get that. So it's very rare so there's no research being done for it. They just basically say, ‘If you get it, live close to a hospital.’ That's the strategy.
Lisa: That's the way of fixing it.
Dr Don: And so both of those are autoimmune, and ever since we've gone to the program, she's hasn’t had a flare-up of either one of those. Because I think our system is directly now able to address those things.
Lisa: Yeah, and can calm down. I think even people who haven't got post-traumatic stress like I've had or whatever, they've still got the day to day grind of life, and the struggle with finances, and the mortgage to be paid, and the kids to feed, and whatever dramas we're all going through. Like we talked about with COVID and this constant change that society is undergoing, and that's going to get faster and more. So this is something that we all need to be wary of: That we're not in this. I've taught and learned a lot about the coping and managing strategies, the breathing techniques, and meditation, the things, and that's what's kept me, probably, going.
Dr Don: Those are great because they're... Again, that's managing it but it's good to have that because you've got to get to the root of it, which is what we were working on. But at the same time, if you don't have any coping, managing skills, life gets very difficult.
Lisa: Yeah, and this is in-the-moment, everyday things that I can do to help manage the stress levels, and this is definitely something you want to talk about as well. So with me, we went through this process, and we did... For starters, you had to get my brain into a relaxed state, and it took quite a long time to get my brainwaves into a different place. So what were we doing there? How does that work with the brainwave stuff?
Dr Don: Well, when we have a traumatic event or memory, that has been stored in a very high-resolution state. So in a beta brainwave state because all your senses are heightened: sight, smell, hearing. So it's recording that and storing it in memory in a very intense state. So if I sat down with you and said, 'Okay, let's get this fixed.' And I just started trying to work directly on that memory, you're still going to be in a very high agitated state because we're going to be starting to talk about this memory. So you're going to be in a beta brainwave state trying to recalibrate a beta stored memory. That's going to be very difficult to do.
So what we do is, and that's why I use the four hours because within that first an hour and a half to two hours, we're basically communicating with the subconscious part of the brain by telling stories, symbols with metaphors, goat and snowflake, all the stories, all the metaphors that are built-in because then your brain moves into an alpha state. When it's in alpha, that's where it does restoration. So it's very prepared to start restoring. And then, if you remember, by the time we got to a couple of the traumatic memories, we only work on them for two or three minutes. Because you're in alpha, and so you've got this higher state of beta, and it recalibrates it into the same state that it's in. So if it's in alpha, it can take a beta memory, reprocess it in alpha, takes all the intensity out of it.
Lisa: So these brain waves, these beta states, just to briefly let people know, so this is speed, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it's the speed at which the brain waves are coming out. So in beta, like you'd see on ECG or something, it's sort of really fast. I think there's a 40 day...
Dr Don: It's 15 to 30 hertz.
Lisa: 15 to 30 hertz and then if you're in alpha, it's a lot lower than that?
Dr Don: 7 to 14.
Lisa: 7 to 14, and then below that is sort of when you're going into the sleep phase, either deep meditative or asleep.
Dr Don: You're dreaming. Because what it's doing in dreaming is processing. So you're between 4 and 7 hertz. That's why people who have a lot of trauma have trouble sleeping. Because not only is their mind processing what it experienced during the day, it's also taking some of those old files saying, 'Well, okay, let's fix that now. Right. Let's get that.’ That's where your nightmares are coming from. It was trying to get you into a processing to fix that. but it couldn't fix it. So it continues, and then when you go below 4 hertz, you go into delta. Delta is dreamless sleep and that's where the maintenance is getting done.
Lisa: That's the physical maintenance side more than the...
Dr Don: Physical maintenance. Yeah, because that's not processing what it experienced anymore. What it's really now doing is saying, 'Okay, what are the issues that need to be dealt with?' So if you're very relaxed and you've had a very... Like me, right? I played hockey, so I had six concussions, 60 stitches, and never missed a hockey game. The only reason now that I understand I could do that is because I'm getting two or three times more Delta sleep than my teammates were.
Lisa: Physical recuperative sleep.
Dr Don: Yeah, I was getting maximum restorative sleep. So an injury that I would have that could heal in two or three days, my teammates would two or three weeks. Because they were living in these, which I didn't know, a lot of my friends were dealing with trauma: physical, emotional, sexual abuse. I didn't know that was going on with my friends. Nobody talked about it. I didn't see it in their homes, but they were all dealing with that.
Lisa: So they are not able to get... So look, I've noticed since I've been through the program. My sleep is much better, and sometimes I still occasionally dream about Dad. But the positive dreams, if that makes sense. They're more Dad as he as he was in life and I actually think Dad’s come to visit me and say, ‘Hi, give me a hug’ rather than the traumatic last days and hours of his life, which was the ones that were coming in before and calling for that action and stopping me from having that restorative sleep.
I just did a podcast with Dr Kirk Parsley who's a sleep expert, ex-Navy SEAL and a sleep expert that's coming out shortly. Or I think by this time, it will be out, and understanding the importance, the super importance of both the delta and... What is the other one? The theta wave of sleep patterns, and what they do, and why you need both, and what parts of night do what, and just realising...Crikey, anybody who is going through trauma isn't experiencing sleep is actually this vicious cycle downwards. Because then, you've got more of the beta brainwave state, and you've got more of the stresses, and you're much less resilient when you can't sleep. You're going to... have health issues, and brain issues, and memory, and everything's going to go down south, basically.
Dr Don: That's why I didn't understand at the time. They just said 'Well, you're just super healthy. You heal really fast.' They had no other explanation for it. Now, I know exactly why. But it had nothing to do with my genetics. It had to do with my environment.
Lisa: Just interrupting the program briefly to let you know that we have a new patron program for the podcast. Now, if you enjoy Pushing the Limits if you get great value out of it, we would love you to come and join our patron membership program. We've been doing this now for five and a half years and we need your help to keep it on here. It's been a public service free for everybody, and we want to keep it that way but to do that, we need like-minded souls who are on this mission with us to help us out. So if you're interested in becoming a patron for Pushing the Limits podcast, then check out everything on patron.lisatamati.com. That's patron.lisatamati.com.
We have two patron levels to choose from. You can do it for as little as 7 dollars a month, New Zealand or 15 dollars a month if you really want to support us. So we are grateful if you do. There are so many membership benefits you're going to get if you join us. Everything from workbooks for all the podcasts, the strength guide for runners, the power to vote on future episodes, webinars that we're going to be holding, all of my documentaries, and much, much more. So check out all the details: patron.lisatamati.com, and thanks very much for joining us.
Dr Don: That's, at the time, we just thought it was all, must have been genetics. But I realised now that it was environment as well. So maybe a genetic component to it as well, but then you take that and put that into this very beautiful, nurturing environment, I'm going to sleep processing in beta what I experienced that day and then my mind basically, at that point, is 'What do we need to work on? Not much. Let's go. Let's start now doing some maintenance.' Because it wants to address the top of item stuff first. What is it needs to be taken care of right now? Right? Those are the threats.
Once it gets the threats processed, then it can then start working on the things that are going to be the more long-term maintenance. So then it'll do that. But if it never gets out of that threat mode, it gets out for very little time. Then, if you're getting 30 minutes of delta sleep at night and I'm getting two hours, it's a no-brainer to figure out why I would heal faster.
Lisa: Absolutely, and this is independent of age and things because you've got all that that comes into it as well. Your whole chemistry changes as you get older and all this. There's other compounding issues as it gets more and more important that you get these pieces of the puzzle right.
Do you think that this is what leads to a lot of disease, cancers, and things like that as well? There's probably not one reason. There's a multitude of reasons, but it's definitely one that we can influence. So it's worth looking at it if you've got trauma in your life. People were saying to me 'Oh my God, you don't look good.' When you start hearing that from your friends, your people coming up to you and going, 'I can feel that you're not right.' People that are sensitive to you and know you very well, and you start hearing that over and over, and you start to think, 'Shit, something's got real. Maybe I need to start looking at this.'
Because it's just taking all your energy your way, isn't it, on so many levels. The restorative side and the ability to function in your life, and your work, and all of that, and that, of course, leads into depressive thoughts and that hyper-vigilant state constantly. That's really tiresome rather than being just chill, relax, enjoying life, and being able to... Like one of the things I love in my life is this podcast because I just get into such a flow state when I'm learning from such brilliant...
Dr Don: You're in alpha.
Lisa: I am. I am on it because this is, 'Oh. That’s how that works.' And I just get into this lovely learning in an alpha state with people because I'm just so excited and curious. This is what I need to be doing more of. And less of the, if you'd see me half an hour ago trying to work out the technology. That’s definitely not an alpha state for me.
Dr Don: That's where they said Albert Einstein lived. Albert Einstein lived in alpha brainwave state. That's why information just float for him because there was no stress. He could then pull information very easily to float into. But if you're in a high beta brainwave state, there's too much activity. It has trouble focusing on anything because it's multiple threats on multiple fronts. So when we have a traumatic event, that's how it's being recorded. If you remember, what we talked about was there's a 400 of a millionth of a second gap in between your subconscious mind seeing the information and it going to your consciousness. So in 400 millionths of a second, your subconscious mind has already started a response into an action even though your conscious mind is not even aware of it yet.
Lisa: Yeah. Exactly what I did with rescuing my partner with the glass falling off the thing. I hadn't reached that logically.
Dr Don: It's funny because that's one of the things that I talked about ,which is sort of, give us all a little bit of grace. Because if you've had a lot of trauma, you're going to respond a certain way. How could you not? If your mind’s filtering into all of that, of course you're going to respond with that kind of a response because your mind is prone to go into that action very, very quickly. So we can give ourselves a little bit of grace in understanding that of course, you're going to do that, right? And not beat ourselves up.
Because you know what I talked about with everybody, there's nothing wrong with anybody. There's nothing wrong with anybody's mind. Everybody's mind is fine except you are experiencing something different than I experienced so your mind kept responding to it, and mine didn't have that. So you had multiple... Think about we have a hundred percent of our energy on our phone when we wake up in the morning, right? Fully powered up. You fire the phone up and eight programs open up, right? And mine has one.
Lisa: Yeah. You're just focusing on what you need to.
Dr Don: Then noon comes, and you're having to plug your phone back in because you're out of energy.
Lisa: That's a perfect analogy. You’re just burning the battery. My all is a hundred windows open in the back of my brain that is just processing all these things and so now, I can start to heal. So having gone through this process with you, like you said, we worked on a number of traumatic experiences, and I went through them in my mind. And then you did certain things, made me follow with my eyes and track here, and my eyes did this, and then, we pulled my attention out in the middle of the story and things. That helped me stay in that alpha state, brainwave state as I probably now understand while I'm still reliving the experience. That's sort of taking the colour out of it so that it's now sort of in a black and white folder. Now, it can still be shared, and it hasn't taken away the sadness of...
Dr Don: Because it is sad that these things happen but that's not the response for an action which is that fear or anger, right? That dysregulation of the nervous system. That's what we want to stop, because that is what is going to affect health, enjoyment of life and everything else.
Lisa: Wow, this is so powerful. Yeah, and it's been very, very beneficial for me and helped me deal. For me, it also unfolded. Because after the four hour period with you, I had audiotapes and things that are meditations to do every day for the next 30 days. What were we doing in that phase of the recovery? What were you targeting in those sort of sessions?
Dr Don: So if you remember what we talked about, we have two memory systems. The explicit memory is what we worked on on that four hours. That's detail, events, and experiences. Once we get the mind processing through that, then we have to work on the same memory animals have, which is that associative repetitive memory. So you've built a series of codes on how to respond to threats, and that has come in over repetition and associations. So the audios are designed to start getting you now to build some new neural pathways, some new ways to respond because your mind won't switch a pattern instantly. It can switch a memory instantly, but a pattern is something that got built over a period of time. So it's like a computer. If I'm coding on my computer, I can't take one key to stop that code. I have to write a new code. Yeah, so what we're doing over the 30 days is writing new code.
Lisa: Helping me make new routines and new habits around new neural pathways, basically.
Dr Don: You don't have that explicit memory interfering with the pathways. Because now, it's not constantly pulling you out, going back into an action call. It's basically now able to look at this information and these codes that got built and say, 'Okay, what's a better way? So do we have a better way of doing it?' Or 'Show me that code. Write that code.' If that code looks safer, then your mind will adopt that new code.
Lisa: This is why, I think for me, there was an initial, there was definitely... Like the nightmares stopped, the intrusive every minute, hour triggering stopped, but the process over the time and the next... And I'm still doing a lot of the things and the meditations. It’s reinforcing new habit building. This is where... Like for people dealing with addictions, this is the path for them as well, isn't it?
Dr Don: Yeah. Because I talked about addiction as a code. I don't believe it's a disease. Your mind has found a resource to stop pains, and your subconscious mind is literal. It doesn't see things as good or bad, or right or wrong. It's literal. 'Did that stop the pain? Let's do that.' Because it's trying to protect you. So if you've now repeated it over and over, not only have you stopped the pain, but you've built an association with a substance that is seen as beneficial.
Lisa: Because your brain sees it as medicine when you're taking, I don't know, cocaine or something. It sees it as essential to your life even though you, on a logical level, know that, ‘This is destroying me and it's a bad thing for me.’ Your subconscious goes, 'No, this is a good thing and I need it right now.'
Dr Don: Because it's in the present, when does it want the pain to stop? Now. So it has no ability to see a future or a past. Your subconscious is in the moment. So if you take cocaine, the logical part of your brain goes, 'Oh, this is going to create problems for me. I'm going to become addicted.' Right? Your subconscious goes, ‘Well, the pain stopped. We don't see that as a bad thing.' I always use the analogy: Why did people jump out of the buildings at 911? They weren't jumping to die. They were jumping to live because when would they die? Now, if they jump, would they die? No. They stopped the death. So even jumping, which logically makes no sense, right? But to the subconscious mind, it was going to stop the pain now.
Lisa: Yeah, and even if it was two seconds in the future that they would die, your brain is going...
Dr Don: It doesn't even know what two seconds are.
Lisa: No. It has no time. Isn't it fascinating that we don't have a time memory or understanding in that part of the brain that runs 95% of the ship?
Dr Don: It's like what Albert Einstein said, ‘There's no such thing as time.’ So it's like an animal. If an animal could communicate and you say, 'What time is it?' That would make no sense to an animal. 'What do you mean? It's now.' 'What time is it now?' 'Now. Exactly.'
Lisa: It's a construct that we've made to...
Dr Don: Just to explain a lot of stuff, right? When something happens.
Lisa: Yeah, and this is quite freeing when you think of it. But it does make a heck of a lot of sense. So people are not being destructive when they become drug addicts or addicted to nicotine, or coffee, or chocolate. They're actually trying to stop the pain that they're experiencing in some other place and fix things now. Even though the logical brain... Because the logical brain is such a tiny... Like this is the last part of our evolution, and it's not as fully...
We can do incredible things with it at 5%. We've made the world that we live in, and we're sitting here on Zoom, and we've got incredible powers. But it's all about the imagination, being able to think into the future, into the past, and to make correlations, and to recognise patterns. That's where all our creativity and everything, or not just creativity, but our ability to analyse and put forth stuff into the world is happening. But in actual, we're still like the animals and the rest of it. We're still running at 95%, and that's where we can run into the problems with these two.
Dr Don: Because you got two systems. You got a very advanced system operating within a very primitive system, and it hasn't integrated. It's still integrating, right? So if there's a survival threat, survival will always override reason and logic, because it's designed to protect you. So there's no reason and logic that will come in if there's a survival threat. It's just going to respond the way it knows, does this Google search, 'What do we know about this threat? How do we know to protect ourselves, and we'll go instantly into survival mode.' Again, there's the reason and logic. Why would you jump out of a building, right? If you applied reason and logic, you wouldn't have jumped, right? People will say, 'Well, but they still jumped.' Yes, because reason and logic didn't even come into the process. It was all about survival.
Lisa: Yeah. When the fire is coming in it was either...
Dr Don: 'Am I going to die out now or I'm going to move and not die now?'
Lisa: Yeah, and we're also prone to movement when we're in agitation and in an agitated state, aren't we? Basically, all of the blood and the muscles saying, 'Run, fight, do something. Take action.'
Dr Don: That's why when people get into depression, it's the absence of those emotions.
Lisa: Yeah, and people feel exhaustion.
Dr Don: Yeah. The mind kept calling for an action using anger, for example, but you can't do the action because it's not happening, so it shuts down to protect you and stops calling for any emotion, and that's depression. So the key to get out of depression is actions. It's to get something happening. So in a lot of people who are depressed, what do I tell them to do? 'Start moving. Start exercising. Get out. Start doing things.' Right?
Lisa: So I run ultras.
Dr Don: Exactly. Perfect example, right?
Lisa: Yeah, because I was. I was dealing with a lot of shit in my life at the time when I started doing ultra-marathons. To run was to quiet the pain and to run was to be able to cope and to have that meditative space in order to work through the stuff that was going on in my life. And I know even in my husband's life, when he went through a difficult time, that's when he started running. So running can be a very powerful therapeutic, because there is a movement, and you're actually burning through the cortisol and the adrenaline that's pouring around in your body. Therefore, sitting still and that sort of things was just not an option for me. I had to move. And it explains what, really. It's calling the movement. Like it was a movement because I couldn't fix the other thing.
Dr Don: That's what they'll tell you to do. To get out of depression is to move. What I say is the way to get out of depression is to get your mind to resolve what it’s been asking for.
Lisa: It's going a little deeper.
Dr Don: Yeah. So it's going down and saying, 'Okay, why has it been getting you angry and now, it shut down from the anger?' Because it's been trying to get you in your situation. 'Don't let Dad die. Don't let this happen.' Right? So because you couldn't do it, it just shuts down. Makes perfect sense but when we get to the resolution that there is no action required, there's no need for the depression anymore. The depression will lift because there's no more call for an action.
Lisa: I can feel that in me, that call. Anytime that anything does still pop up, I sort of acknowledge the feeling and say, 'There is no call for action here. This is in the past. This is a memory.' So I do remind myself that when things do still pop up from time to time now, as opposed to hourly. I go, 'Hey, come back into the now. This is the now. That was the then that's calling for an action. This is why you're doing thing.' Even that understanding, that process now actually helps me in that coping sort of state as well.
Dr Don: And that's why I spend so much time on the education because when you understand that the problem is not as big as we make it, there's nothing wrong with you, right? So people will say, 'Well, I got a chemical imbalance.' I go, 'Why?' 'Well, my brain has a chemical imbalance.' 'Yeah, okay. Why?' Right?
Lisa: You're always going deeper.
Dr Don: They're talking about the symptom. I want to get to the issue, not treat the symptom. So if you come in and said, 'Oh, I have a low serotonin.' So they're just going to say, 'Okay. Well, we're going to put you on 5-HTP to boost your serotonin.' But I say, 'Well, why do you have low serotonin? There's got to be a reason. It's got to be a gut imbalance or there's got to be something going on right within your brain.' Right?
Lisa: Yeah, and this is how the whole of the medical world should operate. Like. 'Let's go back as deep as we can.' It's very difficult because you have to be very investigative in your approach. You have to sort of work out and try to work back where is it coming from. It's much easier just to take an antidepressant in the worst case, or 5-HTP in the more gentler case. Because it is the chemicals, but why is the chemical there or lack of chemicals there?
I can tell if it was my husband, he's training for a hundred miler at the moment, and he's got a full-on job as an officer in the fire brigade, and they have lots of night shifts, and they have very traumatic scenes that they experience on a daily sort of thing. I know when his serotonins are dropping, and I know why they're dropping. For him, time alone in nature, taking some time out, doing some self-care, having some extra sleep, doing those things to try to balance things, getting back to baseline is the level that I can work at as a health optimisation coach. But this sort of program is going even a level deeper, and that's really, really powerful.
Dr Don: Then giving you the tools. So first, we fixed what caused the problem, and we give you the tools to be able to stay present.
Lisa: To stay in there. Yeah, to stay on that nice balance.
Dr Don: And teach your brain what it means to go back. There's where your symbol, and statement, and anchor came in. The idea behind that is to be able to get your mind to make that associative, right? 'Oh, what does that mean when I see that symbol?' Or 'I see that, that means we're safe.' Right? Then it goes back into alpha brainwave mode.
Lisa: I do that one every day. In fact, I deliberately go and search out sunsets now whenever I possibly can, job allowing, and so on. I'm trying to get to see a sunset or sunrise, just reverse it because it was my anchor. It was my symbol, if you'd like. Then instantly, that calms me down, if I'm looking at a sunset going down.
Dr Don: It's an automatic. It's a science. Because when your mind gets... So when I was growing up, my mother, my father, my house was my symbol of safety. So as soon as I would come home, my nervous system would completely go back into regulation because it felt safe. So what we're doing is giving you the tools to teach your mind that when it sees that, hears that, or feels that, that you're safe, and it builds the association. There's what the 30 days of associating that sound, that smell, or that touch, and that symbol with ‘I'm safe.’ Then, it just becomes automatic. You don't even have to think about it. That's why the 30 days are powerful.
Lisa: I think, actually, keep practising that ongoing.
Dr Don: I use it for years. I still do it. Mine is a hawk. I see my hawk all the time. It's unbelievable. He literally buzzes my car two or three times a week. No other bird ever does this, and I see him constantly just coming right in front of my car. So a very powerful symbol for me, but it just is my constant reminder that I'm good. I'm fine. There's nothing I need to be doing. When one of those thoughts come in, you go to your symbol, your mind just goes, 'Oh, I don't need to do anything about that.'
Lisa: What were we doing when I grabbed the risks with my anchor? I think you call that, is it the anchor? So when I see a sunset and I grab my rescue, that was my anchor, what were we doing there? Is it sort of an NLP technique?
Dr Don: Well, it's also activating the parietal lobe in your brain, right? Because that part of your brain recognises touch, and then one part of your brain recognises sound, and another one recognises pictures, the occipital lobe, right? So we're basically giving the whole brain: the occipital lobe, temporal lobe, parietal lobe the same message. 'We're safe.' It gets it in different communications because it communicates differently, right? So when your occipital lobe sees your symbol, with your sunset, that's one part of your brain getting the message, then another lobe in your brain gets the message, and then another lobe gets a message. It's like, 'Oh.' We got it from every corner of the brain.
Lisa: So we must be in a safe, good place.
Dr Don: We must be in a safe place so we wouldn't be feeling this or experiencing this. If you remember, we connected it up to these great events in your life as well.
Lisa: Yeah, yes. Yes, that's right. Then, I also, and I don't know if it's right, but I built in the breathing stuff thing too.
Dr Don: Oh, no. That's perfect too because there's lots of oxygen in there. You can't be stressed out if you've got a lot of oxygen. It's impossible.
Lisa: Yeah, yeah. It just pushes it down. Like that parasympathetic state. Being able to activate that very, very quickly with a couple of the tools and different breathing techniques that I have. I find myself doing that 10 times a day. Just bring me down, or when I'm swapping from one thing to the other, or just to recalibrate my brain almost, or even in training. So we go to the gym. In between the sets, if I'm doing a really hard workout, I'll do physiological size which is just double intakes and exhales. Long exhale is to reset my body because when you go into high-intensity interval training, you're actually putting your body into a state of stress, and that can actually make your cortisol and your blood sugar go up and everything else. So in between the sets, I often do this physiological side. Whether within a couple of seconds, it's like, 'Reset. Okay, go again. Reset. Let's go again.'
At the end of a really hard session I’ll do sort of box breathing exercises to just take my whole nervous system down. Then, I've given that stimulus of the training and then taking the other is if you do... Especially be doing training late at night, and I'm getting off-topic but... And you're doing cardiovascular training, say, at late night, high-intensity running or something that, that can actually stop sleeping because you're in that heightened state of stress.
Dr Don: Yes. You're not safe.
Lisa: Yeah. You're not safe and you need to bring it down and bring that parasympathetic state in. Because at the bottom of it is this autonomic nervous system branch of parasympathetic versus sympathetic state and we want to be more than that sympathetic. I'm always constantly in the sympathetic, sorry, and not the parasympathetic. You've taken me on using this technique to be able to bring me down, basically, very quickly.
Dr Don: Yeah. Because that vagus nerve is going to send a message that we have oxygen. That tells the brain that if there's lots of oxygen, we couldn't possibly be in danger. Because if you're in danger, you'd be running. If you're running, you wouldn't have much oxygen, which would then remind the brain to keep pumping because we're still in danger. That's literally where a panic attack comes in. It's that the mind is looping through something even though there's no threat.
My wife really taught me this is because every once in a while, she’d just go, ‘Huh.’ I go 'What?' 'I just wasn't breathing.' She would literally stop breathing because she was so tense. That made no sense. 'Well, why would you not be breathing?' She’d go, 'I don't know. I just stopped.' Because she was so tense, and her mind was looping. Then all of a sudden, now the oxygen, CO2 level changes, right? Then the brain gets a message that we're running low on oxygen so then the vagus nerve send in a message like, 'Breathe!' But again, that's all interpreted by the brain as threats.
Lisa: Yeah, and if you find yourself doing a lot of sighing or a lot of that type of thing and you've actually stopped breathing, then you need to retrain those breathing systems and ideally, nasal breathing. Because again, there's a lot of good reasons why the nose or going through the nasal passage instead of breathing with the mouth it's very, very beneficial as well. It's an instant thing and when we constantly... Like we're focused on our emails, and we are like 'Oh, the phone call is coming in,' and we just forget to breathe or we overbreathe and we go [imitates hyperventilating].
Dr Don: Hyperventilate, yeah.
Lisa: That just sends body, 'Panic, panic, panic, we're in panic mode,' and off you go into that whole cascade of panic situations. Dr Don, we've gone all over the place today. It's been a brilliant... I love talking to you. It's just so fascinating. It's reminding me again of some of the things that I've got to keep doing that and gives people listening some tools.
But where can people actually come to see you and actually go through the program that I've been through? I highly recommend you do this. If you're dealing with some serious, especially dealing with serious addiction, or trauma, or anything that's really stuffing up your life, you need to go through this program with Dr Don. There are a couple of different options for people. So where can they find you and how best to reach out to you?
Dr Don: You can come to our site which is... We have a website but we also have an easier way to get there which is Gettipp. The program is called Tipps so gettipp.com. And if you come to gettipp.com, then you'll be able to see all the information. You can watch some of the testimonials of people who have been on the site that have gone through the program.
Lisa: Including me.
Dr Don: Including you. Yep, awesome, and that's what we're looking for. Because you may hear one story, and that doesn't resonate with you but then you hear somebody else. These are just people who have experienced what you're experiencing, and everybody has different things in their lifetime. So when you hear somebody else and you go, 'Oh, that's me.' That's why I laugh at this because when I first met my wife, she swore me to secrecy. I could never tell anybody about her childhood and now, everybody knows about her childhood.
Lisa: That's brilliant because it takes the power out of the whole damn thing, and it's helping people.
Dr Don: That's what I said. I always said to her, 'I really believe your story is going to help people.' She was 'No, no. I'll never be able to stand up and talk about it.' Now, she can completely talk about it.
Lisa: She’s completely healed.
Dr Don: Because her system doesn't get activated. Before, if I had said to her, 'Oh, tell this person about what happened to you as a child,' she'd be sobbing. She couldn't even get it out of her mouth because her mind would be looping through. In order to start talking about it, she'd have to go into memory. When she goes into memory, her nervous system would get activated, and she'd go into a fight stage. Who could stop that?
Lisa: You can tell me, just the conversation we've had today, and I've been talking about Dad, and all that traumatic stuff that I went through, not once did I bawl my eyes out today, which I usually would have. Not to say that I'll never cry over Dad again because I probably will, but it will be not being instantly triggered in inappropriate situations. It will be when I want to think about my dad in my time, in my way, and it will be mixed of love and gratitude in the memory rather than the trauma. And that's gold. So Dr Don, thank you. So gettipps.com.
Dr Don: You have to see this. I just lost it. I have a ball. Five balls on my desk, I just throw them.
Lisa: You need Siri. You need Siri. 'Hey Siri, turn the rocks tape on.'
Dr Don: It's just motion activated because I haven't been moving. So even for performance. Because again, we'll be always built on performance more than just trauma. Because I say again, nothing's wrong with you. So the idea is when we get these traumatic events and experiences out of the loop, then your performance can go up. So that's really the key.
Lisa: So high-performing executives, athletes who are wanting to perform at the top of their game and are being drained by whatever, this is a program for them. So the actual name of your institute is The Inspired Performance Institute rather than just The Trauma Institute or something.
Dr Don: So yeah, because what's interfering with you reaching that next level of performance? As you know, as a world-class athlete, the edge between winning and second place is small, but if you get that little edge... That's really what this is all about is to give you that edge so that you can perform at your highest level.
Lisa: Yeah, this is fantastic for athletes. Absolutely. And executives as well who are high-level, high-functioning people who have to be on the ball all the time. This can be really powerful so it's not just draining energy. I know that I've been running on a battery of less than 30% for the last year, for sure. Now, I can start to rebuild my health and it's going to take a little bit of time probably in my... All of that sort of aspects. But now, I'm on the right track, and getting my energy back, and feeling a lot better because this looping isn't happening, and I'm not in that constant state of fight or flight.
Dr Don, much, much gratitude to you for your work, what you've done, and how you've developed this program, for taking me through it. I'm very, very, very grateful. and highly recommend that anyone who was dealing with stuff like this or wants high performance, go and check gettipp.com or theinspiredperformanceinstitute.com is also the full website. Thank you, Dr Don and I hope you'll be home shortly.
Dr Don: I absolutely love it. Loved talking to you so anytime you want me back, I'll be back.
Lisa: Absolutely. Awesome. Thanks, Dr Don.
Dr Don: Thanks.
That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends, and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
We are living through multiple crises. Not only are we going through the COVID-19 pandemic, but there is also a hidden epidemic going on. Over the years, people have become more obese. In 2013, only 34% of our population was within a healthy BMI range, and this statistic is falling exponentially over the years. We need to take action now because obesity is not about how you look — it's about real health consequences.
Dr Katherine Sowden joins us in this episode to talk about women's and public health. She explains how obesity changes our bodies and causes various diseases and cancers. She shares that it’s often not even people’s fault. There’s a range of factors that encourage this epidemic. Exacerbating the socioeconomic and cultural factors is the food industry. Dr Katherine emphasises that we need to start educating ourselves on our health. Only then can we make better choices to prevent these diseases.
If you want to know more about taking preventive measures against cancer and other diseases, this episode is for you.
For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity, or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third-party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of ageing while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘We tax cigarettes, we take alcohol. Why aren't we taxing some of this junk food? It is of no benefit to people whatsoever.’
‘We need to do something and even if it is unpopular. So for example, taxing sugary food and drinks. It's got to be worthwhile.’
‘We can do operations that do amazing things, and really cure people of cancer, and improve their quality of life, but equally it shouldn't be the first option.’
‘But I think we've always got to look at the patient as a whole person. The least invasive cure, the better.’
'The more people we can keep out of the hospital, the better because it means we can deliver quality personalised health care.'
‘The more you can educate yourself, the better. So that when you get that 20 minutes in the public system, you've got the questions to ask, you know what you're going in for.’
‘It's also seen as politically incorrect to discuss obesity. But it's not politically incorrect. That's factual and it's a crisis. We need to stop pussyfooting around it.’
Dr Katherine Sowden is a highly respected gynaecologist and has been the Clinical Lead in Counties Manukau Health since 2014. She is also a Consultant Gynaecologist in Auckland Women's Gynaecology and Ormiston Specialist Centre.
Dr Katherine is a fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. She is currently the departmental lead for non-tertiary gynaecological oncology and focuses on the management of premalignant gynaecological conditions.
She provides a wide range of gynaecology services. You can find out more about her practice in Auckland Women's Gynae and Ormiston Specialists.
You can also reach Katherine by email.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can make better health choices to prevent cancer.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
As the saying goes, trust your gut — and this isn’t only figuratively. One of the most overlooked aspects of health is our digestive system. We tend to ignore and underestimate the symptoms we experience around our gut. But with its link to our brains, our guts play a much more significant role in our overall health. The simple act of eating healthy foods can completely turn your life around.
Kirsty Wirth joins us in this episode to share how reexamining gut health impacted her and her son's life. She talks about the road to recovery, specifically her family undergoing fecal microbial transplant (FMT). Kirsty highlights the importance of in-depth gut health testing, cutting out junk foods, and consuming healthy foods. She further discusses the two types of fermented food and how we can incorporate it into our diet.
If you’re having trouble with your digestive system and want to know which healthy foods to choose, this episode is for you.
For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity, or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third-party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful, third-party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘I have seen how important your gut is and how it can completely change the pathway of your life. It can completely change who you are as a person.’
‘You don't just suddenly wake up one day and you've got cognition issues; that's coming from somewhere.’
‘So the first thing is just test, don't guess... We [can] really find out what is happening in our gut, and we can find out what it is doing to the rest of our body.’
‘If you want to make change, you've got to front up to make the change.’
‘If they don't include fermented foods and they don't include nourishing foods for their gut, they're relying on willpower. No one can get anywhere with willpower.’
‘It's what everyone finds hard and doesn't know, is that you should never rely on willpower. Diets will never work.’
‘DNA is not what we should be focusing on. It's actually the microbes and those fungi and viruses that make up our whole body that actually interacts through that.’
Kirsty Wirth is the founder of Kultured Wellness and an expert in cultures, gut health, and probiotics. Kultured Wellness is a company dedicated to providing knowledge and healthy foods for optimum gut health. As an integrative health coach, Kirsty's area of interest is in how lifestyle, environment, and diet can impact gut health and the immune system.
Drawing on her background and years of research, Kirsty educates people on the root cause behind underlying conditions. Her mission is to spread the word about the benefits of healthy foods, particularly fermented food in nourishing the gut's microbiome.
If you want to learn more about Kultured Wellness, you may visit their website. You can reach out to Kirsty on Instagram and Facebook. You can also send her an email at mailto:info@kulturedwellness.com.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can be inspired to eat healthy foods for their gut health.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
Health optimisation often involves a good diet, sleep, and exercise. But do we know how to implement practices that are compatible with our bodies? For some people, intense exercise can lead to more oxidative stress and inflammation! Not only that, some of us take medication and pills to treat pain and hormones, but are these really helping?
Small actions today can lead to big problems in the future.
Kashif Khan from The DNA Company joins us in this episode to talk about how understanding our DNA can help us make better choices for our health. Diseases can be prevented with healthy habits. But before you try any DNA testing, you should understand the nuances within the genetic industry. With Kashif’s advice, you can learn to choose a provider that can help you take actionable steps.
If you want to know more about the science behind DNA testing for health optimisation, then this episode is for you!
For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity, or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘We didn't go study DNA. There's enough science out there already. We studied people. We said, “Let's start at what's wrong with this person? What are they expressing as a symptom? Let's drill down genetically to see where is the system failing.”’
‘Of all the things we do, female hormone health is where we had the biggest impact. Not because we're the greatest, but because it's the worst experience in current healthcare.’
‘The DNA world looks at things in terms of disease. So you can speak at it that way. But there's so much more to it than that if you know how to interpret it.’
‘We believe coaching is primarily around accountability. So we have coaches we train that understand the reports, that can help.’
‘We're all coming out of the same model, I suppose this reactive healthcare model. Really, we're inventing the future of healthcare.‘
‘That's only then when you have that persistence and the resilience to actually go through with these changes that you're actually going to get new results.’
‘This reactive system that we're living in at the moment and the current model is just bloody bandaids on festering wounds.’
Kashif Khan is the founder and CEO of The DNA Company, a functional genomics company. They help people understand their unique genetic code and how to unlock their physical potential. If you’re looking for ‘DNA testing near me’, their company is the one to call. They ensure actionable advice through a comprehensive genomic profile.
Kashif is also the co-founder and CEO of Younutrients. Their company provides supplement formulations personalised to people’s unique needs. In addition, he is also an investor and serial entrepreneur. He has helped build, scale, and run several businesses across different industries. He has advised early-stage startups and Fortune 500 companies including the Royal Bank of Canada and Cirque du Soleil.
Interested in Kashif’s work? Check out The DNA Company.
You can also reach out to Kashif on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can be inspired to search for ‘DNA testing near me’ and optimise their health.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
.You’ve most likely experienced pain at least once in your life. When you visit a medical doctor for pain relief, they might prescribe you painkillers. Similar to other traditional medical programs, you would find that this is passive. This is because your clinician is trained to treat the pain as a symptom rather than target the underlying cause of it. But fret not. There is a novel neuromodulatory approach that is now being developed by researchers to mitigate chronic pain.
This week, Exsurgo CEO Richard Little joins us on Pushing the Limits to explain how neurofeedback technology can revolutionise how we handle chronic pain. Their device is relatively inexpensive and can drastically improve the quality of life of millions of people worldwide.
If you want to know more about how medical innovations are changing the landscape of healthcare, then this episode is for you!
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity, or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful, third-party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘Our kind of basic mission is to make life easier for clinicians and patients while getting a better result and saving money. If we can do those things, then we've done something fantastic.’
‘If I can make the clinicians' life easier, and the patient's life easier to fit into both of their workflows, their daily life, while getting a good result and saving money, then we have something that would be worth doing.’
'We all know what it's like when you have exercises to do by the doctor or the physio, we don't want to do them, you know, so gamification actually really helps with that.'
‘It'd be easier to give up than it would be to keep going, I'm sure in a lot of the things that you do. It's that passion, and it's a drive, and it's that connection to the patients, once you see it, you can't unsee it.’
‘Make lots of mistakes. Keep trying. You don't start off on that journey. I wasn't sitting on an oil rig one day, and I knew I'm going to build some medical device companies.’
'The patients are too important. I couldn't live with myself if I gave up on this journey because patients are going to suffer.’
‘There's a brilliant team behind all of this, you know, there's so many specialties and so many different things. They're all driven by that same passion to actually help people at the end of the day, and it will affect millions, 10s of millions of people's lives over the next coming years.’
Richard Little is an innovator, entrepreneur, engineer, and roboticist. He is the CEO of Exsurgo, a neurofeedback company. They are developing a cutting-edge device that could revolutionise the way we deal with chronic pain and improve the lives of millions of people worldwide.
He has held different directorships and C-level positions in engineering, military, and medical businesses. One of these is Rex Bionics, where they developed an exoskeleton that could provide mobility to wheelchair-bound patients.
If you want to learn more about Richard and his work in the medical technology space, visit his company website.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn more about the future of pain relief.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
How can we hack the human body to reach its full potential — and beyond? Right now, we can't stop aging. However, we can slow it down by optimising our health to lead long and fulfilling lives. One day, we may even be able to age backwards. Through biohacking, we can use the latest medical research to our body's advantage.
Dave Asprey, the Father of Biohacking and longevity expert, joins us in this episode. Working with renowned doctors and scientists, Dave has created a solution to innovate and hack our systems to push the limits of what the human body can do. He also shares advice on fasting, longevity, and the measures he takes to live a long and healthy life.
If you want to learn more about biohacking to improve your health and well-being, then this episode is for you! You’ll find out what it takes to live a longer and more fulfilling life.
For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity, or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful, third-party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
7 Powerful Quotes
‘Fasting isn't a lack of energy going into the body. Fasting is going without. And the hallmarks of fasting are insulin doesn't go up. And your levels of something called mTOR don't go up.’
'Maybe you're in the middle. In fact, I will tell you right now, 90% of people are in the middle. And it's the angry people who yell at the extreme anti-vax and the extreme vaccine promiscuous side — they're bullies.'
‘You're already stiff-armed into doing all sorts of stuff you don't want to do it. But you don't have to react with anxiety or fear. You can react with intelligence, and logic, and thought.’
‘Medical freedom is one of the most precious rights. That means you have a right to choose what you put into your body and what you don't put in your body from a food perspective, from a supplements perspective, and from a pharmaceutical perspective.’
‘We are cracking the core biology behind aging and our ability to replenish and repair and rejuvenate our systems. So it's your job: age a little bit less quickly, prepare yourself a little bit better. Every year, the technology gets better and better.’
‘People who have enough energy and don't have medical problems as they age tend to be much happier because they've learned the skill of being happy. It turns out we can teach our younger people that, and the way we've always done that is through coming-of-age rituals.’
‘The more successful you are, the more the crazy 5% sociopaths and psychopaths yell and scream and complain online.’
Dave Asprey is an entrepreneur, author, host of Bulletproof Radio, and founder of Bulletproof. He is widely known as the Father of Biohacking. Over the last 20 years, Dave has worked with numerous medical and scientific experts to uncover and develop innovative methods to push the potentials of the human body. Through this, he has created the Bulletproof Diet and innovated Bulletproof Coffee and other wellness products.
Dave has also written extensively on his experiences with biohacking technologies and research. He’s a four-time New York Times best-selling author. His mission is to empower individuals worldwide on the techniques of biohacking to lead long and fulfilling lives.
You can reach Dave on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You can also check out his website and Bulletproof to know more about him and his work.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your connections, so they can find out how biohacking can help them lead long and fulfilling lives.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
We regularly buy our food from markets without a second thought. But to take charge of our health and nutrition, we have to ask: are these foods really good for us?
From produce to sauces, our food can be chock-full of harmful chemicals without us knowing about it. Even if you are a more conscious shopper, the industry labels ingredients to take on deceptively natural-sounding names. Fresh produce can also be laden with pesticides.
So, how can we be more discerning about our food?
Celebrity nutritionist Cyndi O’Meara joins us in this episode to discuss how we can watch out for harmful foods. She shares how food production and supply have changed drastically over the years. Her advice? Check the label. She also recommends being a nutrition activist by taking matters into your own hands and doing your own research.
If you want to know more about eating real food for wellness, then this episode is for you!
For our epigenetics health programme, optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition, and mental performance to your specific genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training and coaching.
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com. We can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity, or want to take your performance to the next level and learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books, Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, dramatically decreases over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting-edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost NAD+ levels in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity, rigorously tested by an independent, third-party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful, third-party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop Now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting-edge science) combats the effects of ageing and is designed to boost NAD+ levels. The NMN capsules are manufactured in an ISO 9001-certified facility.
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
'I grow my own food. Because I think we're going to get to a point where people are either going to have to do that or put up with what the food industry is doing.'
‘You're an activist because you are choosing to buy from a farmer in your area.’
‘We didn't want to eat BHA and BHT. We don't want to eat MSG. We got smart. We would look on the label, (sic) it would have that, we'd say no.’
‘It's about reading the ingredients and making sure there's no extracts and acids and flavours and colours and sweeteners.’
‘Our body has the ability to fight. But if we do not feed it the right ingredients, if we do not give it the lifestyle it needs… and if we don't give it sunshine, if we don't give it love and connection, if we don't breathe properly, and sleep, then we are going to be in trouble.’
‘You look at a lot of the clinical studies that have been funded by the industry that's promoting it, and you have to ask yourself, ‘How independent was theirs?’
‘Once you have your philosophy, you don't fall for everything.’
Cyndi O’Meara is a nutritionist, best-selling author, international speaker and the founder of Changing Habits, an innovative and impactful whole foods company. Cyndi also built The Nutrition Academy, an online course to teach nutrition based on vitalistic philosophies, anthropology, environment, and lifestyle.
Her passion for nutrition also led to her groundbreaking book, Changing Habits Changing Lives, and her most recent work, Lab to Table. She is also an in-demand keynote speaker, especially after her What’s With Wheat? TEDx Talk. Cyndi and her businesses are multi-awarded in Australia.
Interested in Cyndi’s work? Check out Changing Habits and The Nutrition Academy.
You can also reach her on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends, so they can learn how to improve their nutrition.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential, with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.
Lisa Tamati: Hi, everyone, welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Today I have another fantastic guest with you. Cyndi O'Meara from Australia, from the Sunshine Coast, joins me today. Now she is a celebrity nutritionist. She's an author, she's an all around amazing lady. I can't believe that she's actually 61, because she looks like in her 30s. She's just an incredible bundle of energy and an incredible mind of information. So I do hope you enjoy this episode that gets really into the weeds on nutrition, on E numbers, on the chemicals and foods, on toxins, on things that you really really need to know about. So I hope you enjoy this episode.
Before we head over to the show, just want to let you know about our Boost Camp. Now, this is not boot camp, this is Boost Camp. This is an eight week long online webinar series that Neil and I are running from the first of September, and we would love you to come and join us. This program is all about you all about upgrading your life, all about being the best version of yourself that you can be. It's about ageing like a winner. It's about longevity, it's about upregulating your brain and your mind and fine-tuning yourself to being more resilient. It's about health fundamentals. It's about understanding your biology, understanding what types of exercise to do and when and how, understanding your own body types, understanding more about your genetics, this is a really full on program that we'll be delivering live. And you can join us then we would love you to do that.
So what I want you to do is to head over to peakwellness.co.nz/boostcamp. Not boot camp, Boost Camp. B-O-O-S-T-C-A-M-P. I'll repeat that: peakwellness.co.nz/boostcamp, and join us on this program. If you didn't catch that URL, write to me, I'll send it to you immediately. If you want to upregulate your life, have more resilience, be tougher, mentally stronger, have more focus, have more control over your life, your biology, then do join us where we really, really stoked to have you come on board.
Also, just a reminder, too: we have our Patron program for the podcast now, is open. This is a way for you to support this podcast. We've been going now for five and a half years, and every week I find incredible guests for you to listen to and learn from. This is like having a university in your pocket basically, with the best professors, with the best doctors, with the best scientists, with the most elite athletes, real high performance people. It takes an awful lot of work, I can tell you, and it's been five and a half years and I really need a bit of help to keep this on air. So we would really appreciate your support. You can join us for the price of a cup of coffee a month that really, these micro commitments that people do really help the show stay on the air. So if you like what we're about, if you like our mission, if you want to support this mission on helping people take control of their health, and be more in control of their life, then please head on to patron, P-A-T-R-O-N dot lisatamati.com. Right, now over to this exciting show with Cyndi O’Meara.
Hi everyone and welcome to Pushing the Limits. I am super excited to have you with me again this week for another exciting installment of the show. I have lovely Cyndi O'Meara with me, who is sitting on the Sunshine Coast in Australia. Welcome to the show.
Cyndi O’Meara: Thank you.
Lisa: Fantastic to have you there. Cyndi is a celebrity nutritionist, author, runs a company called Changing Habits in Australia, which is all about educating people, from what I understand, educating people around nutrition and helping them cut through the mess of the noise that's out there and get them into the right mindset and the right things to be thinking about. So today we're going to do a bit of a deep dive into the world of nutrition. So Cyndi, before we get underway with some topics, can you just give the listeners who don't know you a little bit of background about you and what you do?
Cyndi: Sure. So I graduated, well, I started my nutrition education in 1980. But I actually didn't start as a nutritionist. I was doing pre-med at the University of Colorado and one of the subjects that I did was anthropology. I did a year of anthropology and cultural anthropology and I thought, ‘Wow, it was food that was really important in the survival of humans and so that we could have babies and keep going,’ and I was really intrigued by it and I thought, well I'll become a nutritionist.
So I came back to Australia and I went to Deakin University and finished my Bachelor of Science majoring in nutrition to go do dietetics and at the end I went, ‘This is nothing like what I was taught in anthropology’. So in anthropology, I was taught hunter-gatherer, agriculturalists, paleo, herders — real food. There was no margarine, there was no low fat, there was no processed or ultra-processed foods. There was none of this, and this is what the dietitians were talking about.
They were looking at more mechanistically nutrition, as opposed to what I was taught with culture and anthropology was to look at it very bio-holistically. So I decided, well, I couldn't become a dietitian. So I went back to university to RMIT. I did two years of human anatomy. That was, I kept cadavers for two years, I did all the -ology: the pathology, embryology, histology, parasitology, everything.
At the end of that, six years at uni, I went, ‘I actually know what the human body needs, it needs real food, it needs what I learned in my first year of university.’ I could have stopped going to university, and done what I thought. I started to just do consultations, and I only did real foods. I didn't, I got them off the SAD diet, which is the standard Australian diet. We could call it the SNZD diet — too the standard New Zealand diet. The standard American diet and the standard UK diet — margarine, breakfast cereals, low-fat milk, bread, cheese, those plastic fantastic foods and gotten them onto real food. And the results were remarkable. So that was in the 80s.
We now jump to 2021, 40 years on. What I am seeing is a vastly different population, and vastly different problems that we didn't see in the 80s. Now, it's almost like we need to do very individualized nutrition, because so many people have food sensitivities, food allergies, they have the antecedents of their life. So they may have been exposed to a chemical, they may have eaten ultra-processed foods and so they've wrecked their guts or, whatever is happening in—
Lisa: Yep, these products or something like that.
Cyndi: Yeah, I only had to change their diet from the SAD diet to real food diet, and we’d get results. I can't do that anymore. So the thing is it we then have to dive deep to find out what is the root cause of what's happening, and what is the problem? I'm not just talking on an individual basis, here, I'm talking on a global basis. 78% of the US population has a gut issue. 50, I think it's 48 to 50% of their kids have chronic disease, one or more. In Australia, it's 38 to 40 with chronic disease.
Now, when I went to school in the 60s, 2% of the whole population of Australia had a chronic disease. Now we have our kids at 38 and 40%. And New Zealand won't be any different, they will be about the same as Australia. If you get to 60, at the age of 60, which I am, I'm 61 this year—
Lisa: Wow, you look amazing! You’ve done something right.
Cyndi: Well, this is what I do, I eat real food, and I look the best I can. So at the age of 60, the chances of you having chronic disease, one or more, is 80%. So I'm in the 20% percentile. Because I don't do what the rest of the population do. I am not a statistic because I don't do what they're doing. If you want to be a statistic, you do what everybody else is doing. If you don't want to be a statistic, you do something completely different.
That's what I learned very early on. Don't go with what everybody else is doing. Do something different. I would believe that that's you, Lisa. I have to tell you this, Lisa. We've already had the opposite interview where I interviewed you and what you did with your mum and your book. I went through a bit of a crisis in our family and that kept, what you said kept playing in my ear.
Lisa: Really?
Cyndi: What you did. You think you're doing something that should be working and your mum just stayed on that level, and then she shot up? Yeah, that's what was happening with us. So I'm well thank you for your incredible resilience, your persistence, everything you did.
Lisa: Someone to tell, someone to tell.
Cyndi: Yeah, and I guess that's what I've always been like, but you, your words were brilliant. Thank you.
Lisa: And we all need people to come along and confirm that we're on the right track sometimes because we are getting bombarded with ‘This isn't possible’. I mean, I've just been working with a young man today. He's had a mess of brain injury and the doctors have told him, ‘You'll never talk, you’ll never walk, you’ll never do anything again’. He's already eight months into his rehabilitation, he's talking, he's starting to walk, and I'm helping him with different things now, and he will make a full comeback. I have no doubt about it, because he has a family that's behind him, he has a mum who thinks outside the box, and is willing to do whatever it takes, and those are the people that will get the results.
This is why these sort of conversations are so, so crucial to have so that we start to understand, and you have the expertise in the area that I'm sort of, know a little bit about but I'm not a complete expert in nutrition side of it. So I'm really keen to dive in. And if I can help you with your family situation, please do reach out. I’d love to help
Cyndi: We might just have a little conversation at the end of it.
Lisa: Yes, we will. I actually was going to take you through the epigenetics, I've just remembered now, and go through that path with you. But I totally agree with you. What I'm seeing in our population now is, when I was at school in the 70s, it was obesity was a rare thing. You had the odd kid who was overweight. Now you look around, and it's like the opposite is having any kid who's not overweight, and people seem to see that this is normal.
If our kids are already like this, and they're already developing things like prediabetes and diabetes before they even reach puberty, in some cases, this is like a mess of warning alarms. For me what's coming down the road as far as a health crisis and the cost that this is going to be on, you know, and human suffering, but also on the society. We have to start standing up and saying, ‘Hey, what we're doing isn't working guys, and we need to make some changes’.
The real food is definitely we we need to be starting from and the processed foods, what is it that's in processed foods that is causing so much trouble? Because isn't like a spaghetti bolognese sauce that I buy from Domino's or something, why is it not the same as what grandma made when she got tomatoes out of the garden? Let's start there, and the weird sort of stuff, so to speak.
Cyndi: So in 1998, I wrote a book called Changing Habits, Changing Lives, and it was about the food industry and what food they were suggesting you had for breakfast, I'd say so breakfast cereal, and then I would explain how they make it, what's put into it, what is fortification? So I'd go through that, and then I'd give an example of what we could have for breakfast. Since that time, I have updated that book five times, because the food industry is not getting better as far as our health goes, but they're getting incredibly tricky, with additives and their chemicals to make you think you're eating food.
So it might smell like food, look like food, taste like food, but it is, no way is it food. Let me give you an example of natural vanilla flavoring. This is just one ingredient. So what they've done is that they've figured out if they genetically modify a bacteria, and they put in the smell of the vanilla bean, so the smell of the vanilla bean gene into that bacteria, put it on recycled plastic, as a substrate as it's eating, it eats it, it will make natural vanilla flavoring.
Lisa: Oh my God. So it’s coals. Really?
Cyndi: Really.
Lisa: That's a new one on a completely left field. That's just one little wee, soddy flavoring.
Cyndi: One ingredient: citric acid, you think it comes from citrus. They genetically modify a mold, put it on a substrate, the substrate could be animal-based, it could be plant based, it could be plastic-based. They're getting really, they're figuring out that there are bacteria that will eat plastic and produce something. So it produces like citric acid. A lot of our additives now are what we call synthetic biology. So they're genetically modifying microbes in order to make a vitamin, amino acid, or something that's going to go into your supplements or into your food supply or your medicine.
Lisa: Wow, that's frightening. That's frightening what you just told me there and I wasn't aware that that, to that degree, the genetic modifying of our food is so because you know, you stay away from genetic modified crops. This is about as far as my knowledge goes in that direction, to be honest. So you're saying that the additives and the preservatives and the stuff that they're using in there is actually, they're doing this genetic stuff?
Cyndi: Yeah, so they figured out that microbes, you know, nobody's gonna care about microbes, and don't like animals or rats or anything like that. No one's gonna care about microbes. They figured that if they genetically modify them, they can manipulate them to do anything. In the 1990s, a Japanese company manipulated, I think it was tryptophan. They use the genetic modification of a microbe and produce tryptophan, put it in tablets, sent it out into the market, and I think it was 150 people died and 1,500 people were injured permanently as a result of this tryptophan.
They figured out that the bug produced a toxin to protect itself from the tryptophan or something like that. So it was pulled from the market, they soon quickly figured out what was causing it. But it was all covered up, nobody talked about it. I think in the 90s, that kind of calmed that genetic modification down, not as many people were wanting to do it, but now it's at full surge.
Not everything is being made, of course, by genetic modification. Some things are being made with just making a bunch of chemicals and putting them together. So if I was to give you a strawberry flavoring, strawberry flavoring can have 48 chemicals in it. That strawberry flavoring and if one item is natural in that 48 chemicals, it's natural strawberry flavoring, not artificials.
Lisa: You’re kidding me. So they're just playing with these names and just putting in something natural in order to make it natural.
Cyndi: They are absolute masters at it and people don't realize. I'm just telling you one thing that is happening. So if we take it to the genetic modification of foods such as soy and canola and sugar beet and cottonseed, and things like that. If we go there, these are called either Bt, so Bt-Corn, which is a toxin that the corn produces. So when the bug eats it's a pesticide. When the bug eats it, its stomach explodes. That's still in the corn, when you eat it.
Lisa: Oh my god.
Cyndi: What we're finding is that while it won't explode our stomach, what it does is it explodes the, it destroys the gut cells, which is one cell thick. So it starts to erode them, and you start to get gaps in your gut and allow protein, chemicals, and things into your blood, which you don't want. You don't want that.
So then the other ones are Roundup Ready. So Roundup being ain chemical that has glyphosate it. So Roundup Ready soya, Roundup Ready sugar beet. But now they're starting to realize that roundup is not doing what it should be doing on the pest; or not, it's a pesticide but it's more for grass and weeds and things like that. They're finding that that's not working anymore. Now they're producing 2,4-D ready crops, Dicamba ready crops. So Dicamba came into the spotlight I think was last year or the year before when there was a Dicamba ready crop that was sprayed, and all the spray floated over to a I think it was a peach or pear farmer's lands, and killed all of these trees. He actually sued, I think it was Bayer or Monsanto and I'm pretty sure he's won that case.
Lisa: That’s a big giant to take on.
Cyndi: Exactly. This is what is happening to our food supply. We, the Australian and New Zealand Food Standards. So Food Standards Australia, New Zealand have been requested by Queensland agriculture, for Australia wide; I don't know if they'll do it in New Zealand, but an Australia-wide food irradiation process on all fresh fruits and vegetables sold in the grocery stores.
Now when you do that, what it does, is instead of you just cleaning your lettuce and, and doing a bit of a sterilization on it, which is what they do, whether it's organic or not, they have to sterilize it to get rid of any bacteria. So what they're now doing is they want to radiate it because it just doesn't get rid of the surface bugs, it gets rid of the bugs that are inside the food as well. But we need those soil based bugs, of course, they help us with our microbiome. So they're all of a sudden starting to say, we want to radiate everything.
Now not only will they kill every bug in our food, what they will also do is that they will sterilize the seed. You know, when on your compost tea, three tomatoes and your pumpkin and and then you've got this pumpkin growing out of your compost, even a tomato growing out of your compost or cucumber. That won't happen.
Lisa: Oh my god, we're not going to have seed come, and who's going to control the seed like that?
Cyndi: I do my own, I grow my own food. Because I think we're going to get to a point where people are either gonna have to do that or put up with what the food industry is doing.
Lisa: And destroy their health.
Cyndi: Yeah, and it's all ultra processed foods. So the whole vegan movement even, I can read you the ingredients of what is called ‘just egg’, and it's a bunch of chemicals. It's an ultra-processed food and it is not saving the planet, in actual fact is the worst thing for the planet.
Lisa: Jeez, oh my god, this is, I’m all terrified now.
Cyndi: I don't want to terrify you. What I want to do is make you aware of what's happening.
Lisa: Oh, absolutely, yeah.
Cyndi: Go to your local farmer, you go to your local farmers market, you support these small time farmers instead of Woolies or Kohl's or whatever you've got over there. Say, Breyer, I forget what's in New Zealand.
Lisa: New World.
Cyndi: All you do is that you change the way you buy your foods, or where you buy your foods from, because then you become an activist by yourself. Don't care about anybody else. You're an activist, because you are choosing to buy from a farmer in your area. And I'm sure you already have some incredible region farmers in your area.
Lisa: You think they are, they're not, how do you know that they're not using the same practices and the soils? And so, I mean—
Cyndi: You talk to them, they're passionate. Go to the farmers’ market, and you say, ‘Do you grow your food’? ‘Yes, I do’. Do you use any chemicals? ‘No’. What kind of farming do you do? ‘I want to actually do something called regenerative farming. Have you ever heard of that? Or I do organic farming or I do biodynamic farming, and this is how I do it’.
They’re so passionate, they want to tell you. So what I do is, I grow a lot. But when I'm not growing some foods, I will go to my farmers markets, and I know my farmers now in the farmers markets. I've done the hard work. And I have something called the Nutrition Academy. And it's a bunch of people that come and do a year with me, and they become the people that do the research in their area. People come to them and say, well, which farmer should I go to at this market or that farmers market.
I want to create a groundswell of activists who say, we're not eating genetically modified foods, or anything made with a genetically modified bug, or anything that has something ultra processed in it. We're not prepared to buy from the grocery stores, because they can't guarantee me where this is coming from. So I will find a farmers market and I’ll support, there are so many young people that want to be farmers, all we have to do as individual say, I'll buy a box from you, or a community supported agricultural box, I’ll buy a box from you every week, whatever you're growing, I’ll buy it.
Then to supplement you go to your local, organic shop, your local fruit and veggie shop, ask them the questions. It's about us becoming inquisitive. If that's what you do this, please say you're inquisitive, you went there telling me my mum's gonna be like that for the rest of my life. Surely there's something out there. What is happening, medicine’s not working, they're telling me nothing's going to happen. So I'm going to go and enquire with other people. That's what I asked people to do with their food supply, is to enquire.
Lisa: It’s not obvious! I've looked locally, and I've just found one recently who's delivering certain times, a couple of times a week, and I have to get through, and you're like, ‘Lisa’s found somebody now’. But it's always out of the way, and it's extra work, and it's, you're busy and you whatever, and there isn't a lot of farmers’ markets in our area. There isn't, and I've been looking into a couple of farms here, and then they find out oh actually they’re not organic, organic, even though they, you know, say that, but their seeds aren't in there, you know, there's certain practices. So there's thinks little problems, especially when you live in a rural area, and there's not necessarily a bigger place where these people can congregate. But I'm downloading a little bit more, time to dig deeper. Time, to really get into it.
Cyndi: Yeah, it will be somebody in your area, because this farm is everywhere, that they would love farming, and they would love to be able to sell their produce. But if we take it a step by step, and we do it like this, so let's say you're on the SAD diet, the Standard Australian New Zealand diet, let's just say you're on that. If you go from that SAD diet, and you just go to the fruit and veggie, meats, dairy section of your grocery store. That's a really good start. That's a great start.
Once that's in your life, then you go well, I want a better quality fruit and veg and meat maybe, or dairy. Because that many dairy farms and lamb and everything in New Zealand. So you go well, I want to better quality this, where can I find somebody in my area. So it might be six months after you've gone from the SAD diet to the, at least eating fruits, vegetables, meats, and making your own food that you go, I want better quality.
Then you go and seek out maybe a butcher that's doing the right thing or a fruit stand that's doing the right thing. So don't think you have to jump immediately. That's why I wrote ‘check it out’. Realize that it’s like, let's start with breakfast, then let's do salt, then let's do dairy, then let's do grains, then let's do nuts, then let's do seeds. Let's do chocolate, let's do— so it's a 52-week, one thing you change a week. Or if it takes you longer than a week to change them, that's fine, 53 weeks. Imagine when you start, where you will be in one year.
Lisa: Absolutely, it's the same with exercise is the same with everything, isn’t it. Just taking it, you don't have to jump right in at the big change, just start with one change, awaken it. That just makes so much sense in just putting in a bit more effort to find things and do things and maybe start growing, I started growing my own vegetables without having much success.
Cyndi: Greens in New Zealand grow incredibly. So it's about—
Lisa: For most people.
Cyndi: Invest in greens, because they’re like a weed.
Lisa: Yes, yeah, we've got some of those going. It's just making the time to do that, and to prioritize those, because I think I've definitely been aware of the whole processed food. So you stay away from the obvious things, but you've just taken it to another level as far as the genetically modified stuff. That's completely new to me, so that's really important. But starting where you're at, and improving it every week, and just taking on a little bit, because I'm a big fan of that in everything in life, because everything can be overwhelming.
If you get overwhelmed, then you tend to do nothing. It's better to be walking for five minutes a day than to be doing no minutes a day. It's better to be getting good fruits and veggies, and later on you work on the other pieces, if this makes a whole lot of sense. Is there a program through, that you have as an educational online content type of thing as well?
Cyndi: It's in my book. So we renamed Changing Habits, Changing Lives to Lab to Table, because that's what it is, at the moment, it's about—
Lisa: Wow, Lab to Table. So I'll put the links and stuff.
Cyndi: Stop being a lab rat and start making better choices for your table. And that's on Audible as well. So people can listen to it and just listen to one chapter and go ‘Right, that's what I'm going to do’. They can jump, they can go anywhere they want. They can start with chocolate, if they really want to. I just say well, where can I buy good quality chocolate that's got no emulsifiers? So an emulsifier is in most chocolate and emulsifiers kill the bacteria that makes the layer that protects you from the outside world, in your gut.
Even that little thing that you do by looking at a chocolate that doesn't have lecithin, it's called soy lecithin or sunflower lecithin, or something that's an emulsifier, even if it doesn't have that, so I teach you how to find a good quality chocolate, if that's where you want to start.
Lisa: Chocolate’s important, so that's a great place to start.
Cyndi: Find the white salt out and getting some good salt that’s not refined, hasn't got anticaking agents in it, doesn't have free flowing agent in it. They don't, you don't realize it because nobody reads their salt packet. They don't read the ingredients. So I just tell you, this is what's on it, go to your pantry, have a look. If you don't believe me, go to the pantry, have a look at what they put in. They'll have potassium iodide in there as well because that's the chemical form of iodine but you want natural iodide.
So an actual iodine is seaweed and New Zealand's got heaps of seaweed, you know. What I do is I make a salt with seaweed in it and it's called seaweed salt, and that's on the Changing Habits website and we do have a Changing Habits New Zealand website, so you can purchase it and and get it delivered to you not via Australia but New Zealand so I think it's changinghabits—
Lisa: .co.nz? Yeah, usually. Okay, we'll get, I'll get my team to—
Cyndi: But mine is .com.au, and we have one of my graduates who runs that and does all the deliveries and everything from New Zealand. So that was one of my graduates from 12 months’ education with me. So these people come out knowing exactly how to help people. It might be a trip to the farmers market. It might be coming into your pantry and going through your pantry. I can go into someone's pantry and I can pull 10 things out. Let's say one is barbecue sauce, another one’s tomato sauce, another one’s hot chili sauce. In other words, I'll pull out all the sauces, and all the sauces will have tomato as the base. All of the sauces will have a citric or an acidity regulator, so citric acid. All of the sauces will have a flavor or sweetener.
So the flavor is what makes the difference. It's not how you used to make your chili sauces or tomato sauces or barbecue sauces. This is an industry that has a base and then they just put a different flavor in, the sweetener might be a little bit different, the acidity regulator might be a citric acid, or it could be citric acid or it could be something else. And basically, you are looking at eating the same thing, just with a different flavor and a different texture.
Lisa: I would have thought, I didn't know that citric acid, for example, was a bad thing, because I thought that came, because you're not educated in this area specifically. You don't know that some of the things that sounds like potassium iodide, that sounds like a natural thing. And so being able to decode that, and I bet they do that partly differently, too, so that you actually think it's something natural—
Cyndi: In the industry, it's called clean labeling. So people like me, got smart. We didn't want to eat BHA and BHT. We don't want to eat MSG. We got smart. We would look on the label, it would have that, we'd say no. So what they've done is they've renamed these. So BHA and BHT is called rosemary extract.
Lisa: Really? So you're just, you just have never sure, unless you really spend some time educating yourself.
Cyndi: Exactly. I read all the labels. So what they've done, rosemary extract is yes, it started with rosemary. But they pulled out one chemical out of the rosemary bark and rosemary leaf. With that, they do all sorts of processes to it, and it ends up as an antioxidant, a synthetic antioxidant, my way of thinking. But because it's an extract from rosemary, they call it rosemary extract, and you go ‘Oh, it's just rosemary extract’. Yeast extract, you think oh it’s yeast extract, but it's MSG. So what they've done is rename, every single natural flavoring is the same as artificial flavoring, they just added one little natural chemical, and well purchase strategies that they put in there.
You might read turmeric, or curcumin, everyone does, or curcumin. 75% of all curcumin is made in the laboratory. It's not extracted from turmeric. The most of the population don't know what's happening. And that's why I go, just stop buying packaged foods. And you do have to make things from scratch, or you have to buy it with somebody that you trust. So it's about reading the ingredients and making sure there's no extracts and acids and flavors and colors and sweeteners. If it said tomato, onion, chili, sugar, salt, I'd be happy. I don't have a problem with sugar. I have a problem with all the other crap.
You’re blaming sugar. I don't mean lots of sugar. I'd like to see Rapadura sugar, but they're blaming sugar on what I believe is a vegetable oil problem, and all these additives.
Lisa: Just interrupting the program briefly to let you know that we have a new patron program for the podcast. Now, if you enjoy pushing the limits, if you get great value out of it, we would love you to come and join our Patreon membership program. We've been doing this now for five and a half years and we need your help to keep it on air. It's been a public service free for everybody. And we want to keep it that way. But to do that we need like-minded souls who are on this mission with us to help us out. So if you're interested in becoming a patron for Pushing the Limits podcast, then check out everything on patron.lisatamati.com. That's P-A-T-R-O-N dot lisatamati.com. We have two patron levels to choose from, you can do it for as little as $7 a month, New Zealand or $15 a month if you really want to support us. So we are grateful if you do, there are so many membership benefits you're going to get if you join us, everything from workbooks for all the podcasts, the strings guide for runners, the power to vote on future episodes, webinars that we’re going to be holding, all of my documentaries, and much much more. So check out all the details, patron.lisatamati.com, and thanks very much for joining us.
Cyndi: One of the things that we do know about this genetic modification that's happening at the moment in the microbes is that there's a disease out there called Morgellons disease, you can look it up. At first the doctors just thought that everybody was a little bit weird and psychotic in a way, that there's sort of mental illness. But what would happen is like, on the, a cut would come here and you'd get a pink and an orange and a yellow and a red fiber that would just come out of your mouth or it might happen here or wherever you gotta cut that would be these fibers, colorful fibers.
So the doctors all said, ‘Oh, you just been rubbing on carpet. You just, you've got Munchausen this disease,’ or whatever, whatever that, or you’re hypochondriac, you know, but what they're really beginning to realize is that some of these microbes, now these are microbes that make fibers. They're associating these microbes with this disease that has gotten into our microbiome. And as a result, they make them. That's their job. So I kind of figure if I'm going to eat natural vanilla, if that bug that makes natural vanilla flavor, does that mean, like, who's gonna smell like vanilla? You know, like, I just wonder. And I make a joke about it but in actual fact, it's, it's no joke. No, they are like nature. And so I choose not to support them in any way.
Lisa: No. And that takes a huge commitment. But that's, that's where we need to be heading towards and like you say, one step at a time.
Cyndi: Just one step at a time. And if in a year, you're doing that, or even two years, it's better than for the next 30 years or three decades, you've not changed and you have more Morgellons disease, or you're scared of a virus called COVID. It's actually called SARS-COVID 2. COVID-19 is the disease. Our body has the ability to fight. But if we do not feed it the right ingredients, if we do not give it the lifestyle it needs, such as exercises, you do running and yoga, and if we don't give it sunshine, if we don't give it love and connection, if we don't breathe properly, and sleep, then we are going to be in trouble. And we will become vulnerable to SARS-COVID 2 or whatever else comes along. Don't be scared of an invisible thing.
Lisa: Yeah, and this isn't mean, this is, you know, those are all my wheelhouse. And that's what I'm always preaching on every week is one of these health fundamentals that if we, in relation to the slide, as far as you know, if we were just focusing on building our immune system, and eating healthier, and doing more exercise, and things would actually be at least better off, even if we did manage to, you know, unfortunately contract it. And we don't want, listen, this whole journey that I've been on the last five years and listening to, you know, I've had hundreds of doctors, scientists, experts, like yourself, sharing their corner of the world's knowledge.
I have absolutely no faith anymore in the authorities, or to be honest, I have no faith in the standards of medical care, I have no faith. Even though you know, like, clinical evidence, can be manipulated, and pushed in a certain way to make something look like it's good and it's safe. Then you look at a lot of the clinical studies that have been funded by the industry that's promoting it, and you have to ask yourself, how independent was theirs? There's just, there's just holes all over the place. And what I think you and I are, you know, with our different expertise as and trying to do is to get people just to question. Just to not take whatever is being thrown at you propaganda wise or whatever it is to actually question, do the research yourself, start to look at it.
It is confusing and overwhelming at times. But when you take control and when you're faced with the big situations, like I have been in my life, unfortunately few times now, not just with mom's story. I've had to face and work things out. If it was up to the doctors, I would have no uterus. I'm about to go through IVF. I'm 52 years old. They told me four years ago, I will die if I do not have a hysterectomy because I had fibroids. Now why did I have fibroids probably because I was on the pill for 30 years. But that's another story. I refused to have my uterus taken out because I believe there was another way. It took me a year to work it out. But I found a way. I found another doctor who worked out exactly which of the fibroids it was a 10 minute operation that was gone. That was a year of suffering bleeding, anemia, blood transfusions every week, but I refused to have the hysterectomy because I wanted to preserve the chance to have a child. And now I'm 52 and I'm able to go through and I don't have it, I didn't die and I still got my uterus. I've only shared that story.
These are the things we have to question. We just work things out and we're just given a white little pill and it's gonna make things better and go away. And I'm sorry, it's not how biology works. It takes time and it takes effort and it takes grind and it takes research. But if you're willing to do that, you're gonna end up looking, you know, like you do at 61. Not like most people who have autoimmune diseases, who have diabetes, who have heart disease, who have all of the horrible things that happened to us.
If we can prevent some people going down that path, then you know, our job's worth doing. If we can help one person who's listening to this just to open their eyes, and you certainly opened my eyes today. I thought I knew a lot, but I know I don't know enough. I don't know enough. This is why I spend like hours every day studying. Every day is a study day, every day is a learning day, every day is a day where I get to connect with amazing people like you that can share another piece of insight that I'm like, ‘Wow, that's terrifying. But okay, let's do something about it’. Sorry I’ve gone on my slip ups.
Cyndi: You did brilliantly, because this is what's happening is there will be people like you that are proactive in your health. Then there'll be people who don't want to change. They'll go get their uterus out, they'll take that pill, they'll never eat the right foods. That's okay, we can’t help them. But there is a group in the middle that are inquiring and questioning and saying there's got to be a better way. I just don't know where it is, how do I find it. So they're the people that I hope to get to, because people like you are proactive, you're already doing it, you don't need me. But it's the people in the middle that are going ‘I know there's a better way, I know I can do this, but I don't know where to go and I can't find it’.
Then they get this aha. And from that, aha, they change their ways from the SAD diet to a different diet. And once they start to feel better, then they go and they start exercising, or they may exercise first and then decide on their food. Then there's this unbelievable effect that happens. Then they become vocal with their family and friends. That's what we want, is that we need them out there being vocal. It's all right, there will be people that don't want to change, and I don't want to even change them. That's just not my market. It's not my people. But I am here for the people who go, ‘Oh, I want to know more. How do I learn more?’
That's why I guess Changing Habits is really more education. Even though we do programs and protocols, and we've got food, my main thing is to educate you is to get you on a program or protocol, and then go, now that you've done that we feeling better, what are the things that you need to learn in order for you to progress as opposed to degress. If you think that you can come on a program or program with me, and go back to your old ways, and still feel amazing, you're delusional, you cannot go back. You have to keep going. So my thing is, if you're coming on that journey with me, please be prepared to be on this and to make major changes in your life that are sustainable, and for the rest of your life.
It's not the one big thing we do once a year that makes the difference. It's those little things that we do every single day, like the five minutes of walking, the banana instead of the chocolate bar, or better quality chocolate instead of a chocolate bar because they’re all shit.
Lisa: Yeah. We gotta find some good chocolate.
Cyndi: You've done a terrible job of making chocolate. You’ve bastardize the whole thing.
Lisa: Oh, no.
Cyndi: Yes. So this is what I want to achieve and the more people that are awoken, the less will have chronic disease, and the less will be vulnerable to whatever comes along. So we know just by the statistics that have happened in the last 16 months, that the people that are vulnerable to SARS-COVID 2 are those with chronic disease. People like you people like me, we're not even, there's not even a death rate amongst us. It just doesn't happen. But it does with people with chronic disease, and it's not the age group, it's your health. And yet they're putting us into age groups because that statistics what happens at age—
Lisa: You get all these diseases, because you've been doing all the stuff for so long and there is genetic components to it and pieces of the puzzle. I partly because I studied genetics, and I know that I actually have a, I'm missing one of the genes for respiratory protection. So I'm actually in a higher risk category, but I can know that and like that I can take my vitamin D’s and my magnesium, my things. Whatever’s going to help me be healthier and then be armed. I mean, my house is full of biohacking, gadgets, machines, things are back standing behind me. I'm ready for battle. Because I know that I can still go down because I have a genetic predisposition to certain things. However, you know, like I was an asmathic as a kid. Severe asthmatic, in and out of hospital all my childhood.
But because I now have my inflammation in my body under control, I don't have asthma anymore. We didn't know that when I was a child, what was causing it. We cut out dairy but that was about it. My parents didn't know what else, things like gluten that we talked about back then and we lived next door to an orchard that was spraying everything everywhere. So goodness knows, but now I don't have a problem with asthma. Now is that because I've changed my diet, my lifestyle and all that sort of thing? Yeah, probably because I am missing that gene completely. So I have no sort of respiratory protection. So I am more prone to that. There's different aspects that we need to be aware of.
One of the biggest, I think, things that, something that I'm big on is stress management, because stress is definitely going to, and this is something that I've been with personally, because I'm so driven and mission orientated. It's very hard not to have a high level of stress when you're operating. So anything that I can do to lower my stress levels, while still operating at a really high performance level, I’m into. That's the breath work. That's the meditation. That's the getting the sunshine that's having my little breaks, it's having my social time, all of those things that I've had to learn to prioritize along the way as well. Yeah, but again, I'm getting off topic. Oh, I've just lost your—
Cyndi: I'm using my shop in the background. You're saying the right thing. We do know, and you've already mentioned, and that's epigenetics. So what is happening above the gene that turns the gene on or off? There's nutrigenomics? Yeah. What is the food that turns a gene on and off? There's also metabologenomics, which is, what are the metabolites are made by your microbiome, which you are 90% genetically microbiome? What are the metabolites that are being made by the microbiome that are turning my genes off? What is the- like in nutrigenomics? I love it, because we know that when we go into a state of ketosis, that we're not only changing the metabolism of the brain and what energy the body uses, but we're actually affecting genes being turned on and off from glutamate together.
So these are the things that we are affecting as a result of just manipulating food, that's natural dynamics. Now, when manipulate what's happening in our body, with as far as the microbiome, if you go for a walk in the woods, and you come against some spore based bacteria, so such as bacillus, though you will breathe it in, you will touch it because you touched a tree, or a rock, or you've dug down into the dirt for some reason, or whatever, you will get this and it has the ability to increase your good bacteria in your microbiome. It can decrease the bad bacteria. This is going out into nature, we've shown this.
If you go gardening in a really good soil, you pick up a certain soil based bacteria that actually improves your serotonin and will give you a feeling of calm and helps in mental illness, there’s psychobiotics out there that we know that certain ones improve serotonin, some improved dopamine, others GABA others noradrenaline. So we have this thing called metabologenomics now, where it switches it, you're not going down the excitatory path of good mind, but you’re going down the calming path of GABA just by manipulating your microbes. And that is nature, breathing as you know, both you and I love our breathwork. Sunshine does it.
So we are giving our evolutionary body the ingredients it needs to be the best. When you do not do this and you stay in a city. You never get out into nature, you don't see the sunshine, you've got screen on. You've lost those ingredients that the body has had cues for for 400,000 plus years. We're not an modern body we're still evolutionary.
Lisa: Our DNA is old.
Cyndi: We’ll never survive on the lifestyle that this modern world is giving us. We can still live in a modern world, don't get me wrong. But we have to let the body know that it can have these other ingredients. So hiking, you know like it's one of my favorite things to do is put a backpack on and go hiking for five or six days. Or nobody sees me no WiFi. And if that's not your bag, go out for the day. Go into a park. If you're in Auckland, you know go to what's beautiful for Cornwall Park. Pet the cows and the sheep. Just go breathe that beautiful old trees in.
Lisa: This is just so basic, isn't it? You know I lost my dad recently and people know the story a little bit. But he was 81 years old. My dad was unfortunately a smoker and that's what brought him in. I could never stop him smoking and that's what ended up being his demise but he was every day all day in the garden, out in the sunshine working physically hard, and he was 81 years old. Apart from what happened to him, which was an aneurysm of the stomach. So he had arthroscopic sclerosis from smoking, but he was powerful, strong, he was exhausted, at the end of the day, he would sleep fine, he had a natural rhythm to his life: get up, work hard, eat probably too much. And not always the best things, smoke way too much. But he had this natural rhythm and he worked all day. He was in the garden all day, and his hands were always dirty, and his feet always planted on the ground. And I really think that's why he got to 81 despite having smoked for 55 years, which is a disaster, obviously.
He probably would have carried on for another, 20 or 30 years, if he hadn't had that unfortunate thing, because he lived in this natural rhythm. He was strong, powerful and fit, despite all of the stuff that he was doing wrong, but just that natural rhythm. I saw this, and I was like, wow. We are artificially stuck indoors, stuck sitting, stuck in front of screens, we need to make time to go out, have that sunshine, get that vitamin D. This is science now, like a lot of the stuff that ancient traditions were telling us to do. Everyone’s that's all woowoo and eerie theory, and there's no proof. Now science is starting to bring this proof out. That's really exciting for me, because then we start to see that these guys were right, there is acupressure pressure points and there is negative and positive ionization.
There is all of these things that people have known for centuries, and, you know, millennia sometimes, and our old DNA just cannot survive if we are only in this artificial environment, not going to do well, we're going to be going backwards in our longevity, when we actually should be going forward. We've gone forward up until now, because we've had incredible surgeries and people know about germs and we've done some brilliant things. But if we can combine that knowledge of nature in our ancient DNA, and anthropology and all of that sort of stuff, and then combine it with the knowledge that we have today, there's the power. Because I truly think that within the next 20 years, we're going to be seeing people living much longer lives, like I don't think that you are going to retire anytime soon, like your average 60 year old would have done 20 years ago, now that's lifting up, right. Then by the time you are ready to retire, it will probably be 150. You know, because that's what's coming at us, the change that's coming is just phenomenal. If we can keep ourselves well enough, in the meantime, to benefit from all this knowledge that's coming down the line.
Cyndi: Yeah, and the longevity is important. But the wellness is also important, as you said, because most people been 15 years of their life, and that's the last 15 years of their life, in a chronic condition or with some disability of some sort. So if we can change that, by what we're doing. We've seen ancient cultures. And it has shown that these ancient cultures, as long as they got past the age of five, they could live to 100 110 120, the body is able to do that. It's just that back in those days, the problem was pregnancy right through to the age of five. But once you got past that, the ability to get to 100 was here.
We are now past that point. We can get most people past the age of five. Although, in chronic condition. That's what's scary is that they're going to have that chronic condition. And they're going to be beholden to the drug companies and beholden to the medical profession for the rest of their lives. I don't have a problem with the medical profession and the medications that they use, because they are life saving at times. But what's happened is that mechanism, which is you have a heart problem, go to your cardiologist, let's not look at your gut or you're leaving your son or anything like that. Let's just check out your heart. Oh, you've got this take that drug, you know.
So that mechanism has taken over from the vitalism which is ‘Hey, let's check your whole lifestyle out. Let's see what you're doing what you're eating, your son, your connections, everything like that. Let's start changing them before we need to go down the route of mechanism’. Vitalism is prevention. But where mechanism is needed is when, like, let's just say you've been in a car accident, you've broken a leg, get to the hospital, you don't get them asking you about your lifestyle. Fix your leg. So they're both important. It's just that mechanism has taken over from this very natural, holistic vitalistic way of living. If we go back to that, then the need for emergency care is going to get less and less or chronic diseases. We’ll have acute problems that we might need another.
This is where I'd love to see the narrative go at the moment and I'm watching your prime minister, as well as my prime minister. They haven’t said a thing about this. All they're doing is social distance, lockdowns, masks that don't work, the vaccine, that's the narrative. What happened, what, 15 months ago, just imagine this, that both our prime ministers said, right, we're shutting down McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, all foods that have got crap in it, we're stopping the genetic modification of any food coming into our country, because you're lucky you don't grow genetically modified foods. Stop all of that, we're going to give you the time to go out and exercise and to give you money to go out and do this and get sunshine and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If they've done that, can you imagine the state of health in New Zealand and Australia at the moment? It would be incredible.
Lisa. That would not be appropriate. You will be pissing off a lot of big companies. And this is what you know, people need to understand, like we tend to think, and like, you know, don't get me wrong, I have a lot of fantastic doctors and things and scientists and things that I work with, who I love, and we need doctors and so on. But the narrative is that they have all of the answers and that they are the only people that have the answers. That isn't necessarily the truth. There are big powers at play. I'm going to sound like a conspiracy theorist when I say that, and that's a word that people use in order to label you and discredit you.
But let's look at what is actually going on. Like in this case with the vaccine, I don't want to go into whether we should do it or shouldn't do it. But do you understand the forces behind this? The money that's involved in this? If I go to a used car salesman, he's gonna sell me that car and tell me the best things of it because he's got a vested interest in it. The pharmaceutical companies have a vested interest in promoting their products. And this is not to say whether that's right or wrong, make your you know, your own decisions. I'm doing certainly doing my research, I certainly have my own belief system. But I know that if I talk too much about what I think, then I'm gonna get taken off here for starters, because censorship is real. Then the second thing is that there is big powerful forces at play here. It's not even like our government sitting there and deciding to do evil things. It's just the power and the mechanism behind it, and the way institutions are set up and the way it's all set up. That is leading to some really, really scary things happening out there without going into the weeds on it too much.
Cyndi: When you say conspiracy theorists, it's just you live in a different paradigm. So your paradigm is about questioning. It's about being inquisitive. It's about, you know, that food and sunshine and vitamin D, and all of those things are important for your health. Whereas what we've been taught for the last, I don't know, 30 40 years on television advertising is this. If you're not feeling well take a pill, keep marching on, don't stay at home, you can do this. Life's too short, let's do this. So that's been what people have been taught. Now they're saying the exact opposite. They're going ‘If you're not well stay home’. Which one do we go with?
I think, when you're in the paradigm of empowerment, as opposed to the paradigm of non-empowerment, which is, my belief is what's happening at the moment is that most people feel very unempowered and they're scared of a virus that’s invisible, and they're listening to the government rather than going, ‘Hang on. Something's a bit fishy here. If Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine have proven to work. Why do we make 7 billion people with a vaccine? Why does somebody who has 0.005% chance of dying from Coronavirus which is our young people? Why? Why is this experimental vaccine being pushed on them?’
When you live in the paradigm of questioning as opposed to the paradigm of trusting. Trust is important at times and hope and faith and all of those things. But if you are putting your faith into what is happening out there at the moment, I really feel there's going to be some regrets. They're already saying, like in Europe at the moment, I think I saw the death toll from the vaccine alone is 12 to 16,000. I just saw it last night.
Lisa: And that’s not reported correctly, of course.
Cyndi: No, and they say that’s 1% of what's really happening. In America, it's around 12. Australia, it's... what’s the number in Australia was it like, four or five hundred. But that's the death, that's not hospitalizations. That's not anything like that.
Lisa: And that's not the long term situation. We don't even know the autoimmune or anything.
Cyndi: It's a completely experimental thing. I don't want to be part of that experiment, just to be part of the food industry's experiment or some drug industry experiment. I'm going to choose and be empowered enquire decide my fate. And if I've done the wrong thing, then that's my fault. I'm not going to blame anybody else. That's my fault that I have made this decision.
Lisa: I'm trying to get Robert Malone on. He's on the podcast, I have to send you a link to an interview with Rob Malone in Britain, Weinstein. And another guy, Steve Kirsch, I think his name was. And it's all around the whole ivermectin, reboxetine. This guy's the creator of mRNA. vaccines, like he knows, he was the dude who created the technology, and he's going ‘Don’t do it’. You know? So? This is a guy who advises the FDA, who is telling the FDA that this spike protein is alive, it's biologically active, and so on, and so forth. I mean, all I can say people is, please do your homework, I'm going to tell you which way you know, just do your homework. And I've seen the censorship that's going on.
Cyndi: You can't see things unless you are directly linked with them. So you're going out doing your homework, and they're all being censored. If there's medical doctors, scientists that are going ‘Hang on, something's happening here’. Even the Vice President of Pfizer, the ex-vice president of Pfizer, is questioning what is happening? In an interview with Dell Bigtree that’s worth listening to. And he's just going, I loved working with Pfizer, this is what we do. But what's happening now, I'm really concerned about and he just goes through the whole thing as it unfolded for him as an ex Vice President, and a wise scientist.
Lisa: These are not people you wanna ignore.
Cyndi: We have to question everything. Let's question our food supply. That's where I guess we started was, it's really important that you realize that those who control food, control the people, and if you want to be in control of yourself, you need to be the controller of where your food is coming from. Be very particular about who's growing your food, where it's coming from, is there terminated state technology in the food that you're consuming? Are you consuming genetically modified grown products and genetically modified, like synthetic biology products? So once you're aware of it, you can never unknow this. And then I'm very aware of it, and then you start to go. ‘I'm not going to be part of that experiment’.
Morgellons is a perfect example. Perfect example. What happens when that natural vanilla flavoring microbe comes out with a citric acid? So it made me become more acidic? I don't know. I don't know. And they don't know. They don’t know either. We have to become strong with our microbiome and so that our microbiome can resist these bacteria. And I think that that's our only hope. Being 10% human and 90% microbe, you have to protect your microbes, or safety assessment on all chemicals, all food additives are only done on the human cells, not on the microbes.
Now that safety assessment started in 1997, we know better, we should be changing safety assessment of chemicals. Glyphosate is a really good example. One, this one is a really good example. It's a painted antibiotic, if it's in your food supply, if it's if you're breathing it in, if you're using it in any way and there are 95 registered products in New Zealand, 596 registered products in Australia. So if you're using one of them with glyphosate, you need to dispose of it. What I would do is I would put it into a plastic bottle, I put the lid on it and I get rid of it some way that it could not be punctured. It's plastic. It's gonna be there for 1000s and 1000s of years.
Lisa: That was selling in their local hobby stores, everywhere. People are still using Roundup in their own gardens and have no idea what it's doing to our microbiome. In our food supply, you know, it's right throughout. It's that's really frightening because sometimes you can't even not have glyphosate. I had Dr. David Minkoff on the show, and he said, he's been testing every one of his patients for the last 20 years. If they have glyphosate poisoning, he's yet to find somebody who isn't hasn't, you know, that's pretty horrific. Their vitamin D statistics are going down and he believes his hypothesis is that glyphosate is one of the reasons that we're not processing our vitamin D or converting our vitamin D properly anymore, and that that's why that's going down quite strongly as well. So we don't know exactly.
Cyndi: Mental illnesses increasing because the bugs that it's killing—
Lisa: Creating the serotonin in their gut.
Cyndi: They create the precursors, like it's just, and folic acid, you notice that folic acid in 2009, was it nine, yeah 2009, was now been fortified in our breakfast cereals and our flowers because we were lacking in folic acid. Well, we've been using a lot since the 70s. But in food since the 90s. And then in the desiccation process, which New Zealand does, I have done the research on that. So the desiccation process means that they're anything like sweet potato, potato, any anything that's leafy, like grains, or legumes that have been grown in New Zealand can have a desiccation process done to it, which is Roundup, glyphosate. So it kills all the riffraff so that harvesting is easier. But then it goes into our food, and then we eat it. Like you said, you've got a doctor that he has tested everybody, and it's just like—
Lisa: Yeah, it's everywhere. You know, we're all poisoned with this stuff. And so there's lots. Yeah. So very well, couldn't we, we could, we certainly need to get together on a private basis here. But I don't want to, I want to be respectful of your time. Thank you so much for the work that you're doing. Being a part of this movement, we're part of the same force, we've got different areas of expertise and you've taught me an awful lot today. I'm just like, ‘Well, a new direction to go and oh, my God, I'm going to be studying even more’.
Cyndi: Just read my book, you'll be fine.
Lisa: Exactly. I will be reading your book. So tell us again, the name of the book, where to get it, where to get your website. So you know, all the sort of stuff that we need to know
Cyndi: Lab to Table is the book. There are two websites, it's Changing Habits. So it's either.co.nz or .com.au that I use. But I also have my Academy, so my 12 month education course, which is the thenutrition.academy. If you just go to that, or just look up the Nutrition Academy and make sure my name is there as well, send me an email, you will come to that and you'll see the education that we're doing. We do have an August intake and their August intake. It's like I saw what the girls put up. And like normally, it's about $5,000 to do the 12 month course, an early bird special on the intake is 3300 Australian dollars.
If you've got American dollars or pounds, you're right, you've got a cheaper than the Australian dollar fee even at the moment. But this will help you go through the process of understanding an anthropological process and vitalistic process. Then with that lens, understanding food. Once you have your philosophy, you don't fall for everything. You'll understand carnivore, vegan, paleo, keto, and where they stand in our history and which one is best for you. Instead of going, ‘Oh, this celebrity is doing vegan, I should be doing vegan, it's going to save the planet’, you will actually understand the real narrative behind the vegan movement, which I have to tell you is dangerous. But it is vegetarian: okay. Vegan: not. You’ll learn all of that stuff and that's just in one module of 12 modules. So I love my Nutrition Academy. I love my students. I love teaching them. It's just my greatest love. And like you said, I don't know what you see. Being that new, educating people I'll do probably right into my 70s and then I might find out from my grandbabies.
Lisa: Yeah, you’ll probably do even longer than that. Cyndi, you've been wonderful. I really respect you. I think you're amazing. I'm so glad that our mutual friend introduced us Thanksgiving. Epic. We'll just keep this momentum going. I think I have lots more to learn from you and I can't wait to go and grab that book. Thank you very much for your time today Cyndi.
That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to rate review and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
Are you having a hard time achieving good health? Do you find that no matter what you try, you can’t seem to hit your fitness goals? It’s not really your fault — wellness is hard to achieve when the food industry sells unhealthy food. Fortunately, there’s a way out.
In this episode, Prof Grant Schofield shares how we can optimise our metabolic health in the modern environment. He discusses the advantages of being metabolically flexible, especially for athletes. We also talk about how sugar addiction and chronic stress can lead to severe physical and mental consequences. Likewise, we delve into the importance of making research more understandable for people.
If you want to improve your health and achieve a state of healthy metabolic balance, then this episode is for you!
For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity, or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘The thing is, with addictions, of course, is that people go because everyone is not addicted to it, doesn't mean it's not a thing.’
‘Sugar is definitely one of those things that is one of the hardest addictions I think, not that I've been addicted to anything else but it's a bloody hard addiction to get rid of and stay on top of.’
‘We're fighting a war here, and we've got kids that are already diabetic and before they're even teenagers, and this is a coming huge disaster for the healthcare system.’
‘We've got a metabolic crisis with obesity and diabetes, but guess what? The most important metabolic organ is your brain.’
'Now I understand the need for health fundamentals like sleep, hygiene, and movement, and exercise, and sunshine, and the right diet, because diet is a huge piece of the puzzle because your gut and your brain are connected.'
‘We weren't designed for long-term stress. We're designed for acute fight or flight.’
‘Let's treat people as if they have got a brain in the head. Just because they don't know the jargon. You can explain the jargon.’
Prof Grant Schofield is a Professor of Public Health at Auckland University of Technology and the director of the university's Human Potential Centre (HPC). His research and teaching interests include wellbeing and chronic disease prevention. Prof Schofield is committed to unlocking people's peak performance through consulting. His motto: 'be the best you can be'.
Grant has been interested in human health and performance ever since he started his career. He first took up psychology, went into sport and exercise psychology, then into public health. Prof Schofield has a diverse background and has an interest in biology, medicine, public health, and productivity management. He covers various health topics in his blog and book.
If you want to connect with Prof Grant, you can follow him on Facebook.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn how to optimise their health.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.
Lisa Tamati: Well, hi everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. This week I have another wonderful professor with me who is going to share some insights and the latest research and I'm really, really excited for this interview. I have Professor Grant Schofield, who is the Professor of Public Health at Auckland University of Technology. He's also the director of the University's Human Potential Center, located at Millennium Campus up in Auckland. His interests lie with dealing with chronic disease and well being and prevention around degenerative diseases, obesity, metabolic disorders. He’s a very, very interesting man, he's written a number of books along with his team. I think you're going to really enjoy this conversation. We're pretty frank and upfront about our beliefs, and they’re very much aligned so I really enjoyed this talk with Professor Grant Schofield.
Before we head over to the show, just a reminder to check out our patron program, www.patron.lisatamati.com, and I'd also love you to check out our flagship epigenetics program. Our epigenetics is all about understanding your own genes, and how to optimize them for your best health. So looking at areas from your food, to your exercise to the what times of the day to do things, your chronobiology, that's called looking at your mood and behavior, your what parts of the brain you use most dominantly, and this is a very powerful program that has changed really, hundreds of lives. We've now used it for a number of years in the corporate space, as well as in the athletic space, as well as with people dealing with different health issues. So if you want to find out more, go to lisatamati.com and hit the work with us button and you'll see our Peak Epigenetics program.
We've also got out Running Hot Coaching. Don't forget that, www.runninghotcoaching.com is the website to go for our online run training system. It's all personalized, customized to you to your next big goal, you get video analysis, a consult with me all in the basic package and plan for your next event, including everything from your strength to your mobility workouts, as well as your run sessions and advice around eating and mindset. So check that out at runninghotcoaching.com. Right, over to Professor Grant Schofield at the Millennium Center in Auckland.
Well, hi, everyone, and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Today, I have a superstar. I have a guest that I'm really, really excited about speaking to because this is a very learned gentleman and an elite athlete and someone who I greatly admire. I have Professor Grant Schofield to guest. Welcome to the show. I’m glad to have you, Grant!
Prof Grant Schofield: Hey, Lisa. Yeah, thanks for having me. And, yeah, I've been following you from a distance for years. And you know, just enjoying your achievements love, and it's so great to have you on the show.
Lisa: And likewise in reverse. So thank you very much. It's a real honor. So today we, I reckon we just gonna dive into some of the stuff that you've been researching and what's on your mind at the moment, because you've got so many areas that I could go down, you know, looking at high fat diets and obesity and diabetes and prevention. Then we can look at the weight paper that you've just recently released, which I've, I just studied and went, ‘Wow, that was all about glutamate and toxicity and all that’. Well, that's new, that was all new to me. So which direction and firstly, give us a bit of an introduction to you in your background and your sporting career and all of that sort of stuff.
Grant: Yeah. So, like, I'd always, something that always interests me in my life is things that I was sort of good at, and I was only good at it because I like doing them was, not so much school, but science and biology. I just liked it. I just like learning about that stuff. I was right from the very start of school and this is just something that continued to happen. I also like doing sports. I was just like one of those kids who is into the sports and I was okay. It was like, every New Zealand kid plays rugby. I wasn't that great, but I played it, you know, I've got on the 15 rugby and all this sort of stuff and that sort of thing. And the school I said also had rowing as a sport, which Yeah, and they did a performance level. So it was to win the national championships. And they so, the crews I was in, trained hard. And there was high-performance aspects, as long as they were in hindsight of nutrition and psychology and training and the broad range of things that good teenage athletes get involved with.
Then of course, they don't finish as when you finish the school, and I sort of found myself, thought I’ll go to uni. My dad was an engineer and he thought I should go to, I wanted to go to do physical education. That was the main thing I was interested in, and my family sort of pulled me out of it and told me I should have gone to engineering. I lasted a week in there. It obviously wasn't for me. But I ended up in a degree studying physiology and psychology, just a science degree because that's what I found interesting. And then I went from, not really been that interested all of sudden getting these A-pluses. I didn't think I was brainy. But it was just, you know, I was just used to go to lectures, and not really take notes, and just listen and ask questions, and it was really interesting. But because I wasn't that mature, there was never a point in my life early on where I was like, Grant Schofield is now capable of getting a decent job where someone's going to employ him, and he's going to make some difference to the world. That wasn't a thing, right?
Lisa: Yeah.
Grant: So I couldn't finish this one degree and go and get a job because I wasn't capable of doing any work. I didn't think I could at the time. But that's the reality in hindsight, right? So. Of course, this is the early 90s. And this sport of triathlon was coming on the scene where I live in New Zealand, there was these great personalities like Erin Baker, another woman, Erin Christie, another one, Rick Wells, and, just to a young person, and then I ended up, you know, going out training with quite large, and a lot of these people, and I just got into the sport. The thing is about endurance, especially longer, it’s as you know, what, you need to be sort of mentally tough, the pain’s a lot softer than something like rowing or, or, you know, measuring 3,000 meters running or, you know, 400-800 meter swimming, these are sports with a piano actually does fall hard on you. And so that sort of softer pain of the—
Lisa: Softer, longer.
Grant: Longer.
Lisa: There's all the pains that come with it, yeah.
Grant: But it's more of a, it's more of a thinking person sport, right, because you get to work through that. Whereas, you know, in a 400-meter is something that you don't get to work through anything. It's just falling on you, the cut score is coming in. And so I really love that stuff. And so I just did more and more of I just want to do nothing but that. The mindset of the endurance ethic that just wants to do more and more and more. Luckily, I sort of carried on with my studies and then started my academic career. And then I became a psychologist, I'm actually quite useless at psychology because, mainly because I want to give people the answer. And of course, you know, good psychological counseling is about asking open-ended questions, reflective listening, and waiting for the client to come up with a solution, which is absolutely hopeless. As my wife would tell you—
Lisa: You’re an action orientated guy, like no, there is the solution here.
Grant: Yeah. This is why this is the problem for us. It's this sort that out. By then, by the early 2000s, when it really just dawned on us that our kids didn't look like we did when we were kids.
Lisa: Yeah.
Grant: You can look. I actually was reflecting on the other day, I looked at my photo of Twizel Primary School, Year One in 1974. And, yeah, by modern standards, people will be wondering if those kids are properly fed, why the teachers are so lean. And you compare that with a modern day Year One primary school class, or later, and it's a different world we lived in.
So that was the early 2000s, that world had unfolded, right? So didn't, wasn't the same.
Lisa: It’s scary.
Grant: And as fit as I used to be, they weren't the same shape they used to be and we wondered why. And so that was really the field that welcomed me, which was that topic of nutrition.
Lisa: Wow. So that’s where you got into, yeah.
Grant: Yeah, yeah, just didn't mean to. And then, you know, all of a sudden, I guess my research career’s followed my curiosity around the world. So when you're, when you've got young kids, you're interested in young kids. When you've got teenagers, youngsters, young teenagers, When I was racing, elite, high performance, triathlons, we're interested in that. And thankfully, being an academic, it allows you to, especially in my field, allows you the freedom to roam around those and understand those different things. So I've sort of had a, maybe it's a short concentration span, but effectively just a curiosity to keep rolling my research career and practice.
Lisa: It's really good that you can do that with an academic career sort of go go like this and still stay—
Grant: You can’t go off into sort of, you know, rocket propulsion or something, but, you know, yeah, as long as I stick it to the main things, which are being sort of fitness, nutrition, sleep, well being, then those sort of four things combined, have really been my wheelhouse. But in different, the settings, and the context seems to often change. And then you just, you'll do some work and you'll discover what you think an answer is, or not an answer is, it's a dead end or it's actually got places to go, then you're sort of done with it, and you're on to the next sort of variation of something.
So that's sort of been my life. So the latter stuff is really, we've done a lot of work on low-carb and keto diets, fasting, written quite a few books on that.
Lisa: Yeah, What the Fat? and—
Grant: And yeah, yeah, and so that's been really interesting for me, you know, for, for reversing things like diabetes at one end of the spectrum, sort of net, sort of metabolic dysregulation, through to the other end of a high performance.
I'm an athlete, so I coach still, you know, being able to triple their ability to burn free fatty acids at a given intensity and really have a pretty much inexhaustible fuel supply. Before that, they would, you know, really run out of glycogen and struggle through the enjoyment and performance of an event. So—
Lisa: Let's start with that one, just if I may interrupt you there, because it's, you know, something that's fascinated me. When I was, you know, active career, I'd never become fat-adapted as an athlete. Your take is that, should endurance athletes be always fat-adapted? Or is it a genetic thing some people are good at, and some people are less so? What is your take on it now, like, given the knowledge that you have and the experience?
Grant: So I think that the normal human condition, if you wander up to a Paleolithic human before we started farming grains and wheat and stuff, that sort of hunter gatherers that they would have enjoyed this metabolic flexibility to use fat as a primary fuel source when are resting and moving around low intensities, and then as they got higher and higher intensity, then they would have supplemented that fat burning with extra energy produced from burning glucose in the body. But that doesn't exist. So commonly, and so we're just in the normal human state that lets you burn fat in some circumstances, and carbs and fat in other circumstance.
But if you went down to the local Westfield shopping mall and went to the food hall, and you you bought all those people up to my lab and put them on our metabolic card and measured there, because you can measure both breath by breath gas analysis and understand whether they've been in primarily fat or carbohydrate or whatever mix of. So we do that sort of graded exercise tissue stop at risk, just breathing into the tube. The machine’s analyzing fat and carb burning, and as you increase your intensity, like running speed or power on the bike, then you just see this greater change.
Now, your average person off the street in the food hall doesn't burn fat, even at rest. So they’re metabolically inflexible. Yep. And then the question is, can you train that? And can you train that even on high performance athletes? I think the answer is yes, and I'll give you a good example. There's a young fellow I trained, Matt Kurt and what I mean, saying this. I've trained him for a few years now. So he came from a CrossFit background. He was a fit young man. Yeah, he would be eating mostly carbs, actually.
Lisa: Yeah, we were all told back in the day.
Grant: Yeah, totally. So he wanted me to help him prepare for an Ironman triathlon. And so I started training him and say, on an April one year so over in New Zealand winter, didn't really mention diet, because we couldn't seem to get to that but we sort of got on the on the idea that he had to go bike riding, and what running would look like, and it was learning the sports. And by December, he did his first triathlon, which was a 70.3, sort of half Ironman, with a view to going through the Ironman in New Zealand three months later and beginning of March, and he did pretty well actually, like it came fourth overall in the amateurs, so he is talented young man, and he’s a swimmer. He could hit a bike, he could run a bit. But I knew he was a cub and I was like, I need to put you in my lab and we need to measure your fuel burning on that.
So in early December, we got them in there and his peak fat oxidation was about half a gram, a minute, at about 165 watts in the box. So it's not very good power, output is not going to be very fast. And he's only getting because a gram of fat has about nine calories, he’s spending half of one of those a minute over 60 minutes. He’s got about 400 to 500 calories an hour available from fat, and you know, he's going to be racing at 1200 calories an hour.
Lisa: Yeah.
Grant: So over several hours, yeah. He's simply is going to run into all sorts of trouble, because he's got this deficit of 800 calories an hour, he needs to find from glucose. He's got probably 2000 calories that he's got in his muscles and liver. He can consume another couple of 100 by eating gels and stuff, or bananas or something. So he's woefully short. And so it means he can just make a half, I mean, over four hours. We probably have eight or nine hours, he's going to grovel home. He’s going to be a really bad mess. And that's what you see. It's always frustrated me. I got things like Ironman Triathlon, they sort of, 8-15 hour events, or 17 hour events for people.
And I think the saddest thing for me is, first of all this, two thirds of the fittest still mimics the general population, which is overweight.
Lisa: Yeah.
Grant: And virtually all of them run out of glucose or glycogen and their body, sometimes during the bike or shortly into the run. And so the whole marathon experience for them is a very unpleasant affair.
They don't like doing it, they finally make it, it's been a real drain on, and they've had so much support from their friends and family over that preparation period, and it was all avoidable. So with Matt, within a mile, we're like, what this is going to happen with you, Matt. So we're stuck on a strict keto diet for three weeks, his training over that period was fairly low intensity, we didn’t really go for any intensity up until after the new year period. And then just sit them on to Iron Man training, and that includes his long run and his long bike which he did weekly, and I've been doing them fasted. Yeah, so with just water. People find that a little bit extreme but his intensity is really low. We'd go out and do you know, like a six hour bike in the end that with no food, and he’d be fine.
Lisa: And that’s the thing, you're adapted.
Grant: You get adapted. And so going back into the lab just before Iron Man, and he’d improved his maximum fat oxidation from half a gram a minute at 165 watts or something, to 1.1 grams a minute at 260 watts.
Lisa: Wow.
Grant: So now he's able to supply 800 calories an hour from fat, and he can do it at 260 watts, which is actually a reasonably competitive pair out, but he's going to get along at you know, 39, 40 calories an hour.
Lisa: Wow.
Grant: And yeah, and so in his first, second ever triathlon, in his first Iron Man, he does, he finishes, I don't know, the top 10 and 9 hours 22. So good effort.
Lisa: That’s amazing.
Grant: Yeah, we come back the next year, now with a bit more training on his belt, and he can he manages 8 hours 50. Wow. And this year, he comes back and he wins the entire age group race by half an hour, breaks the course record by seven minutes and does 8:27. And I got him back in the lab straight after that. And what we saw as further fed adaptation over that two-year period, so now he is able to burn 1.8 grams a minute of fat at 310 watts, and that's an astonishing power output. So 310 watts, yeah, you're doing 42 Ks an hour, on a decent course. And that's, he rode 4 hours 29 480 Ks, it's an astonishing time, especially for a guy who's working full time as a teacher.
Lisa: That's insane.
Grant: So that's what we mean by being metabolically flexible, and, and becoming a real fat-burning machine.
Lisa: But what about the arguments about you know, I mean, keto diet is a very difficult diet for people to, if we're talking about the general population now, and it's quite a hard diet to stick to, long term. What about adherence to things? Do you have to be strictly keto? Do you have to be really low on your carbs in order to get the ketones and be in ketosis and to get this fat adaptation? Is there any middle ground? Can you—
Grant: Oh, yeah, yeah. It's a great question. I mean, the series of questions you got there, Lisa, are just crucial. And the answer is, initially getting into that. as I'm, for that three, it's very strict. And so that's three weeks. After that, it's very much cyclical. So we generate nutritional ketosis and fat burning by fasted long workouts. And on other cases during the week, we're adding carbohydrates quite a bit. So it's definitely not a strict ketogenic diet at all. And we'll have off periods where he's just eating whatever. In fact, I have trouble trying to get him off the ketone to be a bit more loose, frankly. But that's, that's an athlete, not a normal human, in that sense. This is why I introduced the idea of fasting and intermittent fasting and I'm quite keen on that. And for me, what the fast what I tried to sort of mimic what I felt was an easy, sustainable, cyclical way for me to eat that generated fat burning.
Lisa: And pursued it with autophagy? We're all talking about intermittent fasting and I do it like an intermittent fasting, a short-ish intermittent fasting. Is that going to this, I'm not gonna get into ketosis doing an intermittent fasting.
Grant: So I just, I would do this sort of pattern of Sunday, try and be reasonably good on the low carb, just eat whatever I wanted. But try and be okay with it. Monday, do some restricted eating windows. So you know, might be, a longest window. Someone who's experienced like me, I could just have one meal that day, and the Tuesday I just did the same thing. So you know, and when I hit a meal I made sure it was super filling, super nutritious, I was calling that super meals. So that's my, that's my Monday and Tuesday, my hard parts of the week, right I worked hard and I concentrated hard on my freshly generated nutritional ketosis. By Monday lunchtime, despite the weekend, Saturday being quite poor, I was back in full ketosis.
I made a bit of an effort, I managed to sort of hang on to some stuff with no real particular restriction but trying to keep the carbs down for Wednesday, Thursday. By the end of Friday, everything had sort of gone pretty loose. And Saturday it was, could be, sometimes off the route is completely out of nutritional ketosis and plenty of carbs, even the odd bit of alcohol, which I'm not encouraging, by the way, but that just seems to happen sometimes.
Lisa: Yeah. And we've got to live, too,
Grant: Yeah, yeah. So I'd be completely out of ketosis and in no shape for that at all. But by Monday morning, I'll be back in again. So I just get this period.
Lisa: So you can do that. It's been my question today is like, do I, if I go to keto, you know, go the keto diet. Do you have to do it as a religion? This is me. And then you get people like Dave Asprey and and if you read his book, Fast This Way, and that, he talks about cyclic keto, and how that's even better than just being straight keto, because keto itself can have some negative benefits.
Dr Grant: Yeah, I completely agree. And so unless you're wanting to be on keto, for some sort of therapeutic resume, I said, you know, glioblastoma, brain cancer or brain injury like a TBI, I think so. Interesting thing, some other cancers, or you're in chemotherapy, then I don't see any reason to be in that state all the time. But the point is having a bit of bollock machinery to be able to be and easily get in and out. My hypothesis is the Paleolithic one, which is really that humans are metabolically flexible, it's the normal human condition and to see modern humans that have really lost their orchestration of the metabolism to, to burn fat as a primary fuel sources as a sort of denying your own humanity type situation without being too dramatic about it, really.
Lisa: But yeah, if we, I was reading one of your blogs, and you hit another, Dr Lisa Te Morenga, I think it was, saying, oh, but you know, like, if we look at from an evolutionary perspective, the caveman because this is an argument that I've had with people too, oh, but the cavemen didn't live very long, so therefore, it's not a good diet. To say that that's, but that's not a bit that helped us survive till now. You know, like we—
Grant: I think that’s a complete straw man of an argument, by the way.
Lisa: Yeah, I think so too.
Grant: I mean, I think, you know, I mean, first of all, while the average lifespan, is fairly low for people, it’s just for other reasons!
Lisa: It’s for other reasons.
Grant: So if you didn't have those reasons, your actual survival was pretty good. And actually, the important thing to remember is that Paleolithic humans didn't have chronic disease. So they didn't have this, these, what is it a New Zealand at the moment, 12 years of disability in their life before they died, which, so subtract 12 off your lifespan, to get your health span, to health span, span with the same thing. And also question about that.
Lisa: We don't have infant mortality, like they did. And we didn't have lions chasing us, and we've got all these other things that make us live longer. But now we have to take even more care of our metabolic state, in order that we don't have these long term. And I mean, I've been living with the consequences of mom's metabolic disorders, leading to an aneurysm, for the past five years, and trying to undo the damage. You know, what I'm talking about is like, in that decline that we see with so many people for over decades, sometimes, and it's just a horrific way to go out for starters.
Grant: You know, I don't think anyone, if you ask them when they're in good health, about how they want the rest of their life to track, says they want to be in poor health with a low health span. I don't think that's a topic that people raise as being a good thing.
Lisa: No.
Grant: It's my experience. When I ask even people who aren't doing many healthy behaviors of what they want, then they'll say health, family, friends and happiness, whatever that means. But they, yeah,
Lisa: yeah. And I think this is the discussion that we need to be having, so that we find out what the optimum diet is. People I know, I've struggled with my diet over the years. One of the reasons I started running was because I wanted to eat more, because I love food. And then, then I suddenly, at some point, I realized, this hypothesis of calories in calories out is absolute bullshit. This isn't working and that really came to you know, people who hear my podcasts and hear me say when I ran through New Zealand, and I just suddenly woke up. I was running 500 kilometers a week. Yeah, and I was getting fatter because I was in a complete state of chaos. You know, my hormones were up, my water retention, all of that sort of—
Grant: High amount of inflammation, probably.
Lisa: Huge amounts of inflammation. And I ended up flaccid, losing muscle mass and getting fatter and having a slower metabolic rate. I could have sat on the couch and eaten chips and gotten better, you know, in shape?
Grant: Yeah.
Lisa: So that's when a light bulb went for me, and then it also had other reasons like genetically I'm not really made for the long distance stuff, I'm more the high intensity, shorter, sharper, is more suited to me. So I was doing that wrong as well, because some people, it's better to be doing the long. But I think having these discussions where we really dig in, and you've done the research, you know, what, from an evolutionary perspective, what we need to be eating. The state of our food now is horrific. Then you, you add into all that the whole addictive nature of all the stuff and the additives, or preservatives, the MSGs for all of the sugars that are added to our phones, and people are up against it. Like, you know, you can’t even—
Grant: Yeah, I agree. Those two topics that might be worth going into those, I've got two—
Lisa: Yes, please.
Grant: —sort of bases, working in both those areas, the first you mentioned, like you go out, the state of our food supply. So what we've been doing recently is we've been going to primary schools around the place. And we've been taking photos of all the year sixes’ lunchboxes. And whatever you think, particularly on what we call that social gradient, that sort of tipping of rich versus poor at the bottom end of that, whatever you think the food supply’s like, I don't care what you think about how bad it is. It's worse than you think.
Lisa: Yeah.
Grant: I actually cried, I actually physically cried.
Lisa: That’s what our kids are getting to eat every day.
Grant: Yeah, and how that's not a priority. Just remember that the biggest cost to our healthcare system for our kids is having to anesthetize them to extract teeth because they're rotten at age five, and we can't walk around too much if they're not anesthetized. So yeah, I mean, what society treats its most vulnerable like that? Just one little rant: in kids healthcare, we have to go and do fundraising and buy raffle tickets to pay for the hospitals for kids. And we don’t do that with adults. That sort of fundraising for that is despicable. It's not a government that cares.
Lisa: Not to mention the whole bloody ambulance service.
Grant: Yeah, there’s all of that, wouldn’t I fund that? There’s all of that stuff as well. So that's just a mess of how, frankly, Ad the second thing is I've got another student who's just really got into this, the addiction side of food. And as a former psychologist, she goes through and look at the, some, you know, use this Diagnostic and Statistical Manual DSM, DSM-5 is the latest version, which is a way of characterizing disorders.
And you look at the substance misuse disorder, which is really around addictions. And you know, if you change the word alcohol or methamphetamine or tobacco for sugar, yeah, then, you know, the sorts of things you know, sometimes feel withdrawal sometimes. I eat more than I should change unprofessional behavior and makes things worse in my life. You go across all 11 criteria, and you go, Yeah, it's pretty plausible. That's a real thing. Yeah. And the thing is, with addictions, of course, is that people go because everyone is not addicted to it, doesn't mean it's not a thing. So there's this, there's a lot of alcohol drunk where people don't turn into alcoholics It doesn't mean there's not such a thing as alcoholics. And there's, you know, for many people, it becomes a substance they can't control using and I feel the same things about sugar in your ultra processed food in general really.
Lisa: Yeah. And the sugar I mean, the I mean like people like you I know you've done a lot of work with a Pacific Island population and Maori and so on, we have a predisposition to you know, not being able to cope with the sugars and more cardiovascular disease and more metabolic disorders. So even more Prater the stuff because we've already and haven't had I don't know hundreds of years of of having it to a certain degree in I mean, I've struggled no sugar is definitely one of those things that is one of the hardest addictions I think, not that I've been addicted to anything else but it's a bloody hard addiction to to get rid of and stay on top of.
Grant: Something like smoking or alcohol like the absence of is part of it is hard but just slightly easier because it's contained whereas sugar’s so ubiquitous in the food supply, you can't stop it. It's very hard, you know, all of a sudden you put some chili sauce on your something and you're damn near 75% sugar, you know, like?
Lisa: You don't even realize it unless you start baking them and making everything from scratch.- And then you know, not to mention all the MSGs and the additives, preservatives, emulsifiers that are you know, destroying our guts and causing us to want more. I mean, there's a real reason why you can't eat one chip. If you eat one chip, you've eaten the packet,
Grant: Well, that's certainly my experience. But strangely, and I had an argument with a dietitian the other day about this, there's a total open quote and short of eating. And it's like her hypothesis was, well, the whole reason we I was like, Look, there's no point having salted chips in my house, because they’ll last five minutes, I’ll eat the whole lot. Yes. Oh, no, no, no, the way you should overcome that is just have dozens of packets on there and just eat yourself silly and then you'll get over it. That’s just bullshit in my experience
Lisa: Pretty much done that, and that didn't work. That doesn't work. I've heard that theory too. I think that's absolute rubbish, and not something that I'd recommend for starters, because you're gonna start on an either like, that's like, you know, a little bit good, then we must have just have some more.
Yeah.
Lisa: That's ridiculous. Really, they still think that.
You know there's a whole movement?
You're kidding? Okay. But how do we help people? Because people are unaware of the addictive nature of their food and we're so like, I don't have a big garden full of organic veggies. I never time, all the knowledge and I used to having my dad used to do my garden and then it was good. But now I don't. Most of us don't have access to good quality foods.
What the hell do we do? We go into a supermarket and it's just so easy to pick up a pre-made sauce, you know, tomato sauce, or Bolognese sauce instead of, you know, buying a bloody lot of tomatoes and making it. But yeah, but we've fallen into this trap. And now we're addicted all of us. Because the big food industry wants you to eat more of its crap.
Grant: Yeah, they've conspired both on research and practice. And then just in all practical ways. In fact, I wrote a paper with a couple of superstars actually a guy, Aseem Malhotra, who's a cardiologist, in London, and Rob Lustig, who's pretty famous, a pediatric endocrinologist from San Francisco about the the tricks that the food industry has pulled, which are pretty much the exact same ones as Big Tobacco have over the years, you know, creating bogus interest groups, false advocacy, sponsoring athletes, list goes on.
Lisa: I’m a part of that machinery, unfortunately, you know, when I was a young athlete being sponsored by Coca Cola—
Grant: I didn't, I was told, I was told not to come back to, I'm in New Zealand. I spoke there one time, a couple of years ago, because I had to guard the sponsors product, which was Nutrigrain, Kellogg's Nutrigrain, which is four and a half staff health rating food, that's, you know, a third sugar. It's just a disgrace. Yeah, that was not welcome again.
Lisa: When you see famous sports teams, I won’t name any, but they're nutritionists on the telly telling you to eat stuff that really is not what you want your kids eating. And you’re like, ‘Wow, that's wrong on so many levels’, you know?
Grant: I’ll tell you a story about that. I don’t know if I should tell this story. Years ago, I gave this talk on a sort of update on physical activity and health for the first-time executives of Coca Cola over this Waipuna Lodge in Auckland. I'd finished my talk, I was just at the back. And the head and corners in and go on. The next guy that got was a corporate guy from the US about how they're going to discredit various nutrition people and active tactics. I went around, and I sort of sat there and listened to it. And I was like, ‘Oh’, and then about halfway through, I was like, ‘Shit, I'll make sure I get out of here alive’. Yeah, but there was like an active discussion about, about the tactics to deal with scientists who were dissonant to the view, to the worldview, which I thought was a really interesting,
Lisa: This is a reality. And this is what's happening not only in the food industry, it's also happening in the pharmaceutical industry. It's also happening in many industries that we in the public are not, and when you've got people like you that are brave enough to stand up and say stuff, you get attacked. I'm quite surprised that my podcast hasn't been taken off here yet. But anyway.
Grant: Yeah, that's right. And yeah, it will heavily wind but people will be, there’s forces in play there. You don't want to get too conspiratorial because it sometimes requires a degree of organization that doesn't, that we’re capable of, but yeah, I think in the food industry case and pharmaceutical industry, the evidence has been there for a long time.
Lisa: Yeah, yeah. And I think, my approach to it now is like, we are possible, light a candle toward the good information rather than fighting and banging your head against the, you know, because otherwise you can end up in a very bad place. But okay, so we know that there's all these addictive forces, if you like, at play. And so because you just look around town, you know, in the obesity and they are boys they’re looking like girls and, you know, the hormone regulation is just obviously affected and fertility rates are going down. We're fighting a war here, and we've got kids that are already diabetic and before they're even teenagers, and this is a coming huge disaster for the healthcare system when you’re in public health.
Grant: Yeah, yeah. The present one that I've become much more interested in because it's, I think it's become more obvious today for a bunch of reasons. I'll tell you a few stories as mental health, particularly Youth Mental Health. I've been an academic for a few decades. And, you know, a decade ago or two decades ago, okay, students will get seconds, some would have some mild mental health problems, but it wasn't really a thing that you would see very much. Now at the moment, all the time I get students, students like it's dropping out of the degree now because of their mental health.
They've got anxiety. And these are really smart, intelligent, switched-on people with, these are the top of the socioeconomic ladder, we don’t know how much worse it is at the bottom. I didn't even get there in the first place. That youth suicide rate in New Zealand, it keeps getting talked about as the tip of an iceberg for a major problem. One of the women that I work with, mid-20s, beautiful, intelligent woman. Yeah, we're talking about SSRIs, antidepressants, because I've been on those I could have knocked me over I said, are, you know, is it a common thing for your friend group and that sort of thing? She goes, I pretty much everyone I know is on them. Yeah, yeah. And, and so we've got this—
Lisa: It’s a good sequence, isn’t it?
Grant: Because the brains are metabolic. We've got a metabolic crisis with obesity and diabetes, but guess what? The most important metabolic organ is your brain. Somehow, again, here we are, asleep at the wheel, we've got this, you've got this treatment gap. So even if we could treat them with anything effective, which is doubtful. From our current system, yeah, they can only treat half the half of the 910,000 people in the country of 5 million. Because 910,000 is the number of serious mental health problems. Wow. Half of them don't get any treatment whatsoever, because there is no treatment. You bring the mental health crisis line, which we've had to do. And they will say, are they killing themselves right now? And that's just like, no, that's like—
Lisa: ‘Okay, we've got time.’
Grant: Yeah, then okay, we're not doing it, I think. And we'll go to your doctor. If you go to your doctor, you know that there's a nine month wait to see a psychologist?. It’s just unacceptable.
Lisa: And what's the answer? The course, the easy answer for the doctor is to give them a SSRI.
Grant: Which doesn't work very well. No. neuroplasticity, if they're a young person, causes them harm.
Lisa: Closes down hormones. And does it different.
Grant: Yeah, 100%.
Lisa: Just interrupting the program briefly to let you know that we have a new Patron program for the podcast. Now, if you enjoy Pushing the Limits, if you get great value out of it, we would love you to come and join our Patron membership program. We've been doing this now for five and a half years and we need your help to keep it on air. It's been a public service free for everybody, and we want to keep it that way. But to do that we need like-minded souls who are on this mission with us to help us out. So if you're interested in becoming a patron for Pushing the Limits podcast, then check out everything on www.patron.lisatamati.com. That's P-A-T-R-O-N dot lisatamati.com. We have two Patron levels to choose from. You can do it for as little as $7 a month, New Zealand, or $15 a month if you really want to support us. So we are grateful if you do. There are so many membership benefits you're going to get if you join us. Everything from workbooks for all the podcasts, the strength guide for runners, the power to vote on future episodes, webinars that we're going to be holding, all of my documentaries and much, much more. So check out all the details: patron.lisatamati.com. And thanks very much for joining us.
Grant: So to me, the unacknowledged metabolic crisis here we can see obesity. We can measure diabetes. Yeah, and those are problems. But you know, to me the most perverse one, especially having, you know, teenage kids myself and that sort of thing is this youth mental health thing. It's despicable. Like my dad, yeah, good for him. He had metastatic prostate cancer and was sorted with this keto diet, but the amount of access to expensive treatment, he was able to get in his 80s. Compared to a young woman in her early 20s, who has a serious mental health problem that's going to affect her, and even around for the rest of their lives, who can get none. It's perverse, who spends their money on health that way? Yeah, like, I want my dad to get his treatment and get better and everything, which he has, but, what sort of society prioritizes that over these young people?
Lisa: Yeah, and what can we do? Like why, there is a lot of I mean, I talk research a lot, and I know that your research is also pointing in this direction, that there's a lot of health fundamentals that we can get right, that can actually help people without costing anything even, without having to be a pharmacological intervention. How about we try to teach people how to manage themselves? And I mean, I've had, I was on antidepressants for over 20 years, and I could not get off them, because they are addictive. It took me three years to get off them, and thank God I did. I, in my early 20s, had relationship crises, was put on them, just stayed on them because I didn't know any better.
What are, what implications that’s had for me, and then trying to get off them. And of course, your body starts to downregulate your own if you're not producing your own. I've got off them now, and I'm fine, and so on, and I'm helping other family members off them. But that was the first port of call. Now I understand the need for health fundamentals like sleep, hygiene, and movement, and exercise, and sunshine, and the right diet, because diet is a huge piece of the puzzle, because your gut and your brain are connected. And there's a lot of, like you say, a fix. When you have a bad diet, and you have bad nutrition, you're going to have more mental instability, if you want to put it that way, you're going to have more problems, than if you're on a good, really robust, solid, good diet. That's going to affect your mental health. And what are our kids, they're not giving any of that information, or any programs around it.
Grant: Yeah, and you interfere with one aspect of metabolic homeostasis with an antidepressant, and you're surprised that it doesn't work very well, and there’s unintended consequences. What we're trying to do is, and humans, I think, all want to be in the state, we're trying to return ourselves to a sort of metabolic homeostasis where things are balanced and well-regulated. For the most of the body, that's the primary target, there is a sugar in your blood and the insulin in your blood, because if those aren't right, then you're an inflammatory environment and pro-growth and no chance to, you know, being that autophagy of tightening things up. So that's the big metabolic picture. But in the brain, I've just started to stitch together a much more, I think coherent view of what's going on.
Because the balance of neurotransmitters in the brain is important. I just think with the low fat revolution, we pick fat, not carbohydrates. We pick the wrong one of the three. Yeah, well, this is alright, we pick serotonin as the neurotransmitter to manage, we need to get it back to where it started more quickly. That's what reuptake inhibitors do. And actually, sorry?
Lisa: You've written a paper recently on glutamate and its role in all this. Can you explain about it?
Grant: I have, six months ago, I had heard of glutamate because I, trying to, from psychology, and frankly, I'd forgotten what it did. Until one of my smart students reminded me that glutamate is the most important and most prevalent excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain. It's about 90% of your neurotransmitters, it runs in tandem with an inhibitory system called GABA. And so these two things operate together. The inhibition fine tunes the excitation. And not only that, the glutamate gets recycled onto glutamine and then back into GABA and they rely on one another to be in a sort of, you know, good, healthy relationship, right?
And so what happens is, when there's over-excitation, which chronic stress does, then glutamate because it's excitatory neurotransmitters, just keeps getting pumped out. Pumped out, pumped out, and it hits its receptor in the other side of the synapse, between neurons. That receptor, it's called the NMDA receptor, it's downregulated. So it stops seeing the glutamate as much as it could be, which causes even more glutamate to be produced. And then this glutamate starts to seep out of that cleft and to just general space. And the trouble with it—
Lisa: It's toxic.
Grant: It’s toxic, and this is called glutamate excitotoxicity. So this is not a theory, this is a thing. And it starts to kill brain cells, and the trouble with it, first of all it atrophies neurons, which is never good, and they're not there anymore when they die. But those dying neurons themselves spill out glutamate, into more glutamate into the space, and you get this downward spiral of—
Lisa: Neurodegeneration.
Grant: Neurodegeneration, exactly right. And so the most interesting thing in my mind about this, and this is why I'm so excited about it is because, and you'll see this. So the most obvious is a concussion or mild TBI, traumatic brain injury, is that what causes your initial brain cell death is just an insult, right? You bang your head, right? So you get that glutamate excitotoxicity. The initial effects of the concussion is mild, but the long-term effects of the concussion because of the glutamate excitotoxicity are severe. That's why concussions get worse and worse and worse for time after they've happened.
Lisa: Okay, thanks that somebody's saying that! Because people go to the hospitals with a concussion and they go, no, there's, you've had a mild concussion, go home and rest. And that's it. It's like we there's so much we can do—
Grant: 100% there's so much we can do. And I think we already do it when it gets really severe, right? So if you're in hospital with ischemia, lack of oxygen in the brain from a heart attack, or sometimes in some hospitals, that neonatal hypoxia, so newborns become deprived of oxygen. One way that they deal with that is they induce hypothermia, because cold exposure, especially in those areas, helps reduce glutamate. And they provide intravenous magnesium because magnesium antagonises as a receptor and allows glutamate to get back to its homeostatic levels more quick, and it's highly effective. And the animal studies are very, very convincing. And it's near a clinical practice for things like spinal cord injury.
And then you start to think about other ways that the brain gets damaged. So Alzheimer's and dementia is an interesting one. So for other reasons, including high glucose, we start to lose brain cells. But as soon as you start to do a little bit excitotoxicity, then exacerbates the problem massively. A mild or severe stress, which results in post traumatic stress disorder, is another way of damaging the brain initially through chronic, elevated glutamate but it rolls onto itself. And this is solved, then it's not a problem.
Lisa: This is why stress and trauma—
Grant: And chronic stress, you’re just stressed out, your fight or flight response is up more than it should. And it goes on a long time. The two to three minutes that it's designed to be up for is actually days, months, years, same thing. And so you've got these different pathways, getting brain damage.
Lisa: Brain damage is happening as well.
Grant: When you take, if you if you scan people with major depressive disorder, you autopsy people who've committed suicide, then you see severe atrophy and things like the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, important areas. And it's caused by chromatic toxicity. But the reason why that's interesting is that there's a lot you can do about it. And so we mentioned cold water therapy, just getting in cold water, especially you can breathe slowly and deeply through your nose, which downregulates the nervous system, as medical therapy for depression, right? Yeah. So and potentially I think for TBI and concussion and Alzheimer's and that sort of thing, because it helps with that.
But so is aerobic exercise for the same reason. So is a whole range of nutrient supplements, particularly magnesium, particularly you have to take them in the form of magnesium citrate or magnesium l-threonate. And the clinical trials of magnesium citrate and depression is a more effective medication than an antidepressant. And there is no real side effects. So magnesium, zinc, omega-3 fish oils, B complex vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin D, all anti-inflammatory, antioxidant type.
Lisa: And all stuff that I'm on every day, and my mum's on with her brain injury on, all the time.
Grant: That's right, because and they are downregulating glutamate transmission and achieving a glutamate GABA balance in a better way, as does presence of ketones in your blood occasionally, as does any sort of diet that’s anti-inflammatory, and any diet that's inflammatory, exacerbates the problem. So—
Lisa: So for things like brain injuries, like someone like mom who was in a coma and they were putting a ba- basically a glucose strip into the, you know, into feeding tubes. That's just like causing more damage than if we'd had ketones present if we'd had—
Grant: 100%, because you're, there's also a fuel cri- an accompanying fuel crisis on the brain where it can't—
Lisa: Uptake the glucose.
Grant: —uptake the glucose in the normal fashion, but you can use ketones. So you've got the glutamate part going on, and you've got the glucose fuel crisis. So you know—
Lisa: And isn't the same with Alzheimer's, and they, it's a, when you get insulin resistance, you also get the glucose not being able to be uptaken in the brain, and therefore the brain starving for glucose.
Prog Grant: Yeah. So ketogenic diet for that group is actually a pretty therapeutic diet, that would be the one situation that would be, you know, granted, for keto is hard. I mean, obviously, it's a hard population group to work with them on that, but that doesn’t make it not therapeutic. That's another whole—
Lisa: No, and that's what I put, you know, like with mum’s brain injury, once I started to realize that from the research I was doing. I was doing I had her on as good as possible, keto diet for that first couple of years. Not so much now, because she's got autonomy so it’s harder regulate. But she does do intermittent fasting, and she has got all the supplements, and she has got a very, low-carb diet, as much as I can get it to do it, when she’s not sneaking things around my back. But this is just so crucial for all of these degenerative diseases, and I'm really excited about this glutamate thing, because it's only just come on my radar through your research, and I think that this is perhaps gonna go to the next level. Are you continuing the research on this?
Grant: Yeah, and I'm really interested in, I haven't been that interested in micronutrients through my career. I sort of felt while you're eating whole foods, you know, that should be the template. And I still think that, but I increasingly started to think, especially my colleague, Julia Ruckledge, who's a professor of psychology at University of Canterbury, in her work with micronutrients. She uses fairly high doses, but how effective those have been in her clinical trials with various aspects of mental health. And just as I see also random other outcomes like they just happened to be doing a clinical trial when the Christchurch earthquake happened, and they're only halfway through it. So the randomization wasn't quite complete.
They noticed at the end of the trial that the people in the micronutrient supplementation group, about 19% of those ended up with some sort of post traumatic stress from the Christchurch earthquake.
Lisa: Yep.
Grant: Those without, who are in the placebo group, 69% have post traumatic stress. And this is consistent with other research around, you know, the stress of natural disasters, natural disasters, and that sort of thing. And all sorts of things go wrong in the brain. And it's just, there's a mess of effects. If you could get this from a pharmaceutical, the pharmaceutical company would be all over it. But, you know, inexpensive micronutrients. So, you're interested in those really.
Lisa: So that improves your resilience. Basically, you've got the right vitamins and minerals and things in your body to do the work that's needed to be required. Have you ever heard about the research of ketamine and post traumatic stress? When that ketamine is able to stop the formation of the memories, the traumatic-ness if that's a word?
Grant: Yeah, so, so yes, yeah.
Lisa: Because it's part of that there'll be part of that glutamate thing, wouldn’t it?
Grant: Ketamine is, antagonizes the NDMA receptor, as the same mechanism magnesium roles a play, plays a role on. And so ketamine is a little bit more of a difficult substance to think about it because it's an analgesic and it's sort of that pre-anesthetic and acidic and it really spaces people out. But you're right across PTSD, single treatments have been shown to be highly effective. Single treatments with major depressive or otherwise intractable have shown to be temporarily effective. The most interesting one, for me, I was just talking to an ethicist the other day about this. He was talking about ketamine with chronic pain sufferers, and about half of the people they treat with ketamine with chronic pain, they have an instant and complete alleviation of the chronic pain. And they give them ketamine at a subclinical dose for five straight days. I don't know the ins and outs of that.
Lisa: Because it stops the pathways from—
Grant: I don’t know what, I’m thinking of. Re, re —
Lisa: Receptors.
Grant: —re-tokenizes the receptors, and they go into my pathway for a start, which is the only real known mechanism amongst possible other things, but again, it's astonishing right? So this is otherwise incurable life debilitating chronic pain. Five days of treatment of the subclinical dose, you're not unconscious, you probably can't drive around, but it's gone, not there now. So ketamine is an interesting one. And equally, there's other interesting antagonists of that receptor, which, I am obviously no expert, but other people are starting to do the work and unfortunately become illegal drugs, like some of the solutions like psilocybin magic mushrooms, and, there’s are ayahuasca ceremony type things in South America.
Lisa: I hope they didn’t keep researching those. Just because they're drugs doesn't mean that they haven’t got therapeutic benefits.
Grant: So they have potential therapeutic benefits. And to understand that I think it's going to be that's, people will follow that, however I won't be doing any of that research, of course, but someone will be, and it'll be interesting to follow that as it unfolds. And you understand, just to finish it, and US in the 60s, all that came out. I was there, no one knew what to do with these drugs. So they just made them illegal, which is, you understand at that time, but probably needs to make another think about that.
Lisa: They do. So when we, so all of these things from things like Alzheimer's, to brain injuries, to stre-, chronic stress, to big stressful life events, all cause an excess of glutamate, is that correct?
Grant: Yeah. Because it's just overexcitation. Because it's the excitatory system, and you're overproducing and you haven't got a pathway.
Lisa: So you're in a sympathetic state, you're in a fight or flight response.
Grant: Yes, correct. And then it'll get there. And some of those are, just because there's, well, not the traumatic brain injury and the Alzheimer's aren't because of that. There's other reasons that they branch off. But for the PTSD, for the depression, for the, you know, chronic stress sufferer.
Lisa: This is why stress, one of the reasons why stress is just so damaging to us, isn't it?
Grant: Yeah, we weren't designed for long-term stress. We're designed for acute fight or flight.
Lisa: Yep, yep. And then be now, this is why I think there were the research and information around how to turn on your parasympathetic nervous system at will, breath work, cold therapies, or, saunas, heat therapies, all of these things that we can do to manage our stress levels, because which, you know, stress is probably not going to go away anytime soon. We've got these incredibly stressful lives that we lead now, with thousands of jobs that we have to do and things and things like when my dad passed away eight months ago, that was a stressor I couldn't control.
Grant: It's life, isn't it? Stressors evolve.
Lisa: And that's, I’ve lived a mess of post traumatic stress that, so I'm interested in all this research on how do I undo that damage, if you like? Yeah. How do I how do I manage it? This sort of stuff is really interesting.
Grant: I just think you know that the mainstream medicinal effects of cold therapy, hot therapy, and breath work, especially nasal breathing are now sufficiently well established to be mainstream. These are normal things to engage in your daily life, to manage your life.
Lisa: Absolutely, yeah. I think nasal breathing the work I don't know if you know, Patrick McKeown and James Nestor and stuff, they just absolutely amazing work that and information that we can put into our daily lives to help cope, or to help us cope with this stress that we're under, and the bad food even, can all help, and athletic performance.
Grant: And I love about those guys with that stuff, they've actually, they haven't tried to dumb down the science from the late for the lay public. They treat them with the respect that they deserve, and they just translate it into an understandable manner, but they don't dumb it down. They give you the full noise.
Lisa: I love that.
Grant: I love that. I just think, it's like I ate three plus servings of vegetables and fruit and exercise half an hour a day, and not too much gardening or do it. It's just bullshit. It's just treating us with disdain, and not with the deserve I respect, and respect that we deserve. For where’s the science in that? Now I actually get fitter, the more the better. As long as you manage it. It’s pretty friggin, like, why do they not. And I see cancer patients getting told, I just want to eat whatever makes you feel good.
Lisa: Oh, no.
Grant: No, I want the best possible information. Thank you.
Lisa: Yes. And not eating cookies while you're having chemo. You know, and that's what they're doing. And it's just like, do you not? Are you not aware? Have you looked at them for metabolic you know, approach to—
Grant: Often, the excuse that, the excuse that Lisa is, are well, they won't do it so there's no point telling them. That’s just not good enough, right?
Lisa: I know, and that is just treating you, and I've experienced this unfortunately firsthand, treating you like an idiot because you're not a professor.
Grant: Yeah.
Lisa: Just because I don't have a ‘professor’ in front of my name does not mean I'm an idiot. And don't treat me like an idiot as if I don't know anything and that is unfortunately the way you get treated in the system.
Grant: The health system’s not good for that. And they try and use jargon to bamboozle.
Lisa: Yeah. Doesn't work with me. And that's not fair.
Grant: Yeah.
Lisa: When I'm teaching people or working with people, I find that it's absolutely crucial that I explain the mechanisms of action behind why I'm giving you this information. And I try to keep it to a level that I don't overwhelm people, but I want them to understand why they're doing this in order to make, because then they're more likely to go, ‘Ah, actually, I get it now’. Just telling you that stress is bad for you, you should meditate for a day, but I don't tell you why. What are the mechanisms, and what is this actually doing in your body, then you're less likely to do it, you know?
Grant: Just today, and the reason I'm late with you is that I had a group of first year electrical apprenticeships. Young guys from 17 to 20 here at university, and we did today's Stafford is a fitness stuff with them, but I did a bunch of content. You know, frankly, I can get my master's level. These are smart guys. Probably they're interested in it. That's great. Yeah, and no one's treated them like that, they never had got tread lightly by some of the teachers office at school. They didn't get interested in those areas. But you know, like—
Lisa: Yeah, let's treat people as if they have got a brain in the head. Just because they don't know the jargon. You can explain the jargon. And when you understand, one of my great podcast loves at the moment is Professor Andrew Huberman, you know him from The Huberman Lab?
Grant: Yeah. Following that, he's done a great job of just sort of sitting on the couch and having a, no graphs, nice. Pictures, just, it's deep scientific lectures about cortisol and stress exes. And—
Lisa: Yeah, and even if you're not, they haven't spent a decade studying this stuff, you can you can understand how. He makes it very—
Grant: High grade neuroscience and medicine just available to the public, I love it.
Lisa: I know. It's so awesome. That's why you've got to get your podcast back up.
Grant: Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna get it going. You gotta remind us to get on your one and get reinvigorated.
Lisa: Exactly. Because we need, we need to, we need it straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. We need it from people who are at the cutting edge of academia, of academia, the cutting edge of research to deliver it to us straight, rather than it going through the zigzag of ten, you know, professionals along the way, getting dumbed down to the point where it's of no use to anybody.
Grant: Yeah. And then it goes into the Ministry of Health and comes out on another format altogether.
Lisa: Yeah, it’s just complete bullshit. If you just look at the whole, you know, vitamin C recommendations, they've been trying for years, the scientists to get it, the recommended daily allowance, recommended daily amount that you meet to have put up just a little bit. Yeah, but no, we can't do the head. You know, even though the science says that that's not enough.
Grant: Well, I mean, the entirety of nutrition dietary guidelines, in a complete state, which is a drag so far as I'm concerned, but yeah.
Lisa: Professor Grant Schofield, you've been amazing today. I've really loved this conversation. I've taken up a heap of your time, I would love to have you on, obviously, for more sessions, if we can. Because we haven't even touched the sides, really, and there's a heck of a lot. Is there any last things that you want to share? What are you, you're a couple of takeaways from today in our conversation today that you really want to spotlight in?
Grant: I still think that. Yeah, your body wants to be in a state of the scientific ord isw homeostasis, but in a state of balance, I guess with the world that lives in. But the world is designed to live in, needs to have some mesh, or be at least somewhere close to their current world, and often those are a long way apart.
So I think that's probably the major issue isn't it is that we can't reach this homeostasis. So we end up with either glucose or insulin being really high as sort of global things, or the soul glutamate thing running amok. And it's entirely predictable, then, on that basis. So we're actually not going to be as well functioning as we would like. And so then the question is, what can you do about it? The thing is, we always put it back on us which is good, what doesn't need to start with us but I think we forget we live in you know, most people listen to this live in a democracy. And part of a democracy is everyone actually has a say. So, you know, my hope is that, you know, everyone you guys out there, become a little bit more vocal about that. I think that's a really important thing.
There is a democracy around health as a, sooner we'll be, we get to decide like the country decides. And actually we do eventually overwhelm the food industry, that pharmaceutical drug That sort of stuff, it becomes that important, it's become pretty obvious that, especially if you're young people, we can do so much better. And we just need to. And so that's up to everyone, not just me. I'll keep trying, guys.
Lisa: Please, please do. Because at least you have the titles, the credibility, the name, the books, the stuff behind you to actually make a massive impact. But if we collectively all put our two cents and so to speak—
Grant: Yeah, that's miles more than I can do. And just on that, we've been, I've written the books, it's great, have a look at those.
Lisa: Yeah, list out your books, and where can people find you.
Grant: So this, www.whatthefatbook.com. And it's got the What the Fat, What the Fast, What the Face. The latest one is What the Fit recipes. What the Fit sport performance. I'm really incredibly proud of me and the rest of the team, it's not a solo effort. Those put those together, especially Caryn and Craig Roger. We've started a company called PreKure. It's been going a few years now. And we've really concentrated on filling a sort of treatment gap and health and the health sector with health coaching. This time health coaching and nutrition and mental health aspects as well. In my opinion, if you're passionate about health, then you don't need to go to university for 10 years to make a difference.
There's some stuff you need to learn, especially on the coaching aspects around how to help people find the most for themselves, meaning where they're at, and those things and those are good fun skills to learn both for yourself and your family, but also for helping other people. So, PreKure was sort of felt such, prevention is cure, PreKure p, pre with a K.
Lisa: P-R-E-K-U-R-E.
Grant: Yeah, dot com. We're really passionate about helping you help yourself with your health, but more than that, helping help others and that sort of help, you know, taking us out of, taking an active part on this issue for us as around, you know, take advantage of democracy, but also take the advantage to help you know, when you get new knowledge and it's useful. Share it, for God's sake.
Lisa: Share it, yeah.
Grant: That's gonna chip away at the food industry and the other forces that tend to undermine any attempt at human wellbeing.
Lisa: Change and yeah, and I think this, you know, the health I mean, obviously, you had in the health coaching space, and this is a new burgeoning area. We need more people coming into this area that can share this sort of knowledge and bring it out there.
Grant: And, you know, how better to keep you on track and helping you with things for friends and family and other people around your community rather than having to go to the clinic and the doctor, and it's all sickness orientated.
Lisa: For 15 minutes if you're lucky, yeah.
Grant: But someone who's actually got a genuine interest in how you're going and wants to help you. And, you know, so I think we'll go that way. I'm really looking forward to that.
Lisa: Yeah, let's keep working on this mission. I think we're on the same mission. Professor Grant, you're just awesome. Thank you so much. Really enjoyed our conversation today, and we'll hopefully have you on again soon.
That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review and share with your friends, and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
Imagine yourself standing smack in the middle of a busy city. You’d get dizzy just by looking at how fast people go about their daily lives. Everyone is so hyperactive and absorbed in getting things done. Amid all the chaos, we forget to take a pause, be still and breathe.
Remember, we can only evolve into our best selves if we take a moment and be present. And no one knows this more than the ultimate warrior, Mark Divine. He joins us in this episode to share his experiences in the military and how meditation helped him develop inner strength. Mark also teaches us how to use positive internal dialogue in visualising and attracting victory.
If you want to know more about the benefits of meditation through the experience of an ultimate warrior, then this episode is for you.
For our epigenetics health program, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
You can also join their free live webinar on epigenetics.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity, or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘It was about physical, it was about mental, it was about emotional, it was about intuitional and spiritual aspects of our being. In that, I learned that if you train those together, then you will integrate, you'll become whole again.’
‘Human beings have not learned to be whole, and they don't recognise that we're all interconnected. And every one of our thoughts, every one of our emotions, every one of our actions has an implication or impact on the whole.’
‘How you talk to yourself has an incredible impact on your energy and your motivation. Literally, we use the terminology “feeding the courage wolf” versus “feeding the fear wolf.’
‘Understanding your capability as a human being, the potential that you have, the power that we have, you can then project that into the future and say, “What does victory look like for me?”’
‘I think that there's two reasons we're on this planet. One is to evolve to become the best version, highest and best version of yourself in this lifetime. The second is to align with our calling or our purpose.’
‘Ultimately, we create our own reality. It's all basically, it's all experienced with [the] mind. So that's powerful.’
‘You can do anything, one at a time.’
Mark Divine grew up in Upstate New York. He has a degree in economics from Colgate University and an MBA from NYU. He is a New York Times best-selling author, leadership expert, entrepreneur, motivational speaker.
Mark is also a retired U.S. Navy SEAL Commander. He spent nine years on active duty and 11 as a Reserve. With 20 years in service, he served in over 45 countries. During his time in the military, Mark created a nationwide mentoring program for SEAL trainees. Because of his success, he decided to start SEALFIT. This fitness company aims to prepare civilians for the physical and emotional demands of a SEAL-like lifestyle.
Mark knows the value of emotional strength in transforming lives. With this in mind, he published Unbeatable Mind in 2011, which includes an at-home study program.
Mark also has several other entrepreneurial endeavours and books in his name. He’s also the host of the Unbeatable Mind podcast. With all these ventures, Mark’s ultimate aim is to create more resources to improve the lives of everyone he meets.
If you want to know more about Mark and his work, check out his website and Instagram.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can be motivated to be their real selves through meditation.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential. With your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.
Lisa Tamati: Well, hey everyone, Lisa Tamati here. Fantastic to have you back at Pushing the Limits this week. Now I have a wonderful man who I’ve followed for a number of years. He’s one of my heroes, I was a little bit of a fangirl in this interview I have to admit. But it was pretty crazy. I have Commander Mark Divine on the show. Mark is an ex-Navy SEAL. He was a Commander in the Navy Seal. He was there for 20 years, and he was a fantastic leader. He was deployed in over 45 countries around the world. He also trains, trains a lot of the SEALs who are going into BUD/S training. He was number one on his course when he went through BUD/S, and that’s saying something. That’s nine months of hell on earth, so if you get through that, you’ve got to be pretty cool, and to be number one in the end of the whole 190 that went on, that’s pretty amazing.
He’s the author of a number of books: Staring Down the Wolf, Unbeatable Mind, and SEALFIT, and runs a number of multi-million dollar companies. As a leadership consultant, he trains, not only does he train the military, he helps people prepare for SEAL training. He also now runs through his innovative SEALFIT and Unbeatable Mind training systems. Kokoro crucible is one of his programs. He shares the same secrets with entrepreneurs, executives, and teams through his book and through his book, and through his speaking, and through his award-winning podcast. He has his own, and I have the privilege of being on that one shortly. He runs world-renowned leadership and team events. Wonderful man to talk to, someone that I really, really look up to and respect. His discipline that he brings to everything that he does is quite amazing. So I hope you enjoy the show.
Before we go, I just want to remind you to check out our epigenetics program, if you haven’t already. Head over to lisatamati.com and hit the work with us button, and find out about our Peak Epigenetics program. This is all about understanding your genetics, and how to optimise them for your best performance. So everything from food, to exercise, what types of exercise to do, what times of the day you should be training, what times of the day you should be eating, and how often. What type of diet is right for you, right down to the nitty gritty. You know, eat almonds, don't eat cashew nuts, right specific to your genetics, so to speak. It also looks at your whole mood and behavior, what makes you tick, why do you think the way you do, what areas you may have problems with, your predispositions.
That's not to be all deterministic, and negative, that's all to be like this is what you're dealing with, and this is how we can hit things off at the pass. This is a really life-changing program, and we're really proud to bring it to you. We've been doing it for a number of years now. We've taken hundreds of people through this program, and we work with corporate teams. So if you're out there and you have a corporate team that might be interested in doing either this or our boost camp program, which is all about upgrading and learning all about how to manage stress, how to reduce the effects of stress, and be more resilient and bring a higher performance to your game, then please reach out to us. Go over to lisatamati.com. and check out all the programs that we have here.
Just a reminder too, I have a new book out called Relentless: How a Mother and Daughter Defied the Odds. If you've listened to this podcast for a while, you would hear me harp on about my amazing mum and the journey that we've been on back from a massive aneurysm that left her at the age of 74 with hardly any higher function, and a prognosis that said she would never ever do anything again. And they were very, very wrong. So I want to share this book, I want to share the story, because it's a very empowering story. So if you haven't read the book Relentless, I really encourage you to go and do that. I'm really keen to get this out there because this will empower and change lives, and already has, so make sure you read Relentless. Right, over to the show with Commander Mark Divine.
Hi everyone, Lisa Tamati here. I’m super, super excited. I'm jumping out of my skin, I can't sit still. I have one of my great heroes that I've followed for such a long time, so I'm a little bit, being a bit of a fangirl right now. But I'm sure I'll calm down in a minute or two. Commander Mark Divine is with us. He has such a huge history. You are known, really, as the warrior man, Unbeatable Mind, SEALFIT. You've done a heck of a lot in your life. Mark, it's just, I can't wait to share some of your insights, because what you do and what you've done is just absolutely amazing. So, welcome to Pushing the Limits. Can you give us a little bit of background, Mark, on where you come from and what you've done and how you've, just to give us a little bit of, because you, obviously you've been in the SEALs, you're a commander in the SEALs, you're a trained SEAL. So let's start there. Let you come to it.
Mark Divine: Oh, my God, where to start?
Lisa: Maybe childhood.
Mark: I was born at a very young age in a very small town in upstate New York, a province of the United States. I'll try to keep this short because sometimes I have a few run-on sentences. Go like 40 minutes, right? We don't want that to happen. That’s when we have a good time. So yeah, I was a pretty normal kid growing up, running around the woods of upstate New York, crazy family, lots of alcohol and anger. The belt would come out pretty much every other night. My brother and I would literally just provoke my father just to do it, because we stopped taking him seriously after a while. In that regard, I feel pretty fortunate that my young spirit was like, ‘You can't break me’. I realise now that we all choose our parents, let's just say, from a spiritual perspective, I certainly believe that. For certain experiences, and for a while I played the victim, woe is me.
But now I look back and thank God, that really forged my mental toughness and resiliency. I had to unpack some crap from that, obviously, but it made me a Navy SEAL warrior, right? When I went through Navy SEAL training, you could not hurt me, because nothing was compared to my dad. Anyway, so that's a little aside. Upstate New York had a really— it's beautiful. I've been to your country in New Zealand. It's just absolutely gorgeous. I feel the same way about America in certain places, the much bigger. New York is one of those areas that, 6 million acres of unfettered, protected land in northern New York called the Adirondack Mountains, and that was my playground. And our summer home was on the west shore of a lake called Lake Placid where the Olympics were, you're probably familiar with that.
Lisa: Yeah.
Mark: There was no road access to my house. There was no TV, no internet. Still, there's finally internet after but no TV, and we would have to take a boat to get there. And so I grew up with boats and I grew up hiking in the Adirondacks and a lot of time alone in the wilderness, which is one of the reasons I became kind of an endurance athlete. I know you're an endurance lady. Because I was comfortable, being alone. I was comfortable running the trails in the mountains, and I used to have a friend, we would run up Whiteface Mountain, which is at the base or the foot of Lake Placid. Not a huge mountain, it’s 4,000 feet, but you know it took a couple hours. If you're going to hike up there it takes a few hours. For us to run up there, took us 45 minutes. People used to think we were crazy. When we got to the top we would wrap our ankles and our knees and we would play tag on the way down. The trails are steep and just rocks and ruts and roots. It's amazing we didn't kill ourselves.
So that was my like early childhood upbringing, nature being in the woods and in the water were my solace away from the family dynamics. That led me to be a competitive athlete in high school, 12 varsity letters and then into college, I was recruited for swimming and I became a competitive rower. And then I started triathlon. So, I was an athlete, but the athletics really was my escape and kind of my grounding rod, like it is for so many athletes, right? When I— then I wasn't sure what was going to happen. I didn't really spend a lot of time in my youth thinking about my future, I kind of accepted a lot of the stories for my family that I was going to go back and be part of the family business. That business was really the place that Divines go, you know, we don't go into the military, we don't go into academia, we don't do those things. So anyways, it's as your listeners are hearing this, they're probably like, ‘Yep, check.’
Lisa: They may have done that.
Mark: That's the norm, right? That's not, I wasn't off, but it's certainly not what I teach today, right? Because, right, I think if we're— if we don't follow our passion and find our calling in life, then we're going to have discomfort later on, and discomfort is going to lead to existential crisis. So I was very fortunate, incredibly fortunate that when I left college, I got a job with a big accounting firm, consulting accounting firm called Coopers and Lybrand, which became accountant, became—
Lisa: You were an accountant. I mean, that makes me laugh, really.
Mark: I was an accountant.
Lisa: I was on the way to being an accountant too. So because of what my dad wanted, and I'm about as far from an accountant, as you can get, you know.
Mark: I was too.
Lisa: That’s a good story.
Mark: But I stuck with it long enough to become a certified public accountant, I had to pass the exam.
Lisa: I didn't.
Mark: I got my— I tell you what, I would rather go back to BUD/S Navy SEAL training than try that darn exam again. That told me something right there. But you know, it is a great opportunity. Because here I am, you know, I got a degree from a pretty good university called Colgate. But I didn't really have any skills. And so this job opportunity gave me and sent me to a top business school in the United States called NYU, New York University. So I got my MBA in finance, and I became a certified public accountant for four years. I got to work on a lot of different companies as a consultant and auditor. So I saw a lot. But, so that was kind of formative, in a sense, like, I learned a lot. What was probably more formative, or more substantial for me was, once I got into that suit and tie, and I was working eight hours a day, mind you, they allowed me to work only 8 or 10 hours a day. Most people in those scenarios work 15 to 20. But because they were sponsoring this small group of us to go to business school at night, they had to let us off, and then we would go to school full-time during the summer, and just come in on Fridays.
It was a really cool program. So I was working 8 to 10 hours a day, going to school at night. And it's— I was an athlete, right? And I was like, ‘How am I going to, how am I going to stay as an athlete?’ Right? Most people don't. Because you know, in the corporate world, and I was like, ‘I've got to, I've got to continue my athletic career.’ And so I would get up really early in the morning and go for a six mile run. And then at lunchtime when all my peers would go have a beer or martini and lunch, I would go to the gym and do like this, what I now know is a high intensity functional workout, which back then nobody talked about. Because I had to go fast, and I was wanting to do a lot of different variety, and I had to be in and out of there in 45 minutes. And then after, they let me go at five o'clock in the afternoon, and my first class wasn't till 7:30. So I'm looking at that saying, ‘Look, I got two and a half hours. I could do some training here.’ So one night, I wasn't sure what I was going to do. But one night, I was walking down 23rd Street, I was living on 22nd in Manhattan, and I heard these screams coming out of this building. And I stopped and I looked up and I was standing under the flag of the World Seido Karate Headquarters.
‘Oh, interesting. Maybe it's a martial art.’ And I had been intrigued with the martial arts. But in Upstate New York, that just wasn't much. There's nothing as a matter of fact, in my time, and so I didn't really get a chance to study anything. So I went in there and I was floored. I was stunned by what I saw. It was an incredible art. This was the headquarters of a worldwide art called seido, they had three or 400,000 students. And the Grand Master, the founder was on the center of the floor, this Japanese man, 10th degree black belt, looked like a frickin’ tank. And he was, his name was Nakamura, and he became my mentor, my first real mentor. Yeah. Now what's interesting, he says it wasn't really the karate that changed me. It was the zen training. And he is one of the few masters who kept the old ways of training the mind and the body and the spirit, and understood that they all had to be in balance, and they all were part of the package of developing these corrupted, these trainees.
I loved the zen part, and there was a zen class we had every Thursday night for an hour, we would sit on that little wooden zazen bench. And honestly, this studio is the headquarter, had well over a thousand students. There were ten of us in this class, most of them black belts, and I was a white belt, and I was like, ‘Where is everyone else?’ I didn’t get it. And then there wasn't a lot of understanding or talk about meditation back then. But boy, I did this thing to do meditation. I had all the usual kind of resistance to it, and my monkey mind going all over the place and wondering if it really worked. I trusted Nakamura and the way he acted and presented himself as a character, just who he was, was so different than any other human I've ever seen or experienced. And I was like, ‘There's got to be something to this, right?’ So I stuck with it. And it literally changed almost every aspect of who I was and how I saw the world and what I perceived to be my calling and my purpose in life. And it was sitting on that bench that I realised that I was going down the wrong path with this MBA, CPA, working in the corporate world. Even if I went back to the family business, it just wasn't what I was meant to do. That was the first time in my life that I allowed myself to examine my core story that said, this is who I am, and to recognise it was built on a lie.
Lisa: Yeah. And you weren't following your true path.
Mark: I wasn't following my true path. But my true path wasn't exactly laid out for me, in those meditation sessions. It was more like the archetypal energy in the arc of my life was shown to me and that that art was to be a warrior, and then it would lead somewhere else that wasn't quite clear to me, but the warrior part was very strong. And it didn't— I didn't get messages while I was meditating, saying, ‘You're going to be a Navy SEAL.’ What I got was ‘warrior’ and, ‘You're going down the wrong path with this business stuff.’ It was when I finally started to accept that, that I learned about the Navy SEALs, right. Remember, this is 1987, 88, there was no TV shows and movies, no famous names.
Lisa: They weren't famous back then.
Mark: Nobody knew them. In fact, the few people that did know them were like, crazy guys. So I— one day, I was walking home from work, and I came across a Navy recruiting station. I didn't even know it was that but I saw a poster in the window. I took a double take of this poster. I was like, well, the title of that poster was, ‘Be Someone Special’. And it had Navy SEALs doing really cool shit. Jumping out of airplanes, yeah, blocking out little mini submarines, sneaking through the water. It's just so cool for me. I just sat there kind of transfixed, looking at that, and I didn't say anything about the SEALs. They said, US Navy, and I was, ‘Huh, interesting.’ So I went back and I talked to the recruiters so what, ‘Who are those people in that poster?’ They said, ‘Oh, they're crazy Navy SEALs. You don't want to do that.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I do. Tell me more.’ So long story short. I started that whole CPA, MBA bullshit, 1985. In November of 1989, I got my black belt, I got my MBA, I got my CPA and I was on a bus. I was on a bus to Officer Candidate School.
Lisa: That was the next mission.
Mark: On to the next mission. I wandered away from, I walked away from probably what would today's dollars be $200,000 salary to get paid $500 a month?
Lisa: Wow. That takes—
Mark: For heading off as a candidate.
Lisa: That takes courage. That alone takes courage.
Mark: But I didn't question that. You know, I knew it. I knew this is the right path. And when I got to SEAL training, what we called BUD/S, basic underwater demolition SEAL training. Man, I felt like I was home, and there was no way that they were going to get me to quit. I mean, other people said this, but I said this very clearly: ‘You have to kill me to get me out of here.’ And I don't think they can legally do that. Although they sure do try.
Lisa: It can get pretty close.
Mark: It can get pretty close, yeah. I sailed through SEAL training. We had 185 in my class, hardcore, awesome guys. And 19 of us graduated. I graduated number one in my class and my entire team, my boat crew that we trained together from day one, graduated with me.
Lisa: Wow.
Mark: So there's something about that meditation training, Nakamura and the skills, and the values on team building and taking my eyes off myself and putting them on others, the taming of the ego, it really allowed me to help lead my team to success, right? We made it about the team and not about me, and everyone else was about them. And they— the team's, the instructors are, their job is to select the next crop of teammates that they will go to war with.
Lisa: Yeah.
Mark: So what they're looking for is not who's the toughest guy, not who's the best athlete—
Lisa: Not the coolest, yeah.
Mark: Yeah, exactly, not the best looking whatever. It's, ‘Are you a great teammate? Are you gonna have my back?’ So that's something that I guess I demonstrated.
Lisa: Wow, that's a brilliant intro into your background. What fascinates me with you too is that you like— you know, because the SEALs are known for being hard asses. I mean, you know they are hard people, they have been through tough stuff, they go through tough stuff every single day that you're out there. But you've got this meditation side, you do a heck of a lot of yoga. You do, you talk about authenticity, and I know you don't like the word vulnerability, but you're quite, you're open about the stuff. That's quite the opposite of most, in the training that you get. I suppose this comes from Nakamura being your master, that he taught you that very early on, they're sort of the both sides of the coin.
I get that question quite a lot, too. When they— when people read what I've done and achieved and so on, they're like, ‘Wow, you must be a super hard ass.’ And then they meet you and realise that you're actually very vulnerable or cry a lot. I'm very full of mistakes and problems and stuff that I'm working on at all times. But the difference is, I think, that you embrace both sides. And that you are always in pursuit of excellence, and you're always improving, and you're always developing. And I found that a really interesting combination in someone who's so physically tough and mentally tough to have had both sides. Was that a hard thing in the beginning with the SEALs?
Mark: I think you're right. I did learn that initially from Nakamura and so every day, you know, I was so committed. Every day I would stretch and I would do my breathing practices and my visualisation while I was going through SEAL training. Every day in the SEALs, I do some version of that. It was you know, it's difficult for a military operator to keep a daily dedicated practice going if you're up 24 hours a day, and you're in combat. Honestly, when I went to Iraq and combat, I meditated and trained yoga every single day. And it had a profound effect on me, right? In the war zone, all my teammates are just getting frayed at the edges, and I felt strong and confident, and I knew I was going to survive, because I did, I had that vision. I was going to be home with my child, you know, my wife and son.
So it came first from Nakamura, and then I started into yoga. It's not my career, it's important people know, I did plus-20 years in the Navy SEAL, but about nine years active duty and 11 years reserve. So as reserve, so nine years after I joined, even while I was on active duty, I started to get into yoga. But when I got off active duty I had more time. I went full on in, and that was because— actually it is a blessing in disguise. I was living in San Diego and there was no seido karate out here. Otherwise I would have gotten back into seido karate. So first I got into something called goju karate, I got a black belt there. It was very similar to seido but it lacked the spirit and like the mental, the meditation, so I didn't really stick with that. And then I got into ninjutsu, thinking ninjutsu might be a little bit more spiritual. I really liked the teacher but he was a horrible business guy, so right on the cusp of getting my black belt, he shut his school down and ran out of money.
And then I found yoga kind of about the same time as ninjitsu. But I didn't really understand it until I read Patanjali’s yoga sutras and also Paramahansa Yogananda’s autobiography yoga. And those just absolutely shattered my paradigm of what was possible and what yoga was, as the oldest science of mental and personal development. So I fully went into yoga and I ended up getting 700 hours of certifications and started my own yoga program and wrote a book about it eventually, but, and started teaching it to SEALs. And so all this I was still a SEAL officer. Because I didn't retire from the SEALs in 2011, but I was able to do all this and build a business that started to teach Navy SEALs everything I would have been learning. And that's called SEALFIT. That was the business that everything I've been learning and applying in my own life, right? And this was this integrated model of development. It started with Nakamura where it wasn't just about the physical. It was about physical, it was about mental, it was about emotional, it was about intuitional and spiritual aspects of our being. In that, I learned that if you train those together, then you will integrate, you'll become whole again. What that means is you'll become more, you have access to more of yourself. You have to put more potential. You can maintain peak performance, you can serve more profoundly, you can do more, you've got way more energy, way more enthusiasm, way more motivation, way more peace of mind, way more clarity.
It's extraordinary. In a sense, it's like coming back to who we are. That's why I call it integration. In fact, the word ‘yoga’ means union or integration, and so does is zen, believe it or not. Those practices and traditions are really all about becoming whole as a human again, as opposed to fragments and separate, separate from yourself and separated from others. So I stumbled upon this, and created my own path or my own model. And then when I had started to teach it to SEALs and special operators, and other military operators, a ton of people, even from New Zealand, some of your listeners might have been to my training. Then I started to recognise that, ‘Wow, this is necessary in our culture.’ Because most Westerners have no connection to this, this way of living of, taking care of the internal while you are working in the external, the yin and the yang, the balance between being and doing, becoming whole again, so you can do your work from a whole perspective as opposed to a fragmented, separated self. Which leads to suboptimal results, at a minimum, in at least a flat out crisis or destruction at the maximum level. And that's, we're seeing that both in from the investment in violence, military build-up, conflict, as well as environmental degradation is because human beings have not learned to be whole, and they don't recognise that we're all interconnected. And every one of our thoughts, every one of our emotions, every one of our actions has an implication or impact on the whole.
Lisa: Yep. This is really good. Because I think, we live our lives very much in the doing. We're busy all day, we're busy with a billion million things, we're running businesses, we're— we’ve got families and so on. And it's really hard to find that stillness. And I know that even as an athlete who, I think for years, I was just headed through the wall, you know, taking—
Mark: Most people are, that’s how they learn, until they hit the wall, right?
Lisa: Yeah, no, I hit the wall a couple of dozen times before, because I was a bit thick. I didn't wake up, said, ‘Hang on, this stuff isn't working anymore.’ And it works when you're 20. And it works when you're 25. And it works when you're 30. And but when you start hitting your 40s, and you're still smashing the crap out of your body, and you're not really not refilling the tank, and you're not re-examining what the hell are you doing, I think that's when the wheel started, when the wheel started to fall off for me. And I'm like, ‘Hang on a minute, this— why isn't my body doing like, it wasn't what it was supposed to do?’ And when you've grown up, though, with that expectation of, you have to be tough, you have to be hard. And I grew up different to you. But I had a dad who was very, he was an awesome father, but he was a hard ass. And he expected you to be tough and mentally tough, physically tough. He didn't really tolerate a lot of weakness or sickness or anything like that. And he was an amazing dad, but he pushed really hard. And that sort of makes you think, well, you have to be hard all the time. And then when you break down, then it's you being weak. Instead of looking at the whole picture, and quieting the mind and doing these things like meditation was for me. Yeah, I know, I hear it's really important, but I can't sit still. I need it twice as much.
Mark: Yeah, well, there's a reason for that. It'd be fun to talk about. But think about, when I reflect back, and my SEAL training and all these other guys were trying to be hard, and they had the same thinking, because America has a real soft side to it. But there's a lot of freakin’ warriors in America. And we have that same kind of what your dad's talking about. Gotta be hard. Like, there's no room for weakness. It's got to be tough. You think about the metaphor, the guys who quit were just bad asses. Yeah, why did they quit? They quit because they didn't— they lacked the emotional strength to understand what was happening to them in their either most extreme moments of crisis or moments of just doubt, right? And then they're like, so they let uncertainty in, let doubt creep in and corrupt their decision making and then, one mistake leads to an injury we call, quinjury. And you've probably seen this in endurance athletes’ is when all of a sudden the injury kind of crops up and then the person's out. And then really, reality is they created that injury to quit.
Lisa: Yeah, because they wanted a way out.
Mark: Because they wanted a way out. It's very subconscious. It's not prepared. It's not preparing properly. It's not recovering properly. It's not understanding that this is a long game and getting your ego out of the way.
Lisa: It used to prop up for me every— before any big race, that in the week ahead of that race, I would get sick. And I would, I'm sure that that was my subconscious trying to stop me do it.
Mark: Yeah, I've given you an out, right. And so—
Lisa: You’ve got a cold, you've got the flu.
Mark: Think about the metaphor between, if you got a tsunami coming, like, consider tsunami a metaphor for a crisis, or a big challenge, like BUD/S or a 50 mile or 100 mile race or something like that. There's a tsunami coming. Would you rather be a mighty oak facing that tsunami, or would you rather be like a reed?
Lisa: A reed, definitely.
Mark: Yeah, if so, when I went to SEAL training, I tried to be the reed, right? I tried to be really flexible. I didn't let anything bother me. You know, structures would come up and, during Hell Week for us, which week seven back then. But now it's more like week three or four, seven days non-stop training around the clock, no sleep. Everyone's heard about that. Like a day, Thursday, like the day before, we're over it most of it, we’re down to 60, 35, maybe 45 or 50, actually, in our class from 185 already. And instructor evil comes over and he's like, ‘Mark, I don't like you, I'm gonna make you quit.’ And in my mind, I was like, ‘Good luck.’ And I even think I started—
Lisa: That confidence!
Mark: I don't know, it was just my spiritual strength saying, ‘No, you're not going to get me to quit, you can't.’ And so I actually was challenging him in my mind, and it must come through on my face. And he goes, ‘I'm gonna wipe that smirk right out that effing face.’ And he just made me start doing 8-count bodybuilders, which are like a burpee, basically. And I remember in my mind thinking, ‘Okay, all right. Let's do this.’ Right? All I got to do is one 8-count bodybuilder at a time, until he gets tired.
Lisa: Until he gets tired.
Mark: Exactly! So that's what I did. I just did one. I just want, did one 8-count bodybuilder. And then I just did one 8-count bodybuilder. And then I just did one 8-count bodybuilder. And when we got up to like—
Lisa: You broke him.
Mark: 800.
Lisa: Holy heck.
Mark: Which is nothing, right? I did 24 hours of burpees last, a couple of years ago, as part of our challenge. We did, check this out: we did 22 million burpees as a tribe to raise money for veterans. And part of that was to break a world record where our six-person team, you would love this, three men and three women, we did 36,000 burpees in 24 hours, so I did 7,500 or something like that. So 700 is nothing. Back then I didn't know if it was going to be 700 or 7,000 or 70,000. But he got bored, and he walked away at about 700, and I have to say, that worked. That's a good strategy.
Lisa: What about the burning in the muscles and the exhaustion and the running out of glycogen—
Mark: You can do anything, one at a time.
Lisa: Wow.
Mark: It's just like in a race, I'm sure you get to a point where all you have to do all you are saying to yourself is, ‘Just one more step.’
Lisa: One more step. Yep, absolutely.
Mark: Same thing. We call them micro goals. And so we teach— I started teaching these to SEALs, and the best guys already did this. But now we teach it, the SEALs are teaching what I call the Big Four. And they're teaching box breathing for controlling their stress, they're teaching positive internal dialogue, and mantras. And they're teaching visualisation, visualise every event and visualise what the end state looks like for you and then visualise the mission and whatnot. And then micro goals. Like go to BUD/S thinking about eight months of training, you go to BUD/S thinking about, ‘What do I got to do today to win this?’ And then when today gets hard, you just collapse. ‘What do I need to do to win this evolution or event that I'm in?’ And then when that gets harder, you know, it's like, ‘What do I got to do to get to the next five minutes?’ Anytime you quit, or you have the thought, ‘Well, this sucks. I think I want to quit.’ You just say, ‘Well, let me just push through to another— let me just push through another five minutes.’ Or, ‘Let me just get to that berm up there,’ if it's a run, or Log-Pt could go on forever. ‘Let me just finish this evolution, then I'll make a decision.’ And so you just keep kicking the can down the road of the pain and the quit decision and the suffering and eventually the suffering goes away, because that's a temporary state.
Lisa: And this is like that you just dropped so much golden inside of two minutes. Take a couple of those because these are things that I've took me 20 years to learn.
Mark: Play it back in slow motion.
Lisa: You know, like this. That's how that's how I break down. You know, every mess of the like, I remember and my listeners have heard me tell the story. But I ran 2,250 kilometers from New Zealand for charity.
Mark: Wow. Good for you. Holy cow.
Lisa: Yeah, no, it's like, but I've been so busy in the build-up doing— I've been at other races around the world, done Badwater in the States, just come back from that, just launched a book and then I'm standing at the start line. I've been so busy in the thing that I actually hadn't thought about actually running the— because I was just like, ‘Yeah, I got everything, sweet.’ And then I’m starting at the start line and I just had a panic attack, like the first real big panic attack. And I'm not, because you're staring down the barrel of this—
Mark: Like, holy shit, this is too high to climb. What the heck have I done?
Lisa: What the frick was I thinking? And I went home, we had media, we had all my crew and everybody there and I just went away behind the one of the cars and got my mum, my mummy ‘cuz she's my safe place, went to my mummy and I just bawled my eyes out. And said, ‘Mum I can't do this, I don't know what the frick I was thinking. I can't, and there's no way out.’ And mum's just like, ‘Hey,’ as she hugged me, as mums do. And she said, ‘You don't need to do 2,250 today. All I want you to focus on is that little box up there,’ you know, that was a couple of hundred meters up the road. ‘That's what you got to do right now. And then you're going to, you're going to get through to lunchtime, and then you're gonna have lunch. And then we're going to get through to this and that.’
She just broke it down into pieces, and she took all of that load that I was just like, ‘Oh my God, this is huge,’ and she broke it into one step at a time, basically. And that was some of the greatest learnings that I've taken away for every event that I've done when— and there have been times when I've broken and I've just crashed on the ground. I don't know how to get up and people have come along and they've got me up and walked me through the next few steps. Or the next— and that has gotten you over that hump, you know? And I just wait, you know, that's so much gold, right there, what you've just said. I think if we can do that in daily life so when we're faced with some big scary thing coming at us, how do I just get through this moment? And we're very— if you can get through these impulses, you know, like there's 30 seconds, through the 30 seconds almost, sometimes you can get to a place where you can cope again. And then you can sort of get back up.
Mark: And this goes back to like the internal dialogue. Most people don't examine their internal dialogue. And this is where meditation is so critical. And you can also consider, like running or swimming or biking, endurance sports generally, are also very good for examining internal dialogue, because you're going to meet resistance. How you talk to yourself has an incredible impact on your energy and your motivation. Literally, we use the terminology ‘feeding the courage wolf’ versus ‘feeding the fear wolf’. Feeding fear is allowing negative dialogue and negative imagery and negative emotions to kind of run the rule the roost of your psychology, and that weakens you. Negative thoughts demonstrably weaken you as a human being.
Lisa: Yeah, because—
Mark: They're gonna not just weaken your motivation but literally musculature-wise you get weaker, and that's been proven through kinesiology. So positive thoughts create a higher vibration, which bring more energy, more access to more creativity and motivation. And so you got to train positive thoughts. That's what I mean by feeding the courage wolf. And the more you feed the courage wolf by training positive mantras and positive thoughts, then the more you starve the fear wolf until he goes away, until he just doesn't have the food anymore. And those patterns dry up and blow away. So I created a bunch of positive mantras that I would say in the SEAL training, and they're still with me today.
As soon as I start a hard workout, they kick back in. ‘Feeling good, I'm looking good, ought to be in Hollywood. Feeling good, I'm looking good, ought to be in Hollywood. I can get out of me in Hollywood. I've got this easy day, piece of cake. Boo yeah, hey, got this. Easy day, piece of cake. Boo yeah, hey.’ And then I'll synchronise that with my breathing. So, hardcore, run three steps and inhale 1, 2, 3, ‘I've got this. Easy day. Piece of cake.’ Exhale 1, 2, 3. Right.
Lisa: And the rhythm is good too, hey.
Mark: Yeah, exactly. So I was synchronising those before, the big four. The first skill I said, box breathing, it's really breath control. Running, anything you're doing, always breathing through your nose as best as possible, and controlling the breathing and creating a nice rhythmic pattern with the breathing. It's going to be different depending upon what you're doing. If you're lifting weights, gonna be one thing, if you're running another, swimming another. Swimming creates its own little breathing patterns, because head in the water versus out of the water. But just starting there, controlling your breathing and adding a positive mantra, or a positive internal statement that's linked to the breath is transformative. Not only does it keep you in the game athletically or whatever, but when you do this during your regular day, day in and day out, you're training your mind to be really positive and to be very concentrated. So you're developing concentration power. So you're turning your mind from like a scattered floodlight, which is flickering on and off, the monkey mind, to a very, very concentrated laser beam that you can point that laser beam on anything, any task, any project, and it deeply improves your productivity, the ability to get things done, you know, significantly.
Lisa: Wow.
Just interrupting the program briefly to let you know that we have a new Patron program for the podcast. Now, if you enjoy Pushing the Limits, if you get great value out of it, we would love you to come and join our Patron membership program. We've been doing this now for five and a half years and we need your help to keep it on air. It's been a public service free for everybody, and we want to keep it that way. But to do that we need like-minded souls who are on this mission with us to help us out. So if you're interested in becoming a patron for Pushing the Limits podcast, then check out everything on www.patron.lisatamati.com. That's P-A-T-R-O-N dot lisatamati.com. We have two Patron levels to choose from. You can do it for as little as $7 a month, New Zealand, or $15 a month if you really want to support us. So we are grateful if you do. There are so many membership benefits you're going to get if you join us. Everything from workbooks for all the podcasts, the strength guide for runners, the power to vote on future episodes, webinars that we're going to be holding, all of my documentaries and much, much more. So check out all the details: patron.lisatamati.com. And thanks very much for joining us.
Mark: And then the imagery, right, the imagery. Well, let me backup. The other thing that that process of paying attention to the quality of your thoughts and changing them to positive thoughts, and increasing your concentration power, as you start to look at the dialogue too, in your head. What is actually going on? And you recognise that typically what's going on in your head is a series of statements that are also based upon belief systems, but it can be framed as questions. When people say, ‘I don't think I can do this,’ what they're really saying is, ‘Am I worthy? Am I competent?’
We can begin to recognise that our belief systems are based upon questions and statements that may or may not be true. And so you want to take a look at the ones that are questionable, especially if they have a negative quality, and say, ‘Is that true?’ And you realise, ‘It’s not true. I am worthy. I am competent.’ Now, I may not feel that yet. But the more I tell myself that and the more I can see that in myself, and the more that I meditate and actually feel into my worthiness and my confidence, and the more I work to eradicate the emotional side or shadow that may have, be tied to related to that — for me, it was because of the childhood abuse, I kind of felt a little unworthiness and whatnot, even though I was capable as a SEAL, it's still kind of plagued me for a while, until I had to stare down that wolf of fear and be like, ‘Yeah, that's all bullshit. That's just a story that I'm holding on to and I was able to release all that energy and feel that worthiness now.’ Then that leads to a whole nother set of questions, which are extraordinarily empowering, right. So when I— understanding your capability as a human being, the potential that you have, the power that we have, you can then project that into the future and say, ‘What does victory look like for me?’ Right? ‘If I'm going to run this 2,000 meter, or 2,000 kilometer race, and I'm going to raise money for charity, what is that for? What's my ‘why’? And what does victory look like?’
You get a clear sense of what victory looks like. And then you can even do that with the micro parts. So you chunked it down into 100 kilometer segments, let's just say. What does victory look like for that segment for the next five days? What does it look like for today? What does it look like— this is, in a sense, what your mom was doing, but she was doing it from the other way around. What does it look like for the next six hours? What does it look like for the next three hours? You get a clear picture because you're asking the right questions, and you're winning in your mind before you step foot into the battlefield. So asking really powerful questions like, what does victory look like? Who is on my team? Who's got my back? Why am I doing this? How is it related to my purpose in my life? These are the questions that we start asking, because now we've drowned out the negative incessant chatter, which is just holding us back and distracting us. We've created this space, and I use the metaphor still water pond. We've taken our mind and we've created it instead of this choppy, you know, bouncing all over the place, turbulent thought stream, largely negative, we've calmed down. And it's now this still water, and on this still water, you can look at it, you can really see a reflection clearly. So that's kind of a nice thing, you get to see your true self more clearly, but also, what you drop into that water in terms of the thought is going to ripple out and affect everything. So you end up dropping thought seeds that are really powerful, instead of chaotic and negative.
Lisa: Because there's this whole, these automatic negative thoughts and if we think about how we evolved that was there for our survival. Because we needed to be aware of dangers and things in our environment, so we were always looking for the bad thing that was going to come at us. But in our world now, where we just, we have this constant chatter in our head. And it's, you know, I've certainly dealt with this for a long time, and I and I fought against the whole sitting still thing, and focusing inwards. Because it's very unpleasant, when you having— when you want to move, you just want to move. Give me a hard ass workout, any day, over meditation, you know, because it's just like this energy, this agitation, but that's why I need to do it. So that I can break through that piece of the puzzle. And then you can tap into strengths that you didn't know you had, and quietness, and then you start to really reflect and like, for me, it has only really been, even in the last few months where I've been—
My dad passed away, and it was one hell of a battle for his life. And I, yeah, it was a real— I was fighting against the system. And it was a mess of battle. It's all good when you win, but it's also good when you don't win. And so this one, just been— I was a bit of an existential crisis after that, because I'd lost this battle for my dad, who I loved dearly. And it made me go inward. It made me start to really question some of the biggest things because you start realising that life's short, shorter than I think it's gonna be. You want to understand why, and then going inside and doing some deep work and doing some trauma work and doing all that sort of hard stuff has been great. There's always good that comes out of shit. You never ever want to go through things like that, but when you do, you can always turn them into something, a learning curve of some sort. And having that, I was listening to you with Bedros Keulian, who's also is another one that I—
Mark: Yeah, he’s an awesome guy.
Lisa: Yeah, he's just a rock star. in you, when you were talking about how you went through the zen process where you were, for a start, you started meditating, but you're just learning to quiet the mind. And then after a few months, that became then mindfulness. Where you’re starting to observe yourself from outside in splitting the mind or somehow you put this and you're actually observing yourself as this higher self, if you like. Can you explain that a little bit? And how does that—
Mark: Yeah, so glad you brought that up. Because I wanted to talk about that. Because you're right. It's— meditation is hard, especially for active people, which everybody, everybody listening, everybody in the Western world is pretty much hyperactive. Yep, that's what we're taught; it’s reality. Like, ‘Go, go, go. Do, do, do.’ We get over-committed. Now we have, you know, constant distraction with our iPhones and social media, and it's just gonna get worse, worse, worse. Wait until we get plugged in with a neural link, you know, like, wow. So we got to push back against that. The only way to push back against that is to disconnect from all that and to sit still, or stand still, or take a walk. But don't do anything, right. Don't do it for a goal. Don't do it to check it off a box. Don't do it to be the best meditator you know.
Lisa: Tick that box.
Mark: It doesn't work, right?
Lisa: That was what I was going to—
Max: There's no goals here. Right? It's about becoming still, getting that clarity and this still water mind back, if you ever had it, but we had it when we were kids, of course, but in a different sense. So that you can evolve. You know, let me start there. I think that there's two reasons we're on this planet. One is to evolve to become the best version, highest and best version of yourself in this lifetime. The second is to align with our calling or our purpose. And those two really kind of go hand-in-hand or hand-in-glove. You can’t evolve if you're constantly doing. You actually will stay stuck. You'll keep getting your ass handed to you. You'll keep suffering. You'll keep feeling victimised. And you'll keep looking outward for the solutions. And you'll keep blaming other people, or society, or taxes, or the government, or God.
Lisa: A lot of fingers are turned.
Mark: The answers lie within, right? And so the only way to go inward is to slow down and just be quiet. Right? So it's imperative. Now, why do most people fail? A) Because everything I've just talked about, they haven't been taught this. And B) because they're body mind, their body brain is very, very agitated. It’s amped up because you've been taking all this stress on throughout your life. So what I teach is that the first step in meditation practice isn't mindfulness. It isn't a mantra practice. It's just a box breathe, which is a pattern breathe, five-count in, five-count hold, and five-count out, five-count hold, or four, or three, if you have trouble with that. And just let that nostril breathing in that massaging that the vagus nerve, stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. And it's bleeding off stress and bringing your body brain back into my balance.
Lisa: Yep.
Mark: When your body brain is back into balance, your brain is going to experience that as a lower frequency rate. Lower frequency means fewer thoughts, right? If you're in gamma, it's like tick-tick, popcorn brain. But if you're in alpha, like listening to beautiful music, classical music, or you're maybe doing some journaling, your mind stops racing. It starts to get into—
Lisa: A lovely alpha state of focus.
Mark: Yeah, and so the box breathing practice trains your mind to get back into alpha, trains your body to de-stress, and you do this. It might take you months, usually about three months. I— my clients have this extraordinary calming that comes over them. And they're already changed. But this is, you know, just the preparatory work, right? This also, for those who are working on their physical structure in their health and their weight, this also has enormous benefits because you begin to feel a lot better. And you begin, you know, you're starting to breathe in that life force again. You're getting more oxygen with every breath, and you're retraining the breathing patterns so this becomes your more natural state. If you, let me just pause here, if you train for 20 minutes a day, have a five-count box breath, that's three breaths per minute, over time, and might take a year or more, you're gonna eventually settle into a natural breath pattern of six breaths per minute, which is now proven to the optimal.
Lisa: Exactly.
Mark: I've been doing this for years, I never knew that, it just settled out there to where six breaths per minute through the nose was standard for me, or a standard, and that's what will happen to you.
Lisa: Yep.
Mark: Yeah. But those are full breaths, full exhales, getting all the toxins out there.
Lisa: Basically the exhale.
Mark: It's enormously beneficial for your body, and everything starts to come back into balance: you start losing weight, you start eating better. Because you want to eat better, you start sleeping better, because you got all that, less cortisol and less stress. Wow, all that is foundational. Now, with all that starting to happen, after three to six months, you can start to sit comfortably, and you're starting to enjoy it, and you're starting to look forward to it. That's when we can start meditating.
Now everything looks like meditation, but you're really sitting in box breathing. But now we turn that box pattern into a concentration practice. That's part two. And so the way I teach that is to visualise the box being drawn with each side being drawn in a different color, lighting. And also adding that mantra, or one of the other, but they both work and they work together. So now you're giving your mind one thing to focus on. This then develops that power to concentrate deeper, but also gives you the ability to notice when you're— when you lost your focus, or you split your focus. You’re wandering. And then you get, develop the ability to bring it back quicker and quicker to the box better, and that's called attention control. So you're training yourself: concentration, the ability to control your attention, and the ability to be less distracted. Wow.
Now that's mind training and that's the part where I say you're training your mind first with the box breathing, then with the second part of concentration and attention control. To be like a tame, beautiful stallion that was a wild stallion. A wild stallion is gorgeous, but it's dangerous. And most people's minds are like that. They're beautiful, but they're dangerous.
Lisa: Yep.
Mark: They’re dangerous to themselves and to others. But once you train it by lassoing that mind and stabilising it and calming it down, de-stressing it and then being able to focus it, then it's much happier and it's much calmer, and it's going to serve you, instead of trampling.
Lisa: Achieve more and do more.
Mark: Right. That's step two in the process, and this might be like, again, everyone's gonna be different, but six months to one and a half years. That's step three. Some of this stuff naturally unfolds, but it's really powerful if you recognise and you're deliberate about it. You don't want to rush meditation; this is a lifetime practice. Be comfortable, get it right in the beginning, because it'll serve you for the rest of your life. So many people bounce around with meditation, they draw in it, they're off it, they quit. They're just using an audio app, you know, and they're not really training their brains. It does have some health benefits, but it's not really training their minds.
Furthermore, if you don't end up doing the emotional work, you can really do what they call spiritual bypass or an emotional bypass where you can have some nice experiences. You go for the bliss and the white light and all that. But you're not doing anything to change your character, your underlying structures of beliefs and thoughts and biases, right? I had a meditation teacher who told me, ‘Mark,’ he wasn't talking to me, he was talking about meditation. He said, ‘If you're an asshole, and you start meditating, and you meditate for 20 years, you don't do anything about that, you’re just gonna be a more focused asshole.’
Lisa: There’s just more asshole-ness. Oh no.
Mark: Right? So you want to get this right. Meditation can be transformative at all levels, but you got to do it, right. It's just like learning foot placement and proper alignment and structure to run 2,000 kilometers. If you don't, you break. Same thing with meditation. If you go straight into, like Kundalini Yoga, and you think, ‘Oh, that's it, that's my path.’ And you have a Kundalini awakening, and you haven't done the foundational work to integrate that, or to deal with that in your body, then you could go crazy. And there are people around this world who are absolutely batshit crazy, because they had Kundalini awakenings, and they weren't ready to handle it.
Lisa: Wow. Okay. So you need to do this—
Mark: You need to do this work. This is why the yogis would train for years and years and years, in the asanas, the physical postures, so that when they were ready for that experience of enlightenment, which some some had, and some didn't, and they had that massive, like lightning bolt of electricity just explode up their spine and integrate all their chakras and, and just drawing and all this life force that they were able to handle it.
Lisa: Wow.
Mark: It’s an intense experience. Now that's a little bit advanced training, probably, we don't need to go into much more of that here. But my point is that, take your time, don't be so goal-oriented with meditation. It's okay to be goal-oriented with your athleticism and with your business stuff. But when it comes to raising your kids and the meditation, it's better to be patient, and to be present and just allow the process to unfold because it's going to be a little bit different for everybody, depending upon where you are at psychosocially and physically and emotionally.
One thing I do want— so one thing I just want to finish up this part. So you have the first part, which is the de-stressing the routes of control where you're just breathing for that. Then the second part where you're breathing for concentration, power, and attention control. The third part, which you alluded to, that opens up naturally, is you start to take a little bit of the pressure off of the concentration training, and you allow any thoughts streams to arise. Where concentration training, you're trying to like— you're not trying to empty your mind of all thoughts, because you're thinking of one thing, and that is the concentration, you know, the object of concentration. And so you're putting a lot of effort into that, mental effort, which develops mental power. But eventually, you've got enough of that. And so you, you take off the gas a little bit, and you allow less energy to put it— be put into the concentration and allow other things to arise.
This is where you get that metacognitive split, which is interesting. So now it's almost like your brain has been partitioned into two hard drives. And one hard drive is your right brain and right hemisphere, which is fully online and aware now, because of the concentration. It’s not all subconscious, it's aware, say able to see context. And the second partition is the left hemisphere of your brain, which is the content, thinking. And so your box breathing softly, just, mindfully, this being aware, and you're seeing what's coming up. But you're seeing it from a perspective that's separated from the thoughts and emotions. This is a sea change in behavior. It's awakening to this understanding that you are not your thoughts and emotions. And therefore you're not the stories and you can change your stories, you can change your life by inserting new stories.
Lisa: So you're observing yourself from the outside as an extra character that's watching the emotions and the things that you're off and understanding the actual brain that's been partly programmed in childhood and our culture and everything that it's exposed to, which is running this pattern that's been running forever. And you're actually watching and saying, ‘Well, that's interesting.’
Mark: I do that in the observer. Yeah. I call that the witness.
Lisa: Yeah.
Mark: So then, there's two more things we do in meditation. So once you begin to open up to the witness, the most powerful way to visualise is from the witness perspective, because you're doing it from your higher self, you're visualising your future from that perspective. It's just, a lot of people start training, they start with visualisation, and they're like, I can't get a clear picture of my future. And they're really hooked to their thinking mind and they're thinking about doing in the future. When you can decouple from the thinking mind and look into the future from the perspective of your witness, you're basically seeing what your spirit wants you to see. And so that's going to be much more in alignment, if not in total alignment with what your real purpose is on this planet. And you're not seeing yourself doing, you're seeing yourself as a type of person, like an archetype or calling. Seeing yourself as a healer, as a teacher, as a warrior, as a leader, as a— and then that's gonna have a certain flavor to it, like a healer might be a healer of the earth, or it might be healer of children, or it might be healer of elderly, right, so it's gonna have a flavor to it, that's going to come to you spontaneously.
That's where intuition comes from. It's like this deep knowingness inside, or transrational, from outside of us, which really isn't, nothing outside of us. Ultimately, we create our own reality. It's all basically, it's all experienced with mind. So that's powerful. So witnessing can lead to the most incredible thing, which is, like embodied visualisation, where you're visualising from the perspective of the witness, and you are seeing your future clearly. And you practice that every day. And then that creates this massive magnetic pole. Because you're actually creating a memory of a future that is bound to happen, right? You know, we have these different kind of futures strands, which are possibilities, but we get to choose which one now, that's going to become the go from possibility to probability to destiny.
Lisa: Wow.
Mark: That's profound. And then the last thing that happens is, when you stop doing anything at all, and this happened to me on the on zen bench when I was in my 20s. Now it's routine, where you know, you can start breathing, for control, and then you breathe for concentration, then you open up to the mindful awareness, and you see what's going on and check in and make sure that everything's cool. And then you do your visualisation, and then you just stop efforting at all, you just stop trying to do anything, and you just sit and rest and let your mind rest. You're not going to sleep. But what you're doing is kind of turning inward and just letting awareness kind of search for itself. So awareness, your awareness is searching for, let's just say, absolute awareness, is trying to recognise itself in the totality of everything. And it will find itself because it is the same as that.
This is when you get this incredibly, deeply connected feeling to all that is, right? This is where you know, the ultimate road to the end of separation is this sense, this unity we experience.We're super easily connected. We all arise on same thing. Our higher selves all arise from the same thing, we have our unique aspects of it. But the metaphor is that I love to use is, you know, we recognise that we're all like waves in the ocean. But we're still all, we all have the same awareness and we're connected to the ocean.
Lisa: If we were part of the ocean, vessel in the ocean.
Mark: This is another transformative experience in meditators’ progression and evolution is that they then never, never do go back to feeling separate again. You may have moments but you remember, ‘Oh, yeah, this is just a temporary experience of separation. So let me go back and continue my training.’ And then the training starts to become integrated into your daily life, and then every moment becomes training, and then you've— that turns into a permanent state of unity experience. And that's, that would be called enlightenment.
Lisa: Wow. And this is like the whole body things, it's not just training your body because everyone wants to know, ‘What diet should I have and what exercise should I be doing?’ We’re forgetting this big piece of the puzzle that we're not just physical beings, and that we can access our neurology, through our physiology, and we can access also higher, higher things if we take the time. It was a hard sell for me, like I said. I struggled because I just wanted to be doing. I'm an action-oriented person, I want to be doing things and to actually take that time and it's not a waste of time, even though you know when people say to me, ‘But I haven't got time to meditate.’ Well then, you need to make time to do all this stuff. Because— and you start off you don't start off eight hours a day up in the mountains. You gotta progress.
Mark: You’re not sure you might want to do that. That's—
Lisa: Really great. There was one other thing that you discussed too, with Bedros that really interested me, which was recapitulation. Can you explain what recapitulation is and how that works?
Mark: I will. And before I do, I would like to just say that as an athlete, I imagine most people listening are athletes, we have a great opportunity and also great responsibility. Because most of the people, at least in the past who have been drawn to meditation don't have the physical strength or capacity that we have. And so you end up seeing you know, this might be one thing that has turned off a lot of people, you know, healthy people fit people, is there— that Buddhist monk is fat, right?
Lisa: He doesn't look like I want to look like.
Mark: Right. I don't want to look like that, or I don't want to wear a robe, check out a society and sit in a monastery woods. And yeah, yeah, and I— so those, you got to recognise that like zen monasteries, I've been to zen monastery before, and it's just not my thing. And people who are drawn to spiritual traditions, but ignore their body, and ignore their emotions, they're incomplete. They might have some advanced mental training, but they're incomplete. The physical structure— and a lot of these people fall, right, they fail in the long run, because they still get stuck in their ego, or they get really unhealthy and they fall apart. So athletes can approach this from the perspective of total health, right? Body, mind, spirit, and we say physical, mental, emotional, intuitional, and spiritual. And it's going to be a more complete process, or package. And furthermore, you're going to be able to help others because you're going to be really healthy and really strong, really motivated. And you're gonna have a lot of endurance. Yeah, and you're gonna happen, you're gonna be whole. So I think it's athletes and warriors who also become enlightened or awakened, who are serving the world, who are— who can change the world.
Lisa: Yeah.
Mark: Together, right, because we got the strength and the staying power. And also, because we're— you know, we have to face our fears and our shadows, because we do hard things, we tend to actually be more emotionally balanced than people who don't. So that's— I wanted to say, that's a really— that should be a motivating force.
Lisa: I mean, that's, you know, like, you know, we’ve sort of come full circle in this holistic approach, rather than a hit through the wall approach. Which, you know, in the gym, or in the training field, you have to go sometimes to, through to places that are not pleasant. But you don't need to neglect this other part of you, and that that's your whole and it's not contradictory, because a lot of people think, you know, ‘Mark Divine, what's he about, man? Is he this hard ass athlete? Or is he this amazing spiritual teacher?’ And he, well he's both, you know, and—
Mark: I’ve done my three hours of training this morning.
Lisa: I haven't.
Mark: Today was deadlifts in a nice functional lot and my yoga and meditation all together. It's all one thing. Back to your question. So imagery and visualisation is just such an incredible powerful tool for us to create our destiny, which I've already talked about, but also to heal our past. So recapitulating is where we use imagery, ideally, also, from the state of the witness, right? When we get there, to go back into our past and to relive, re-experience and relive traumatic events. And then to recontextualise them and to forgive both from your heart and from your dialogue, conceptual stuff, but also with the imagery to see yourself forgiving your younger version of yourself.
And then to change that picture, to change the image that you associated with it, and the energy associated with it. This is often best done with a qualified coach or like therapist, in the process of like EMDR, eye motion desensitisation training. It’s really valuable, and that's something I do all the time. I have an EMDR coach, and I continue to do this because there's no there there, right? You can peel the onion forever. And then many, many past lives, right work on the past life, right? There's no end to this stuff, right? Once you get into it, you realise that this is a lifetime of work. And the more you do, the lighter you feel, and the more energy you have, and the more joy and bliss you bring into life. I like, I call it akin to like dragging kettlebells of regret and resentment.
Lisa: I love that quote, because you're draining all that, like what I've felt in the last years, like I'm pulling this heavy load of shit that's accumulated from all the traumas and all the shit. And so I've been working with Dr Don Wood, I know he's been on your show, working through some of the traumas and taking the colour out of those memories and recapitulation or what—
Mark: What Dan is doing is recapitulation, it’s a form of it.
Lisa: It’s the same thing.
Mark: It's the same thing: to change the association, the energy, the emotions, and the imagery with past traumatic events. First, you have to identify those events, right? So awareness is the first step. I learned to recapitulation, I've done thousands of hours of training in different systems, not just Navy SEALs, but obviously yoga and Tibetan Buddhism and martial arts, tai chi, qi gong, and now aikido and my earlier stuff, and then even a patchy scout training and some Toltec training. Toltec training, they're— the ancient warriors. required the young men— I don't know if I don't think the women in ancient times— and the Toltecs were warriors, but the men. By the way, I only say that because of all the culture weirdness is going on in America anyways. Yeah.
Lisa: You got to be careful what you say.
Mark: I don't want to get canceled.
Lisa: Google might take us off here.
Mark: Right, exactly. So they require the young men, before they were allowed to become warriors, to spend a year in nature. Now that's, people heard of that, right? You can take your year walkabout and assuming you survive. But what they had to do during that year was what was unique. They had to recapitulate their entire lives, day by day, all the way back to birth.
Lisa: Wow. It’s heavy.
Mark: It's heavy. So this did a couple of things for them. One is it really developed their visualisation skills.
Lisa: Yeah.
Mark: Which then they were going to use for great benefit for their future, but they had to learn, you know, first, to work with their past and secondarily, let them see and recontextualise and heal any regrets or any wounds or any trauma that they had, or any mistakes that they made. So that when they were admitted to the warrior clan, and they actually had to face battle, they didn't have any of that energy holding them back.
Lisa: That's so—
Mark: If you think about anyone listening or even you, if you walk outside right now, and someone's standing there with a sword, first thing that’s gonna leap into your mind and your heart is like, ‘Holy shit. I don't know if I can do this.’ Or there's energy there that is going to prevent you from acting in a powerful way. Well, recapitulation and clearing all the energy will clear all that up, and you would just literally spring into action.
Lisa: Wow, so you wouldn't have that?
Mark: You wouldn’t have that, you even overcome fear of death.
Lisa: Yeah. Wow. You haven't got that heavy backpack of shit.
Mark: Right. Exactly. I love that metaphor. We use that in our Kokoro camp, which is 50-hour training that we have for SEALFIT, which, at once, in one sense, simulates Hell Week. But in other it’s really designed to train these five mountains of the physical, mental, emotional, intuitional, and spiritual. We have, the students end up in this very long, painful hike, and they've got these 40-pound sandbags in their back, and they're doing all sorts of drills and skills. At the end of this, we haven't take the sandbag out. You think about their biggest regrets, like the big one. Like everyone's got like one big one. The monster regret. And then we have them cut the sandbag, open, and then they dump that regret out. And it's so powerful, because people are literally in tears as they let that shit go.
Lisa: Wow, that is, that's amazing. Because you've literally carried it up this bloody mountain. You've exhausted yourself. You're letting that stuff go. It's absolutely brilliant. And I think, yeah, we need to be doing, and then doing this as a daily practice at the end of the day, going back over your day, so that you’re not taking the shit from this day forward.
Mark: Yeah, I'm glad you said that. So that the morning routine is to prepare to win your mind for the day and the evening routine is to look back and make sure that you won the day and you learn from your mistakes, and you let go of all regret. So recapitulation is used in two ways. One is to go back and overcome the big things, the big traumas, like you're doing with Don.
Lisa: Yep.
Mark: And the other is to go back and to literally just make sure that every day that you're not dragging any new kettlebells of regret into your sleep cycle. You deal with it right away. If you did something that you think, ‘Oh, man, I wish I hadn't done that.’ Well, either forgive yourself right away, or go make amends right there if you can. Pick up the phone. Send a text. Do it now. Or plan the critical conversation for the next morning to get it off your chest.
The faster you do, the better off you do. Then this becomes a practice of letting go and having a daily practice of letting go of regrets and resentments is extraordinarily valuable, right? Because then it frees up all the energy before it takes root and starts to create a cancer of energy in your body, or real cancer, literally.
Lisa: Yeah. And then we've got much more power to actually do the stuff that we’re meant to be here doing, to create the programs, the books, podcasts, whatever it is that you are in for. You can't when you're carrying this huge great load on your back, yeah, I don't know. My ability when I was in my 30s and I didn't have quite so much crap in there, I was unbeatable. I was like, and then as life keeps slapping you around the face, and you're getting some big traumas happen, you start to lose that energy and you start to like, live. And people go, ‘Oh, well, we’re just getting older, you know, the mitochondria and all that.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, well—’
Mark: This is where people start to give up, right?
Lisa: Yeah!
Mark: And that's, no. It's the time to get busy.
Lisa: And the older you are, the more you have to work. That's my mantra because I've brought my mum back from a massive, massive aneurysm, which I've written a book about called Relentless. And this story is really, really powerful. And, but it's about like, she's 79 years old and I train her like an Olympic athlete.
Mark: That’s awesome.
Lisa: I make little concessions every now and again, which tells me off, like the other day, she's, she's willing to go through the hard yards to rehabilitate her brain because her brain was in a vegetative state when she first had this. Not much happening upstairs at all. I’ve spent five years rehabilitating her, and spending hundreds and thousands of hours, retraining her from the time of being a baby, but like a being a baby, being an adult, and read the neuroplasticity, and all the things that I had to learn and hyperbaric, and through all the stuff that I did with her.
She hasn't given up. She hasn't ever said to me, ‘I don't want to anymore.’ Because she's a fighter. Even though she's a quiet, lovely lady, and you think well, that she's just a nice, gentle lady, she's tough as nails when it comes to just getting up and doing the work today, at the age of 79. That is a huge role model for other elderly people. Because we tend to— and I really honor our elderly, you know, they're part of my culture, I'm from Maori culture, and we do that quite well. And in normal culture, we seem to tend to think that, you know, older people are no longer worthwhile, and they should, they cost the society and though they're a burden, and they're not. This is where our wisdom and their experience if we can help them be healthy and strong, and my opinion is that they have to have goals, and they have to be working. People always told me, ‘You should make it comfortable. And, you know, hasten her exit of this world.’ And I'm like, ‘Hell no.’
Occasionally, like, the other day, I was pushing down on the back, and she's doing squats, you know, to give her some weight resistance, because I can't put a barbell over here. For once, she comes up and she goes, ‘I want to punch you in the face.’ And I was like, ‘This the first time in years!’
Mark: There’s the fighter!
Lisa: She usually just does whatever I ask her to do, but she’d had enough of me that day. But she fights every day, you know, and that those sort of stories are powerful. But you know, you have to, she just gets up and does the work every day. So it's never too late. And we should be honoring our elderly people, we should be giving them goals. I don't care whether you're five or 105, you need to be aiming towards something. When you let go and you be comfortable, and you just get into your comfy world. And this is you know, I'm going to sit back on the couch and watch Netflix and eat chips. Well then you’re on the way down.
Mark: You're toast. Yeah, that's why the idea of retirement is such a killer. It's just a horrible deceit. So get rid of that thought, don't ever retire, just change what you do and find something else you'd love to do and keep on setting goals and achieving and growing. Yeah, keep growing.
Lisa: Yeah, that's absolutely true. Mark, you've been absolutely amazing. I want to be respectful of your time, because I could talk to you for hours. Literally, honestly, I'd love to just unpack all this stuff. But you've been absolutely amazing. Now you have a number of books, you have courses online, and then you have live training camps that people can go to, which, I’ll think twice about. I think they’ll be really tough ones. But where can people find you, your books? All of it.
Mark: I love your sell there, ‘Think twice about going to his training.’ That's probably a good advice. Well, my personal website is www.markdivine.com. They're just kind of like a catch all, and my podcast can be found there. You can find my podcast at iTunes and all that. And then follow me on Instagram, @realmarkdivine. And books, if you're interested in this training, you know, here's my last like this one, Unbeatable Mind is where it all started. And I'm actually working on the fourth edition, my pandemic edition will be out in September. Staring Down the Wolf is came out last year, right before the pandemic. This is about emotionally powerful leadership. And then The Way of the SEAL is really like how to think and lead like in the lead warrior, like how to get shit done. And there's some really good stuff in all these books, and they're all, there's a little overlap, but they're all very, very different.
Lisa: That actually, just before we do wrap up. That leadership piece of the puzzle, I have to ask this, because my husband's a firefighter and he's leading teams and so on. How do you get— if I can just ask for a couple of quick tips on the leadership stuff because it's probably another bloody hour. But how can you be a good leader? How can you get people who are disengaged back into the game, into the team, being part of a team?
Mark: You know, that's a really good question.
Lisa: Yeah, I’m sorry I only thought of it now.
Mark: The first thing to do as a leader is to show up as the best version of yourself: humble, authentic, trustworthy, courageous, and respectful. To develop those qualities takes some time, and you got to work on that. And you got to work on it with the team, in front of the team, and not hide it from the team. And not pretend to be perfect, not pretend you have all the answers. So most leaders are, in their own way, in terms of being able to unlock the power of their team, because they don't, the team doesn't trust them, because they don't know they're wearing a mask. So take the mask off, develop your whole self as a leader.
Then what we like to do in our company, Unbeatable, is we like to develop leaders. We like to create teams within the companies that we work with, for the sole purpose of development, which is really cool. We call them boat crews. So imagine you're in a company or a fire department, and you're in a boat crew with guys that are working on becoming better versions of themselves. You’re working on things like we've been talking about. That ends up developing incredible trust and motivation. Because now everyone's— they're taking the mask off together, and they're holding each other accountable to be better people. And then they go out and fight a fire together. That's simple things, it's like box breathing with your team. It’s very intimate, and it creates this incredible resonance and trust with people.
You start to recognise, like we were saying earlier, that we're not separate. One of the best ways to be motivated, to help someone who's unmotivated get motivated, help them in separation themselves to feel connected.
Lisa: Yep. And how do they get him to take that mask off and let you know, because you said once somewhere, that leaders are also followers, and that when you're— like the team is the new way of the future. The team is the new leader, and leader follower?
Mark: The way we do it, is to put everyone together into a crucible experience, into some experience where they literally cannot solve the challenges alone. This is why we do these events that we have, they’re not all hard. The SEAL events, the SEALFIT events are ridiculously hard, and they’re for people like you. In SpecOps candidates for FCS or SEALs or Green Berets, whatever. But with Unbeatable Mind, my company, I'm doing mine, which is the same behind me. We do this with corporate clients. And we have 50 year old women who are out of shape and they're like, ‘Aah!’ But we don't beat ‘em up like Navy SEAL training, we just get everyone uncomfortable together. This will be like doing yoga and breathwork and ice baths, and integrated training. We teach them a lot of the skills of Unbeatable, all the skills of Unbeatable Mind.
We have them do it together as a team, we have them hold each other accountable, we have them really open up and develop more of that vulnerability. It's really uncomfortable for a lot of people. We did an event last week where two of the individuals hadn't even spoken to each other in over a year. By the end of the event, they were hugging. They were like, ‘Wow. I'm sorry that I treated you like that, and I projected all that on you.’
It really helps— we start all of our training events with corporate teams, or organisation teams, or even athletic teams with a three-day or two-and-a-half to three-day event like this, which is very, very dynamic, very integrated, it’s not all— it's only a little bit of physical training. But it's definitely there, right? They're learning all these skills, all five mountains, they're doing physical, mental, emotional, intuitional, and spiritual development as a team. After that, we work with them for a minimum of four to six months in a boat crew, in a small team setting with a certified coach. The combination of those two is just transformative, because then they're practising all the skills we talked about both individually, but all the team and they're being held accountable. They're doing challenges together, they're having really authentic communications together and they're working on emotional things, are working on their mental strength and physical strength and setting goals. It's really, really powerful.
Lisa: It must completely change corporations when you do that in teams—
Mark: Yeah, it can be.
Lisa: Because we will go to— a lot of people go to work and they have this professional persona that they put on and they're all doing their interactions with this. And then they go home and—
Mark: They take the mask off and pick up the beer or the wine.
Lisa: Yeah, because of the frustration and, ‘Oh my God, I'm not coping.’ And if we can, I often get, I know we have to wrap it up. But if we can, you know, like, just be real with each other. We're human beings. We do not have to go around like the Queen of England and observe all these protocols and stuff and be professional. Can’t we just be us, you know?
Mark: People are craving leaders who are real.
Lisa: Yeah.
Mark: And that's what we need. And that's what we need to work on. Just doing the work that we talked about today brings it right, it brings that reality back. Because you're discovering the truth of your own nature. And then as a leader, you just want to bring that to your team. First is how you show up. And then by starting to introduce these ideas, and then by starting to train together, and eventually, I think, where the world will change is when, when we all start changing yourselves. But then, we then— each organisation becomes a change agent internally, meaning you're changing the people, you're not trying to have a bunch of jerks, trying to change the world through donating to some social cause, or demanding some social cause on social media. You're all changing. The organisation is changing, because you've got the practices, you're practising breathing and mindfulness and authentic communications and compassion within the workforce. And then that shows up in how you interact with your customers and how you interact with the environment, etcetera.
Lisa: It just covers that whole area in this theme of leaders-followers and having that change around. Just because you're the one that's got the officer or whatever on your shoulders, it doesn't mean that you are always in the lead role. Sometimes you can be in the follower, if you've got that and having been comfortable with that.
Mark: That's right.
Lisa: I think that this is a good place to wrap it up. Mark, you've been absolutely wonderful today. Thank you so much. So unbeatablemind.com. The three books, The Way of the SEAL Unbeatable Mind, and what was the other one again?
Mark: Staring Down the Wolf. And I’m going to say, we have this amazing entry course that we created this year. It's a 30-day challenge course, where it's a 15 minutes training day. I have a video training, and then there's a little journaling. And it can be found at www.unbeatablemind.com/challenge.
Lisa: Wow. And we can do this online.
Mark: You can do it all online. I’ll email you. And people love it. And it's a great way to learn box breathing and visualisation and micro goals and a lot of things we talked about. It's super cheap. Like it's ridiculously cheap.
Lisa: It sounds a good—
Mark: $99 or something like that. So check it out.
Lisa: That sounds like a really good place for people who, you know, stuck in New Zealand can't fly to America together.
Mark: That's right. Yeah.
Lisa: Or something. Right. Which I'd love to. Mark Divine, you've been amazing. You're just incredible, man. And I thank you so much for your time today.
That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review and share with your friends, and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
Have you ever wondered what it must feel like to be a world record holder?
It may seem like their experiences are so different from yours, but you’ll be surprised with how alike they are to you. They may share the same hobbies or be in the same industry as you before they made their record. Or they may have faced the same struggles you're currently confronting. No matter where they come from, great people are still people, just like you.
Today, ex-Special Forces soldier, security specialist, and record-breaking adventurer Dean Stott joins us. He shares his experiences, from his military background to his Pan-American Highway cycling adventure. His is an inspiring story of pushing the limits and redefining the meaning of ‘adventurer’. Just like everyone journeying through life, he has also faced challenges on the way to the finish line. After listening to the episode, you may gain the motivation to try something you've never done before.
If you’re thinking of one day achieving a world record or if you want to know the meaning of being an adventurer, this episode is for you.
For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, your goals and your lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or are wanting to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, a NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that is capable of boosting the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements that are of highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combat the effects of aging, while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘If someone disagrees, “I didn't think you're gonna do it”. The best way to prove them wrong is actually physically doing it.’
‘You can't control the uncontrollables, you know, as long as you have a plan. One thing I saw, really take from the military is that meticulous planning and detail that goes into it.’
‘What I really took from the military is that unrelenting pursuit of excellence, trying to be the best you can be.’
‘The world's very quick to tarnish certain societies with one brush because of what they've seen on TV.’
‘Before you get, sort yourself out, you know, we'll sit down, and we'll ask three questions: “What worked? What didn't work? And if you're going to do it again, what would you do differently?”’
‘And then it was just, look at the next two hours. Look at the next stage. I didn't look at the afternoon, didn’t look at the next day. And before you've done it, you've done a day, you've done a week, you've done a world record.’
‘Don't worry about what other people are doing. Just focus on yourself. You know, I always say anticipation is worse than participation.’
Dean Stott is a former member of the British Special Forces, where he travelled to dangerous places for 16 years. After an accident, he was forced to find other ways to use his time and skills. With his experiences in the Special Forces, Dean is now a world-leading security consultant and avid adventurer.
Indeed, Dean redefines the meaning of adventurer in everything that he does. He has set the world record, cycling the entire 14,000 km Pan-American Highway in less than 100 days.
Apart from these successes, Dean is also a motivational speaker who helps others overcome fear and adapt to change. His positive mindset and wide range of skills also enable him to work with brands and charities. He also incorporates advocacies into his adventures, with his most recent world record supporting mental health.
Check out his website if you want to know more about Dean and his next adventure. You can also reach him through other platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can understand the meaning of being an ‘adventurer’ and go on their own adventures.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
Lisa
Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential. With your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.
Lisa Tamati: Welcome back everybody. Lisa Tamati here, your host. Fabulous to have you with me again for another crazy episode of Pushing the Limits. Before we get underway with today's guests who I know you're going to find very, very exciting and interesting, just a reminder, to check out our epigenetics program, our flagship program that we do. One of our main programs besides our online run training system, where we look at your genes and how to optimise your life, your nutrition, your food, your exercise, all aspects of your life, including your social, your career, what parts of your mind you use the most, your dominant hormones, all this information is now able to be accessed and we can identify the lifestyle changes and the interventions that we can make to optimise your life. So if you want to hit know a little bit more about that program, head on over to lisatamati.com, hit the work with us button and you'll see our Peak Epigenetics program, go and check that out.
I also like to remind you about my new supplement, NMN, nicotinamide mononucleotide. A bloody long name I know, but it's about longevity and anti-ageing. There is a ton of science that has gone into the research into NMN and as a precursor for NAD, which is nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. I've had a couple of podcast episodes with Dr. Elena Seranova. I'd love you to go and check those out. She is the founder of the company and I'm importing it now into New Zealand, Australia and down the center of the world. So if you want to check out that anti-ageing and longevity supplement, I spent months trying to get it so make sure if you're down in the world and you want top quality, independently certified, scientists-backed supplement that really does what it says on the label, then check it out. Go to www.nmnbio.nz, nmnbio.nz, and find out all about it.
Right. Today's guest is oh he's a bit of a legend. Dean Stott is his name. He's a ex-Special Forces soldier, he was in the special boat service, British Army's where he came from originally. And he spent 16 years going into the most dangerous places on the planet and doing his job as a frogman. That's his nickname on his website. Even, as The Frogman. He is the author of a book called Relentless. Go figure, we've both got books called Relentless. I think we knew that we were going to get along. He's a motivational speaker. He's also a world record holder. Most recently he cycled the entire Pan-American highway. What are we talking- what is it, 14,000 miles or something ridiculous. And he did it in under 100 days. He's an absolute legend. And he had to get it done in time to get to Harry and Megan's winning. So he was desperate to get it done under 100 days. It's a really interesting story. This is a guy who's lived life on the edge in every which way you can possibly imagine. So I'm really looking forward to sharing his insights and his story with you now. Right, over to the show with Dean Stott.
Well, hi everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Your host Lisa Tamati here, sitting in New Zealand and ready for a fantastic interview today. I have a bit of a hard ask with me. I think it's a bit hard to describe this man, what he's done. I have Dean Stott with me. Dean, welcome to the show. It's fantastic to hear you. Yeah, you're sitting in Orange County?
Dean Stott: I say, yeah moved to move to Orange County in California six months ago, actually in the middle of the pandemic. Just took advantage of the world pause, and just changed scenery.
Lisa: Just change the scenery. Right, Dean we're gonna have a really interesting conversation because when I discovered you actually through another friend's podcast, My Home Vitality, shout out to Sean and everyone over there. And I realised that we had the same title of our books, was your one right?
Dean: Yeah.
Lisa: My one's been smaller. I thought, you, ‘This guy's probably right up my alley’. So you are known as the frogman, you've been in this Special Forces, Special Boat Services. You have also become an expeditionary athlete and adventurer and, in many years. But I want to go back a little bit, and it's starting to, were you always this determined and crazy and head through the wall type of person? And tell us a little bit about your background for starters.
Dean: Yeah, so I don't know whether I was on reflection, you look back and think maybe I was slightly, you know, you touched when I was in the military, my father was in the military. And I grew up surrounded by that, in that environment, but was never forced upon me to continue any sort of tradition and things like that. My father was the army football manager and coach. So he was very sports-oriented, what we would call a tracksuit soldier. He very much that, you know, his career was based on his sport and abilities. So there was that competitive drive anyway, that I had from my father. My parents split up when I was a young age. And when I was about eight years old, I moved away with my mother for a couple of years. My father then got custody of me and my sisters, we went back to live with my dad, so I only had the single parent, and we just went everywhere with him. And it was all with the military and all these sporting events. I wasn't, you know, the children of today, with technology, you know, when we were younger, as you will know, we know you weren't allowed in the house unless it was absolutely raining.
So we had some natural physical robustness. And by, I joined the military, I approached my father and told him my intentions of joining the military, when I was 17. And he, he told me, I'd last two minutes. I don't know whether that was reverse psychology for me to push harder and prove him wrong. And, but I was about 65 kilos, and five-foot-seven, so I wasn't, you know, the figure, the man that I am today. And, but when I did join the military, I then went through training and things. And I didn't have aspirations of being Special Forces or commandos or anything like that. And I didn't, I wasn't really aware about the structure of the military anyway, because it was just sport. That's all I've seen where my dad, I hadn't seen the bigger picture. So then when I pass basic training. It’s only 10 weeks long, you know, you then get a little bit of confidence in your abilities. And then you started in a short period of time, by the age of 20, or 21 actually, I was a para-commando diver and a PTA, done every arduous force within the military. But I'd grown so quick over those two or three years, and I will be about 85 kilos, now. I'm five-foot-eleven. So I was getting confident in my own abilities. And I was also growing into the individual that I was today. And I mean, once you pass a certain threshold, or pass a course, you then sort of look at, ‘Well, what's next?’ You know, I wasn't the best on the courses, but I just gave it my 100%. And then you sort of, your career then starts channelling in one direction, you then those before you or your peers, the mentors are all going Special Forces. And then it's like, the next question is, ‘Why not? Let's have a crack.’
Lisa: Yeah, that it takes a special type of person to be able to, like, I grew up in a family with lots of stories, like my dad was only in the military for a short time, but he was a firefighter. And so, you know, my husband's a firefighter, my dad's a firefighter, my brother's a firefighter, we’re a firefighter family. And when I was a girl, when I was a little girl, we couldn't, I couldn't grow up to be a firefighter. It wasn't, it wasn't you know, unfortunately. Thank God, you can now. And, you know, if my dad had had his way, I would have been a firefighter, I would have been an SAS soldier, I would have been like, because he was a hard ass And he wanted all of that for me. And, you know, unfortunately, society sort of stopped some of the things. So I ended up doing it in other ways that I could do it. But wasn't there a lot of pressure? Did you feel like you had to live, you know, your dad saying that to you? Was it sad and just a thing? Or did that really bite with you that, ‘Hey, I'm going to prove you wrong,’ you know what I'm going for?
Dean: Yeah, I think for me, it was. And we'll talk about other stories in my career, and it seems to be a common theme. I know, I fought. There's no point in arguing my father, you know, and or anyone, if someone disagrees, ‘I don't think you're gonna do it’. The best way to prove them wrong is actually basically doing it. Yeah. And then you don't even need to say anything. You just need to just leave that pause. And so I think for him, I don't know. I think it was a throwaway comment, you know, the fact I still talk about it now. And you know, a lot of people say to me, would you say that to your son? So of course, you know, I mean, I and, but for me it was that drive. Now, my father we talked about, you know, he really, he was sport oriented, actually when I joined Military I got sent to Germany to play football as well, because they knew I was Dave Stott’s son.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dean: And see, after a year of being there, I said, ‘No, I don't want to follow the same footsteps as my father, I want to carve my own path.’ And that's when I then went, commando, para and things. So I was going a different path from my father, he wasn't a para commando and things like that. So for me, it was like, this was new territory to me. I wasn't really put under pressure from him. I know a lot of guys who I served with, you know, from a young age, from young boys, all they ever wanted to be was a Royal Marine, or a para, they wanted to be SAS and things. I didn't, I wasn't, there was something that I didn't–
Lisa: You weren’t conditioned.
Dean: Look, I wasn't even aware of it. That was why. So when I approached these courses, I didn't put myself under that self-induced pressure with some of these guys– guys and girls do. And I think that helped in a way. I sort of approached it in a, you know, it is what. It is not being naive, it's not what was involved walk in the park. But, you know, I was aware how difficult it was. But it wasn't the be-all or end-all. You know, some guys who did it, don't achieve the grades or, or the standards, and then they're broken. That’s all their life. And I think it's actually too much pressure on themselves. So sort of going into these situations, you just need to be a bit open-minded.
Lisa: And what was the training like to go into the Special Forces and to know what you do? What is it like to go through– because we see the stuff on the telly, and you know, everybody knows about how hard ass all that type of training is. And what do you need? What did you get out of it? What was the experience like for you to do those extreme sort of courses?
Dean: Well for me, it’s very much a grown-up course. You know, the way that then, you've got this stuff on TV, where you have the perception it's hard-ass and everyone's swearing and shouting here. And it is night and day from that, you know. I understand with TV, there's a fine line between authenticity and entertainment. Actually, if you film selections, it’s actually quite boring. You know, these guys just get told where they got to go. And they just do it. So, and that's what I liked about the course is that the fact that you're– you all grow– you’re all treated as grown-ups. There was no shouting, and they just told you what to do. They didn't need to shout, the selection was that hard in itself, that they didn't need to put that additional pressure on you. So I did what I can. And in fact, they gave you some sort of independence. To think on your own. I was fortunate to be an instructor on the commando course and also the senior dive instructor. So I've seen it from an instructor's perspective. And on those sort of courses, you do give the students some motivation and inspiration as well.
But on this one, you don't get anything. Yes, you get the reverse when you go to the jungle, and they tell you about how you're not doing well. And you know, just give up now and save six months of your life and things out. But again, I got that reverse psychology as a young boy telling me I couldn't do it. So yeah. And for me, I didn't go– you're– I was from, I came from the army. So I, the normal traditional route was especially SAS. I went SBS. I was one of the first army guys to do that. And that was because I'd spent eight years with three commando brigades, Brigade Iraqi force and I was a senior dive instructor. So water, I was more comfortable in water. So the special boat service was that natural transition for me. So they say when you go on selection, be the gray man, you know, just don't don't stand out and bring attention to yourself and things. I’ll be the gray man for about two minutes. Because they will react, they’ll scream my name out. And that's why I was going this way and not the traditional, right?
Lisa: Because you came from the wrong place.
Dean: Yeah, although I didn't put myself under my own self-induced pressure. I had that sort of hovering above my head. But again, once you– if you're confident in your abilities, and there's a fine line between confidence and arrogance at that age. I was a 28 year old sergeant. And I spent seven years in Brigade Iraqi. I've seen those who've gone before me and I knew that I was just as good as then. And you sort of know that they're going to play these mind games and when they come, as long as you identify when they come in and just deflect it.
Lisa: Yeah. Has it really helped you in everything that you've done since like, what are some of the key learnings that you take away from doing such arduous, tough, scary stuff?
Dean: Um, I think, you know, you can't control the uncontrollables you know, as long as you have a plan. One thing I saw, really take from the military is that meticulous planning and detail that goes into it. And the fact that we rehearse, rehearse, and rehearse. You know, we do that over and over and over again. You know, I've been guest speaking alongside some, like, some of the England rugby players. They talk about the World Cup, now that how they repeat an exercise, until they get 1% better. You know, we'll rehearse, rehearse all these different scenarios. And, but ours is a bit of a different situation. You know, if we get it wrong or pause or hesitate, you know, we don't lose five points in a row, we lose lives. Guys, people will get killed.
So yeah, so there's that which what I really took from the military is that unrelenting pursuit of excellence, trying to be the best you can be. But also, as well as the planning, and that we talked about that, we'll probably talk about it later when we talk about the bike ride, is the fact that not– nothing always goes to plan. Plan is the best plan in the world, you know, and things never go to plan. And don't worry about that. And that's what I liked about the Special Forces is there were a lot of, ‘Well, if you don't go as planned, you just react to the situation that's in front of you.’ And a good friend of mine told me a quote, ‘You can't be experienced without experiences’. And that's what I got from the military. The military, a lot of these big corporates around will, would love to try and replicate the scenarios or, or conditions that these people have been in, but you just can't. And that's the great thing about the military. They put you in some high octane environments, in difficult positions, difficult environments, and having to make difficult decisions. But you learn from that, you know, my decision, when was the wrong decision? You know, when you have to make? Yeah, you just reflect back on what worked and what didn't work.
Lisa: Wow. So you were in the military for, I think it was 16 years, was it, or something?
Dean: Yes, yes. Yeah.
Lisa: And so it was a big chunk of your life. And then and then what happened? Tell us about the accident.
Dean: Yeah. So I joined, I joined a special forces in the height of the war on terror. So I was the pinnacle of my career, everything was going really well. I was doing what these children nowaday plays Call of Duty. That was my lifestyle, day in day out. And we're just about to get pre-deployment training to go back out to Afghanistan again, and we're out training in Oman. And I was doing what's called a HAHO jumps, it’s a high altitude, high opening jump. So unlike freefall, where you're free aligned, you're actually still connected to the aircraft. You exit the aircraft at 15,000 feet. And you do that, because that's the limits of oxygen. Any higher and you need oxygen. You open the aircraft and the parachute will open– pull open straight away. And when you travel up to 50 kilometers, or 30 minutes in the air to the target area. So I've done– no– we've done hundreds of these jumps before, I think it's about the third or fourth jump in a day.
And I just exit the aircraft as I normally did, no different from any time before. But this time, when I look, there was something wrong and my leg was actually caught in the line above my head. So I was trying to clear my leg in time before the parachute opened and potentially rip my leg off. But I couldn't clear it in time. The parachute opened, pulled my leg up over my head and the right. Thankfully made my foot released. And otherwise wouldn't be here having this conversation. But straight away I knew there was a problem. The pain was so severe that I was vomiting and because of how thin the air was, I was drifting in and out of consciousness. But no one else in the team knew there was a situation so I wasn't going to come over to net and tell them that I had a sore leg. So I managed to stay with the team, assess where the other parachutes were coming in against the wind.
And my first challenge was to land it because if I didn't land it correctly, you know, on one leg, you know potentially, you could damage your good leg. So, but I did. It was a great, great landing, landed one-legged. And fortunately, the damage sustained on the exit show in my career. As I tore my ACL, my MCL, my lateral meniscus, my hamstring, my calf and my quadriceps, so all these supporting muscles–
Lisa: Just got ripped.
Dean: Yeah, just got ripped. But you know, in the ideal world you would go straight back to UK and you start physio, you just start working on it. But it was the same time as the Icelandic volcano which grounded all aircraft. I was there for about nearly five weeks just thrown in a hotel with painkillers.
Lisa: Are you kidding. So that was it.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, I sort of missed that, and then got back to UK. I remember I made it back to UK, got sent home for six weeks and leaves. We’re now talking about 11, 12 week period from the injury. Then they lost my MRI scans. It was just a spiral of failure in the medical system there. And so yeah, so I left. But all I've ever known, it’s 16 years. Military, even as a young child growing up. So I didn't have, I didn't look beyond the military. For me, I was a lifer. That was me.
Lisa: Wow. So how did that, apart from the gun to the physical injury, but how did that affect you mentally? Like you suddenly– you're at the top of your game, you've been training for this forever, you're doing your job. And then all of a sudden, you're out of the game. And you’re completely sidelined. What happened to you mentally from that side?
Dean: My wife will tell you a different–
Lisa: You didn’t get divorce. So that's good.
Dean: But the one of the things I scored an identity crisis. Well, it is whether you believe in the military, whether you're a professional sports person, or whether you're just someone who works in an organisation or a team, but I've been– I've gone from working in a tight-knit unit, having a role and having a purpose, knowing what I was doing for the next two years, to like, ‘Where do I now fit in society? What was my role and purpose?’ But I got to where I got to, because of my physical robustness. That had now been taken away from me as well. I couldn't even run 100 meters without my leg being in pain. So I had that going on in the background. Also, to add to the pressure, my wife was eight months pregnant. So also wondering whether there is going to be any work there. How am I going to support my family? And thankfully, for me, my wife is very entrepreneurial. You know, you hear horror stories of men and women when they leave the military, about that transition can be quite turbulent. Mine was quite smooth. You know, the military, like your mother and father, you know, they clothe you, they feed you, they pay you on time. You don't even know what, who provides the water or what to eat. You’ve just got a job to do.
But when we leave, we're not aware of who we need to speak to in the council's or the state. There. So my wife was a bank manager for three sons and their banks in Aberdeen. So the stuff that I would normally be worried about, she was, ‘Yeah, I've got all that.’ And she sent my first security company on a Blackberry watching TV, you know, done the right paperwork. So when, so whatever I was going through a hard time having to talk personally, you know, thankfully, wasn't that bad, because my wife had sort of–
Lisa: Yeah, she's awesome.
Dean: But yeah, I just had, you know, talking to the security industry, the pressure of trying to, if there's any work. And I was very fortunate. Within 48 hours I was asked if I can go out to Libya, which I know you're familiar with, to help set up the different project restart the British Embassy during the Arab Spring. And so that's what I did. So wow, look at me, I had work straight away. And I was out in Benghazi, helping sell that project.
Lisa: Can you tell us a little bit about that story? Because that sounds like a bit of a movie.
Dean: You know– familiar I did– when I left, I wanted to find a niche within the security industry. I didn't want to go to Afghanistan and Iraq and do the hostile action, because I've sort of done that, you know, I've done that bit. And you know, I was very lucky to survive. So why would you take another risk? And I looked at the security industry, and actually, a lot of my friends from the special boat service. They were, they had their maritimes companies who are dealing with the Pirates of the east coast of Africa. So I didn't want to be competing with them either. My wife's from Aberdeen, so I moved back to Scotland with her. It’s the only gas capital of Europe. So where is all this trouble? So I was looking into more in the corporate clothes protection sort of industry, that's where my head was focused.
But when I got to Libya, I soon identified that Libyans didn't want another Libyan, another Afghan or Iraq once Gaddafi had fallen, they wanted to take control. But also these larger security companies, the big five, now sort of like dominate the industry. They were charging crisis management in evacuation plans, when actually we just scraped the surface, there was nothing in place. So I flew home, my wife gave birth to our daughter, Molly. And I said, ‘Look, I have a plan. Do you mind if I take our savings out of the bank?’ And that's what I did. And I went back into Libya, there was a huge proliferation of weapons at this point. It's actually ammunition was difficult to get hold of, weapons are not a problem.
So I bought 30 weapons off the black market, and I buried them between Tunis and Egypt and buried them with communications equipment money, and just designed my own evacuation plan, spent a month in the desert. These in design. And I mean, I sold them to a couple of the oil and gas companies on a retainer and just just sat on them. Then the security industry. You know, for me, I didn't want to work for an organisation and be on rotation and things like that. I took a gamble and it was very ad hoc. So each time I got a phone call was a different job. So you know, for example, we did London Olympics. And then next thing you're taking the UAE royal family superyacht from Barcelona to Maldives, and you're training the Kurdish Special Forces in Erbil.
Lisa: Wow! Fascinating!
Dean: It's very diverse. When you tell people in the security industry, I mean, they think you're a doorman from the local nightclub.
Lisa: Surely not.
Dean: I'd like to help people as well. And I'm for me, but what it what it was good for me was– is I was seeing– some of these countries that I've been to anyway with the military, but seeing all the cultures and seeing how things, not from a military perspective, because it was almost a little bit blinkered, there, you know.
Lisa: Yes. Like you say, your head, your role.
Dean: You know, it’s understanding more the politics, the demographics and things like that. So I just come back from the London Olympics. I was in Benghazi. And in the evening, the American ambassador got killed. And they made it into a film called 13 Hours.
Lisa: Yes, that's what I thought, it sounds very familiar, I'm sure.
Dean: I know, I always say, ‘Right place, right time’ or ‘Wrong place, wrong time’. And I was there in Benghazi. And I was asked by a German oil company if I could get some of their German engineers from Benghazi to Tripoli. So I had safe houses in the desert. And that's what I did over the three days. I took them back out. And then two years later, I was in Brazil, covering the World Cup.
Lisa: You’re just like… You just got them out through a hole and you do that like going to the supermarket.
Dean: There's no real, no threat to them, no direct threat to them. the only issue I had with that one, you know, we could have– I had drivers from Benghazi, who took us out initially. The problem in Libya, you have 167 tribes. And this is where there's real issues. Because, I mean, you have, you know, those in the East in Benghazi, don't like those in the West in Tripoli. You know, the politics are in Tripoli, the oils are in the East. And so it's understanding that as well. And that's why, so we did it over three days, and the reason we did that is, I was actually, I had the drivers from Benghazi in the safe house. And now that will, ‘You know, Mr. Dean, we can go on because Tripoli is only, you know, it's not far, 300 kilometers’. But they didn't realise I had drivers coming in from Tripoli.
Lisa: And you didn’t want them to–.
Dean: And I didn't want the drivers to compromise us when we go in. So I woke up that morning that we were setting off and the drivers that arrived from Tripoli, the drivers and Benghazi in there. They all had their guns out.
Lisa: Oh, my God.
Dean: I say I mean, I mean, they’re worried they weren't gonna get paid. I said, ‘No, you're paid. I just can't take you to Tripoli.’ And so it's just understanding that sort, rather than just driving as fast as you could to Tripoli and potentially running into issues along the way. And so yes, that was a success. And two years later, I was in Brazil covering the World Cup. And we now had the Tripoli war, which is a civil war between the militias and the government. And I think that's just ended now. And I got a phone call from the Canadian Embassy saying that they'd been stuck in Tripoli. And so they had 18 military within an area close protection team with them, but they weren't allowed to leave the city. So they'd never seen the coastal road out and didn't really have eyes on. So in the days leading up to that, the British Embassy got shot at every checkpoint between Tripoli and the Tunis border. So I went out with my fixer, and just spoke to the tribal elders in those regions at war and everywhere else. And it was actually just showing them courtesy and respect. Just let us know who we are, when we will come in, we were no threat. And again, it's that understanding the politics and the demographics, which was a success to that. And yeah, we got 18 military in four different maps safely back to back to Tunis.
Lisa: Wow.
Dean: But you know, I've never like they said in Hollywood, I never needed to dig up any of the weapons. They're still there. It’s more of an intelligence-led security thing. But I came home from that trip and my normal procedure would be to wash my kit, repack my bag and everything else, and then get ready for the next phone call. Yeah, one of my shirts was covered in blood. But I've been doing first aid and RTA. And I said to my wife, ‘Can we get the blood out of the shirt?’ And she said ‘Yes, but I’m more concerned why there's blood in there’. Totally what I just got yourself is like a throwaway comment. Yeah, you see, this was the second time in my life, I realised the pin dropped. There was something more mentally, I was just five years now from the military and I was trying to match the adrenaline rush that I had been, without coming to terms with the fact that I'd left and I didn't have that support network. If something had gone wrong, my friends were gonna come in and parachute for me. And so something had to change. And my daughter was young, and my wife now is, you know, she had a very successful property development business. And she said, ‘Look, this was actually all about communication’. She thought I wanted to go away. And I thought she needed me to go away.
Lisa: Yeah, yeah. Because you've been used to that sort of setup for so long.
Dean: Yeah. And I've just been disconnected from society. I just thought that was the norm. You know, I was going to Somalia on my own. Yeah. Just doing–
Lisa: Were you not like, like most people listen to this, I mean, it's such a foreign world for the average person who's never been exposed to any of this. And I've never been anything military. I've been in some tricky situations, and self-caused, gone into shit places which I wasn't really for or shouldn't have been in. But for most people, this is a terrifying thought to even go to some of these places, let alone to do the job that you do. Did you never have a fear of like, do you not have the normal fear responses that most people have?
Dean: I think I do. I think the problem that we have in today's society is TV, is media. You know, it's very, you know, dramatised about these places. These places they go. I use Somalia as an example. I'll go there on my own and have a walk from the airport to the hotel, I won't– because that's where the business is. That's where I think things are happening. And then I've been, you know, yes, there's bad places and things go on. But it's no different from any city, you know. Yes, there's a bit of a terrorist threat and things. But I've been sent on a mission, south of Mogadishu, and in some of the most beautiful waters. I see parts of the country that people don't see. Now, I'm not naive to think there is no threat at all. You know, the success of a lot of my projects is having the right fixers and local influence. The world's very quick to tarnish certain societies with one brush because of what they've seen on TV. For me, they’re the most hospitable people. You know, the Canadian Embassy, the KCA Deutag and a few others, they wouldn't have been successful if it wasn't for the locals.
Lisa: The local people. Yeah.
Dean: And I think that's where somebody's security companies or individuals who think they can just come in with weapons and guys like me, very arrogant, they think they're going to do, to get away with it. And, and it's just showing respect, and humility. And that's my approach to it. So I am obviously conscious there is there is a friend, you know, I have friends who–
Lisa: And you can handle yourself there as well.
Dean: –things that, but yeah, I think that as long as–
Lisa: Yeah, I know what you'd be like when you go to some of these places, you have these preconceived ideas. And some of the places I've been to, like Niger. I went to Niger and you know, Niger, I don’t even know how to say it properly, Niger. Never got that right. That was one place where I landed there. And we were doing a 333k race through there. And I didn’t like go, ‘Holy shit, this place is pretty damn scary’. And you know, you're running across the desert on your own, and there was a lot of military, sort of oil problems. Chinese doing exploration in the desert against the wishes of the tribal people. So there was lots of military convoys coming through with all the arms and things. And you're a little girl running across the frickin’ desert on your own. It's pretty, pretty hairy moments here where you think you can just disappear, you know. But generally speaking, most of the places that you go to where you think are gonna be terrifying, aren't that terrifying. And the people are pretty amazing, too. And you've got to be aware of yourself and, you know.
Dean: Yeah. Having the responsibility, you know, those sort of places as well if they're running an event like that, and, you know, these countries want, you know, it's all about tourism and try and promote and put the country in a good light, you know, they'll do this. Yeah.
Lisa: This one was a bit out there, though. Like this was a French Foreign Legion guy who was running it. He didn't give a shit about anything except making money, right? We went into it naively. These particular ones thinking it was gonna be like the marathon on Saturdays or something. You know what I mean? And it wasn't. It was like 17 runners, nothing was organised. It was like, we ran out of water, we ran out of food, we, you know, I ended up getting food poisoning on top of it all. So that was a really– that's when I realised that most of the races are really super well run, but then there are the cowboys out there. And, you know, we were in their very hands really, you know, and we were lucky to get out the other side on that one. But so how do you like, for your wife? What's it like having your husband off doing God knows what, and having to keep the, you know, the business going, and the life going, and that fear of you being away?
Dean: Yeah. And I'm very fortunate. I've got a, my wife is part of the business anyway, the scoop is anyway, so she would always be doing intelligence bits anyway. So having her being part of that helps. Yeah. Well, rather, you just go in, and she's not knowing what's going on. Yeah. I mean, a part of that. And when we talk about the bike ride, you know, she was the campaign director that so–
Lisa: Sounds amazing.
Dean: –but gets involved in everything. Because then it's very easy to explain why you're doing something or why you're going away because, yeah, the full picture. But no, very, very fortunate to have an understanding– and she, you know, Alana's got a book coming out soon as she talks about why she fell in love with me, because I showed a world that she hadn't seen before. I mean, I was very, we had very similar mindsets, and like, achieve whatever goals you want. So for her to then say, ‘I couldn't do something,’ or you know, would go against, you know, what she believes in, and why we got into it. So obviously, now I'm a bit older and we've got kids and obviously I need to be a bit you know, she needs a little bit more. Yeah.
Lisa: She sounds like an amazing lady. I'll have to get her on.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, she is. She's got a cracking story herself.
Lisa: Yeah, she sounds like it. So I want to transition now into going into life after this chapter of your life, if you like, in becoming this professional adventurer. Because in what you're doing now, what you've got coming up, and the whole world record that you have. Tell us about that.
Dean: Yeah, so we actually stem from coming back from that Canadian Embassy job. You know, something had to change. In chapter 16 in the book, it’s called ‘Dead or Divorce’, so that's the stage we're talking about. Obviously, it's been five years since my leaving the military. I’ve sort of neglected my own sort of physical and mental well-being. I’ve been so fixated on work and bringing in money, and I take like a TRX with me around, just throw it in the suitcase. And I haven’t done any sort of cardiovascular stuff. My injured leg like now was two kilos lighter than my good leg, which is an awful wastage.
So I just that’s when for Alana said, “Come do property development.’ And that's what I did. I hung up my security boots and just bought a pushbike of farmers, and just cycled to and from the office. There's only about eight miles there and eight miles back. You know, nothing big but straightaway being physically active again, you know, I felt like there was a big, big weight off my shoulders, and that's what I did. I cycled to and from the office. But you can imagine my story, you know, sat in these architects and planners meet. So it’s about a month for my 40th birthday. So I was getting a midlife crisis around. What have I done with my life? I'm going to have a legacy and things. So I said, well, ‘I've always fancied doing a world record.’ And Alana said, ‘Well, what in?’ And I said, ‘Well, cycling is good, because it's not impacted– well, you need to consider my knee injury.’ And something that wasn't the knee injury wasn't going to compromise it.
So I said, ‘Well, what about cycling?’ And you know, being in Scotland, I was thinking maybe Aberdeen to Glasgow or something. And my wife then found the world's longest road, which runs in southern Argentina to northern Alaska. So for the listeners, it's probably equivalent to say it's the equivalent of cycling from London to Sydney. Yeah, 30,000 miles.
Lisa: And then another.
Dean: Yeah. Because of the curvature of the earth. So having only cycled 20 miles, this is what I did: I applied for the world record in it. We had looked at Cairo to Cape Town. But I– majority of my security work was in Africa. So I'd be in those days anyway. So for me, I wanted to, as part of the challenge, I wanted to see places that I am– someplace that I hadn't been to before and also because of where you started, and when you're finishing, you're going through all different temperatures and climates and things like that. And so Guinness came back. And the world record when I apply for it was 125 days. Six weeks later when it came back, and said you were successful with the application. And we've been beaten by eight days, the new world record was 117 days.
So that was my target. And my wife and I do a lot charity work. We have been doing since I met her really and, you know, do a lot of stuff with the military. You know, it's part of a special boat service, ambassador for Scotland. Legion, which is the oldest military charity in the UK. But I’m gonna name drop now massively. So Prince Harry and I are good friends, and we've known each other.
Lisa: Is he though?
Dean: Yeah. And as you’ve seen. And I've been friends about 14 years, met each other on a community training course. And, you know, he’d come to some of my events; I've been to some of his events. You know, I– in Mozambique, Tanzania had an intelligence fusion sale, which would identify smuggling routes for the ivory, you know, which I could then relay back to him. So he's doing a lot of stuff in the background. So I rang him up, and I said, ‘Look, I’m gonna cycle, the world's longest road, you know, what campaigns should we do it for?’ And this is back in 2016. So him and his brother and Kate, were just about to launch a mental health campaign called Heads Together in 2017. And he said, would I do it for that campaign? And I said, ‘Yes, of course’. So I now have the challenge of the campaign. And in the end, I set a target of a million pounds.
Lisa: Wow, that’s a big-ass target!
Dean: For me it had to be the enormity of the challenge to reflect how much you're trying to raise. You know, you couldn't– you know, you can't go– can’t say I'm going to raise a million pounds and run the London Marathon because it just doesn't add up. The size of the challenge and the size of the ask here, you know, was balanced. And also to add to that I'd never cycled before as well, which is even more of a–
Lisa: Mental.
Dean: Yes, yeah. So I did a train for a year, you can imagine what it is like trying to get sponsorship at the beginning.
Lisa: What the hell!
Dean: I will perform, break a record, and we'll record and raise a million pounds in mental health and a lot of them thought had mental health problems themselves.
Lisa: But you had a track record of what you've done? I mean, I would have taken you seriously, as far as the–
Dean: A lot of people say to me, ‘How do you get sponsorship?’ You know, I got– and it was just, it was the right messaging at the right time. You know, the Heads Together campaign is launched in the UK, and it's very much the topic of conversation. So a lot of these big corporates wanted to get behind.
Lisa: Wonderful. Yep, yeah.
Dean: So it was the right message at the right time. And, yeah, I got a great sponsor. And, you know, that was only about two months before setting off. You know, I funded it, funded 50,000 of my own money up until that. I had to believe in it
Lisa: And put something on the line?
Dean: Yep. Yeah. So. So that's what I did. Yeah, I mean, I set off on the first of February 2018, the– when I was doing all the early stages when I was doing the planning, and I'd never cycled with I just took a military set of orders, put it on there and just crossed out ammunition. And then as I started learning about saving, I then introduced that into the plan. But there's things that, you know, there are things that are out of my control, like natural disasters, coups, third party influence. So the world record was 117 days, but I was aiming for 110. And it wasn’t– I was going to beat it by a week.
Lisa: You’re in that buffer.
Dean: Yeah that buffer. The buffer, the fudge they call it. Encounter that is eating into the fudge and not your challenge. So that's why, where I set off aiming for 110 days. You know, I was very fortunate to, being in the military and worked in the desert, the Arctic, and the jungle, and things that I've never done on the bike. I had to then simulate those situations. So the Atacama Desert in Chile is the driest non popular desert in the world. It's 47 degrees. What I decided to do so, I went out to Dubai and did two weeks heat training in Dubai. The altitude in Ecuador, of cycling. You know, the biggest climbs in Tour de France ranges in 21, 23 kilometers, minus 67 kilometers and sea level to four and a half thousand meters. So I had to train altitude. So I know that on the day of the event, you know, you do 8 to 10 hours on the bike.
Lisa: Altitude. Yeah.
Dean: So, yeah, I did that. And there's a famous bike ride in the UK called Land's End to John O'Groats.
Lisa: Yes, I know that one.
Dean: Yeah, so I did that twice. I never mean to sound arrogant, but for me, it was a training ride and actually it’s training ride because the challenge was 15 Land's End to John O'Groats back to back. So if I couldn't do one, how was I going to do 15?
Lisa: Yes. It's funny how your perception changes, the bigger your current goal that you're going for, the other stuff becomes small, but what I've learned too is that it goes the other way as well. When you stop doing the big stuff, your horizon comes back in pretty quickly. And then you know, it can be gone the other way.
Dean: You can never replicate what you're going to do with some of the ultra marathons, you won’t go run the exact distance.
Lisa: No, no, you're running near it.
Just interrupting the program briefly to let you know that we have a new Patron program for the podcast. Now, if you enjoy Pushing the Limits, if you get great value out of it, we would love you to come and join our Patron membership program. We've been doing this now for five and a half years and we need your help to keep it on here. It's been a public service free for everybody. And we want to keep it that way. But to do that we need like minded souls who are on this mission with us to help us out. So if you're interested in becoming a patron for Pushing the Limits podcast, then check out everything on www.patron.lisatamati.com. That's P-A-T-R-O-N dot lisatamati.com. We have two Patron levels to choose from. You can do it for as little as $7 a month, New Zealand, or $15 a month if you really want to support us. So we are grateful if you do. There are so many membership benefits you're going to get if you join us. Everything from workbooks for all the podcasts, the strength guide for runners, the power to vote on future episodes, webinars that we're going to be holding, all of my documentaries and much much more. So check out all the details: patron.lisatamati.com. And thanks very much for joining us.
Dean: Yeah, what I got from doing those Land's End to John O'Groats, you know, I did about nine days, is the fact that the first four or five days are always whether you're at your peak, or wherever you're below peak is always going to be hard and then by the end of the first week, your body then knows what you're asking of it.
Lisa: I found that like too, when I did– because I ran through New Zealand, and I did you know, 2250ks in 42 days, which I was aiming for 33 days, but I had again, I didn't add in the fudge, did I? And I got slower and slower and more injuries and so on. So it took me a bit longer than I was planning. But at the two-week point was when I was at that absolute, like I don't know how to take the next step point, you know. And somehow I had to drop the kilometers a little bit, but then I was able to– my body actually got better from that point on. And I would never have believed if I hadn't lived through it. I thought I was like, absolutely, I don't know the how I'm going to take the next step to then actually the end of the 42 days being like, ‘I could carry on now’. You know, it was quite a phenomenal thing to go through. And I've heard other expeditions that athletes go through the same sort of thing that it bottoms out at the worst point. I've got a couple of mates who ran across the Sahara, and I mean, right, right across the Sahara, 7,000 kilometers. And they said the same thing that they you know, two weeks, and they were thought, you know, ‘We're about to die here. We're not gonna make it.’ And then it's sort of you know, and you have the ups and downs. But if you can push through that mentally, that point you seem to come through it.
Dean: Yeah, you do. I think, you know, for me, I set off from sort of going back slightly when I was doing my research, I, you know, was reading books and magazines learning about cycling. You know, it evolved so much since I was a young boy in a BMX, and I wasn't getting the information I really wanted. So I spoke to the previous record holders, and they're very open, which was great, really, they're very receptive. but they– you know, one of the things we do in the military, especially in the special forces is, it's like a hot debrief. So when, as soon as you've done a job or operation, you come. Before you get, sort yourself out, you know, we'll sit down, and we'll ask three questions: ‘What worked? What didn't work? And if you're going to do it again, what would you do differently?’ So I just asked that question to the previous record holders, and all their issues were in South and Central America: bureaucracy, the borders, languages, first to the base. So they all started in North America, and it was the second half of the challenge which had the issues, right. So I turned on its head, start in the south and get those issues out the way early. So one thing I was quite proud of– just because everyone did it that way didn't mean it was the right way.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dean: But yeah, but I set off from Southern Argentina in the first week, you know, relentless winds, it was like 40 mile an hour, approximate speed. I've never known anything like it. But once that had– I had targets each day, you know what I had to hit each day and I was hitting those targets. I think by the end of the first week, I was 39 miles behind target, but my target is still a week ahead of the world record, right? Yeah, yeah. The weather sort of changed for the better and now the winds have abated. I got through Peru, I got tailwind all the way through Peru. That's 2500 kilometers of tailwind. We did you know, I crashed the bike in Chile, I got food poisoning in Peru, you know, coming out with issues and, you know, got to Ecuador, got the big climb-ins. But before they're gone on the challenge, I've never done more than 150 miles on the road, on the road. I've done 10 hours on a turbo trainer, but never done more than 150 miles. By the week four when I was in Peru, anything less than 150 miles wasn't enough for me. I was physically and mentally stronger as I went. I started at 90 kilos. I was too big.
Lisa: Yeah, but I but you needed it.
Dean: Yeah, but I knew from my time in the military that special forces selection six months long, you don't start day 1 100%. You carry that timber and weight, and then that will shed and you'll get fit. And that's what I did. And you know, when I finished I weighed 78 kilos. Almost 12 kilos. And you know you have to– it’s almost like a polar expedition, you're losing weight from the start. So you just need to try and try and keep it on. But I got to Cartagena on day 48 on March 21. That took 10 days off the previous world record for South America. But that wasn't the world record. And a lot of people called me said, ‘Oh,’ they said, ‘The pressure’s off.’ I said, ‘That's not world record. Call it Brucie bonus. That was a Brucie bonus or a marker to aim for rather than looking at the full challenge. As you know, you don't look at the– Right down into–
Lisa: You get overwhelmed pretty quick.
Dean: What do you do on the flight? So I did. I broke it into countries into days, and then broke the days into four stages. Food and hydration were paramount. So just have a big breakfast. And then just cycle as fast as I could for two hours. You know, I didn't then– just get off the bike for 30 minutes and have food and water and then I'm back on the bike. I was disciplined in my time into 30 minutes, 30 minutes and then chat to someone or the llama you know, he was like, ‘Back on the bike’.
Lisa: Okay.
Dean: That creepage thing gets bigger. And then it was just, look at the next two hours. Look at the next stage. I didn't look at the afternoon, didn’t look at the next day. And before you've done it, you've done a day, you've done a week, you've done a world record. And so that's how I did it. So I was just doing four training rides a day, I wasn't doing a world record.
Lisa: I love it. And you just chunked it down into bite sized pieces that you could make–
Dean: That you can manage. And then I– you see people when they do that– a lot of people do their challenges in the lab. Well, you know, 10 miles behind today, you know what, I'll catch you out tomorrow, but you don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. You could have another bad day and then be 20 to 30 miles behind. So for me, to be in the right headspace, mentally, I made sure I hit my targets or I was ahead of targets. After that first week, I was 39 miles behind target. From then on, I was way ahead. So I was in a good headspace at the end of the day, knowing that I was where I should be. Because as you probably accounted with your New Zealand, when you know that you've set a target and you're not– may not get there. You can start messing–
Lisa: I did, yeah. Yeah, it does. Yep.
Dean: So for me, I always say to people, ‘Just stay on the bike or do those– run an extra two or three, just hit the target you set for the day because you, mentally you're going to be in the better.’
Lisa: You can get that nice dopamine hit, that neurotransmitter dopamine, it gives you that little reward and that motivates you to do the next round and keeps you going.
Dean: You know, next morning you know you're not right, I've got to do 30 miles before, your way should be all ahead.
Lisa: Overwhelming you away when you're certain to go backwards. It's yeah, I found that brilliant.
Dean: And then I used to trick myself in the fact that, or give myself a treat, so I had like four stages for South– North America we'll talk in a minute, that’s a different way of psyching, and but for South America because of the security issues, you know, I had a support team and a documentary team and we were very much risk averse, more risk averse than myself. We stay on but I had to consider their welfare. And so we were saying– I'd say go from first light to last light. So that was my depth. That was my cycling period. And the– sorry yeah, I broke it into four stages. So in the morning was fine because I just had a breakfast. So the first two hours, I'd be able to gauge how long I would be on the bike for the day. Because unlike when other people go for bike rides at home, they'll go for a ride and they'll do a loop and they'll come home. So at some point they'll have a headwind or a tailwind or a side wind. But on this ride, if I had a headwind, it was all day. So that would really gauge up to the rest of the day. So that was the first stage. The second stage I had lunch to look forward to. And the third stage– sorry, the fourth stage. I had the end of day to look forward to. The third stage I had nothing to look forward to. So I would make sure– so my look forward was a can of Coke or an ice cream. Yeah, just something simple. And something to look forward to after the two hours.
Lisa: Yeah, let's get reward thing. You just need it little, ‘Yeah, I’m going for something.’
Dean: ‘They’ll arrive in, oh, just another two hours after that.’
LisA: I'd find that sometimes my reward, and this is getting like pretty sad like, yeah, ‘I'm gonna be allowed to go to the toilet,’ you know, like, ‘I'm gonna have a wee’. Like shit! That’s pretty, pretty shit when you actually, when that's your reward.
Dean: It's probably looking with a bit more–
Lisa: What the hell. And so, you know, because I watched the little short. Can people watch the documentary? Is it out yet? is it available?
Dean: No. So we've got the footage, we've got all the footage together. We– the sort of plan is maybe because we're talking about the next challenge shortly here, rolling onto that and doing a double. And they do it through a series of them. Where we were sitting on that, which is good. But yeah, I took, you know, a broader South America record, which is great. From the cycling perspective, you know, it was a great decision going south-north. From a logistics perspective, it wasn't. We're having to change vehicles in every country in South America to slow me up. So we bought an RV and a 4x4, which was going to get shipped from Fort Lauderdale to Panama. And that would then take us all the way to Alaska, because I had to fly from Colombia to Panama, there’s a Darién gap, which you can't cross. This is the only bit you have to fly. And I was in Ecuador, two weeks before my wife Alana rang me, told me, the vehicles hadn't been loaded on the container in Florida. So my wife, my PA, and a couple my friends, I think it forced them, they flew out and they drove the vehicles 4000 miles in eight days from Florida through Mexico all the way from Central America to Panama.
Lisa: This location.
Dean: So when I broke the record in the morning, flew across, they came in an hour late and handed over the keys. So that then really helped us for the second part of the challenge. And I got to North America on day 70. And I was 14 days ahead of that. Perfect, you know? Okay, you know, i can take the foot off the gas, or I can have a day's rest here or there. Then my wife kept ringing me and you know, she's very good in keeping all those distractions away from me. So my initial thought was the children, or something wrong with the kids. And then she told me we've been kindly invited to Harry and Megan's wedding. Changed the dynamics completely of the challenge. So you get home, I had to be finished by day 102, which is 15 days ahead of the challenge. So going into the challenge, going into the phone call, I was 14 days ahead. 10 minutes later, I'm now a day behind.
Lisa: Oh my God.
Dean: It doesn’t matter what you've done, it's been taken from you. So yeah, mixed, mixed emotion cycling off from that phone call.
Lisa: Yeah, like excited for the wedding. Shit! I’ve got to go faster.
Dean: And then when I got to Lubbock in Texas next day, we have 60 mile an hour winds and tornadoes, so I was stuck for another 24 hours. So I was now two days behind and there was an app on your phone called Windy TV. I don't know if you've come across it. It gives you the strength and direction of the winds every hour for the next two weeks. But 95% accurate real time I stepped away from the challenge when looking at Windy TV, but unlike South America when I sit outside first light, last light, in North America we had the luxury of security. Cycle at night. So I took advantage of that and I just played. To get out at Lubbock, I just cycled 340 miles in 36 hours to miss the next weather window coming in and just play chess with Mother Nature through North America. I had 17 days planned, and I cycled in 11 and a half days in Canada. We also use it to my advantage: I picked up a tailwind in Cheyenne in Wyoming and did 260 miles in 11 hours and 10,000 feet of climbing because I had a 50 mile an hour tailwind.
Lisa: And some luck and some–
Dean: Yeah exactly. Though it’s not about having a plan but having to change the plan to the situation on the ground and then I got a week outside and I was that, right? This will record smashed. I'll be back in time for this wedding unless I get eaten by a grizzly; we’re in Canada and Alaska. And then I was made aware about this professional cyclist who's got three other endurance world records. He's about 26 years old, sponsored by old Red Bull, all the brands, and he come out on social media that day and said that he was going to do the Pan-American Highway in August and be the first man to do 100 days. Dynamic’s completely for me so I just cycled. You know, every time I thought I hit my objective, my objective then kept moving. So I am, I cycle with– for 22 hours in the last 30 hours in minus 18 to come in maybe nine days, 12 hours and 56 minutes. So it wasn't the original plan. It was so fast. Yeah. And I couldn't tell anyone I've been invited to the wedding. You can see friends comment that, ‘He's picked this right up, you know, he's now– he's going,’ and people said, ‘He's rushing back for his mate’s wedding.’ I couldn't tell them. Yeah, so I just had to do it. But my family were in line and the kids had flown into Prudhoe Bay, which is an oil field on the top of the Arctic Ocean. They'd come in with all these oil workers. They’d never seen kids there, so I knew they were there at the end. So that was that final bit of motivation.
Lisa: Oh yeah. And when you're in that last spurt before the thing, it's like, let’s just get this shit done. Get over the damn line.
Dean: Like the last day, last two days, I had 250 miles to do. And I thought well, I'll do 150 miles a day. I mean, and this leaves me 100 miles in the last day. And I'm well under the 100 days. So I did the first 50 miles and got to this roadblock at noon. And they were at, ‘No, you can't pass until eight o'clock tonight.’ So they took eight hours off my streak. So I got into the RV. And again, I just put pen to paper even on the last day. But thankfully because it landed at midnight sun, it doesn't get dark. And I said, ‘Well, it's eight o'clock tonight, I will cycle until I get there.’ And I cycled at seven o'clock the next evening. But doing about eight, nine mile an hour because the winds were so strong. I was taking in coffee every couple of hours to stay hydrated. So even to the very last day, the plan to get–
Lisa: That’s insane.
Dean: So yeah, we crossed the line, you know, from any cyclists out there, you know, it worked out 99 days. So ninety– five days off. Three to get where you’re into and two logistics. There's 94 days of cycling, which is 147 miles a day. And I burned– I lost 12 kilos in weight. And the app speed was 16.8 mile an hour, which is fast because it was just short, sharp sessions. And more and more impressively was the money we raised. We raised over $1.2 million, or ₤900,000.
Lisa: You’re kidding me! That is insane.
Dean: Mental. Yeah.
Lisa: Congratulations.
Dean: That was through corporate donors and sponsors. And I might seem like those guys, showing no emotion, they like, see people suffering, with their hands in their pockets. But for me, I was trying to promote, like the unrelenting pursuit of excellence if you're going to do something you do it to the best of your ability. So me crying on the camera wasn't gonna happen.
Lisa: There was a few tantrums on there, right?
Dean: But that was it, yeah. So I'd never looked, you know, we couldn't– we came back two days later, we had the royal wedding was sort of then for me, overshadowed everything I did you know, all the plan was like, ‘How was the wedding?’ I was that, ‘Really? I'm just–’
Lisa: That's a bit sad really, isn't it?
Dean: I wish I'd had a bit of time to sort of absorb what I've done and achieved. You know, I was still just getting used to being with my family. Never mind–
Lisa: Harry and Megan they kind of waited another week for you to get your shit together.
Dean: No press. No revenues. No ads, you know, we talked about, you know, as well, but you have depression when you come back, when things taper things like that. You know, for me, I had two highs in one week. And then it was like, pfft! We had a big fundraiser six weeks later and Harry came, you know, did a Q&A session on stage and we raised it.
Lisa: Oh, wow.
Dean: And that was my sort of short-term focus after the bike ride. You know, I was supposed to taper my training and I did a 10-mile bike ride to the coffee shop. And you know, when I came back, I'm very objective. I need to have a target or something to go for. So for, just to go cycling 10 miles wasn't– on the way back then these cyclists spotted me. I just needed to put on my PB for that strays, I knew I wasn't actually going to be taping. So I just put the bike in the garage.
Lisa: It's really either, like, if we can just touch on the mental health side of it afterwards. Because, that's something that I've found after every big thing that I've done, especially when it's been overseas environment and some out of place or something. You come back and you're like, you come back to your family, especially when your family not involved, and then like everybody else is just going about their normal business and you're like, just like, ‘Do you know what I just experienced?’ And everyone's like, ‘Oh, that's nice, darling.’ And you might, you know, that's really– I found that quite devastating at times, when your family just didn't get in, you feel like a fish out of water.
So I have this bit of a crisis of luck with– and you’re saying you also have a crisis of like, ‘W8hat is my, what is my role in life?’ Like when you got out of the army, it's like, ‘Well hang on, my whole bloody safety net of who the heck I am and the framework that I built is just suddenly been taken from me. Now, what the heck I am?’ And then you've gone and become this adventure athlete and doing this crazy sort of stuff. So you've filled that, that void, if you like, and in like, with my mum's story, now with the same book name that we've got, like that was Relentless it was– I was suddenly thrown into this new world of like, I'm no longer an F, you know, I couldn't be a full time more I was. I was always working, but I was an athlete at the same time.
And now it was just mum, you know, like, full bore to rehabilitate her or she's going to die. So, but you adapt. Everything becomes the ability of the human mind and body, you go through a transition phase, but then you learn to adapt. And some, you know, for a couple of years, I found it hard. It's like, ‘Who the heck am I if I'm not that anymore, and I'm not doing that anymore and I’m not doing that? But you have other priorities. You've got kids now and stuff, and you don't want to be in dangerous situations involving–
Dean: Yeah, I was probably used to that. Because at the time in the military, you know, when we were, it was the same sort of situation, you'd be away on tour, and you come back, and everyone's just going back there to their normal day to day business. And it's– there's no point in trying to talk. So I was used to that anyway, from the military, and in the private security. I think we're, um, I'm lucky with Alana and the kids is that they get fully immersed in it. They're part of that project as well, you know. Our daughter cut her hair, she had really long hair, cut her hair and raised ₤1000 for the charity. So they really go all in everything. Alana does the campaign and, and the fundraising. So it's not me and then the family, coming back to the family. They're in that with me. So I think I'm very lucky.
Lisa: You are pretty lucky, I reckon, with your family, you've got a pretty good combo with your wife. And–
Dean: Then I believe that anyone, and I don't mean to sound arrogant, anyone can break a world record if you take away all those distractions, the mortgage, and things like that. And then who's looking after the kids who's picking the kids up from the school and all you've got to concentrate on is your–
Lisa: I totally hear you, because I think that's the fix, the actual key to it, you know. when you've got the luxury and it is a luxury now not having that luxury to be able to be a you know, selfish athlete, who can do what, and can focus fully. And then you can, of course you can do crazy, amazing things. Unfortunately, life does come and chuck, you know, curveballs at you. And you have to go with the flow you know, but it doesn't negate what I've decided too is that I’m reaching an age now, you know, like my body started to break the pieces by about 48 things have gone pear-shaped. Is that you know, it doesn't negate what you did. And you know, because you know you sort of have this mentality ‘I’m a has-been I've been there, done it’. No, it's just like I could use a new stage in your life. And what is the challenge now? And there are some other big challenges that you're on. And you've got a big– speaking of big challenges, you've got some other crazy mission coming up. Tell us about that.
Dean: So my unique selling point in the athlete world is I take a sport or discipline I've never done before. So, you know, we're going to– we’re actually going back slightly when we- when our sponsored marketing team did the SWOT analysis on the lockdown. Right?
Lisa: There's mum ringing in the middle of my bloody podcast.
Dean: We’ll end this. The strengths, the weaknesses, the opportunities, and threats. And the only weakness it came out was my arrogance towards the cycling community. But, you know, thankfully, no one ever said that, you know, but I took that as a strength. You know, it's that fire in the belly to say, ‘Well, you know, that's what they think then’. But no, look, no one ever said that innovation was good. But then, you know, now, I've enjoyed cycling. Now I'm going to be arrogant towards the kayaking community. I just say that back. The kayaking community really, really great in coming around on this challenge. So I’ve cycled the world's longest road. The plan is now, or the plan is next year, first of February, I set off, is to kayak the world's longest river from source to sea, from Rwanda to Egypt, which has never been done before as in paddled from one end to the other. There’s been stages, but never completely. So 4,280 miles is that long. But unlike the last challenge which was promoting mental health, you know, will still always be an ambassador and push the importance of physical activity and mental health. You know, this one, my wife's very passionate on modern slavery, human trafficking and–
Lisa: Yeah, wow.
Dean: –doing a lot in that area. But I didn't want to channel myself down just that one topic. So I've left it open. And so we're going to talk about poverty, pollution, sustainability, conservation.
Lisa: Amazing.
Dean: Six-episode documentary, and really, for me, promote Africa. I, we talked about the security industry and how people see a continent from what they see on the TV. For me, it's my favorite continent. I love Africa. I know the people don't have two coins to rub together, but they're probably the most friendliest, happiest, and hospitable people.
Lisa: Totally.
Dean: I really want to promote that as well. And unlike the bike ride, which is mostly physical this is, you know, there's a lot more skill involved in this. You know, it’s everything from flatwater to grade six waterfalls.
Lisa: Yeah, isn't there some big waterfalls and stuff?
Dean: You got crocodiles, you got hippos, you got civil war in South Sudan. So it's gonna, it's gonna have it's gonna have some issues along the way.
Lisa: You're going to hit some more adventures, and I can't wait to hear about those. I have to actually connect you ahead on the podcast. Last week, a lady by the name of fellow countrywoman of yours, Laura Penhaul. And Laura is, she rode across the Pacific. And she's a bit like you. She didn't, she never rode before, when she took on this challenge. So she did it with three other ladies, she got a team together. You have to have a listen. I'd love to connect you guys because she might get I mean, it's a different rowing, quaking, but you know, pretty, pretty phenomenal. Lady is–
Dean: Amazing. Yeah, no, please do. Yeah, but I've left this one open if anyone wants to come join me at any stage, more than welcome. You know, we approached Guinness about being a world record and you know, Guinness, no one's ever done it before. So they just took the Amazon guidelines and dropped it on this, but Amazon's a different river. Amazon's quite flat and they said ‘Oh, you're allowed to use one boat.’ But if that was the case, you’re carrying the boat about halfway around so we then changed it to self propelled by paddle which means I can use either a ocean ski, a creek boat, or a raft. But actually then, in reflection, looking at you know, when you do Guinness World Records, there's so many guidelines you need to adhere to. Which is fine when you're cycling on a road or something. When you're paddling the river which has never been done before. I mean, there's Civil War, there's animals that are gonna eat you and things that, you don't want to be– you're gonna have to make some key decisions and you don't want your decisions to be blurred because you've got to stick to these guidelines. So actually, we just push that out and said ‘Well, we're not going to do it for world record.’ Not at first anyway. We'll collect the data, but I don't want that to sort of hinge long decision.
Lisa: And I think it stands on its own, Guinness World Record or not, you know, like that's not– I don't know, it's not important. This is about the actual beast you're gonna go on this crazy adventure.
Dean: Yeah.
Lisa: So we can– do you know– I'm you know– I'm just absolutely fascinated by your mindset and the way that you approach things and all the stuff that you do and I'd love to have you on at another stage in the future. And your wife. Because I think you need a double episode to find out what the hell makes a lady like that tick as well. But where can people follow you, get involved with your project, the next one that you've got coming out, your book, etcetera?
Dean: So I'm obviously on social media. You know, social media for me was a taboo when I did the last challenge because Special Forces. But I now understand it’s a platform where you need to be sort of promoting. So I am on Instagram as @deanstott and then I am on Twitter @DeanStottSBS, and I’m on Facebook. And so I'll start, you know later on in the year you will start seeing posts of me training and you know, talking about my nutrition and things I didn't really do before because I didn't think people were interested in that, and in the mindsets, we add that. And then the website www.deanstott.com.
Lisa: Dean Stott with two T’s.
Dean: We've got the frogman on there and then you can then– and we're going to be posting up there as well. You can buy the book from there or you can get the book from Amazon or audio.
Lisa: And it's got the same title as mine so buy both Relentless books, people, when you're on Amazon or wherever the heck you are, both buy Relentless. Buy Dean Stott’s one and my one, that would be really, really good. Dean, is there any last words that you want to share like to people out there listening, who are just over– like to look at someone like you and they just go, ‘Well, you know, he's amazing and I could never be like that.’ What's your words to them?
Dean: Yeah, you know, I always say don't compare yourself to other people. You know, the problem you have nowadays is social media and the people like, ‘Well, I can't do that’, you know, well you’re not that person. You're unique. And you know, I did it when I was doing the cycling. People out there, ‘Look at Mark Beaumont.’ I'm not Mark Beaumont and things like that. So don't worry about what other people are doing. Just focus on yourself. You know, I always say anticipation is worse than participation.
Lisa: Yeah, I love that. I've quoted that from you.
Dean: A lot of people will tell you why they can't do it. And, you know, just block out those out. And just take it in bite sizes, what I say. You know, if you're gonna, for example, a marathon 26 miles. You wouldn't go try and do 26 miles, you probably wouldn't achieve it. I mean, you'd be so deflated and your self-esteem is– but just set yourself a manageable target: five kilometers, hit that and then you just grow from there.
Lisa: Yeah. There's some fabulous advice. Dean, thank you so much for your time today. You're an absolute superstar. I, you know, or have your, you know what you've done. And thanks for, you know, raising so much money for charities and doing good in the world and being a positive force out there in the world. I think it's really, really important. So thanks.
Dean: Thank you. You’re more than welcome to come and join me anytime on the now.
Lisa: Oh, man. Now I would love to do that. Mum might have something to say.
That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
So many things seem to be beyond our control in this fast-paced world. As a result, we've developed anxieties and worries that we carry every day. With their weight, we may find it more challenging to achieve even the most minor goals. So, how do you get through these thoughts and feelings? How can you reach success and improve your well-being?
Carly Taylor joins us today in this episode to teach us how to deal with things outside of our control. Through her discussion, you'll hopefully learn about how to recognise and optimise your thoughts and emotions for your greater good. Carly also shares about helpful tools she's discovered and practised, including Morita therapy and Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT).
If you want to deal with the daily pressures of your life healthily, you'll learn helpful things from this episode.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, your goals and your lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or are wanting to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, a NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that is capable of boosting the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements that are of highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combat the effects of aging, while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
'I use the modalities of Japanese psychology and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and I also throw in a bit of Stoicism as well. Because all three of those modalities are just so intertwined. And it's just what I find incredible is what's relevant today is what was relevant back 2000 years ago.'
‘I then looked at life coaching, and it kind of didn't really resonate with me, then by the time I kind of was, you know, trying to figure out what direction I was going to go that my background is completely different.'
'I mean, we're all individuals. And we're productive, you know, from when we are born right up to our experiences, right up until this present moment.'
'But what makes us unique is that we're able to observe our thoughts. And if we can create that space between us and our thoughts, we can look at that thought more in an analytical way rather than in an emotional way.'
'So that's sort of the acceptance part of what's in our control, what's not in our control, and the big one is those thoughts and emotions.'
'Well, I mean, what other people think is a huge one for the majority of my clients, it is the number one fear if you want to call it or or anxiety or worry is what others think of them.'
'But it's that sort of everyday anxiety that we feel. And it's this, sort of focus on the discomfort and wanting to get rid of it. And when that's intense, this is not easy.'
Carly Taylor is a certified nutritionist, health trainer and personal coach. She is also a qualified Japanese Psychology therapist who applies Morita therapy and Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT).
She shares her tools and learnings through her Mindset Coaching. As a guarantee to her clients, Carly also uses the tools she teaches in her coaching sessions. Through her coaching, she helps people change their mindset and break barriers that used to hold them back. As a result, her clients develop skills and achieve success despite their situations.
With her passionate approach towards research, she continues to learn about new practices and tools to navigate life. Along with her husband, Paul, Carly also helps groups of people achieve peak performance through the Mind, Body, Brain Performance Institute.
If you want to learn more about Carly and her coaching approach, you can visit her website or Instagram.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn new tools to improve their well-being.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential. With your host, Lisa Tamati. Brought to you by lisatamati.com.
Lisa Tamati: Welcome back, everybody to Pushing the Limits. And this week, I have the lovely Carly Taylor to guest. Carly is the wife of Paul Taylor, who was also recently on this program, and who I absolutely loved. The amazing woman who is with Paul is Carly Taylor. Now Carly is an ACT therapist and a Morita psychology therapist. So what the heck is that all about, you might be thinking. Well, she's somebody that helps you if you have problems with anxiety, with depression, with overthinking, all of those things that many of us really deal with. So today's episode is all around giving you the tools to help with all those from the point of view of ACT therapy or Acceptance Commitment Therapy, as well as the Japanese psychology, Morita therapy. Now, Carly is also a qualified nutritionist, a certified personal trainer, and a certified health coach. She brings over 10 years’ experience in the area of behavior change. So I'm really hopeful that you're going to enjoy this episode with Carly. She's a very lovely lady, and she has a lot to give you. So enjoy that.
Before we head over to the show, make sure that you check out our epigenetics program. This is our flagship program that we use as a framework for all people that we're doing health coaching with, the people that we're doing running coaching with. And it's really helping you optimise your genes. So learning about what your genes are all about, who you are specifically, unique you, and then optimising you. So in all areas, we're looking at mood and behavior, we're looking at your dominant hormones. We look at the career path that may be right for you, we look at the way your brain thinks, at what time of the day you should be doing different activities. We're also, of course, looking at exercise and nutrition specific to your gene. So if you want to find out more about that program, head on over to lisatamati.com, hit the ‘Work With Us’ button, and you'll see our Peak Epigenetics program. Come and find out all about it, or drop me a line at support@lisatamati.com, and we'd love to help you with it. We do run webinars so we can send you some information on it. It takes a little bit to get your head around, but I tell you this is the future of personalised health. No longer is it a one size fits all approach. This is all specific to you. It's very scientific and very evidenced-based. So I hope you'll come and join us on that program. We've taken literally now hundreds and hundreds of people through this program, and it gives us fantastic results. We also have a course, our online run training system that's personalised, customised to your specific goals at runninghotcoaching.com. Find out all about the package and what's involved there. This is not, by no means, just for elite athletes. I don't want people to think that it's just for ultra-marathon runners or just for people that are doing crazy adventures. This is for you. If you're just getting off the couch, if you're doing your first K. It's also for you if you are doing your hundredth marathon, ultra-marathon or marathon. So find out all about that at runninghotcoaching.com. Right now, over to the show with the lovely Carly Taylor.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to Pushing the Limits. It's fantastic to have you back with me again. Today, I have the lovely Carly Taylor with me. Welcome to the show, Carly, it's fantastic to have you.
Carly Taylor: Oh, thanks for having me. It's good to be here.
Lisa: Super excited. Carly is the famous wife of Paul Taylor, who I've had recently on my podcast too, and who I really connected with. I think he's an absolute legend, your husband. What he's doing is absolutely—I think he's probably as crazy as me, if not worse.
Carly: And he’s passionate, I think.
Lisa: And is passionate, and silly, and crazy. So I thought, ‘Who is this amazing woman that is with Paul Taylor? Because she'd have to be probably something special.’ I started researching into what you do. And I thought, ‘Oh, I have to have you on the show as well.’ So welcome, Carly. It's really exciting to have you. Today, we're going to talk about Morita therapy, and ACT therapy. I'll let you explain what all that is and give us a bit of your background. But can you just tell us who you are, where you're from, and all that sort of jazz?
Carly: I do one-on-one coaching. I'm a mindset coach, but with a bit of a twist because I use the modalities of Japanese psychology, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and I also throw in a bit of Stoicism as well. Because all three of those modalities are just so intertwined. It's just—what I find incredible is what's relevant today is what was relevant back 2,000 years ago, and also in the Eastern, in the Japanese psychology as well. So with Morita—so the Japanese psychology there were three components to it. So it’s Morita therapy, which is also known as the Psychology of Action. Which is kind of unusual because you kind of think of Eastern philosophy and what you think of meditation and contemplation and all that sort of stuff. But Morita therapy is very much about purpose and action. Then there's Naikan, which is the self-reflection exercise that you can do, and then Kaizen as well, which is that sort of incremental things that you can do to improve over time. But my main focus is Morita therapy.
Lisa: So, how did you get into this? What was your background before you got into? How did you get into mindset coaching? What's your personal story?
Carly: It’s really evolved. I've always been someone who likes helping people. Over the years, I was kind of the go-to whenever friends had problems, and I looked at—
Lisa: The shoulder to cry on.
Carly: Yeah, exactly. I was always the shoulder. But, I started off looking into life coaching. I did when we're in Scotland, I did voluntary work with ChildLine Scotland. That was such a brilliant organisation, and they have really good training. So I kind of started my training with that, and counseling over the phone with young people. I really got a lot out of it. I then looked at life coaching and it kind of didn't really resonate with me. Then by the time I was trying to figure out what direction I was going to go - my background is completely different; my background is music and advertising - so I kind of did it and adapted then and tried to sort of play to my strengths, I guess. Had kids, and so, my focus was on the kids. Paul was building his business and doing a lot of traveling, doing a lot of extra educational stuff, just continually learning. And I was doing that, sort of in the background as well, but not with the intensity that he was doing because I was with the kids.
And then he was listening to the Art of Manliness podcast. Greg Krech, who is a Morita therapy expert, was on and talking about the Psychology of Action. Paul was just like ‘Oh, my God, this guy is amazing and so aligned with the stuff that we're doing,’ and looked into it a bit further. We worked out that he did this certification course over in the States. And Paul just said to me, ‘Right, it's your turn.’ It's like, ‘This is all you. If you don't do it, I'll do it, then it's your turn.’ So I was way out of my comfort zone. First time I left the kids, and that traveled over to Vermont, in the States. Did a 10-day residential component of the certification, and then came back, and then studied for a year and a half. That's how I got into it. It really, that 10 days at the ToDo Institute really completely changed my life. It was the first thing. Jumping to one of the components of Morita therapy is around attention and where your attention is. One of the first things Greg said in the course was, ‘Your life is not based on your life. Your life is based on what you pay attention to’. And I was just like, ‘Well, that's an—,’ and it kind of just took it from there. And then when I got back, I started just slowly getting clients with the Japanese psychology, and then I discovered ACT, which is Acceptance Commitment Therapy, which was started by Steven Hayes in the 1980s. It is more of a modern approach, but same principles. It's Japanese psychology. So I combined both of them, and I just loved them, and I use the tools myself every day.
Lisa: And you've turned it into the Carly therapy.
Carly: Yes, Carly therapy.
Lisa: Yeah. Because you do—you take, I do this too. Like bits of this, and a bit of that, and a bit of like your own recipe or what resonates with you. What you find is working and so—
Carly: Yeah, and what I actually love about it is it's not just about, it was started by Shoma Morita who was the Japanese psychiatrist in 1920. He started it for patients with anxiety, a form of neurosis. It started as an in-patient program. He had quite a strict protocol that they went through. But what I love is that you can apply these principles into just your daily life. So it's not just about emotional well-being. it's about living fully every day using these principles.
Lisa: So let's dive into it a little bit then. If someone comes to you with anxiety, depression, something like that, where would you start with them? So like we can—what I want to get to is how do we pull out some of the tools and some of the learnings that some people can take some value away from this conversation today? So where would you start? What's this type of thing that you're looking at? What sort of tools and processes do you go through?
Carly: One of the first exercises that I will do with them is to look at their life and identify what's in their control, and not what is not within their control. It's a really interesting exercise, because it gets the thinking process going. Because that list of what's not in your control becomes very, very long. And the things that are within your control is actually quite short. So you look at the things that aren't in your control, the obvious ones, like the weather, COVID, a lot of political decisions, that sort of stuff. But you drill it down, and you can't control what other people think. You can't control what other people think of you. You can certainly influence it, but you can't control it - what they do, what they say, how they behave. And you cannot control what you think, or the thoughts that come into your head.
Lisa: The automatic sort of thoughts that jump out of your head.
Carly: Yeah, the automatic thoughts and the automatic emotion that comes up. Of course, once those thoughts pop up, you can reframe and do all that sort of stuff, or positive affirmations, all that, all those sorts of things. But as soon as that thought pops up into your head, that's beyond your control. We have between 70 and 80 thousand thoughts per day.
Lisa: Yeah apparently. This is crazy! We’re just thought machines! We are just churning these things out all the time. Dr. Daniel Amen, who I follow, he talks about ANTs, automatic negative thoughts. And where do you think there's this, you’re saying that we're not in control of those, they're just coming through. Are they coming through from our programming or, subconsciously, or what?
Carly: Yeah, I mean, we're all individuals. And we're productive from when we are born right up to our experiences, right up until this present moment. But it's also good to have an understanding of how the mind works because those automatic negative thoughts, if we didn't, as humans, have a negative bias, we wouldn't see the human race today. So, back in caveman days, you probably heard this before, it's like, we had to have anxiety. We had to have that negative skew because otherwise we were going to get eaten by a saber toothed tiger. But in our modern world, it's those negative thoughts. It's like, ‘What's our boss thinking of us? So why do we get that many likes on our Instagram posts?’ It's not helpful. A lot of the stuff right now that's causing those negative thoughts. It’s not helpful for us to live fully. So in Morita therapy, the first step is the acceptance. First of all, it's awareness of thoughts. And that's where it's good to use that metacognition of observing your thoughts and something. So I love that I'm constantly observing my thoughts and I’m like, ‘Oh, there it is again’.
Lisa: Because I first heard that from Craig Harper, our mutual friend at the You Project. I've been using that a heck of a lot since I heard that. When you step outside your house, when you watch yourself, as if you were above, as if I was above looking down my spirit self or whatever you want to call it. Looking at my brain. Just tuning out this shit, basically. Bringing forth this. And then looking at it and go, ‘Hang on. Is it good? Is it serving me right now?’
Carly: Exactly. And that's the question to ask. It's like, if you can create space, because then Craig would have talked about the different cells and we are not our thoughts, and we're not our anxiety. So there's a part of us, as humans, animals can't do this, but what makes us unique is that we're able to observe our thoughts. And if we can create that space between us and our thoughts, we can look at that thought more in an analytical way, rather than in an emotional way. It's not about whether that thought is right or wrong. It's whether it's helpful.
Lisa: Yeah. And something right now.
Carly: Yeah, exactly. That's sort of the acceptance part of what's in our control, what's not in our control. The big one is those thoughts and emotions. And then have been aware of creating that space and observing them, that's kind of the first step. Any act, we call that diffusion or unhooking. When we get hooked by our thoughts, it's almost like they're pushing us around, and then they start dictating what we do without necessarily taking us towards the person that we really want to be. So if we can observe them and unhook from them, then that gives us that space to choose our behavior, and choose it aligned with our values or our purpose and takes us towards the person that we want to be.
Lisa: That's brilliant. So it's really getting the executive functioning part of our brain, our prefrontal cortex talking to our amygdala more or being more connected to them. This frontal area of the brain that only humans have really developed, and in some primates have to a certain degree. But because a lot of us go around being hijacked by our amygdala, all the time. So that's the reptilian part of the brain that’s sort of a more primitive part of the brain, that is responding very, very quickly, quicker than the prefrontal cortex, to dangers in your environment, or negative things happening in the environment. Was it here as a survival mechanism? Talking about this the other day, and I said, how fast my amygdala switches on when something in my environment happens? Say, someone cuts me off in traffic. Those automatic thoughts that come out from the amygdala before I switched my logical adult brain on, ‘I'm going to punch that dude in the face’.
Carly: Thank goodness, your prefrontal cortex switches in then and says, ‘Don't do that!’
Lisa: But when I was younger, I was less able to do that. And I was very fiery, very angry. Now as I've gotten older and understand that sort of process, I can go, ‘Okay, come on, take a couple of deep exhales here, and we're going to calm ourselves down and get a grip of it’. But it's also a very protective thing. Sometimes I catch a glass that's falling off the table before I've even registered it with my prefrontal cortex. And that’s also your reaction speed. Your amygdala is working at, I don't know what it is, thousands of a second faster than this. And so you're catching things. It can be a very positive thing, but it can also be - our jails and our justice system are full of people whose amygdala is more dominant and more able to control. And so they've done things in the spur of the moment without getting political on it, but it is something that we need to practice and work on. And it's something that you as a parent would know that the younger the child is, the less control that they have up there. So they just do whatever their emotional brain tells them to do - scream, yell, kick, whatever. As we get older, we learn to handle a bit more. But there's still this disconnect going on.
Carly: Yeah, our brains aren't fully developed until the age of 25. But, you look at that, and there's decisions being made by young people that are going to affect them for the rest of their life, and that their brains aren't fully developed to be able to make those long-term decisions. So, it's really interesting.
Lisa: So that's the awareness and stepping out and unhooking as you said, or diffusion, and looking at yourself. So that's the first thing that you can do. And looking at what is in your control and what is not in your control. So how do you approach the stuff that's not in your control, that makes you fearful, for example?
Carly: What other people think is a huge one. To the majority of my clients, it is the number one fear, if you want to call it anxiety or worry. It is what others think of them. Even that is a very normal thing. So the next step is about acceptance. It's not acceptance in a passive way, but it's an acceptance of what is a natural part of the human experience. Wiring what people think is actually quite normal because back when we were in a tribal setting, we had to care what others thought. We had to know that we were adding value to the tribe, and the survival of the tribe. Otherwise, we'd get kicked out. So it's just that now, there's too many people. We have so many connections. Not only our physical connection with people, but also through social media. So it's almost like this connection overdrive that we have, and this worry about what others think, this worry about the posts that young people post on social media, their appearance, and all that sort of stuff. So I guess I approach that, first of all, with my clients that this is just a natural part of being human. That looking at that thought of if they're worried about what somebody is thinking of them. Looking at that is not right or wrong. But is it helpful? If it's not helpful, then do that by observing self. Defuse or unhook from it. Create that space, and then redirect attention into what needs to be done in that moment. Acceptance isn't about that passive, “I’ve got to put up with it.” It's not about tolerating anything, but it's about making room for it, and making room for those thoughts and those emotions that come up. And using tools like the breath and exercise that manage it. But I think the main thing is about discomfort tolerance levels, because we don't, and I know you would talk about comfort zones a lot.
So Morita, he believed that in radiotherapy there were two sets of opposing forces. One was a desire to live fully, and the other one was this desire to be secure and comfortable. So they're opposing each other. But as you would know, any success, like all my achievements in my life has involved some level of discomfort. And sometimes we're willing to feel that discomfort. Even on your wedding day, you feel nervous and everything, but you still get married. But it's that everyday anxiety that we feel. It's this focus on the discomfort and wanting to get rid of it. And when that's intense, this is not easy. I don't want to lighten this because I know that these intense feelings can be quite debilitating to people. But using these tools, you make room for it, make space around it, and be able to do what's important to you, coexisting, bringing that discomfort with you, in the hope that it's going to turn down like the intensity. It's a bit like a radio playing in the background. If the radio is really loud, it's taking your attention, it's hard to focus. But using these tools of diffusing or unhooking, it's, slowly the radio just starts to turn down. And it might just be a little murmur in the background.
Lisa: And hanging with that tension long enough, so stepping, being brave enough to take something on. Say a challenge - you're going to America to learn this thing a bit. You're leaving your kids behind, and your husband behind, you're off to this new place. And you're like, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ All that sort of stuff. Me and my life going off to run like in the Himalayas, or the Sahara, and absolutely shitting myself. And it sounded good while he was signing up, and you'd had a glass of wine. And now, you’re like, ‘What am I doing? I'm in this so deep, there's no way out now, so I have to go through’.
So I know that tension very, very well. And I know that those are the times when the growth happens, isn't it? When you're pushing, but you are also risking failure, you are risking being, and this is the sort of dichotomy, or how it's contradictory. We, as human beings, seek comfort. We seek safe because that is our DNA programming. But because we live in such comfortable societies with comfortable couches and comfortable Netflix's to watch in houses that we live in and cars that we drive, we don't ever get out of that comfort zone if we don't want to. We can have our food delivered to our door and order our clothes online. And we can be very, very insular if that's the way that we decide to live, but we are never going to grow in that state. We are never going to challenge, we're never going to fulfill our potential. And so when you talk to people, they all want to change. They all want to be epic. They all want to do like, ‘I wish I could be like you and run ultra-marathons, or run a business, or whatever the case may be.’ But nobody’s wrong. But a lot of people just are not willing to put up with the pain, the discomfort, the fear, the financial investment, the time investment, the hard yards, in order to reap those rewards. So how do you teach yourself to be a little bit tougher? A little bit of, ‘I'm going to do this. I'm scared anyway. But I'm doing it.’ How do you teach yourself that sort of toughness or resilience?
Carly: Because if you try and avoid or suppress those strong, intense emotions, it's going to affect your life. You're not going to be able to live fully by staying in that comfort zone. And I love what I want to do. It just reminded me of the cold shower thing, I have my current shower this morning. So we're running this eight-week course with Jonah. We might talk about it later. But part of that is this ritual of the cold shower. Now I don't particularly like the cold. And I like being comfortable as well. It's like being anxious or nervous, it's not a nice feeling to have. But what you can do is practice getting uncomfortable. So deliberate practice. And I think Paul called it discomfort harvesting or harvesting discomfort.
Lisa: That's what I should do, a PhD in the weekend.
Carly: There you go, we've got your PhD. Cold shower is such a good tool to get out of your comfort zone. Because you have total control at the end of your nice warm shower, which is nice and comfortable. You have control whether you turn that to cold and spend a minimum of 30 seconds under that cold water, being uncomfortable. And if you can't do that, then the likelihood of when something goes wrong, and these intense emotions come up, then the likelihood of you being able to handle that could be low if you can't even handle having a cold shower. Cold showers, as you know, they have huge benefits on the immune system, and even emotional well-being. Everything that comes from me and my experience of them. It is about getting out of my comfort zone. Because I need to practice that as well.
Lisa: We all do, all the time. This is the misconception, too, that you've done it. In my case, I had done one ultramarathon, therefore you're tough for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. This is something you need to use it or lose it. So that's why that daily ritual stuff is very important.
Carly: Absolutely. And you were never exonerated, we'll count until the day we die, we'll keep doing this stuff. Because we're human. And that's the acceptance part of it, it’s that life is hard. I loved Matthew McConaughey. That speech that he did for the students who are graduating. But one of the things he just said, ‘Life is hard’. There's nothing original in that, but it's just the way he said it. It's like you need to get used to it, you need to prepare for it. Because life as humans, we will not stay in this comfortable environment, something will happen, somebody will get sick, jobs will be lost. Just like COVID happened and businesses, it's like stuff happens to us. So what we can do, while things are going well, is put ourselves out of our comfort zone on just small things on a daily basis. And then when the shit hits the fan, we can really cope with it.
Lisa Tamati: And this just summed up my entire books, really, in a mouthful, because it is about scaring the crap out of yourself, pushing the limits, and finding what you can do. Not all the time. We've spoken about this before about rest and recovery times and coming back so that you can recover from that big thing you just took on. You can't just go back to back to back, scary big, awesome, huge things all the time, because that leads to burnout and PTSD and goodness knows what else. So it is about everything that I study in biology and psychology and all the areas that I study, it seems to be this flow, life loves this even flow, right from our nutrition. So eating the same thing all the time, always being on keto is not good. It's about this up and down. With biology, you want to have a little bit of this, and then you want to pull back, you want a little bit of cold. And when it comes to hermetic stressors, doing things like saunas, like cold showers, like training and exercise. If you do too much, you're going to—if you look at those four phases of stress, where you've got the alert phase, and then the resistance phase, and then the recovery or exhaustion phase. If you're going overtraining, you're not going to get there. You're not going to get that response, that compensation.
It's the same thing here. You want to be going flowing in and out of tough times, come back, recover, see how that went, then have another crack at something else in a different area of your life perhaps. And that this even flow of life is, if we just stay in the static, then we're actually going backwards. What really matters for me and the stuff that I do is when it comes to health. Because if you're not in this willingness to put up with things like cold showers and going training when you don't feel like it, and eating good food and trying to have these stable fundamental health habits and working on them, I'm not perfect and no one's perfect, but working on these things, you are going to pay the price with your life, your health. Yes, we're all going to die one day, but I hope that I will live a healthy long lifespan, a very long one. I want to have health for as long as I possibly can. And so by studying all this, by learning all this, you can actually, hopefully hinder the worst things happening. I mean, a lot of things, you can't prevent everything because like I said, some things are outside of our control. And we have to acknowledge that. But what can I do to up the odds, then I'm going to live long. Up the odds that I'm going to be healthy until the end. All of those types of things because the price, and I've seen this in my own life and in my own family, unfortunately, when they didn't acknowledge all those things along the way and then the big freight train came in, and then you're pushing the proverbial uphill.
Carly: There's a reflection exercise that I do with my clients. And it's, imagine that you're 80, and you're reflecting back on your life, but it but it's your life today. So you don't go back in the past. It's like you're reflecting back on your life today. And one of the questions is, what would you do differently? And it's a really powerful question, because it gets you to look at your life in a more analytical way and go, ‘Well, actually things like I’d exercise more, or I’d drink less’. Spending more time with your family is a huge one, that's usually the number one thing I would spend more time with my kids or it's more time with my family. And once you've got that list, you can look at that, and then you have the power today to choose those things moving forward. So if you project yourself into the future, reflect back, you then are able to almost design your life how you want to live from this point onwards.
Lisa: I've heard what people that are on their deathbed are thinking, what are the greatest regrets that they wish they had done. And it is things like that, it's not, I wish I'd worked more. I wish I’d earned more money. We need a certain amount of work. And we need a certain amount of money, all of these sorts of things. But what are your highest priorities, and then aligning your values and what you're doing to those priorities. And there really isn't a dynamic thing, it changes a little bit and your values and all the things change over time. But being in alignment with your greatest priorities now is something that we need to keep reevaluating, and are we on track for that? I'm talking to myself here, because I'm definitely a workaholic. And I want to, ‘Oh, that sounds like a great idea’. Write another book, do a PhD and whatever dreams and things that you've got. And then you're like, ‘Hmm, that's going to take me away from my family’. Early in my life, I wouldn't even have thought that I would have just been so excited about the thing. And now I've got to stop and think about those things. Because you realise now, I'm 52 and I'm running out of time to do the things that I want. And when you lose a loved one, like I recently lost my dad, that's a real rough. Because otherwise, when there's no major thing like that has happened to you yet, you’re just bumbling along and everything's okay. When I talk to my family members and stuff about my father, it's like, ‘I wish I'd taken him fishing more. I wish he had more time. I wish I'd learned from him’. And we're all wishing we had done this together. So it is that wake-up call that is like, how do you want to be thinking in the next 20 years then?
Carly: And that's kind of a silver lining thing as well, isn't it? Even though something as sad, and the loss of a loved one, that silver lining is that you can learn from that and go, ‘Well, I wish I'd done that.’ And then is there an opportunity now to do that with somebody who's here and with you? Do you know, I was thinking, one of the things that I've started doing consistently now— with life, the modern world, the way it is, and its rush, rush, rush, rush. And we're getting out there almost, a lot of us are on autopilot. And I know I was. Even with it's like, ‘Right, I'll do my exercise. I'll go to my CrossFit class or my exercise class, and then I'm going to work. And I’m doing this’. It's like, go, go, go, go, go. For me inputs, like emails and text messages and social media, everything's kind of input. It's overwhelming.
So what I started doing, and it's actually Craig Harper was on his podcast last year, and right at the end of it was before Christmas, I totally walked into this. He was like, ‘So what's something that you want to achieve in 2021?’ And I said, ‘I want to get up earlier’, because I thought I was funny, even though I was still getting up at 6:30. But I was just fine. I was just going straight into it. And so he sent me his 100-day challenge to get up at 5:30 each day. And what I did was I started this pre-input routine, I don't know, do you do this. So I get up, and there's no phone. Do not touch my phone. I don't have my phone in my room. It's uncharged in the kitchen. So don't go near it. Don't go near a computer. What I started doing is the first thing I do is, I journal. It's not a journal where I'm writing paragraphs of stuff. It's all dot points. But the first thing I do a metric. So I just say, the alarm went off at 5:30, got up at 5:45. Or maybe I did get up at 5:30. Or maybe I got up at 6:00, but I measure it. Over time, I've kind of been able to say: well, what influenced me whether I didn't get up or whether I did get up. Most of it is what I did the night before. The morning starts the night before. So you can see patterns there. But the big thing that I found is that it gives me silence. And I think silence is something that we're missing in today's world, because of all these inputs. If you can sit with silence, that's when you can really think about things, you can observe your thoughts. You can start being creative when ideas come up. So before any inputs or journal, I look at what my wins were yesterday, and really celebrate those. Have you heard BJ Fogg?
Lisa: Yeah, Tiny Habits.
Carly: Tiny Habits. So, he says to celebrate the small things, and you get that little dopamine hit. And dopamine is also the neurotransmitter of motivation. I will journal even micro moments that I've had with people outside in the community that I thought that was really, just like my barista. She makes me a great coffee, and she has a chat and tells me my hair looks nice. It's those sort of little things that I think we need to have more focus on, and to celebrate those sort of moments in our life, because otherwise, they just pass up. They’re just fleeting, and we’re onto the next thing.
Lisa: And when we tend to just be looking at the big picture all the time, like the big goals - the program we are writing, or the book we're doing or the project at work, or whatever the case is. We don't celebrate those. I've started to, because I'm running three companies, I've got a disabled mom that I still look after 24/7, 7 days a week. It's full on. And a lot of the time, some days, I'm just like, ‘How the hell does any human brain do this?’ I'm just like, ‘I've got a pretty good brain, but I am not keeping up.’ When you drop the ball and you're like, ‘Oh.’ Like I said to my husband, ‘I dropped the ball on this appointment the other day and I'm such an idiot,’ and he said, ‘Stop, stop. You're not an idiot. You're telling yourself that.’ And of course I am. Thanks for pointing that out to me. And yet you're doing the best you bloody will can and in this very difficult situation. Give yourself a break. And we're all doing that, we are all trying to keep up because things seem to get faster and more.
And so taking moments out, like an appointment fell through this morning, ‘Oh, an opportunity.’ Now I can either get into some work, which has plenty to do. Or my husband comes out and he looks at he's looking all down on the dumps and exhausted, and I’m like, ‘Let's go for a walk, darling. It's a beautiful day. Let's go and just walk for 20 minutes. Get some sunshine on our eyes, wake ourselves up, have a talk about the day before,’ then come back and then ‘Wow, it's a different start to the day’. Because usually it's just back, back, back. And then you find yourself at 10 o'clock at night when you finally sit down for the first time. Turn the telly on or something to just zone out, to compensate for this whirlwind. Building into your day, those little micro times we say, ‘Oh it’s a beautiful flower’. Being in the, ‘Oh, what beautiful sunshine,’ and all this, ‘Someone’s smiling at me.’ ‘Hi, how you doing?’ Just those little wee things that can help you get enough energy to get through to the next—
Carly: And that's where attention comes in too, which is part of Morita therapy, is that we can pay attention internally to our problems and our thoughts or feelings or our pain. Or even with all that going on, we can still pay attention to a beautiful flower. It's about one of the most simple, and it sounds crazy, but using your senses can get you out of your head and into the present moment. And we were talking about, I think Paul may have mentioned this, I don't know. One of the exercises is looking for the color blue. So if you find you're ruminating in thoughts, or if you're driving in the car, I find that that's when I started, all the thoughts come up when I'm driving, because it's such an automatic thing that you do. So I really try and redirect my attention. There's a metaphor of a torch. So the beam of light is your attention. And you have control over where you shine that. It's so effective. So am I shining that torch in my internal world? Or can I redirect it with all this going on, redirect it to the outside world? And I'll just look for things for color blue. Look for tiny things for color blue look for, obviously, the sky hopefully will be blue. Look, they're different shades of blue. And what that does, it doesn't get rid of what's going on internally, but it just redirects your attention.
Lisa: Distracts you from the internal looping that goes on in your brain, when you start to just, those thoughts just keep going around in circles. And there's actually no solution coming out of it. And this is the sort of thinking that goes on at two o'clock in the morning when you wake up. Cortisol has gone up and you've got some project that you're struggling with or something and it's just a loop, loop, loop, loop. And you've got to break that loop.
Carly: That's the hardest time, because at two o'clock in the morning, you can't really look for the color blue. You can ask yourself a question, ‘Is this happening now? Oh, no, this is not it's a statement. This isn't happening now’. Because you're thinking about the future or you’re thinking about the past. But it's not happening now. And what's happening now is that you need to sleep.
Lisa: I focus on my breath doing breath work. And apart from that, it doesn't happen so much to me. Now that does on occasion. But do some breath work where you're concentrating on the exhale. And there's lots of different breaths - box breathing or 4-7-8 breathing. I like to do what you're doing this massively long exhale. And that really slows down the parasympathetic nervous system, and can actually help you fall back to sleep. And I find that very, very powerful. But it's just breaking that cycling in your head, when you find yourself with a specific problem, that you're just not getting the answers to, going round and round, that's when you need to go either meditate, breathe, go for a walk, go for a run, do something that actually changes your mood. You're allowing space, because a lot of the time people think, ‘I have to stay here and not solve this problem right now. Otherwise, it's going to get worse’. Actually, when you let go, and you let it have time and space, that's when the answers come to you.
Carly: Yeah, that's right. And looking at what's within your control at that moment. It's not within your control that those ruminating thoughts keep coming up. But what is within your control is how you respond to them. So what you do in that moment, and a really good question to ask is, what needs to be done now? We’re only at a series of moments. It's that we only have the present moment. And most of the time, the anxiety or the ruminating thoughts are not related to the present moment. They're about the future or the past. So getting back.
Actually, that reminds me, there was a study done. I don't know if you've heard of it by Matt Killingsworth. He's done this study on the wandering mind, and how it relates to happiness. He created this app, and there were 35,000 people involved in this study. And what he did is throughout the day, people just getting on with their day and throughout the day, these questions that pop up like ‘What are you doing now?’ I had that list of 50 things I might be doing. Like, I'm on the train, or I'm at work or whatever. And then it was, ‘What are you—are you thinking about what you're doing? Or are you thinking about something else?’ So it was measuring their wandering mind, and then measuring their happiness levels. And it showed that even if you are stuck in traffic, which is a very frustrating thing, especially if you're running late, if your mind was wandering, you were less happy than if you were in the present moment, just observing your surroundings. You are even happier being in the present moment stuck in traffic than if you were in a pleasant moment but having a wandering mind, if that makes sense. So being in the present moment, and I think we need to practice it. It is a skill. Attention is a skill. And being aware that our attention is constantly being robbed, just like advertising, and social media. It's just constant attention. So if we can take control of our attention and get into the present moment, then that can have such a huge impact on our well-being.
Lisa: Yeah, absolutely. And this is one of the things that I love about a podcast like this. I am fully focused on you in this conversation. Nothing is pulling at me right now. Whereas when I'm working on the computer, and there's a hundred windows open, and I'm back and like, ‘I'm just going to jump on messenger so that I can do this task, send a message to so and so’. I get on to messenger, this is an example. And then, ‘Oh, there's another message coming. Oh, who was it from? Oh, I'll answer that’. And then you're off, and you're over here, and you're over there. And that original thing that you were actually meant to be doing in that moment is gone. And this is the difficulty. Even though I know that this happens, and I'm trying to control it. Shutting those windows down is not always an option, because you have to have the windows open, otherwise, re-find the bloody websites every time. But having the control to go, ‘No, I'll work on that later’. I'm working with a guy at the moment who I'm sure I'm driving insane on systems and processes, because this is a thing that my brain does not do well. And it's driving my business partner mental, because I am constantly like chasing shiny objects, super excited about science, running here and there, learning everything, wanting to do a hundred courses, not focusing on the things that need, the systems and the processes, and they're boring.
And so this poor guy is trying to help me. Shout out to Mike Drone. Get my calendar sorted, get my scheduling sorted, get my inbox under control, get these basic systems. It was an interesting, the Calendly thing, that you have to have, all professional people have. I have, ‘I can’t do it, I can’t work it out. All I have is a fare overseas. And I don't get it.’ And then there was this resistance to it because I didn't want to waste my time learning something that I'm not interested in, or the outside take care of that. I tried to get my assistant to take care of it, and tried to get my husband to take care of it, and nobody would take care of it. They kick me back on my lap. And then Mike said, ‘You have to do it’. And so I actually spent yesterday, a good two three hours setting it up. And I was so proud of myself. Stuff I hate, but I did it.
Carly: Did you do this? Did you just focus on that task that you did anything else come in?
Lisa: Yeah, I had things coming in. But I keep bringing my focus back and I actually managed it for the first time in history. On a thing that I'm not interested in. Because if it's a thing that I'm interested in, if it's science, man, I know, I kind of watch or listen to stuff and learn stuff and read stuff for Africa hours every day. That's what I love. That's my happy place. But when it comes to doing the admin, the text, the accounting, the learner, and learning that software, oh God. But it's not because I thought, ‘Oh, I've always thought, are you just too dumb for that. You just don't get it. Your brain doesn't work’. That was an excuse really. Because I can, I know I have a good brain that can cope with it. It's just that I never gave it the attention because I didn't want to be there. And it is still going to be a battle.
Carly: It reminds me too, that this morning, the sort of pre-input routine that a lot of people do is deep work at that time. So if there's something really important that you need to work on. Like if you're writing a book or like whatever it is that you want to spend two hours on or however many hours on without any inputs. Do that first thing in the morning. And don't have your email open or don't have those. But if you can, turn off your notifications, but have that as your deep work and get that done. And then you get on with the day with all the other stuff that you need to do. There's a lot of...
Lisa: [50:42 unintelligible]
Carly: Yeah, exactly. And it's that Stephen Covey thing that, the important not urgent stuff, do that first.
Lisa: That's really hard to do. In prioritising those lists, and having, and this is where the systems and processes coming in, as I'm finding out now, as I'm working on this, as this is urgent and important, you have to do that right away. And if it's just urgent, but not important that can wait, I’ve forgotten all the whole list of things that you sort of - but doing that in an automatic fashion, so that you actually know what then. If a free space comes into your life, like a cancellation or something, “Okay, what is the thing that I can grab out of my to-do list?” That should be filling that space. And I'm still working on that one, instead of getting dragged any which way, which I still tend to do, which is easier to do. And there's a billion things when you got your own company, and you're working, there is a billion hits you have to wear every day. And that becomes just, you can work 24/7 and still be behind.
Carly: Yeah, it's crazy. And that's why, what you were saying before, when you had that opportunity, when you had that space because you missed an appointment. You had that supposed to choose where you were going to go, and you chose a walk with your husband, which is just such a good recovery thing today and a time to be present, and a time to spend time with somebody that you love and grasp those opportunities.
Lisa: Yeah, and not feel guilty, which is what I do. I really should have picked that other project up. I really should have given my husband the time when he needed it, or my mum, or whatever the case may be. In that moment, and take those little opportunities that come up.
Carly: Yeah, so important.
Lisa: Carly, this has been such an interesting conversation, I feel like we could go for another couple of hours. And maybe I'll get you back on. Because we get into the rest of the ACT therapy and the different areas. But is there anything, as we start to wrap up now, anything else that you think that we haven't covered that we should that would really help people out there listening?
Carly: I think the sort of the overarching thing with this approach is having a purpose-driven life rather than an emotional-driven life. And what I mean by purpose is that it's not the sort of big goal, what's my purpose of life, but the purpose of the moment. So even with worry, or anxiety, or ruminating thoughts, just looking at what is my purpose in this moment. It could be as simple as “I need to clean up the kitchen.” Because that's having your house in order, it's something as important to me. And so it's those sort of small things that we do every day, that kind of creates purpose in our lives. I think that's an important thing to— because it's so easy to have our emotions drive us and respond depending on how we're feeling. But if we can look at the purpose of the moment, then we can make those choices that are going to help us live more fully.
Lisa: And not relying on motivation all the time, but taking action and doing the things that are on your highest priority. You and Paul have an eight-week program. So you're doing an eight-week program, which is all around. Will you tell us a little bit about that, what you're doing at the moment?
Carly: So we're running an eight-week program. We've got about 93 on it, which, it’s our first one. So we're really, really pleased. So we do a weekly zoom session, every Tuesday night for about an hour and a half. It's basically, we go through all the different domains of our lives and the different areas - nutrition, mindset is a big one, exercise. So each week, we have sort of a different topic. And then there's an app that goes with that. So there's like a ritual board, everybody has daily rituals that they can tick off. Culture is one of them. And they get points to that. So it's a bit of healthy competition going on. There's a leaderboard on who's doing what. We've had such good response from people. It's been amazing. So yeah, we're hoping to do another one soon after this one’s finished. We're halfway through now.
Lisa: Brilliant, brilliant. I think this is the sort of stuff I love and I eat for breakfast. Love the stuff. I think it's so important that we're working on this sort of thing. So where can people find you and reach out to you and to Paul and what you're doing? What's your website and your social media handles and so on?
Carly: Yeah, so mine is carlytaylorcoaching.com.au and Instagram is Carly Taylor Coaching. And then mindbodybrain.com.au, which you'll find more about the Better You course, which is the behaviour change course. So that's the eight-week program.
Lisa: Put all those notes in the show notes.
Carly: And then Instagram is Mind Body Brain, which was right.
Lisa: Look, Carly, you've been fantastic today. Thank you so much for your time and your input and your passion that you bring to the stuff.
Carly: Thank you so much for having me. It's been great to meet you.
Lisa: It's just been epic. I've really, really enjoyed a conversation and I think a lot of people will have got a lot of practical tips to take away from this conversation as well.
Carly: Yeah, they'll be looking for the color blue today.
Lisa: Exactly.
Outro: That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends. And head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
There's a stigma associated with unresolved trauma. Many people don't talk about their traumatic experiences. Unfortunately, we're only taught short-term solutions like coping with stress and managing our emotions. With these short-term solutions, the root cause remains unresolved. The trauma is still present and can affect our everyday lives.
In this episode, Dr Don Wood joins us to talk about how unresolved trauma can directly affect our health. He aims to remove the stigma around unresolved trauma, and the first step towards healing is understanding the pain we've gone through. He also talks about the power of our minds from the different stories of his past patients.
Tune in to this episode if you want to learn more about how unresolved trauma can affect your health and life.
For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, your goals and your lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or are wanting to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, a NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that is capable of boosting the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements that are of highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combat the effects of aging, while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘I really started the Inspired Performance Institute because of my wife and daughter more. Mostly my daughter than anything else.’
‘So if I had been a little frustrated with something that worked that day, or is, you know, some other thing that was nothing related to her, she could pick up on that tone change. And then, in her mind, what her mind would be doing is saying, “What do we know about men when they start to get angry?” And a whole bunch of data and information about her father would come flooding in and overstimulate her nervous system.’
‘And so when my daughter was 14, she was diagnosed with Crohn's. And they just told us that you just kind of have to, you know, learn to live with this.’
‘And that's really what led me to develop the program, is I realised that when my daughter was 16, she disclosed to us some sexual abuse that she had had when she was like six years of age that we had no idea. So my wife was, obviously both of us were devastated, but my wife was extremely, she had experienced, you know, sexual abuse as a child and thought she would never let that happen to her child.’
‘How could the body crave a substance that it doesn't know? It doesn't regulate heroin. How could it crave something that doesn't regulate? I believe it's the mind has made a connection between the heroin and survival.’
‘What's happened is your mind has been calling for an action for many, many years, that was impossible to accomplish. But your mind doesn't know that and it keeps putting pressure on you. “Do it, do it, do it.” And because you don't do it, it's using these emotions to call for the action, it stops calling for the action, it shuts off the emotions. And so now depression is the absence of emotion.’
‘I believe in a lot of cases, that's what they're doing, are trying to desensitise you to it. You know, talk about it enough, maybe it doesn't feel as dramatic. And talk therapy has its place so I'm not against it. I think where talk therapy is really good is when you're dealing with a current problem. Where I think the difference between what we do is we're able to get the talk therapy much more effective when you take out all the old stuff that keeps aggravating the new stuff.’
Dr Don Wood, Ph.D., developed the TIPP method after researching how atmospheric conditions affect our minds and impact our lives. In his search for answers for them, Dr Wood connected trauma and their health issues. He also recognised the daily stress they lived with. The only solutions provided came from medications. His experience with his family provided the determination required to develop a cutting-edge neuroscience approach.
The program has benefited individuals all over the world. The results have been impressive. Dr Wood has helped trauma survivors from the Boston Marathon bombing attack and the Las Vegas shooting. He has also helped highly successful executives and world-class athletes. Marko Cheseto, a double amputee marathon runner, broke the world record after completing TIPP. Chris Nikic worked with Dr Wood and made world news by becoming the first person with Downs Syndrome to complete an Ironman competition.
The Inspire Performance Institute was built on this simple phrase, ‘There's nothing wrong with you, there's nothing wrong with your mind’. Some events and experiences have created some glitches and error messages for your mind during your lifetime, and all you need is a reboot.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can understand how unresolved trauma can affect our overall health and well-being.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Lisa Tamati: Welcome back, everybody to Pushing the Limits. Today I have Dr Don Wood, who is sitting in Florida. And Dr Don is a wonderful man. He is a trauma expert. He is someone who had a problem in his own family and sought about finding a solution. He is the developer of the TIPP method, T-I-P-P method. He spent years researching, and to understand how our minds affect our bodies. Dr Wood made the connection between trauma and health issues. In addition, he recognised the daily stress that people live with when they've been through trauma, and that the only solutions provided in the normal conventional world and medications. But his experience with his family provided the determination required to develop a cutting-edge neuroscience approach, a real holistic solution that provides immediate and long lasting relief for people who have been through trauma of any sort, whether it's small or large. The TIPP program developed by Dr Wood has benefited individuals all over the world. And he really wanted to create a solution that removed the stigma of trauma. Too many people are afraid to ask for help because of that stigma. And that's why he named the program around increasing performance levels. The name of his institute is the Inspired Performance Institute.
I really love this episode with Dr Don Wood, he is a lovely, amazing person with a way of helping people get rid of PTSD, get rid of trauma out of their lives. So that they can get on with being the best versions of themselves. And that's what we're all about here. He's worked with everyone, from soldiers coming back from wars to victims of the Boston Marathon bombing campaign, to highly successful executives and world-class athletes. He's been there, done that. So I really hope that you enjoy this conversation with Dr Wood.
Before we head over to the show, just want to remind you, we have our new premium membership for the podcast Pushing the Limits. Now out there. It's a Patron page so you can be involved with the program, with the podcast. We've been doing this now for five and a half years; it is a labor of love. And we need your help to keep this great content coming to you, and so that we can get the best experts in the world and deliver this information direct to your ears. It's a passion that's been mine now for five and a half years and you can get involved with it, you get a whole lot of premium member benefits. And you get to support this cause which we're really, really grateful for. For all those who have joined us on the Patron program. Thank you very, very much. You know, pretty much for the price of a cup of coffee a month, you can get involved. So check that out at patron.lisatamati.com. That's patron P-A-T-R-O-N dot lisatamati.com.
And just reminding you too, we still have our Epigenetics Program going. And this, we have now taken hundreds and hundreds of people through this program. It's a game-changing program that really gives you insights into your genetics, and how to optimise your lifestyle to optimise your genes basically. So everything from your fitness, what types of exercise to do, what times of the day to do it. What, whether you're good at the long distance stuff or whether you be a bit more as a power base athlete, whether you need more agility, whether you need more work through the spine, all these are just information that's just so personalised to you. But it doesn't just look at your fitness, it looks at your food, the exact foods that are right for you. And it goes way beyond that as well as to what are the dominant neurotransmitters in your brain, how they affect your mood and behaviour, what your dominant hormones are, the implications of those, your predispositions for any disorders and the future so that we can hit all those off at the past. It’s not deterministic, that is really giving you a heads up, ‘Hey, this could be a direction that you need to be concerned about in the future. And here's what you can do about it.’ So come and check out our program. Go to lisatamati.com. And under the button ‘Work With Us’, you will find our Peak Epigenetics program. Check that out today. And maybe you can come and join us on one of our live webinars or one of our pre-recorded webinars if you want to you can reach out to me, lisa@lisatamati.com, and I can send you more information about their Epigenetics Program. Right, now over to the show with Dr Don Wood.
Hello, everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. This week, I have another amazing guest for you. I've found some pretty big superstars over the years, and this one is going to be very important to listen to. I have Dr Don Wood, welcome to the show, Dr Don.
Dr Don Wood: Thank you, Lisa. I'm excited to be here.
Lisa: This is gonna be a very interesting, and it's a long-anticipated interview for me, and Dr Don is sitting in Florida, and you've got a very nice temperature of the day, isn’t it?
Dr Don: Oh, absolutely gorgeous- low 80s, no humidity. I mean, you just like I said, you couldn't pick a better day, it's very fast. I would have tried to sit outside and do this. But I was afraid somebody would start up a lawn mower.
Lisa: Podcast life. I’ve just got the cat wandering, and so he's probably start meowing in a moment. Now, Dr Don, you are an author, a speaker, a trauma expert, the founder of the Inspired Performance Institute. Can you give us a little bit of background of how did you get to where you are today, and what you do?
Dr Don: Well it’s sort of an interesting story. I really started the Inspired Performance Institute because of my wife and daughter more. Mostly my daughter than anything else. I talked about this, is that I led this very, very quiet, idyllic kind of childhood with no trauma. Never had anything ever really happen to me. You know, bumps along the way, but nothing kind of that would be considered trauma. And I lived in a home that was so loving and nurturing, that even if I got bumped a little bit during the day, you know, was I, when I was a kid, I'm coming home to this beautiful environment that would just regulate my nervous system again.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Don: So I believe that that was critical in terms of having my nervous system always feeling safe. And that really resulted in amazing health. I mean, I've been healthy all my life. And as an adult, when things would happen, I could automatically go back into that nervous system regulation, because I had trained it without even knowing it.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: that I was able to get back into that. Well. And so when I met my wife, I realised she was not living in that world. And amazingly enough, Lisa, I thought everybody lived like, because I had no idea that a lot of my friends were being traumatised at home. That I had no idea, because everybody's on their best behaviour. If I come over, everybody's behaving themselves and you don't see it. My friends, a lot of times wouldn't share it because of either shame or guilt. I mean, my wife, nobody knew what was going on in their home.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: And she had one best friend that knew, that was about it. And if you met her father, who was really the bad guy in this whole thing, everybody thought he was the greatest guy. Because outwardly, he came across as this generous, hard-working, loving kind of guy. Loved his family, but he just ran his home with terror.
Lisa: Wow. Terrible.
Dr Don: And so, oh, it was terrible. So when I met my wife, I realised, wow, this, because we got close very quickly, because I had the chance to play professional hockey in Sweden when I was 18. So we got married at 19. So very quickly, I was around her a lot, while we were sort of getting ready for that. So I got to see the family dynamic up close very quickly. And that's when I realised, boy, she's not living in that world, which is living in fear all the time. And that's why I sat down with her one day, and I just said, ‘Tell me what's going on here. Because I can sense this tension in here. I could sense that there was a lot of fear going on. What's going on?’ And she started sharing it with me, but swore me to secrecy. Like I could never tell anybody because of all that shame and guilt, because nobody really outside the home would have been aware of it.
Lisa: Or probably believed it.
Dr Don: Or believed it. Right.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: And then it was again, that ‘What will people think about me? What do they think about my family?’ That's really common, when you have people who have experienced trauma like that. And so, I sort of follow along and said, ‘Okay, this will be our secret,’ but I thought to myself, ‘Well, this will be great now, because I'm going to get her out of that home’.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: And she's going to be living in my world. So everything will just calm down, and she'll be feeling that peace that I've experienced all my life.
Lisa: Not quite so simple.
Dr Don: I was like, Well, how is this not helping? Like, why now? She's living in the world that I grew up in because I was very much like my father. I wasn't gonna yell at her, scream at her, do anything that would have made her feel fearful. But she was still living in fear.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: And if, yeah, and if I said something like, ‘No, I don't like that.’ She could tear up and start going, why are you mad at me? Yeah. And I would be like, ‘Oh my God, like where did you get I was mad at you for?’ I just said. That made no sense to me at the time. Now I understand it perfectly. What I didn't realise at the time was that people who have been traumatised are highly sensitive to sound—
Lisa: Hypervigilant and hyperaware of noise and people raising their voice.
Dr Don: Any kind of noise. And what she also, as a child, she had learned to listen very carefully to the way her father spoke, so that she could then recognise any kind of the slightest little change in my vocal tone. So if I had been a little frustrated with something at work that day, or, you know, some other thing that was nothing related to her, she could pick up on that tone change. And then, in her mind, what her mind would be doing is saying, ‘What do we know about men when they start to get angry?’ And a whole bunch of data and information about her father would come flooding in and overstimulate her nervous system.
Lisa: So then it's like they Google search, doing a Google search and going, ‘Hey, have I had this experience before?’
Dr Don: Yeah.
Lisa: And picking out, ‘Yeah, we've been here before. This is not good. This is dangerous. This is scary.’
Dr Don: Yep. And that's actually what led me to the research that I did, mainly because of my daughter, though. So my wife lived with that, she developed Hashimoto’s. So she had this thyroid issue with, because she was constantly in a fight or flight state.
Lisa: Yeah, the cortisol.
Dr Don: More flight than anything. Yeah, cortisol. And so when my daughter was 14, she was diagnosed with Crohn's. And they just told us that you just kind of have to learn to live with this. And she's going to be on medication for the rest of her life. And we'll just continue to cut out pieces of her intestines until she has nothing left and she’d have a colostomy bag. That's just the way it is.
Lisa: Oh. And she’s 14 years old.
Dr Don: She was 14. Yeah. She ended up having for resections done, she would go down to you know, 90, 85 pounds. She’d get so sick, the poor thing. No, because she just couldn't eat. Yeah. And she couldn't hold anything down. And they just told us to have no answers. My wife did unbelievable research, trying to come up with answers and really couldn't come up with anything except this management system that they've been given her. And so, I was adopted. So we didn't know my family history. Yeah. So our family doctor was my grandfather. And I didn't know this until I was 18.
Lisa: Oh wow.
Dr Don: I always knew I was adopted. But my mother shared the story with me when I was 18. That he came to my parents and said, I have a special child I want you to adopt, right. Now. I guess you just knew that my parents were just amazing people. And you know, at that time, you know, unwed mothers, that was considered a shame. Right? You didn't talk about that. So that was a quiet adoption.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Don: In fact, his wife didn't even know about it.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Don: Could be my grandmother. And that's, it's interesting, the story, because I should share this too. Because what happened was, is I never understood why my birth certificate was dated two years after my birthday. And what happened was, is that my parents adopted me, like immediately upon birth. But my grandmother found out about it, his wife found out about and sued my parents to get me back.
Lisa: Oh.
Dr Don: And so they had to go into this legal battle for two years.
Lisa: Oh, wow.
Dr Don: Now I remember when I was really, really young, I used to get these really bad stomach pains. And I, and they took me, I remember going to doctors, I was really young. I remember going to doctors, but my grandfather was very holistic at the time for an MD. So you know, I was on cod liver oil, and you know, all these different things like, and so what he said to me, he says, No, he's just stressed out because of the stress in the home. You have to take the stress out of this home. He's feeling it.’
Lisa: Yep.
Dr Don: Right. So it's not that my parents were yelling, screaming.
Lisa: He’s ahead of his time.
Dr Don: Oh, way ahead. But what he realised was that, because it was so hard financially for them, that had a major effect on their life. So I guess I was feeling it. And so they went out of their way to take all the stress out.
Lisa: Wow. What lovely parents.
Dr Don: Oh yeah. So it created this unbelievable, unusual home life. And so I never had any real tension in the home.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Don: Well, that was, I guess, as my wife said, we were the perfect petri dishes for this because I was living what we want to be, and she was living in the opposite world of what a lot of people do live in. And so at least I knew what the model was, what we were going for.
Lisa: And when we're exposed to trauma very early in life, it has a much bigger impact on your health and everything then when it happens later in life. Is that right?
Dr Don: Absolutely. Because we've never learned how to balance our systems, so then it stays, you know, in dysregulation a lot more than it did. And that's really what sort of led me to develop the program, is I realised that when my daughter was 16, she disclosed to us some sexual abuse that she had had when she was like six years of age that we had no idea. So my wife was, obviously both of us were devastated, but my wife was extremely, she had experienced, you know, sexual abuse as a child and thought she would never let that happen to her child.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: So now my poor wife has also got a new, you know, trauma onto her. And so that's where it really came down to, is, you know, she said to me, ‘You could research this and find out what's going on, because I have no answers.’ And that's when I started to research and I made the connection between trauma and these autoimmune issues, for example, that my wife had, and my daughter. And so what I discovered is that I believe that unresolved trauma creates inflammation in the body. The inflammation compromises the immune system and your neurotransmitters. So we start getting sick, and we start feeling bad because our neurotransmitter, serotonin is produced mostly in the gut. So the serotonin is affected by the inflammation, which was from my daughter, right? She's not going to feel good.
Lisa: Nope.
Dr Don: And then that just leads to a host of other problems. And it's, it's really, really sad that the only solution that we currently are using is to teach people to live and manage and cope with it.
Lisa: I think, yeah, so we, we know, which is, which is good. You know, we're learning things, how to cope with anxieties, and breath work and all that sort of good stuff. But it's not getting to the root cause of the problem and being able to to deal with it. So when we're in a heightened state of stress and cortisol, and when we’re taking energy away from our immune system, and blood literally away from the gut, and and from a neurotransmitter production, and all that sort of thing, so is that what's going on, and why it actually affects the body? Because this mind body connection, which we're really only in the last maybe decade, or 15 years or something, really starting to dig into, isn't it? Like there's and there's still a massive disconnect in the conventional medical world where this is the mind, and this is the body. And you know, from here, up and here, and it's separate.
Dr Don: And so on and so forth? Yeah.
Lisa: Yeah. And it we’re one thing, you know. And so this has a massive effect on our health, and it can lead to all sorts of autoimmune diseases, or even cancers, and so on. So you were at this time, so you didn't have the Inspired Performance Institute at this stage? What were you doing professionally? And then, did you go back and do a PhD? And in...? Wow.
Dr Don: I've always been an entrepreneur all my life. So I was in financial services, we did a number of different things. We, my son and I, still have an energy business, we do solar energy and stuff like that.
Lisa: Oh wow.
Dr Don: I decided if I was going to do this, I needed to go back and really study. So I went back and got by, went back to school, got my PhD.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Don: And, you know, to truly, to try to add credibility, number one, to what I was doing. Because, you know, people are gonna say, ‘Well, who are you? Yeah, you know, why should we listen to you? You never had any trauma and you're supposed to be an expert? Like, how does that work?’ You know, it's the same thing with addiction. You know, I help people with addiction. I've never had a drink in my life, never touched a drug in my life. Now that I say, but I know what addiction is.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: I don't believe addiction is a disease. I believe it's a code that gets built from pain.
Lisa: Yeah, let's dig into that a little bit. And then we'll go back to your daughter's story. Because addiction, you know, it's something I know from a genetic perspective. I have a tendency towards, towards having addictive nature, personality traits. I chase dopamine a lot. I have a deficit of dopamine receptors. And so I'm constantly going after that reward. Now that's worked itself out in my life, and in running ridiculous kilometres and working ridiculous hours, and not always in negative things. Luckily, I've never had problems with drinking or drugs, but I know that if I had started down that road, I would have ended up probably doing it, you know, very well.
Dr Don: You’d be a star as well.
Lisa: I’d be a star in that as well. And luckily, I was sort of a little bit aware of that and my parents never drank and they, you know, made sure that we had a good relationship with things like that, and not a bad one. Have struggled with food, though. That's definitely one of the emotional sort of things. And I think a lot of people have some sort of bad relationship with food in some sort of way, shape, or form on the spectrum, so to speak. What is it that causes addiction? And is it a physical dependency? Or is there something more to it?
Dr Don: Yeah, that's why I don't believe it's a physical dependency. Because here's the way I look at it is, people will say to me, ‘Well, if I stopped this heroin, the body's going to crave the heroin, and I'm going to go into withdrawal.’ And my response to that is, ‘How could the body crave a substance that it doesn't know? It doesn't regulate heroin. How could it crave something that doesn't regulate?’ I believe it's the mind, has made a connection between the heroin and survival. Because you have felt bad, right? Because of trauma, or whatever it is, whenever you took the heroin, you felt better.
So I had a lady come in who had been on heroin. And she said to me, she's, ‘Well, I told my therapist, I'm coming to see you. And he told me, I had to let you know upfront and be honest and tell you I have self-destructive behaviour.’ And I just smiled at her. And I said, ‘Really? What would make you think you're self destructive?’ And she looked at me, because this is what she's been told for a year.
Lisa: Brilliant.
Dr Don: She says, ‘Well, I'm sticking a needle in my arm with heroin, don't you think that's self destructive?’ And I said to her, I said, ‘No, I don't think it was self destructive. I think you're trying to feel better. And I bet you, when you stuck the needle in your arm, you felt better.’ That nobody had ever said that to her before. And so I said, ‘Now, the substance you're using is destructive, but you're not destructive? What if I could show you another way to feel better, that didn't require you having to take a drug?’
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Don: And I said, ‘You're designed to feel better. And I believe that the brain, what happened is, is it because you felt bad, you found a resource that temporarily stopped that pain.’ And you see your subconscious mind is fully present in the moment. So when does it want pain to stop? Right now. And if that heroin stops the pain right now, then what happened was, is that system, you have two memory systems, you have explicit memory system that records all the information in real time. So it records all the data, and stores. No other animal does that. We’re the only animal that stores explicit details about events and experiences. We also have an associative procedural memory that we learned through association and repetition over time. So, because the explicit memory kept creating the pain, because we kept thinking about it, and looping through this pain cycle, you started taking heroin, then you engage your second associative memory, which learns through repetition and builds, codes, habits, and behaviours.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Don: Because you kept repeating it your mind built a code and connected up the pain being relieved by the substance.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Don: Now, your subconscious mind is literal. So it doesn't understand negation. It only understands what's happening now. And so if your mind says that substance stops the pain, it doesn't look at the future and consequences of it. It only looks at what's happening. It's only our conscious mind that can think of consequences. Your subconscious mind, which is survival-based only understands. That's why people at 911 would jump out of the buildings. They weren't jumping to die, they would jumping to stop from dying. Yeah, if they didn’t jump, they would have died right now. So even if they went another two seconds, they weren't dying now.
Lisa: Right? So it’s really in the right now, there's really no right now. It's really in the seconds.
Dr Don: And the very, very milliseconds of what's happening now. And there's no such thing as consequences, it’s basically survival. So now, if you keep repeating that cycle over and over using heroin, and then somebody comes along and says, ‘Lisa, you can't do that. That's bad for you. I'm going to take that away from you.’ Your survival brain will fight to keep it because it thinks it'll die without it.
Lisa: Yeah. Makes a glitch.
Dr Don: It's an error message.
Lisa: Have you heard of Dr Austin Perlmutter on the show last week, David Perlmutter’s son and they're both written a book called Brain Wash. And there they talk about disconnection syndrome. So the disconnection between the prefrontal cortex in the amygdala and the amygdala can be more powerful when we have inflammation in the brain. For example, like inflammation through bad foods, or toxins, or mercury, or whatever the case may be. And that this can also have an effect on our ability to make good long-term decisions. It makes us live in the here and now. So I want that here and fixed now; I want that chocolate bar now. And I know my logical thinking brain is going, ‘But that's not good for you. And you shouldn't be doing that.’ And you, you're trying to overcome it. But you're there's this disconnect between your prefrontal cortex and your amygdala. And I've probably butchered that scenario a little bit.
Dr Don: No, you got it. But 95% of your mind is working on that subconscious survival base. It's only about 5% that's logical. That logical part of your brain is brilliant, because it's been able to use reason and logic to figure stuff out. So it created the world we live in: automobiles, airplanes, right, computers, all of that was created by that 5%, part of the brain 5%. However, if there is a survival threat, survival will always override reason and logic. 100% of the time.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Don: So you can't stop it. And it's what I talked about was that time slice theory. Did I mention that when we were going?
Lisa: No.
Dr Don: When I did my research, one of the things that I found was something called the time slice theory. And what that is, is that two scientists at the University of Zurich asked the question— is consciousness streaming? So this logical conscious part of our mind that prefrontal cortex, is that information that we’re, as you and I are talking now, is that real, coming in real time? And what they discovered is, it’s not.
Lisa: Oh.
Dr Don: The 95% subconscious part of your mind, it's streaming. While let's say your survival brain churns in everything in real time, processes that information, and then only sends pieces or time slices, because your conscious mind cannot handle that detail.
Lisa: Oh, wow. So they’re filtering it.
Dr Don: Filtering it. And yeah, so as it takes it in, processes it, and then sends time slices or some of that information to your conscious mind. Right? But there's a 400 millionth of a second gap in between your subconscious seeing it, processing it, and sending it. And when I read that, that's when I came up with the idea that what's it doing in that 400 millionth of a second? It's doing a Google search, see? And so in that 400 millionth of a second, your survival brain has already calculated a response to this information before you're consciously aware of it.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Don: And so the prefrontal cortex has got a filter on there to be able to stop an impulse, right? So it's the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex is sort of the gatekeeper to say, ‘Okay, let's not go into a rage and get into trouble. Let's try to stop that.’ So we have that part of our brain. However, here's where the problem comes in— You're driving and traffic and somebody cuts you off. And so your first response is, you get angry, because this person is like, ‘Oh, I want to chase that guy down and give him a piece of my mind.’ But that part of your brain can say, ‘Let's think about this. Hold on,’ you know, even though it's 400 millionth of a second later, the first anger response, then it should be able to pull that back. Here's where the problem comes in. If getting cut off in traffic looked like you had been just disrespected. During that Google search, your now, your subconscious mind has filtered through every experience of being disrespected. And so much information comes in that it cannot stop the response. It overrides it, because now it feels threatened. And our prisons are full of people who had been so badly hurt, that that part of their brain can't do that. You and I can probably do that. Right?
Lisa: Sometimes.
Dr Don: Because we can say, sometimes? You know, you can run them down. You can leave the car. But that's where the problem comes in. Yeah, can't stop that, then that rage and all those things come in. And that affects your relationships could affect all kinds of things. And people would say, ‘Oh, you got an anger management problem. We're going to teach you to live with, you know, and manage that anger.’ What I'm saying is ‘No, it's a glitch. We don't need all that data coming in.’ Right, good response, a Google search is creating the problem.
Lisa: Like there's so many questions while hearing what you just said that, and I've experienced in my own life where with my family, where the initial response is so quick, that someone's punched someone else before they've even thought about what the heck they are doing. In the, when you said that, disrespected like this is, you know, I think when I've gotten really really angry and overreacted to something, when I think about it logically later, and a couple of times were of, like, in my early adult years, I was in a very abusive relationship. Thereafter, when I would get into another relationship, and that person tried to stop me doing something, I would just go like, into an absolute fit of rage. Because I was fighting what had happened to me previously, and this poor person, who may have not even been too bad, got the full barrels of verbal assault. Because I just reacted to what had happened to me 10 years previously. And that's the sort of thing where I felt like I was being controlled, disrespected when he went in. So that Google search is happening in a millisecond.
Dr Don: 400 millionths of a second. you couldn't have stopped, impossible for you to stop. And then people would say, ‘What's wrong with Lisa? She's just normally a great person, but where is that coming from?’ Up until now, you may not have known that. But that's what it is. And it's impossible for you to have stopped. It was the same thing when my wife and I would say, ‘No, I don't like that.’ And she would start to cry. I'd be saying, ‘Gosh, what am I doing to make this woman cry?’ It wasn't what I said. It was what I said that activated her Google search, which then flooded into data about her father. She was responding to her father, not to me. We both didn’t know that; we all thought that she was responding to what I just said.
Lisa: Isn't this always just such complex— and if you start to dissect this, and start to think about the implications of all this, and our behaviour, and our communication and our relationships, so much pain and suffering is happening because we're not understanding, we're not, we're angry at people, we’re disappointed with people, we’re ashamed of things that we've done. And a lot of this is happening on a level that none of you know, none of us are actually aware of. I mean, I liken it to, like, I know that my reactions can sometimes be so quick. Like before, my, just in a positive sense, like effect glasses falling off the beach, I would have caught it with my bare hand before my brain has even registered it. I have always had a really fast reaction to things like that. That's a clear example of, like, that permanent brain that's in the here and now, has caught it before I've even realised that's happening.
Dr Don: You know, and that's why I always say to people, ‘Did you choose to do that?’ And they'll say, ‘Well, I guess I did.’ I go, ‘No, you didn’t.’ Didn’t just happen that happened before you could actually use the logical part of your brain. And because it was so much information, right? Even though the logical part of your brain would say, ‘Well, you know, don't lash out at this person. They didn't mean that.’ It would already have happened. Yeah, I worked with a professional athlete. He was a baseball player playing in the major leagues. And I explained that concept to him. And then we were at a, one of his practice workouts, and his pitcher was throwing batting practice behind a screen. And so as he threw the ball, this guy, my client hit the ball right back at the screen, and the coach, like, hit the ground. Right? And I stopped right there. And I said, ‘Great example.’ I said, Did your coach just choose to duck?
Lisa: Or did he automatically do it?
Dr Don: He had no, he had no time to use exactly. The logic. If you use the logical part of your brain, what would you have said? ‘This ball can hit me; there's a screen in front of me.’
Lisa: Yeah, yeah. But you know—
Dr Don: No way logic is going to prevail, when there's a threat like that coming at you. Yeah.
Lisa: This is why it's important because we need to be able to react in that split second, if there really is a danger and there's a bullet flying in ahead or something like that or something, somebody is coming at us from, to do us harm, then we need to be able to react with split second timing.
Dr Don: But you don’t want that logic coming into it.
Lisa: No, but we do want the logic coming in when it's an emotional response. Do you think like, when people have had repeated brain injuries, they are more likely to have problems with this, you know, the prefrontal cortex not functioning properly and even being slower to respond or not getting enough blood flow to that prefrontal cortex in order to make these good decisions?
Dr Don: Yeah, absolutely. And if you look at SPECT scans or brain scans of people who have had those kinds of injuries, you'll see that that part of the brain, that frontal part of the brain, the blood flow will drop when they get into those situations.
Lisa: Wow. And then they can't make a good decision. And here we are blaming them for being—
Dr Don: Blaming them for being—
Lisa: —and they end up in prisons, and they end up with hurt broken lives and terrible trauma. And, you know, it's not good if they react and hit somebody or kill somebody or whatever. But how can we fix this? And that one of my go-tos is the hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And I've heard you talk about that on a podcast with Mark Divine in regards to your son. And that is one way we can actually help our brains if we've had had a traumatic brain injury or PTSD or anything like that, is that right?
Dr Don: Yeah, my, like I said, my son had three head injuries, one in elementary school, one in middle school, one in high school. And the first one, we didn't see as big an effect. But he did have a problem. The second one, he ended up with retrograde amnesia. And then the third one, we just saw him go downhill and just really couldn't communicate very well, didn't have any energy, had a lot of anger issues and they just kept saying he's got major depression, you need to medicate them. And I was like, ‘No, I believe we've got traumatic brain injury.’ But I could not get them to give me a script for a SPECT scan or an fMRI. It was impossible. And I wasn't looking for the structure, because they'd look at an MRI and they'd say, ‘We don't see any damage.’ Well, it wasn't the physical damage we're looking for, it was a functional damage that we were looking for.
Lisa: Yeah, the blood flow. Yeah.
Dr Don: And once we discovered that that's what it was, we got him into hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and he started getting the blood flow into the areas that he needed to process what he was experiencing. And so if you can, you can imagine how difficult that would be, somebody saying, well just go over there and do that. And you don't have the ability to process it.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: And so that frustration there is anger would be coming from just complete frustration.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: That he just couldn't do it's like, you know, you ran in somebody and you couldn't lift your right leg.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: Right. And somebody said, ‘Just start running.’ ‘I'm trying.’
Lisa: Yeah, yeah.
Dr Don: It would be very, very frustrating.
Lisa: Yeah, I mean, having worked with, you know, my mum with the brain injury for five and a half years, and I will tell you, man, that is so frustrating. And still, even though she's had well, you know, must be close to 280 or something hyperbaric sessions, and gone from being not much over a vegetative state to being now incredibly high functioning. But there are still some pieces missing that I cannot get to. Because obviously damage in the brain where parts of the brain cells are, have been killed off. And we, you know, I'm really having trouble with things like vestibular systems, so, or initiation of motivation, and things like that. And hyperbaric can do a heck of a lot, it can't fix areas of the brain that is actually dead. So I, you know, and we don't have SPECT scans over here, this is not available. We don't do them.
Dr Don: Yeah. And they’re hard to get here. I just don’t understand them.
Lisa: They're very frustrating, because they just are so powerful to understand. Because when you see you've got a problem in your head, that it's actual physical problem, then, you know, it takes away the blame the guilt, and you know, like, I was having this conversation with my brother, and I'm, you know, talking about Mum, and why isn't she doing this, that and the other end. And I said, ‘Because she's got brain damage, and we can't get her to do that thing.’ ‘But she's normal now. She should be doing that now.’ And I'm like, ‘She's much, much better. But in that part of the brain, I haven't been able to recover.’ It is still a thing. That is the year. That is, I am, not that I'm giving up on it, but you know, there are just certain things that we haven't quite got the full thing back.
Dr Don: The SPECT scan would show that. And you'd probably see it, or do they do fMRIs there?
Lisa: I haven't checked out fMRI because yeah.
Dr Don: Check out the fMRI.
Lisa: I only heard you say that the other day, and I didn't, I knew about SPECT scans and I knew about. Dr Hearts and all the SPECT scans that he's done, and Dr Daniel Amen and the brilliant work on it all and I've searched the country for it. And New Zealand there's, they've got one that does research stuff down in New Zealand and I think but it's it's nobody can get access to it. And it's just, oh gosh, this is just such a tragedy because then we can actually see what's going on. Because people have been put on antidepressants. They've been put on, you know, antipsychotic drugs. Some things that are perhaps not necessary. We could have, we could have dealt with it with other other ways, like hyperbaric and like with, you know, good nutrients, and even like your program that you do that would perhaps be the first line of defense before we grab to those types of things. But—
Dr Don: The fMRI would definitely probably help you. So it's, you know, a functional MRI. Yeah. So it's going to give you blood flow. I just had a young boy come in, nine years, nine years old, having real issues. And anyway, his mum's gone everywhere, tried everything. And I said, have you done an fMRI? She says, oh we’ve done the MRIs. But, and I said, ‘’No, you need an fMRI.’ She'd never heard of it. No, I was telling her about it.
Lisa: I hadn’t even heard about it either.
Dr Don: She didn’t want to do SPECT scans, because SPECT scans are going to put something into your system, right? So she didn't want any kind of dyes, or any kind of those, you know, radioisotopes and stuff like that. So the fMRI is the other answer to try to get that.
Lisa: Oh, okay. I'll see whether they've got that, they probably haven't got that either. I'd say, probably having Dark Ages with a lot of things.
Dr Don: There's so many things like that, that would give you answers that they just don't do, which is surprising to me. Because when you think research, I mean, you find out how effective they are, why wouldn't they do it? You know, they just won't.
Lisa: Oh, yeah, like one of those doctors who was on my podcast, and we're talking about intravenous vitamin C. And he said, I said, ‘Why is it taking so long when there's thousands of studies proving that it's really powerful when there’s critical care conditions like sepsis, what I lost my father to?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, because it's like turning a supertanker. There’s just 20 years between what they know in the clinical studies to what's actually happening in the hospitals.’ He says at least a 20-year lag. And this is just, when you live in New Zealand, probably a 30-year lag. We’re just just behind the eight ball all the time, and all of these areas of what's actually currently happening.
I wanted to go back to your story with your daughter. Because she's got Crohn's disease, 14 years old, diagnosed, having to hit all these restrictions, and that she's going to have to manage it for the rest of her life. And she will never be well. What actually happened? Because we didn't actually finish that story.
Dr Don: Well, like I said, so she had, you know, suffered for many years with that, and she's an actress, so any kind of stress would just aggravate it. So she would constantly be getting sick, because, you know, the more stress she has, the more inflammation she's creating, and then she would just get sick and go back to the hospital. So it has really affected her career. So that's when my wife said, ‘You've got to come up with some answers.’ And so I did the research. And I really believe that it was a trauma as a child that continued. Because this is when I made the connection between unresolved trauma and inflammation. Inflammation is the response to trauma, whether it's physical or emotional. And the purpose of the inflammation is to protect the integrity of the cell. So the cell gets into an enlarged space. So it sort of puffs out, gets enlarged and hardened to protect it from getting penetrated from any kind of foreign invader.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Don: So the idea behind it is, it's a temporary pause, because there's been an injury. So the idea is, we need to protect this area. So let's protect it and not let anything get into the cells while, until the danger has passed. So this temporary pause in the system, temporarily suspends the immune system, temporarily suspends the processing of the cell until the danger passes, and then the immune system can come in and clean up, right and take care of everything. The problem was, is that my daughter's trauma was never resolved. So those cells in her intestinal area stayed in an active cell danger response, in an inflamed response, because as far as it was concerned, she was continually being assaulted.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Don: Because it kept looping through the trauma. Yeah. So once we took her through this program, and we resolved it so that we were able to stop her mind from constantly trying to protect her from this threat as a six year old, because your subconscious doesn't have any relationship to time. So if you think about something that happened to you when you were six, that's happening now. So in her mind, she was being hurt now. And until we got that updated, so it’s like a computer, I say your brain is a computer. Your body is the printer.
Lisa: Oh, wow. That’s a good analogy.
Dr Don: And so if the brain has an error message, it’s going to affect the printer.
Lisa: Yes.
Dr Don: So in her mind, that trauma kept on looping. As soon as we got that corrected, and her mind understood that there was no memory— the memory was still there, but the activation of our nervous system stopped, the inflammation went down.
Lisa: See, that's it, like your body's calling for action. I've heard you say—
Dr Don: That’s when it processes the emotion.
Lisa: Yeah. So when you think back to a traumatic event in your life, and you start crying and you're reacting as if you were right there in the in, which, you know, I can do in a split second with some of the trauma that you know, been through. That means that there is a high-definition in your brain, that those moments in time are just locked in there, and causing this, the stress response, still now. And that's why you’re crying years later, for something that happened. And it's actually calling for action. It's telling you to do something. But of course, it's a memory you can't do something.
Dr Don: So action required, you know I think that’s the glitch, the error message that I talked about. So if you think about something that happened to you five years ago, and you start to feel fear, or cry, your heart starts pounding in your chest, your mind is saying ‘Run,’ five years ago, because it's seen it in real time. Now, it's impossible to run five years ago, but your mind doesn't know that. So it's going to continue to try to get you to run. And so a lot of times when I talk to people who have depression, one of the things I asked, I'll ask them is, ‘What are you angry about?’ And they'll go, ‘Well, no, I'm not angry, I'm depressed.’ And I'll say, ‘What's happened is your mind has been calling for an action for many, many years, that was impossible to accomplish. But your mind doesn't know that and it keeps putting pressure on you. Do it, do it, do it. And because you don't do it, it's using these emotions to call for the action, it stops calling for the action, it shuts off the emotions.’
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Don: And so now depression is the absence of emotion.
Lisa: Right.
Dr Don: And so what is done is to protect you, it's shut down the request.
Lisa: Everything down. So you go sort of numb, numb and apathetic and just—
Dr Don: Because you can't do what it’s been asking you to do. And so it's been calling for that action for many, many years. You don't do it. And so it says, ‘Well, this isn't working. So let's just shut the system off for a while. We won't ask for the action anymore.’ And so that's why the people are depressed. And as soon as you get to the cause of it, what has your mind been asking you to do and you resolve it, then your mind stops calling for the action. And then the depression will lift.
Lisa: You had a great example of a lady that you worked with. Rebecca Gregory, was it from the Boston— can you tell us that story? Because that was a real clear example of this exact thing.
Dr Don: Yeah. So Rebecca came to see me five years after the Boston Marathon. She was three feet from the first bomb that went off. And so her son was sitting at her feet. So when the bomb went off, luckily she shielded him, but she took the brunt of the blast. She lost her left leg. And five years later, she's having post-traumatic stress, right? And she says, ‘I have nightmares every night. I heard about your program. I heard that you can clear this in four hours.’ She says, ‘Iy sounds too good to be true.’ But she says, ‘I'm completely desperate. So I'll try anything.’ And so she came in and sat down. And what I explained to her as she started to talk is, I said, ‘Rebecca, do you know why you're shaking and crying as you're talking to me right now?’ And she says, ‘Well, because I'm talking about what happened to me.’ And I said, ‘That's right. But your mind thinks a bomb is about to go off. And it's trying to get you to run.’ And I said, ‘But there's no bomb going off. It's just information about a bomb that went off. But your mind doesn't know that.’ And that, she'd never heard before. And so what we did is over the next four hours, we got her mind to reset that high-definition data that had been stored about the bombing into a regular alpha brainwave state, right, where it's very safe and peaceful.
So she could recall it and she could talk about it without the emotion. Why? Because, now we're not going for happy, right? You know, it's still sad that it happened. But what we're trying to stop is that dysregulation of the fear, the call for the run. That stopped. And you can watch your testimonial on her on our site, and she just talked about, she goes, ‘I just couldn't believe that you could stop that.’
Lisa: But in four hours.
Dr Don: And then now she can go out and she spoke all over the country. You know, she was a very high-profile lady who did a lot of great work in trying to help people. But she was still suffering with post-traumatic stress. Yeah, trying to help people who were experiencing post-traumatic stress.
Lisa: She knew what it was like.
Dr Don: She was living it. Same thing. I tell the story, it’s another dramatic one was a US Army sniper who had to shoot and kill a 12 year old boy.
Lisa: Oh, gosh.
Dr Don: And when I first sat down and talked to him, he was just sobbing. And he said, ‘I just can't live like this anymore.’ And by the time we were finished, he could then describe everything that happened that day, including shooting. And he said to me, goes, ‘How the bleep did you do this? Like, how am I able to talk about it now? And I said, ‘For eight years, your mind's been trying to get you not to pull the trigger.’
Lisa: And you can't go back in time.
Dr Don: But your mind knows you're not pulling the trigger now. So it stopped calling for the action. It's just information now.
Lisa: And so, is this similar to EMDR? I did a few sessions of EMDR when we lost our little baby boy a couple of years ago. And in that time, when I was doing it, I thought, this isn't working. But when I look back on that traumatic event, I no longer have the response, really, to— it’s sad, but I don't, but I'm not like I was in the months after that. And I don't, I wouldn't say I'm completely, you know, out the other end of that particular trauma, there's been more since that I'm still dealing with. But it definitely did something. And I don't know what, it was a lot of eyeshifting and going home. What was it? Is it similar to what you do? Or is it different?
Dr Don: Yeah, I studied EMDR. So what we do, so that's a technique some of the techniques I use in EMDR I'll use. But I think what we've done is enhance it even more. I've made it even quicker and even more comprehensive.
Lisa: Yep.
Dr Don: And EMDR. How many sessions did you do in EMDR?
Lisa: I think I did four.
Dr Don: So yeah, so they're gonna be between 4, 8, 10? Right. We're doing one.
Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. And I wasn't sure immediately after it had done anything. But I must admit, yeah.
Dr Don: And it does, because what it's doing is getting that memory reprocessed, which is what we're doing. But we do it much simpler, like I don't need much detail at all. In fact, I've sat with people, you know, a person said, if a woman had been raped or sexually assaulted. The last issue was to sit there and do is start describing what happened to her. So what I do is I say, we got a, we got three different ways of doing this one, you can talk about it if you'd like to, and I'm going to take you through the techniques, right, to get your mind to reprocess it. Or two, I'm just going to do strictly visually. So I have no idea what you experienced. I'm not going to know any of the details, which feels very safe.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: Or third, what I say is I'm going to teach you a new language, and it's called flowing. There's only one word and the flowing language, it’s flowing. So instead of saying, I walked into the room, you're gonna say flowing, flowing, flowing, every word is flowing. The advantage to that is she has to go into memory to see it and bring up the images.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: But I have no idea what it is.
Lisa: Yeah. You don’t need to hear it.
Dr Don: I don't need to hear it. And then I take her through basically a two to three minute technique. That's all. And at the end of that, it's updated.
Lisa: That's incredible.
Dr Don: And my wife used flowing with me, right? Because it was some things that were, for me, she didn't want to share.
Lisa: Fair enough.
Dr Don: Right? Yeah. And that was fine. And so I tell them, whichever way you want to do it. I said, ‘If I needed to know, I would ask.’ I said, ‘But if I'm asking, it's just from curiosity.’
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: But it's not necessary. That is radically different. Right? For people who have experienced really severe trauma. And it's very, very, you know, safe and very pain free.
Lisa: And what, so what is it, what, we have talked therapies where we, you know, go to a counselor, and we spend years sometimes working through our childhood traumas and our, whatever traumas have happened since and we don't seem to get anywhere, which is a lot of time. It might feel good in the moment that you're sharing, and being able to express yourself, but it doesn't really work. In my experience, at least. What is the difference here? Are we just reliving and actually enhancing these memories when we just talk about them all the time, and not actually deal with them?
Dr Don: I believe in a lot of cases, that's what they're doing, are trying to desensitise you to it. You know, talk about it enough, maybe it doesn't feel as dramatic. Yeah. And talk therapy has its place so I'm not against it. I think where talk therapy is really good is when you're dealing with a current problem. Yeah, current stress maybe in your marriage, whatever, and learning how to handle what's going on right now. Where I think the difference between what we do is we're able to get the talk therapy much more effective when you take out all the old stuff that keeps aggravating the new stuff.
Lisa: Yep.
Dr Don: So if you're in a current stressful situation, and it's been aggravated, because every time you talk about it is bringing in all the data of the old stuff, then it's very difficult to deal with. So that's, I think what we do, which is really different, and makes everything much more effective.
Lisa: Yeah, absolutely. That makes sense to me. And with, going back to your daughter, because we so we, she is now managed to get on top of her Crohn’s. I mean, Crohn’s is an incurable disease, apparently.
Dr Don: That’s what we were told, yeah, that there’s no cure for Crohn's.
Lisa: What did you do with her to actually because it's that physical thing, and there are a lot of people out there listening probably have Crohn's or IBS, or something like an autoimmune disease, or can, how did that work out with her? And, you know, why is that sort of a really amazing story?
Dr Don: Well, all I know is that after we took her to the program, she hasn't had a Crohn's flare up. So I'm not saying that we can cure Crohn's with our program. Exactly. What I do know is that after she went through the program, she hasn’t had a Crohn's flare up. So to me, there's a correlation between her nervous system and the activation of her Crohn’s. And so once we got that settled down, so Crohn's could be, may not be just from that. There could be other reasons for it. So you never know. So somebody could do our program and not have that same reaction. But what we do see is a lot of different, because when we talk about, I believe that there's imagine more like a cell phone, you plug in your cell phone at night, right? We go to sleep, we charge up, we wake up with 100% of our energy. Then how much of that energy do you have available to do maintenance. So if you've got a lot of maintenance and repair issues, you're draining a lot of energy.
Lisa: Oh, yeah.
Dr Don: And if your mind is looping through a lot of trauma that's pulling a lot of energy away from your ability to do maintenance and repairs. Yep. And so I talked about when I played hockey, which is a pretty brutal sport, I had six concussions, 60 stitches, and I never missed a hockey game. Now at the time, they just said, ‘You just heal fast, faster than most people.’ What I didn't realise is, I believe the reason I healed fast was because I was getting much more maintenance done.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: At nighttime when I slept. Because I didn't have a lot of trauma that my mind was constantly looping through. So it wasn't pulling energy away. So if I'm getting two or three times the maintenance and restorative sleep, of course, I'm going to heal faster. How could I not?
Lisa: Gosh. Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense. Really. Yeah.
Dr Don: And that's why I've been healthy all my life, I just don't get sick.
Lisa: So super immune system.
Dr Don: Very powerful immune system that can fight whatever comes at me. And again, we talked about vitamin C, if ever, I feel a little tickle in my throat, or I start to feel that, I just pound in vitamin C, you know, 4000, 5000 milligrams, vitamin C, and it’s gone.
Lisa: Immune system jumps into gear, because you don't have these stressors. So when we talk about stress being so detrimental, you know, we talk about it all the time, stress is bad for us, and what you know, excessive stress, there are good hormetic stressors, where we go for exercise, or we get in a sauna, or we do cold therapy, and these are short, temporary stressors that cause cascades of changes in the body that make us stronger. But when we're exposed to chronic stress, which is like what we're talking about, traumatic events, and you know, like I also wanted to say there's not just, somebody died, someone's legs been blown off, someone's you know, been to war. These are not just those big, big, traumatic things. These are these daily little things that start to add up as well that can be traumatic stressors, can't they? It's not just the big ones.
Dr Don: That's what I wrote my second book called Emotional Concussions. So they're those bumps, right? That little concussion that you feel like, ‘Oh, I'm okay, right. Yeah, I had a bump on my head. But now I seem to be okay.’ Those add up, those little emotional concussions can add up, or can also get connected to other ones. And so you don't realise how they're affecting you.
So I've had people come in who will say, you know, ‘I've never had any real trauma in my life, I've been fine. There's nothing wrong.’ And then all of a sudden waterworks will start when they start thinking about something that happened to them when they were a child. As an example I had a lady come in. She had been adopted by the stepfather, her mother got pregnant at 18, didn't marry the father, then married another gentleman who then ended up adopting her and having two other children. And so when she was about six years of age, the original, her natural father wanted to meet her. And her stepfather said something to the effect that ‘You were a mistake.’ And she said, ‘I hated my stepfather. I made his life agony for him.’ She'd never connected up that event. She just said, ‘I just never liked him. I gave him such a hard time all the time.’ She goes, ‘My brother and sister loved him.’ She says, ‘I just hated him.’ And it came down to that event. And so in her mind, right, once we got and we got that event resolved, and here's how we resolved it. I said, ‘Is it possible—’ So once I've got you in this very, very peaceful restorative mindset, right, then we start looking at some of this information. So when we looked at it, she was crying when she talked about she's, ‘I remember my stepfather saying that I'm, I was a mistake.’ When we look at it, when she's in this very restorative mindset, I said, ‘Is it possible that what he said, isn't what he meant? Is it possible that's a saying that people say, “Oh, that was a mistake.” But they didn't mean you're the mistake.’
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: Right. It probably wasn't the best thing for your mother to have a baby at 18 out of wedlock, right. However, that that had never really occurred to her that that could, because a six year old child doesn't have enough life experience to understand that statement. In her mind, ‘I was a mistake. He thought I was a mistake.’ And so as we're going through this, all of a sudden, she said to me, she says, ‘I just had this flood of energy coming into my chest right now.’ And she says, ‘You know, what just came into my mind? him sitting there braiding my hair when I was little.’ She said, ‘He was a good man, I just never gave him a break. And now I sort of see what my brother and sister saw. He really was a good guy.’ Right? So this in her mind—
Lisa: Just one event. Just that one event. One slip of the tongue, so to speak, or, you know, taken the wrong way, or, you know, an adult conversation that a child’s misconstrued, it doesn't even have to have bad intent behind it.
Dr Don: With sometimes no ill intent. My wife had a similar situation where when she was really little. She's living in this dramatic household and gets invited to when she was like, six, seven years of age to a tea party by the mothers in the neighbourhood. And the grandmother dresses her all up nice and pretty. And she goes there. And I remember her telling me the story and crying. And she says, when she got there, the mothers as she walked in, looked at her and one of the mothers said, ‘Oh, look at this one, this is going to be a real heartbreaker. Oh, yes, this is going to be a real heartbreaker.’ My wife as a child has been so hurt already. What she hears is they see something bad in her. She grows up and hurts people. And she says she felt sick to her stomach, she just wanted to go home.
Lisa: Wow, completely at the wrong—
Dr Don: As an adult, still had that impact on her until we got it resolved.
Lisa: And so these little things that as parents that makes you go, ‘Oh, my God, what damage have I done? Just because I yelled at the kids the other day because they couldn’t have any lollies or something if I did, it’ll damage them.’ It does make you feel a bit panicky about you know, all that all the trauma that you could be causing to your kids.
Dr Don: So I'm working on a third book, like for just talking about that, on how those kinds of things after studying our program, saying, ‘How can we help parents be able to understand the impact those words?’ Because again, with the best of intentions, right, you could be saying a particular phrase or saying or action that is being misinterpreted by somebody who doesn't have any kind of experience.
Lisa: Yeah, absolutely. And it can have far-reaching effects that was way beyond what should have been.
Dr Don: Another great example, I had a lady who again, same thing, uh, no trauma in my life, great childhood, you know, and I said, ‘Can you come up with any kind of an event that you remember that was upsetting or disturbing.’ And so she says, then she had to think about it. And then she says, ‘Yeah, I remember one day she said, I was in church since I was about six years old.’ And she says, and all of a sudden, I see her eyes starting to fill up as she started to talk and she started to choke up, and she says, ‘I was talking and my grandmother took out the brush from her purse and hit me on the head with it and said, ‘Stop talking. You're in church.’ And then the waterworks came. And she says, ‘I just realised I lost my voice that day.’
Lisa: Oh, wow.
Dr Don: She says, ‘I don't speak up for myself. I don't.’ Yeah. And that had never connected to her. And she realises, ‘I just let people tell me what to do.’ She says, ‘I don't ever speak up for myself.’ And that was a revelation to her that she had never connected.
Lisa: And it was such a minor thing.
Dr Don: Did her grandmother decide to do that? No, it was just like, ‘Stop talking, you're in church,’ right? Yeah, just a little thing.
Lisa: You're like, wow.
Dr Don: Another one, which is really fascinating, just to show you how the subtlety of it. A gentleman telling me that his father who never really was an angry person or whatever. But there was one particular time, he says, ‘My father really hurt me. And it was shocking to me.’ He started to tear up. And as he explained it, what he said is his father hit him on the back, tapped him on the back of the head, he says, but he felt like he just whacked him like full speed. Until he realised, he said, ‘I'm thinking about it now, my father wore this big ring.’ And so when he, his father probably meant to tap. But the ring was like a shock, like a big hit. So the child, ‘You really unloaded on me?’ But he probably didn't mean to, right, and probably couldn't understand why his son was overreacting to this little tap on the head. Right? But then again, that was a situation that affected the way it was a an event that he said, his father overreacted. And he realised he probably didn't mean to do it the way he did it, but had an effect on on him.
Lisa: And then you add to that whole works, your genetic predisposition to either having you know, the warrior gene or the worrier gene, you know, in the, whether you hold on to adrenaline and anxiety and have more anxiousness. And in general, you know, and, like, I remember, as a kid, my mum saying to me, ‘You were just such a sensitive kid. You would cry at the movies if Bambi got,’ you know, she just couldn't take me to any movie, or anything, because I was just very sensitive, always-trying-to-rescue-the-world kid, you know. And trying to atone for everybody else's misdemeanors that they did, and you know, I probably still am. And that, you know, so you have this genetic thing that you come in with, and then you add on some of these things. So while somebody may have had a much more traumatic childhood, you can still react with that, those, you know, if you've got the disposition much more violently, or much more strongly to those as well. So we're very complex, little, little beings. It's a wonder any of us managed to do anything really.
Dr Don: Well, what do I refer to that when I start talking is your atmospheric conditions. Your atmospheric conditions, your Joe Polish, who there’s that saying is he goes, ‘I love the way you say that because your atmospheric conditions are different than my atmospheric conditions.’ So if you grew up in very dark, stormy atmospheric conditions, and I didn't, but then, of course, I'm going to see the world differently, because I'm going to filter through those.
Lisa: And you know, what Joe talks about too, as a mutual friend of ours is an incredible guy. Addiction and taking away the shame and the guilt and all of that that's associated, then the blame for and seeing people for actually what's happening instead of apportioning blame. And that stuck with me what he said about that. I think it was a film that I watched that he made. Like, let's remove some of the judgments that we have on people who are dealing with drug addictions or alcohol addictions. We may not like their behaviour, we may want to help them get out of that situation. But judging people when we never walked in their shoes, when we never had any of those experiences that that person has, how the hell are we, any of us really, able to judge other people?
Dr Don: And that's what I talked about in the program too, because what I get to, as I say, think about it, if our brain is a filter, right, and we take water, which are our thoughts and we pour the water through the filter, and it comes out clear, right? But if we pack mud into that filter, and we pour the water through it and it comes out, muddy, we say, well, what's wrong with that water? There's nothing wrong with the water, it filtered through the mud. How is it not going to be muddy, which is your thoughts? Yeah. And so if you've had a lot of packed mud into your filter, right, and your thoughts come out very dark, right and very muddy. Right? How could you not do it?
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: So when I sit down with somebody who's in addiction, what I say to them is I said, ‘It's impossible for you to not have done what you did, based on the way your mind filters. So that doesn't— there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with your mind. All you've done is you've had a certain set of experiences and your mind filters through those.’ And I said, ‘I've never had a drink of alcohol in my life. I've never had a drug in my life, but I've never experienced your pain. So if I had experienced your pain, and you had experienced my life, you would be sitting where I am. And I'd be sitting where you are.’
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: How could I have done it differently? Yeah, it's not what I say is addiction is not about character, willpower, morals, or ethics. Right. And so you take that that's what Joe and I've talked about, you take away that shame and guilt, because shame and guilt is what got them into it, and probably keeps you there. And so you take away that. So there's a young lady, Michelle, who, when I met her, she's 33, 17 years since she was 16 in active addiction. I mean, everything you can imagine. And the first thing I sit down with her, and as I say, ‘Michelle, there's nothing wrong with you. You don't have a disease. You've built up a series of codes to protect you from the pain.’ And I said, ‘You've had a lot of trauma.’ She goes, ‘Well, how do you know I’ve got a lot of trauma?’ And I said, ‘I can it in hear your voice. Your voice is shaky. And so I can hear the trauma in your voice.’ And I said, ‘What I'm going to do is show you how we're going to update and reset that so that you now can then filter properly. And then that's going to stop the need to feel better, so that's the only reason that you wanted to feel better.’ So she was smoking cigarettes as well, as well as the drugs within four days, she completely stopped smoking. She hasn't smoked, since. It's over two years, has never touched the drug since.
Lisa: Wow.
Dr Don: She had zero withdrawal. When I said the withdrawal is coming from the mind saying, ‘You better get it or we're going to die.’ So I believe the mind creates the physical pain, which they call withdrawal. Because it's saying, ‘If you don't get this, we're going to die.’ So it's going to create physical pain to make you— it’s like bending your arm up your back. Because I've talked to drug addicts who will tell me that as soon as your dealer says they're on their way to bring the drug, the withdrawal stops. Because they know they're gonna get it.
Lisa: So the brain just shuts up because you're going, you're getting it.
Dr Don: That's in the mind, because how could the mind crave heroin? I said, if the mind could crave anything, what would it crave? Water. Or if the body could crave anything, what would it crave? Water. But we don't have waterholics, we don't have water rehab centres. That’s what people would be craving. And with you running, right?
Lisa: You’re only craving water.
Dr Don: But you didn't have a problem drinking too much water.
Lisa: No. And when you're, when you're in the sands, like a desert, like across lots of deserts. And there was one day that we only had two liters of water a day, you're not hungry. You're not anything else but thirsty. That's the only thing you can think about, and it's the only thing that you want. And then you know, the addiction to chocolate that I had in my normal life is gone.
Dr Don: Sure. Survival-based, your brain is survival-based, and it wants more. And so if somebody says, ‘I'm going to take away your drug.’ Your mind says, ‘But we'll die.’ It's an error message. And so that's why we'll create the physical pain to get you to go get it. And then as soon as you get it, you feel better. Right? That says nothing about your character, willpower or morals or ethics, that’s just biology and chemistry, right? And the brain is so powerful to survive, it will do amazing things to stay out of pain.
Lisa: Yeah. And this is why the evolution of how we've evolved in, you know, where our DNA has come from. And then you stick us in this artificial environment that we've made for ourselves, you know, like looking at food addictions, for example, you know, you're going to McDonald's on every street corner and fast food everywhere and ultra-processed and with our old DNA, we’re programmed to go and look for fat and salt and sugar. And that's what we’re wanting to get.
Dr Don: It makes us feel good.
Lisa: It makes us feel good. It stops the pain, it stops temporarily, you know, unfortunately, and it's available now everywhere. And this is where, you know, we get into this whole problem with you know, obesity and all sorts of degenerative diseases and the follow on from that. And we're really just fighting against our biology, you know?
Dr Don: And when does it stop the pain? Right now—
Lisa: For five minutes.
Dr Don: When I eat that Big Mac, I feel better right now.
Lisa: And afterwards I feel like—
Dr Don: Logically thinking about, if I continue to do this, I'm going to destroy my gut? No, because all I want to do is stop the pain.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: So I'm working on a smoking cessation program. And this is really, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it explained this way. But this is how I explained smoking. I'll say to somebody, ‘What do you think you're addicted to?’ Most people will say it's nicotine. And you know, nicotine is harder to get off of than heroin. Right? And I'll say ‘So you think you're addicted to nicotine?’ That's a yes. And so what if I tell you you're not addicted to nicotine? ‘I'm not?’ And I said, ‘No, you're not addicted to nicotine.’ I said, ‘What happens is that when you smoke a cigarette, the nicotine enters your bloodstream and goes to your brain.’ I said, ‘Now nicotine has almost the exact chemical compound of a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine.’
Lisa: Oh.
Dr Don: So when that nicotine hits your brain, your brain thinks it's acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is the neurotransmitter that's the precursor to the release of dopamine.
Lisa: Oh, wow.
Dr Don: So what happens is your brain then starts releasing more acetylcholine to start releasing dopamine. I said what you're addicted to is feeling better.
Lisa: Yep. So God has some eggs instead because that’s a—
Dr Don: But you've trained your brain, to recognise, to associate the associative memory is what's creating the addiction. And it says, ‘When we take that, we feel better.’ It doesn't understand the chemistry that's involved. That's all you're doing. So now, you're, that your best friend that you sit with all by yourself right outside that building because nobody wants to sit with you while you're smoking, right? Now, this cigarette becomes your best friend and somebody says, ‘Well, you can't hang out with your best friend anymore.’ Right? It's like, ‘Oh, no, I'm not giving that up.’ So what you have to do is we have to create a replacement for your best friend. The reason why it's so hard to quit, is because somebody is coming along and saying, ‘Lisa, you just can't hang around with Debbie anymore. Debbie is not good for you.’ And you say, ‘But I don't have any other friends. I feel better when I hang out with Debbie.’ Yep, we've got to find a replacement for Debbie. And another way to do it. And then your brain will then create another way, right, to feel better. Wow. Which is healthier. That's how you break addiction.
Lisa: That is fascinating. So how do you do that with something like heroin though? What do you replace it with? You can't, you know, there isn't, was there—
Dr Don: Here’s the best thing is once we get that unresolved trauma cleared, you automatically start feeling better.
Lisa: because you don't have the pain and therefore you don't need them.
Dr Don: Then we work on the associative memory. So you have to go through our four hour program, we have a series of audio. So if you are an addiction, I have a 30-day addiction audio series that is basically getting your mind to reset the neural pathways of the behaviour. But it's a lot easier to do that when we don't have the pain activated.
Lisa: Wow. Okay, and now you’re establishing new rituals.
Dr Don: Now all we have to do is work on the pathways, new pathways and start questioning, ‘Why did I use to do that? I remember I used to do that, but it didn't make any sense.’ Now your logical part of your brain can get involved and help because there's no pain involved.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: And now you can use that intellectual part of your brain to say, this doesn't make any sense, let's come up with a better way of doing it. It couldn't do that before when the pain said, ‘Shut up, get out of the way, we're gonna die.’
Lisa: So you're taking that whole piece of the puzzle layer away and then retraining the brain after the fact, after the four hour program. But so that is an essential part of it as well to reestablish new neural pathways and grooves in the brain to do, have behaviours that change. But without that first piece of the puzzle, all of that—
Dr Don: A variety of very, very difficult system to override.
Lisa: Yeah, we—
Dr Don: And almost sometimes impossible.
Lisa: Yeah, I’d say impossible for him for many, many people in many different situations and people are dying left, right, and centre of addictions and you know, the follow-on effects. And they, yeah, we can't stop them.
Dr Don: And they're told that they're broken.
Lisa: And they're useless.
Dr Don: And they just surrender, and then understand that they will never ever be better. And you're, you know, you're a world-class supreme athlete. Can you imagine, with all the training that you did, if I was your coach, and I said to you, ‘Lisa, you're gonna have to put in this tremendous amount of hard work, but you will never win a race. You'll never accomplish anything. But you've just got to put up the hard work.’ No, I'm looking for the little medal at the end of this. I'm looking for some reward at the end of this. Yeah. And what they're telling you is ‘No, you'll never be able to get it.’
Lisa: You’ll never get it, and they take away all your power. You know, they take away all you’re disempowered, and you're like, ‘Oh, well, you're never gonna, you're never gonna do this.’ See, I mean, I never listened to any of that rubbish.
Dr Don: I don’t believe you’ve trained any human being to accomplish any goal by telling them that they can surrender to it.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: That they're going to just have to accept the fact that this has control of them.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: I, no, I'm not going to argue that they haven't helped people because they have. So, but I just say, wouldn't it be better to take the approach of, that you can defeat this?
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Don: And you can overpower it. And you can take back control, because now you understand the science behind it.
Lisa: Exactly.
Dr Don: And why it happened.
Lisa: I love it. That's my approach, you're singing from the same core sheet there. Because I, you know, like, in, whether this is an addiction, or whether this is a diagnosis for something, and you're told, there's no chance, and there's no hope, the amount of people that I get writing to me, because of my story with my mum, telling me I was written off, I was told I'd never do this. Oh, my loved one was, and now look at us go. You know, how many times have people been written off when they didn't need to be written off? Because some expert has told them that there is no hope? No, that means that you don't know. Somebody in the world that doesn't, that knows. And that approach I think, in you know, whether it's addiction, or whether it's dealing with a big health crisis or problems, you know, we've got to take this approach.
Somebody out there, like Dr Don would, might have a solution for my problem. And it's the whole point of the show is to be able to bring those people and the messages to, to people who need it, so they can connect with those people and maybe get help with a problem. And I certainly want to get help with some of the trauma that I've been through recently, and hope to get over it. Because, you know, no matter how many, like I've always, have had a strong mindset. In some ways, I'm incredibly strong when it comes to sport and overcoming obstacles and taking on big challenges. But I am completely weak in other areas, and I know, my own weaknesses, and my own, you know, I'm very self-aware of my limitations and stuff. And we're all working on different areas of our lives. And I might be a black belt at doing this, but I'm very much a white belt at doing that, you know. And finding new information and new things that can help you improve different areas in life, I think it's just, you know, just absolutely gold.
So Dr Don, can you tell us where can people find you? What courses do you have? What books do you have? And you know, how do people reach out to you and work with you?
Dr Don: Well, I know, I think we were gonna do something for the listeners who are listening to your show. So if you go to get G-E-T tipp T-I-P-P, that's the name of our program, T-I-P-P dot com slash Lisa, I think you'll get all the information. So it's www.gettipp.com/lisa, and then all the information on how to get the program, learn more, I think there's some offers, I think that you're doing in there as well for information.
Lisa: So that's absolutely brilliant. So gettipp.com, with two Ps, all the information about Dr Don's work, his courses, books, you know, we'll make sure that people can get access to that. Dr Don, thank you very much for your time today. It's been very, very valuable over the last few weeks of, you know, really been enjoying studying some of your work. And it's given me a little bit of a hope for my horizon after you know, going through some pretty traumatic things in the last five years that I need to sort of work through and you know, realising that on a day-to-day basis are half of my energy now. Like I often look back because I'm no longer doing the ultramarathons, and I don't have the energy to do them anymore. Not because of my age or anything else, I think because a lot of my energy is just going into you know, fighting a lot of demons. Yes, the trauma of losing my dad, going through what I did with my mum, losing the babies. There's a heck of a lot of stuff that's gone on in that time. And all of us are facing these types of situations. Your situation may be different than mine. But at some time in life, life's gonna come along and give you bang over the head.
Dr Don: Your mind is not okay with some of those things and it wants to— And so when people say to me, ‘Oh, I sabotage myself,’ right, or, ‘I'm doing these things and it's, it's interfering.. I say ‘You can't sabotage yourself. The brain is not designed to do anything but survive.’ And so it, some people say, ‘Well, why would I go and do this crazy thing over here that would sabotage my career or sabotage my relationship?’ And it's not trying to sabotage; it’s trying to protect you from pain. So it will go into crazy areas to protect you from the pain that looks like sabotage. And that's how people describe it. I say it's impossible. That, your brain cannot sabotage yourself. Even when people say, ‘Well, how do you explain somebody taking their own life or committing suicide?’ I said, ‘They're not trying to die. They're trying to stop the pain.’ The pain is more powerful than death. That's the way— did I tell you the story about the German sniper?
Lisa: No, do tell me that.
Dr Don: This, I know, we're trying to wrap up here.
Lisa: Oh no.
Dr Don: This was fascinating when I read this story. It was about the German sniper from World War II, that when they fought against the Russians, he said the Russians had almost no weapons, but they had a lot of people. So their plan was to charge at the German stations, right, and try to overwhelm them with people. You know, they were carrying sticks and shovels or whatever they had. And he says, ‘And they would—’ I remember, somebody I knew, told me about that they were a German during the war. And they said the Russians would just overwhelm them, get into the bunkers, and then just, you know, take their weapons and try to kill them. He says, so this sniper, for the Germans, he said his job was to shoot them. And he said, ‘But every time they would shoot them, another wave would come.’ He says, ‘And it was just endless, endless.’ He says, ‘And then I figured out how to stop them.’ He says, ‘I shot them in the stomach.’ He says, ‘Then what happened was, is when the next wave would come, they would see all the comrades lying on the ground screaming in pain.’ And he says, ‘And that was the bigger deterrent than to actually dying.’ And he says, ‘And that’s what slowed it down.’ This shows you the power of the mind not wanting to be in pain, what it will do to go to avoid pain.
Lisa: And this is the desperation that some poor people get into. And that's what they're trying to do when they commit suicide is just stop the pain.
Dr Don: Stop the pain is so overwhelming that they would rather stop the pain. They're not thinking about dying, they're thinking about stopping the pain. Because the brain won't try to die, it will try to stop the pain before that.
Lisa: Wow. And this is where the biology is just too simple in the fact that it doesn't think through the logical stuff. It just works in the here and the now.
Dr Don: None of that stuff is logical.
Lisa: Like you see the future prediction. Yeah, there's no, the consequences of me doing this are X, Y, Z is they don't think that far.
Dr Don: They can't, because the reason logic are overwritten every time by survival. Yeah, by the survival in this exact millisecond.
Lisa: This knowledge is just powerful on so many levels. And it's just given me a new dimension of how powerful this is. And again, it's about taking the blame off people, and let's find ways to fix this. And to work through that and to help people so that we don't, so just apportion blame and you’re a person lacking willpower, you’re a person with addictions, and you are lesser than me. We all have biology, and we are all struggling on some level. You know, most of us are just better at, you know, doing the day-to-day stuff. But, yeah, I think you're a humanitarian, and the work that you're doing is really, really helping people, Dr Don. So thank you very much for the work you do.
Dr Don: Thank you. When I first met you and Joe introduced us, I saw the work you're doing, you're doing phenomenal stuff. So I was so excited to meet you and get an opportunity to share with you, you know, and work together because we’re better, have our message out there.
Lisa: Absolutely. We're both going to get messages out there. We're both got to help spread this to a few more people around the world. And this is what this episode’s done. So thank you very much for your time today. Dr Don Wood.
Dr Don: Thank you. I enjoyed it.
That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review and share with your friends, and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
Have you ever tried to copy a role model before? Chances are, results didn't align with your goals. Our bodies are different on so many levels and in so many different ways. The path to optimising your body and health varies from person to person. Our health type is crucial when it comes to learning how to manage stress and building our immunity!
In this episode, Dr Cam McDonald joins us to talk about how different health types deal with the different phases of the stress model. He notes that certain classes need to focus on different stages. When building immunity, people also need to listen to their bodies' needs.
If you want to know more about how to manage stress and build immunity based on your body type, then this episode is for you.
For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, your goals and your lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or are wanting to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, a NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that is capable of boosting the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements that are of highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combat the effects of aging, while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘And so if you prolong that, or put the wrong kind of stress on somebody, then it creates damage. But then the really cool thing about the stress cycle is that if you recover, then that your body learns.’
‘What happens in your resistance phase? It essentially assumes that you are being chased by something very urgently. You need to get away from like a saber-toothed tiger essentially.’
‘And one of the biggest problems just to expand this to one final timeline is that you do this for 10 years. Yeah. And your body says I need you to stop completely. And that's a heart attack.’
‘So what's so fascinating about how we develop and how we grow as individuals from the womb, and we've discussed this on previous podcasts as well, is that we have certain stresses that will be more stressful for us than for other people.’
‘And so what we know is the type of things that stress this person is cold. Firstly, if they're very, very cold, their body doesn't have the muscle or the fat tissue to stay warm. And that really drains their energy levels.’
‘So this individual, they have more hormones like prolactin, and they are more likely to be insulin resistant. They have a slightly slower thyroid as well.’
‘So those leaner, more delicate bodies will go within themselves, they'll try and be alone, so that they can create certainty, because certainty in their future creates safety for them and warmth as well.’
Dr Cam McDonald has spent the last decade furthering his knowledge and skills to promote accessible health. He's a dietitian and exercise physiologist. He has a long-standing personal passion for health, genetics, and environmental influences. His goal is to support all people to live up to their full physical potential.
Cam has a firm focus on people becoming more aware of themselves. He wants them to know their natural strengths and optimal behaviours for the best health. He is an informed speaker who has a passion for fitness and the inspiration to do something about it.
Want to know more about Dr Cam's work? Check out his website or follow him on Instagram and Linkedin. You can also reach him through email (drcam@yourgeneius.com) or phone (0411380566).
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn how to manage stress optimally.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential. With your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.
Lisa Tamati: Welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Today I have another super interview with Dr Cam McDonald, who you may recognise from previous episodes that we've done. Now, Cam McDonald is the ph360 CEO in Australia. And he's one of the world's leading experts in personalised health and the use of genetics and epigenetics. He really understands when it comes to individuals being able to understand the strengths of the unique biology, and how it gives them an exact pathway to better health in a way that makes it easy for them. He's a leader and educator, a scientist, motivator, and he is a crusader on a mission is what Dr Cam is. And he is a wonderful guy.
Now today we are going to be talking about the stress response, what happens in the body when you are under stress. We're also going to be talking about how that pertains to your specific health type or your body type with your specific genetics, and how different people react in different ways to stressors, and how genetics actually makes a 50% contribution to this whole thing. We're also going to be looking at resilience and stress management and how to build a better, more resilient, stronger you. So I hope you enjoy this episode with Dr Cam McDonald.
If after listening to this episode, you're keen to do the epigenetics program, which were steeped in and have been using for a number of years now with our athletes and with corporates and with individuals wanting high-performance people dealing with very difficult health journeys, then we'd love you to check out what we do here on over to lisatamati.com and push the button ‘Work With Us’ and you'll see our Peak Epigenetics program here, you can either jump on a live webinar with us, we have one every couple of weeks, or just reach out to us or just sign up for the program, it will be life changing for you. It will help you optimise every aspect of your life: not only your your food, and your exercise, which everybody wants to know about and what's right for you, but also everything to do with your mood, behaviour, the brain function, what social environments you'll do well and what physical environments you do well, and we touch on some of these topics in today's episode. So head on over to lisatamati.com, under the ‘Work With Us’ button, you'll see that there.
Before we head over to Dr Cam, just reminder that we have our premium membership for the podcast Pushing the Limits open now, we would love you to come and join our VIP tribe. We've been going now for five and a half years with this podcast and it is an absolute labour of love. And we really need your support to keep us on air, to help us spread the information from these world leading experts to you. So if you like what the whole podcast is about, if you can spare just a few dollars a month, that's really a cup of coffee or two a month, depending on what level you want to join us at. We would really appreciate that, and for your troubles, of course we have a lot of premium member benefits for you there over on that www.patron.lisatamati.com URL. So that's patron, P-A-T-R-O-N dot lisatamati.com.
And lastly, before I head over to Dr Cam, please check out my new longevity and anti-ageing supplement. I've co-founded a company here that is doing NMN supplements with Dr Elena Seranova, a molecular biologist. And this is a, NMN is a very powerful compound that some vitamin D, vitamin B3 sorry, derivative that helps upregulate the sirtuin genes and improve longevity and autophagy and lots of great things in the shell. So if you want to know a little bit more about the science behind the NMN and why you should have it, then please check out our website at www.nmnbio.nz That's N-M-N bio.nz.
Right, over to the show with Dr Cam McDonald.
Hi, everybody and welcome to Pushing the Limits. Super excited to have you with me here again today. I have a repeat offender on the show Dr Cam McDonald, who's coming on for how many times is this? Number three, I think, Dr Cam?
Dr Cam McDonald: I think yeah, it is number three. Yeah, we've done a combo, we've done a solo and now another solo.
Lisa: Yeah. Today we're going to be talking about resilience, stress and immunity, and how to personalise your protocols and your lifestyle interventions for your particular genetic type to increase your resilience and immunity. So Dr Cam, where should we start with this big topic? It's a big, it's something that everyone's talking about at the moment as immunity and lowering stress levels.B ecause when we're stressed when we got lots of stress hormones running through us all the time, which I think you and I probably both do, to a certain degree with our jobs and our lifestyle and our genetics. How do we manage that on a day to day basis? And how do we personalise that and understand that in regards to our own sort of body make-up and health types?
Dr Cam: That's a great opening question, Lisa, that is as broad as your life. So probably, I reckon the best way that we would start with this is, is just by defining these things like stress and resilience and even immunity. So I guess stress can be defined as anything that takes our body away from homeostasis. So we're calm, we're cool, we're collected, we're lying in bed. Waking up and putting your feet on the floor actually creates a stress on our vascular system. Our blood has to start moving harder, because it's now moving against gravity, that creates a little bit of a stress that's taken us away from that resting state. And so if you prolong that, or put the wrong kind of stress on somebody, then it creates damage. But then the really cool thing about the stress cycle is that if you recover, then that, your body learns. So it goes, alright, I've got damaged here. And I'm now going to learn about that, and in my recovery, I'm going to get stronger so that that same stress, when I get exposed to it again, doesn't affect me as much.
And so I guess some examples of stress might be, exercise is a stress. We don't think about it that way, we think what's positive exercise is positive. Yeah, but exercise is actually a stress. It makes us feel, it actually puts a demand on our body. And you will know, running your ultramarathons, that your body is not in its best health at the 90 kilometre mark. It is at its best, they'll probably before the race starts, and then your body is exposed to a prolonged period of stress. But then you do that your body then rests and recovers and you get stronger so that you can get up and do it again.
But then there's other stresses, you know, like our workload, and being underslept, and eating the wrong food, and being in relationships, that great stress. All of these things put a demand on our body and our mind. And this tells the body that there's some sort of emergency. And so in that emergency, we have to take action, we have to cope, which we can expand on. And then we have, then we get very tired and we get exhausted. And then that's when we need to recover. So for me, a stress is really anything that takes us away from that rested state.
Lisa: Yep.
Dr Cam: If it's short, and the right kind of thing, and then we recover, we get stronger. If it's prolonged, and there's no recovery, then it can help us deteriorate and lead to very poor health and lowers our immune system as well. And then when it comes to resilience, resilience is about being exposed to stress, but being able to handle it.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Cam: And so, when, it's different to recovery in that you're getting stronger resilience, as in you are in the stress. And generally if you have, I like to think of resilience as having resilience juice. You've got a certain amount based on your capacity to tolerate stress. And so you know, the training that you've put in, the mindset that you have, gives you more juice so than in any given stress, you can tolerate a better and push forward. And I'd have to say that resilience, or stress is essential. And so we have to have stress to grow. Therefore, we must have resilience to be able to tolerate that stress so that we can continue growing. If we run out of resilience, we don't want to expose ourselves to stress ever. But this doesn't allow us to grow then. So this is where I see those two things into playing. And then the immune system is one of those things that you can have an underactive immune system that isn't mounting a good response. Or you can have an overactive immune system, which has actually been attacking your own body, autoimmune conditions. And so we're really looking when we're talking about immune health, we're talking about that sweet spot right in the middle where we're aggressively fighting things from the outside, but protecting our own tissues and organs at the same time. So I reckon that's a place to start. We can go from there.
Lisa: Yeah, that's, he just done, he did that so well. So I think so stress, resilience and immunity are all interlinked. And we need a certain amount of stress. And we talk about hormetic stresses, and how good they are for our bodies because they cause a cascade of events. When I hop into the sauna, it's hot and I'm sweating, and that's causing a response in the body. I don't want to be in there for three hours, though, because that's going to kill me, probably. But a small, short, sharp shock can often be helpful in creating a hormetic stress. So what we're trying to do is avoid the chronic stressors, the sort of stuff, excuse me, that builds up over time and the stuff that's going to be negative for our mindset, and our ability to cope.
So when we have our stress response, Dr Cam, what actually happens in the body? So—I don't know—someone cuts you off in traffic, or you get a nasty email from your boss or something like that, or you have a fight with your spouse or, what's actually going on on a physiological level?
Dr Cam: Yeah, awesome. So there's a really beautiful model that talks about the stages of stress and design by Hans Selye. And this has stood the test of time, and it's definitely the way that we need to understand stress. So we have our—it's a four-stage model, with the first stage being homeostasis, when you just chill out, like you're sitting in the car, there's no real stress, you're just driving along. What happens when you get cut off, or the boss yells at you, or says', I want to see you in’... probably the boss saying, ‘I want to see you in my office in 10 minutes in an hour, even better’.
And so what happens in that first stage of stress is you become neurally alert. Alarm stage, it's called. Essentially, all of your senses will become more alert to say, ‘What's going on here? And what kind of information do I need to pick up from the environment to make sure that I'm going to be okay'? So you go to alarm phase, it's like, ‘What's going on? what's happening’? And so that's where we get anxious, which is worrying about the future, it's like what could possibly be coming in our future. And so that alarm stage, and another way to think about it is you're standing on the start of a 800-metre race. So you've got that, that nervous energy, the gun hasn't gone off yet, all in your brain. Yeah. So that's alarm stage one.
Alarms, sorry, and then we go into resistance stage two. Resistance stage is where we are now in the fight. We're now in the boss's office, defending ourselves. We are 500 metres through the race, where our body, it's now no longer a matter of ‘I've got to be alert to the environment', but rather, ‘I've now got to get in and fight. And I've got to cope'. And so this coping thing is something that we're doing all of the time. So, and in the, the great example, obviously, would be yourself in a long-distance run. Your body has to cope with all of the stress of continuing, when your body wants to stop. And genuinely it says, ‘I want to stop. This stress is not fun, I want to stop, please'.
The same thing goes for your—you've had a bad night's sleep for five nights in a row. And now you've got a front up at work. And you have to cope with the tiredness. And so that coping is resistance stage two. What your body does to cope in stage one, our nervous system becomes aware in stage two, our blood pressure goes up, our blood sugar levels go up. Now, blood fats go up. Everything that's going to support energy release in the body, and making sure that we can maintain a very high level of energy, they are going to be the systems that go up. And so you know, because when you're 500 minutes to a ratio of blood pressure, if it drops, you won't have enough blood to pump around your body.
So in order to cope, it has to keep your blood pressure up. If you're tired and underslept your body in order to cope with the workload, it needs to have a blood pressure that's going to allow you to stay awake, you need to have blood sugars that give you fuel, you need to have blood fats that give you fuel.
And so in stress, your body breaks down muscle.
Lisa: Can’t avoid.
Dr Cam: And turns that into carbohydrates for your brain, and it breaks down fat tissue and turns it into fats for your body, your blood pressure goes up. And so now we have this. Essentially, if you have a 500-metre race, it would look, I haven't made the race, it would look like you have sort of diabetes and high blood pressure if you want to take a snapshot of that race.
Lisa: And I'm done that in the middle of things. And it’s like, the individual training sessions and I took, I remember taking my blood sugar. I've been fasting for 18 hours, did an interval training session, took my blood sugar and it was at 9.5 and I had a heart attack. Like, what the hell!
Dr Cam: Exactly. Hopefully you didn't have a heart attack.
Lisa: No, I don’t.
Dr Cam: But you know, looking like a profile, your profile would have. So this is what's so important is that exercise, that under sleep, it makes your body cope. And blood pressure isn't bad, blood pressure is keeping you awake. High blood sugars aren't bad. They are providing fuel for your brain. Blood fats are bad, high triglycerides aren't bad, they are keeping your body fuelled. And so we see these things as bad things but in fact, they are our coping mechanisms. Without them we wouldn't be able to get through the day.
Lisa: Right, in the short term.
Dr Cam: in the short term. And this is the problem is that you'll then persist with this. But before we get there, what happens in your resistance phase? It essentially assumes that you are being chased by something very urgently you need to get away from, like a sabre-toothed tiger, essentially. Yeah, and so on. Your immune system goes, ‘Well, I don't have the energy to tackle these bacteria, to mess with this virus. I just need to make sure that I can supply as much fuel down to my bones and my muscles as I can so that we can get out of here. And then I'll worry about my bacterial infections later’.
And so while we're in this coping phase, your immune system gets suppressed, it goes down. And this is why, in some autoimmune conditions, they actually use very strong immune suppressants and reduce the immune system because the immune system, in stress, depresses. And so in coping phase, if it's really short happy days, because your body can tolerate that, that's what it's designed for. But then it's been 12 weeks of low sleep, lots of coffee, which increases your alarm stage, pushes your blood pressure up, you're working really hard so you’ve got that mental stress as well. And then, over a prolonged period of time, your body hasn't had a chance to recover. And so then you then go on holidays.
Lisa: And what happens? Yeah, you get sick.
Dr Cam: You get sick! And you think that this is your body being even more sick, we think I'm sick. So therefore my body is even worse than it was at work. But what's happened is that you've just delayed your immune system to turn on, even though your body was just as sick, probably more sick. What happens now in stage three is exhaustion phase or recovery phase.
Lisa: Right.
Dr Cam: And so your body, in order to gain growth, like get stronger from a workout, you know, you take a muscle to temporary fatigue when you're lifting weights. And what happens? Your muscle gets exhausted, can't lift another weight, it then rests for 48 hours, and it comes back stronger. So this exhaustion phase is actually really important. But what happens when you get sick, your body, your brain, it's like, as you turn off work, your brain finally dials down that internal stress, that reason to cope. And so now you don't have to cope anymore. And so all of your recovery mechanisms now increase.
And one of the best ways for your body to recuperate as quickly as possible is to lie flat on your back for a week. So I'm gonna make you incredibly sick. I'm going to tackle all these bacterial, these viral infections. I'm going to recover your body; I'm going to try and replenish your nervous system. And I'm going to do that as quickly as possible. And so I'm going to drive a lot of symptoms that help our bodies slow down, so that you do take some rest. Because our body is speaking to us!
Lisa: ‘I’m gonna knock the crap out of you!’
Dr Cam: Saying, ‘Hey, you've been going too fast for too long, you need to rest and recover. I'm going to make that happen now, I'm going to make it hard for you to get up'. Your body is actually on your side. And we see this even at a day to day level where if you get tired throughout the day, so you wake up in the morning, you've got some really important stuff on, you have some coffee that puts you even more alert and coping your system. You’re then pushing hard all day long. You're on your best behaviour at work. Yeah, you then get home and your brain switches off. Yep. And you're not yet sick. But your brain is so exhausted that it switches off, at least the prefrontal cortex does.
Lisa: Yeah, and then you become a horrible person.
Dr Cam: Your control, you become this person who hates their family, all of us don't understand why.
Lisa: Irritable, shifting. Hey, guys last night–
Dr Cam: Exactly. We all do, I think I've stepped out of a few of those myself. And so we have this short-term experience of stress, and then recovery, which is exercise. Short-term stress, recover, get stronger. Short term stress of day to day, you know, but it's probably a bit longer than what our body would like. We get stressed, we have to recover, we have to recover with rest. And if we don't get that rest, then it'll express itself through shortness, we won't have that tolerance that we had at work. Because we don't have that as much cope on, we're exhausted. Yes.
Lisa: Wow, that's just really, that’s so pertinent to what I did last night. Got very shitty, had to go for a very long walk. And because I had a hard, stressful day, and this exactly what happened, you know. I had a bit of a meltdown, and then came home and got my shit together. But I know I should do, I know I should go for a walk.
Dr Cam: Exactly, exactly. And one of the biggest problems just to expand this to one final timeline is that you do this for 10 years.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Cam: And your body says I need you to stop completely. And that's a heart attack. You know, it's like you've been coping for long enough, your blood pressure has been high enough for long enough, your cholesterol has been high enough for long enough, so much that it has created damage because there's been no recovery. So now I'm going to stop you for six months.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Cam: Because it's been so long since we stopped last time. And so the key part of this stress piece is you can expect any stress, but it's about the recovery that is most important. If you recover appropriately, you get stronger, and then you repeat that stress again. And this is where the resilience comes in is because if you see stress as a positive, even stress at work, and you have like a really tough day at work, you go, ‘Whoa! I've learned how my body responds in stress. I'm gonna learn, or I now know how to deal with that situation better’. That resilience mindset right there, that allows you to actually lean into those lessons, recover, and actually get a lesson for next time as well.
But if you've got a mindset that this stress is killing me, then you don't fully recover, and your mind will actually create more stress on top the next time you experience the same thing as well. And so this is where that resilience base in that mindset is not just physical, is how much can you tolerate? How much can you cope physically before your body cops in? But also, how much—how you’re shaping your thoughts around this stressful experience as well. So and just having a better mindset and more presence and more awareness and more mindfulness, essentially, will actually improve your immune system, because you don't go into the same level of stress, because you've got a mindset that is able to… Yeah, exactly.
Lisa: You can see things coming sort of thing and in trying to try to hit it off in the past sort of thing before that, because we you know, we all, I think for years and years, I hear people say, ‘Oh, stress, you know, stress is bad for you, or you're going to have a heart attack'. If you keep going at that rate, that type of talk that you hear, but you don't understand, really, the mechanisms that are at play in this game, and what's actually happening. And the situation with our lives at, presently, you know, what we've got, you know, COVID in the world, which has caused, as a society, a huge amount of stress, and uncertainty and all these sorts of things. So now is a particularly important time to work on these tools and to be able to, you know, build our resilience.
And one of the things I wanted to mention there was that, if you're, as you know, hard charging type A personalities, got a lot of stress hormones anyway. You have, you know, when I was younger, this especially was like, just toughen up, just go harder and just deal with it. And if you're tired, work bloody harder instead of going the opposite. And that works for a certain amount of time, until it doesn't, and then you burn out. And, you know, so let's look at now, how different health types you know, because Dr Cam, as everyone knows, hopefully you listened to the podcast is the CEO of ph360. This is a genetic program that we look at the epigenetics and how your environment is affecting your life and your health. So let's look at how do, and why do, different people react differently to the same stressor? You know, why can somebody have something horrible happen to them, and get up the next day and carry on, and the other person's down for the count? You know, what were the realisation coming in?
Dr Cam: Yeah so, what's so fascinating about how we develop and how we grow as individuals from the womb, and we've discussed this on previous podcasts as well, is that we have certain stressors that will be more stressful for us than for other people. For example, you look at a sumo wrestler, right? A sumo wrestler, if they get pushed by a 60-kilogramme, 15-year-old boy, they're gonna go, ‘Oh. That's not a stress at all. In fact, it tickles a little bit'. Versus then you look at him that 15 year old boy push an infant, that's very, very different to the experience of stress. And so obviously, that's a quite an extreme example, but I wanted to make the point or even if another 60 kilos, 15 year old person, they push them, it creates a different type of stress. So physically, we're different. Mentally, we are also different as well. And behaviourally, we genetics determine over 50% of our personality, or at least 50% of our personality. And so how we respond to different things is built into our biology as well, and into our genetics.
And so what we see is that different people will actually appear in these phases of stress differently as well. And so a person like us, so we've got, we've got Crusaders on the census in the pH360 model. Essentially, the wedges are a quick background. So how we develop in the womb determines which organs and hormones are going to be dominant in our body. Those then contribute to how our body shape and size actually develop.
Lisa: Yep.
Dr Cam: So we have some individuals that develop from the layer of the embryo that is more predominant in the nervous system, so the nervous system gets more fuel, the musculoskeletal system and the digestive organs, they get less fuel. And so we end up with a body that has less muscle, less fat, less bone, generally a very fine delicate structure, and hormones that make them—and our nervous system that's very heightened, and hormones that make them very heightened as well, lots of noradrenaline, dopamine.
And so when we look at a very lean, delicate individual. When we think about how they're going to tolerate stress, if they get left out in the jungle, we know that their ability to tolerate that stress is going to be lower because they have less reserves on their body. They have not as much time before they starve because they're fat tissue and muscle tissue just isn't as great as somebody with a much more substantial body. And so these things are being determined very early on in their life.
And so when we talk about stress for this individual, their nervous system is the thing that protects them from stress, because they don't have big, strong muscles that are gonna help them fight. They don't have a big reserve. They have a very hot nervous system. And so they spend a lot of their time in stage one stress. When they go into stress, they immediately start thinking about the future, and where is my certainty in the future coming from. So they're much more prone to be anxious in a stress, because as soon as their environment gets disrupted, they, they start processing neurally to escape. They have to think their way out of trouble. And the things that stress them...
Lisa: They can't fight their way out, so they have to use their brain.
Dr Cam: They have to make a sweet recovery station up in a tree somewhere where they're safe from predators, and set some traps because they don't want to be in hand to hand combat, like they need, really need to be strategic about it. And so what we know is the types of things that stress this person is cold. Firstly, if they're very, very cold, their body doesn't have the muscle or the fat tissue to stay warm. And that really drains their energy levels. And so temperature is huge. So if you put this person in lots of air conditioning, it actually makes them stressed. This is why we have so many people in offices, stressed by sitting in air conditioning, or while wearing three or four scarves. Because temperature is so important to be controlled, but they can't control it, they actually need external heat to control their temperature.
We also know that their nervous system is more heightened, because the way that they protect themselves is to be in stage one most of the time. So they need to essentially be on high alert. So any noise, people doing random things. And when I say random things, lots of people around them, people are a little bit unpredictable. So their brain is alert to unpredictableness or unpredictability I should say. And so we have cold, we have lots of noise, we have lots of people, people touching them, watch all of these things is going to overload their nervous system, which is the thing that they need to be safe. Yeah, and this creates an enormous amount of stress. As a result, this person is going to need to spend more time in the warm by themselves. And this is because that allows them to dial their senses down and come out of stage one. Because any noise, any cold is like an alert to their body saying this environment is not safe.
And when it comes to how they can manage stress, their mind is very, very important. If they can calm their mind, and also have very, very clear dot points on what they're trying to achieve, and very clear outcomes and guidelines, that brings a whole lot of peace to their brain. Because if they're working with known rules, ‘I have my rules. And if I apply this rule, then my future is now certain. And I don't have to worry about the future anymore, because I'm following the rules'. And so everything for their body is very neural inside, how do I create certainty? How do I reduce the amount of mental alertness that I have? And you need to reduce the amount of mental stimulation.
So this will often come along with long, slender bodies with less muscle tissue, less fat tissue. And in order for them to feel best, they need to have a very clear mind, a calm mind with a very calm environment. And so, you can see though, they would spend a lot of time in stage one constantly checking out the environment.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Cam: And that itself can be very exhausting. And so if they're in an environment where they're constantly on like in a really crowded place, or in a nightclub or a festival where there's lots of people and lots of noise, it will, they'll be in cope, just trying to manage all of the nervous stimulation and they'll become exhausted quite quickly because their physical resilience is not as great. They get drained very easily because their nervous system gets tired very easily. Whereas it's very different for other people.
Lisa: So let's for the slender, slight built, not much muscle person, let's go to the opposite end of the scale and look at someone like a Guardian or a Connector, who has a lot of muscle mass, a lot more predisposition to having more adipose tissue and so on. And they've developed in the womb with a lot of energy going into the digestive system.
Dr Cam: Yes, that's right.
Lisa: Yeah. Can you explain the opposite end of the wheel? So what are these people going to, when is it going to be stressful for them? And how do they cope with stressors?
Dr Cam: Yeah, perfect. So this individual, they have more hormones like prolactin, and they are more likely to be insulin resistant. They have a slightly slower thyroid as well. We know subclinical hypothyroidism is very common for these individuals. These are bodies, which are much more like a sumo wrestler, they are bigger, stronger, the most amount of muscle, the most amount of fat tissue, they can accumulate it, they don't have to. They have the strongest bone structure. And essentially, all of these hormones set up, and these metabolic environment sets up for conservation of energy and to protect other people. Prolactin is actually a very protective hormone, it's I need to protect other people. And they respond very well to connection. And so when you've got a body, so the first body that we spoke about is actually quite selfish, I need to look after myself first.
Lisa: Yep.
Dr Cam: Versus this body, the way that it's built psychologically, and behaviourally, due to the hormones and it has in the genes that are playing out, they will be very protective and very nurturing of the people around them. Why are they able to do that? It’s because they have this capacity, they have prolactin and insulin and growth hormone, and IGF 1, all of these hormones actually help you become bigger. For any given circumstance, if this person has more fuel, they will put on more weight as a result of that same amount of fuel. They will conserve better, they will add mass better. And so when you've got this really strong body, very substantial body, you are able to protect others and not be at risk of draining your own energy levels, because you have so much more. And so what happens here is, when this person goes into stress, it's when other people look like they're in stress, the people that they care about them closely. If those people are in stress, their nurturing protective hormones fire up and go up, and they go into a worry state. And then they start worrying about everybody else.
And so, but what's really interesting about this, evolutionarily, this body, when the community experienced stress, their body would go into conservation. Because if everybody was experiencing stress, it means the food supply was about to run short, or we're about to go to war, or about to move camp, and we're not certain about our food supply. So the way that I'm going to manage this is I'm going to gain as much weight as possible, so that when the famine does come, I'm going to be able to support everyone and not have to wait. So it becomes this incredible famine protection.
And so what we see when this person goes into stress, they want the opposite. They conserve energy, they actually go into exhaustion phase, they rest and recover more, they eat more food, which puts them into rest and recovery. They do less exercise, because if they use energy when they're stressed, they think, oh but what is everybody else going to have. And so their body instead of going into hyper-alertness and hyperactivity, and use all of your energy to think this through, this body actually goes into laziness, into cravings of food.
And often the stresses that are created, it's not the temperature, this person is very well-insulated. It's not the nervous system, because this body can really tolerate a lot of physical stress, stress and strain, and mental strain, for that matter. It is disconnection from the family. If they feel disconnected from the people that they’re close, if they see stress in their family, they will feel like the community is threatened. And that will create stress for them. If they're eating very high sugar foods in fact, it represents a stressful result all if my blood sugars are high, then I must be stressed and therefore I need to conserve more. And so the body is able, so that actually creates a stress as well. Doing very, very high intensity exercise in the morning can be a stress for them.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Cam: Because this is when prolactin levels are highest when nurturing is going to be most well executed by this person. I guess you wake up in the morning and you nurture the people around you. If you're out there burning all of this very high intensity energy. It actually sends the stress levels, the cortisol levels higher, which is a coping hormone. Yeah, that's stage two. And then this person—they will actually experience a higher level of cortisol for the next few hours, which then makes them insulin resistant and helps them store weight. It's like, ‘I’m spending all my energy and running around in the morning, then there must be something wrong with my family because I'm not looking after them’.
Lisa: And so he put on weight when they do high intensity.
Dr Cam: And it's so fascinating. We'll notice we have people all the time who do 12 weeks of a boot camp first thing in the morning, exactly what they're told, and they don't lose weight, or they gain a little bit of weight.
Lisa: Yep.
Dr Cam: And so this person gets stressed from that social disconnection, first and foremost. And then they can actually live faster to quite well, they're very, very good at it. But when they do get stressed, instead of going into stage one, and more alertness, they don't have to be alert, because they've got resilience. They go into late stage two, they go on to cope. But they also crave, and they use less energy, and they conserve. And so without late stage two and stage three is where they enter into the stress cycle. It's, they don't go through this big worry of the future. They go more into reflecting on the past and feeling down, and their energy levels come down as well, which is the recovery state.
And this is why they're able to gain and grow. Because in recovery, you grow and you gain. In stress you spend and you wither. But as these guys grow and gain in stress, and that's because they enter the stress stages at a different place.
Lisa: And they so that's why for the slighter build person actually will lose weight when they're under stress and...
Dr Cam: And bone. Osteoporosis is... Exactly, yes.
Lisa: And the heavier person will actually put on weight when they're under stress, because the same stress hormones, but they come in in different stages, and for different reasons in that person's life. And so the person who's of a heavier build and a heavier bone structure, they are going to be craving more of those bad foods when they're in a stressed out site. So they'll be searching out for the, you know, the deep fried. Because from an evolutionary perspective, that's what's happening, isn't it? We’re driven to find those high caloric, high GI foods, which were very scarce back in the day, and unfortunately, they're not so scarce now. And so that becomes a real problem for this group of people.
Dr Cam: Yes.
Lisa: And then let's look at the third one. The mesomorphs. I’m sort of, I'm a little bit of mesomorph, a little bit ectomorph. But more muscular, high intensity people who do well under that. What's happening in their bodies?
Dr Cam: Yeah, cool. So just to give a bit of a summary right now, essentially, what we've got is different bodies in stress will go towards their safe zone. So those leaner, more delicate bodies will go within themselves, they'll try and be alone, so that they can create certainty. Because certainty in their future creates safety for them, and warmth as well. Versus and so they will crave to provide warmth, they'll go for warm foods, and for high sugar foods that supply their nervous system. Versus the Guardian will go towards safety in, the heavier that I am, the safer my community is. Because I'll be able to protect them for longer. And so if I go for these low end, like if I don't do much exercise, and if I eat lots of food, the brain will actually motivate them to do exercise and eat lots of food. That then creates weight, weight creates stability, stability, creates safety for the community.
And so when we go to the activator, the activator is that the pure, the body that's developed predominantly with their muscular skeletal system, their adrenal glands are very, and their sex organs are developed. And so they are higher in adrenaline. And it's very sensitive to testosterone. And this makes them, when they are thinking about their best form, it’s uncertainty, is high adrenaline, which makes them feel good also, a competition, and winning. Variety also creates uncertainty as well.
So this body is searching for variety, uncertainty, competition, a bit of risk in order to feel normal, which is very different to the other bodies as well. And so with the things that create stress for them, is the feeling of being trapped. The feeling of being limited, because they like to break out, they like to be free, they like to be in charge. And they don't like to be told what to do. They don't like rules. So anytime that there's a rule in place, they'll be irritated by that look to break it out. And they have to, they have because I have this big adrenal outflow, they get all of this energy just generate very, very quickly and it must come out. And so the thing that creates stress for them is when that energy can't get out, so why don't have someone that I can express with. Or I can't move my body. Movement is actually the way that they can use a lot of this energy as well, because their musculoskeletal system is all tied into their dominant development.
And so when we're talking about this body in stress, it actually kind of likes a bit of stress, because adrenaline is there. And winning is kind of stressful as well, the thing that's going to create problems for them is that if they can't step into this space, they can't step into competition, they can't step into a bit of risk, they are told exactly what to do. They also have more oxidative stress as well, when they do things. They do things at high intensity. And so the body that gets developed out of this is shorter, more muscular than typical. If you look at the top 10 crossfitters on the planet, particularly in the guys, that's a really good depiction of a shorter, muscular, fiery, short and... Exactly. That body is exactly what we're talking about right here. Love a bit of challenge, love a bit of competition, CrossFit is made for this environment, made for this body.
And so what we need to do for this body is not stop it from experiencing stress, because it actually will move towards that in order to get its adrenaline, we actually need to make sure that it recovers appropriately. And so what happens for this body is like it'll be walking around in their day. And they'll say, ‘Oh, hey, we've got this new thing over here, do you want to do that'? They go, ‘Yes, I'm gonna do that'. And then they're at work, and they got all these new projects. ‘Oh, yes, I'll be part of that. Yes, I'll be part of that'. Because their adrenaline is–
Lisa: It’s starting things.
Dr Cam: …’I’m gonna do this, I love this!’ Exactly. So they go high intensity into action, because they've now got so many things stacked up, and they're happy to drop one thing and then move straight to the next. That means that they never get a break from their adrenaline.
Lisa: Yeah.
Dr Cam: And so when that happens, they get more oxidative stress, their joints start getting very sore, they get pent up and frustrated, and they can just become quite exhausted. And so they enter into stage two with their stress response. So they don't, they don't think about the stress, they don't think about worry, and what's going to happen in the future, they don't go through that alarm phase, they go straight into fight, like I'm going to cope with this, I'm going to get into a fight, I'm just going to take action. And so immediately, they go from doing nothing to doing everything very, very quickly, very high intensity change.
And so when that happens, they need to expel their energy. And they, the way that they can expel their energy is by verbalising it and just talking it out. And they've got to have someone who doesn't argue back. And I'm at fault with this many times with my partner, she's an activator, and to express and I want to just sit there and listen like I should, but rather I fight back. But this, essentially, these bodies generally, they need to expel energy. It can be verbal, but the best is physical exertion. If they do really high intensity physical exercise, it will make them feel a whole lot better. But it only goes for 20 to 30 minutes, and then they have to stop. Then they have to stop completely and turn their adrenals off. And one way that you can do that is by lying on your back for 15 minutes, which actually turns off the outflow of ACTH, which is your adrenocorticotropic hormone. It's the one that comes from your brainstem. It says, ‘You should release adrenaline'.
And so if you lie flat on your back, it allows this body to fully recover. So this body is going to naturally step into stress, it's actually a timebase, is to be in a bit of stress. But what they miss out on is recovery spending time with fun people, calm people. Spending time light, like just absolutely resting, stopping throughout the day, and just allowing their body to calm down. That's actually what this body needs.
And so when we're talking about managing stress, the first thing we need to do for this body is not make sure that everyone's okay like and make sure their social circles, okay, it's not make sure you've got all the rules and the processes of time alone, while you have for the other couple of bodies. Now for this body, we need to make sure that they exert their energy and then eat regularly. So because what eating does is it puts them into a stage three of recovery. And so if they're eating six meals per day, they're putting themselves into many recovery sessions throughout the day because their body has to digest. And what happens to this body when they don't eat is they get very hangry. This is the hangriest body. And so we have this situation where they're acting frustrated or intolerant. And it's not because they're not a good person. It's because they haven’t eaten. And if they eat, then all of a sudden they feel so much better. And they deal with things in such a different way. The same thing goes after exercise. And so we have very, very different strategies. We've only spoken about three type generals, where there are six and then everybody's individual within that. But these give you the major, major types of variations that you see based on how we develop and how our genes work.
Lisa: Just a quick question on that, and the activator, on the mesomorph ther. In regards to autophagy, because we—I think we briefly talked on this last week, but I did a whole session on autophagy with Dr Seranova. And, you know, intermittent fasting is a big thing. But how do we—how does an activator do it then? If they want to get the benefits of autophagy, but they can't go without food for long periods of time when they need six meals a day, which is the opposite of what you would advise for someone on the endomorph side of the wheel?
Dr Cam: Yeah.
Lisa: How are we getting—do autophagy going without causing the hangries? And without...
Dr Cam: Yeah, great question. So the first thing and I guess you can apply this question to all of the groups, like the longest, leanest group are going to do the least well with lots of fasting because they've got a metabolism that just needs lots of fuel to stay up and about. And if you make them fast, for too long, they actually get very, very tired, which is a little bit destructive. The, but short fasts, no problem, you know, like a meal or a day.
But generally, it's still providing some carbohydrates is going to be important throughout their day. But they can get away with it. But it's just going to be for a shorter period of time. The more substantial body can deal with fasting for extended periods of time. And so their body is actually set up to benefit significantly from fasting. Yeah, the third version that we've spoken about the high intensity, high oxidative stress type individual, if they are going to be engaging in using lower food intake or fasting to stimulate autophagy, then they want to be reducing their activity at the same time. And they want to be practising some really calming activities, because they need to make sure that they can dispel the energy or not dispel the energy through like a calm activity, as opposed to relying on the high intensity activity or not be stressed in the first place.
So they need to get themselves into a very calm place, environment, with less competition with less things that they can say yes to, with things that allow them to essentially not use their adrenaline energy to jump into things. They need to kind of create a fairly blank environment so that they don't get stimulated by things so that they don't have this requirement for extra energy. So that's essentially we just need to consider the other components to it.
Lisa: Yeah, that really sort of puts it into picture because you want the autophagy you want the cleaning out of the broken proteins and the stuff that you know, that makes us live longer when we do that on a regular basis. And you know, stopping in tour and upregulating your ANPK and all of that sort of stuff. But I was still a bit of a mystery in my head. But how do I do that when I'm an activator, activator Crusader, I'm on that cusp. So for you know, I get it that people on the Guardian side, they can go without. But for me, you know, that's always been. So if I'm going to do a fast, I need to make sure that I'm in a really non-stressed out situation and calm, which doesn't happen very often. Let's move now just briefly, we will wrap it up shortly. But immunity, we're in, in relation to all of this stress responses and so on. What's happening on a biochemistry level when, when we're under the stress in, right now with COVID. And all the other winter coming down here in the Southern Hemisphere, we don't want to get sick, we want to make sure our immune system’s on fire. What can we do to improve our immune system in regards to these different body types?
Dr cam: Yeah, perfect. So, and the most important thing here is in order for our immune system to come on, then we have to get into stage three and homeostasis. That may—the stages that we need to be in in order to stimulate our immune system. And so what that means, we have to put ourselves into recovery. And so one of the most profound things that we can do straightaway where all of, most of our recovery happens from the day, our mental recovery and our physical recovery is sleep. We need to make sure that we get enough sleep. There are different things that create sleep for different people. But seven to nine hours is recommended for everybody. And it's very, very important that we get that sleep to stop it. So that's the first piece.
The second piece then is every part of our environment is creating stress. And so we need to make sure that we understand what's happening in the environment and how that's going to affect different people so that we can recover from that stress appropriately. And so if we were to go to the three groups once again, and I'll just preface this by saying that every single person's journey to an improved immune system is actually fully personalised. And it needs to be tailored specifically to you. And this is something obviously—that we work with you on Lisa with ph360, we got personalised immune protocols that actually allow you to do that and get all of this stuff that I'm about to address in principle, but for you specifically.
So we have—if we were talking about the donor, reverse, or from last time, we talked about the activator, and the activator connectors versus a bit of Crusader in there too, that top left of the circle. Essentially, we're going to be looking at what are the things that remind—bring safety to this body movement will support that. So if we do exercise, a high intensity exercise for this individual, and then we have full recovery, what we know from one bout of exercise, you can get increased immunosurveillance, that is your immune system is now more alert to the environment, rather than waiting for bacteria and virus and ready to pounce on them stronger.
We also know that if you're exercising regularly for eight to 12 weeks, you will see less chance of getting an infection, less chance or lower amounts of severity and lower amounts of time sick. So just being physically fitter, has a profound effect on that. However, if you're a Guardian or a Diplomat, and you're doing high intensity exercise in the morning, it actually adds to your stress load. Yeah, so but if you do it in the afternoon, then that's going to really improve your immune function and your recovery throughout the night. So exercise is a stress, it is a particularly potent way of enhancing your immune system. And the same goes to sleep as well. Sleep, just one poor night's sleep can ruin 70% of your immune response. And so having enough sleep, really important. Making sure that you're moving in a way that's appropriate for your body at the right time, very important.
And it's even more important for the activators. Because they're their body is so requiring the release of that pent up stress. Then when we start talking about, if we start talking about guardians, then just to talk about a couple of different sort of topics, the Guardians and the diplomats or even the Guardian, specifically here, they need a really connected social environment. And if they're experiencing a lot of stress socially, like they're isolated from their family, they disconnected from the people that they really believe are very close. Or if there's a lot of infighting and arguments and all that sort of stuff in the family home while they're in lockdown, for example, yeah, that social stress is going to create a whole lot of stress for this individual, put them into cope and then downregulate their immune system.
And you'll know this as well is that if you're in a, you know, stressful work, relationship or social relationship, you don't feel at your best and your immune system is actually being decreased with time. But it's even more for the guardians and the connectors key. And we have, you know, that the senses and the Crusaders, they're very neural in the way that they stress. And so body type. Yeah, exactly the lot of bodies often more delicate. And so some movement is going to be great. But ultimately, sleep is going to be important. Social is not going to be as important for this individual, what's going to be really important is that they can actually calm their nervous system to bring them out of stage one stress, if they're doing meditation regularly, if they're going for slow jobs, either have an evening or have a morning, or they're doing stretches and yoga, that actually calms the nervous system very well, which then takes them out of stress one at stage one and stage two, which allows their immune system to come back on. And so we have these different priorities. We've got, you know, movement for the more mesomorphic bodies, we've got social connectedness, movements also going to be very important here too, as is food.
And then we have the neural calmness and environmental calmness of warmth is going to be very important, but then we get into food, food, you know, it has all of these incredible little compounds that specifically drive your immune system to pick up or push down or to be able to, melylike, you need enough protein to build your immune system. Generally, you need, you need your you know, the right fats to control inflammation, you need the antioxidants to help reduce some of the damage that's going on when we're finding all of these bugs from the oxidative stress. And so activators are going to need lots and lots of antioxidants for that reason because they experienced more oxidative stress.
Guardians are going to be better served to do some fasting and the fasting will really support them in bringing their blood sugar levels down, helping them go into recovery, really supporting their digestive system, controlling their blood pressure in many cases as well versus—and so, versus the the sensors and Crusaders are going to actually need a bit of carbohydrate. I’m going because the carbohydrates provide mental calm for them. Because if they don't have carbohydrates, their brain can go into a stress state to provide fuel breaking down protein turning into carbohydrates, with lots of cortisol. And so the compounds that you need specifically are individual. But we have these general principles that govern what different people need. And this is why, if you know, you say ‘I'm going to improve our immune system through this generic program, right here’, there's a very good chance, it's not going to be appropriate for you. And so you really need to understand what your body needs so that you can get the best benefit.
And most people will benefit from low calorie intake for a few days, at least, you know, activators, any five days of no protein, no fats, fats versus guardians will actually do very well on broth only, fluids only, non-caloric fluids only for 10 days. Whereas the diplomat will need 10 days of just fruits and vegetables, but very little protein, very little fat as well. So there's a different protocol for different individuals. But the lower calorie really helps to reset the immune system in many ways. And there's been some lovely research by Professor Longo on that stuff around fasting and how it stimulates stem cell production of your immune cells.
So if you're taking care of the whole body, you're understanding, you know, what kind of environment you need to be, what kind of movement is going to be appropriate, what kind of social environment is essential, then you put the right types of foods in as well, you're going to see a whole system wide increase in your immune system. And then the studies that we ran last year, we looked at very detailed immune markers. And we saw significant change applying the protocols that are found in pH 360. We show significant change in the immune aggressivity and readiness in 10 days. So you can really change these markers very, very quickly. And really, the only thing that we have is a strong immune system. That's that's the thing. That's what vaccines lean on as well. Yeah. It leans on your ability as a non response. Yeah. And this is why vaccines are effective as effective in some individuals with suppressed immunity. So we definitely, we need a strong immune system, irrespective of what path you take with this.
Lisa: Yes, absolutely. And that's just so important right now, and to understand the nuance between the different types of detoxes, and the different types of ways of dealing with the different body types is just so, so crucial. And autophagy and cleaning out, and it's like taking out the garbage regularly. I can put in all my antioxidants and all my good vitamins and all my good nutrients. But if I'm not taking the garbage out on a regular basis, and doing that appropriately for my body type, and then you know, you're going to have suboptimal performance and suboptimal immune system. And yes, so stress, resilience, immunity, huge pieces of this giant puzzle that we're all trying to put together. And we're very complex. It's not, it's not easy, it's not easy. But giving this framework to the whole thing with the different body types. I've never seen this in any other system that that I have learned and or researched or read about where it's actually personalised, you know.
And that's why I think it's so powerful, because you can read a book on fasting and go, Well, I'm going to do that. But you need to know how to do it best for your body. And that's, you know, and how to detox for your body, and how to do all this. Dr Cam you’ve been brilliant today, again, as usual, a mine of information, and just brilliance. So thank you very much for jumping on again, I really appreciate your time, and the work that you do. And if anybody wants help with understanding what health type you have understanding this specifically to you, then that's what we do, please reach out to us. I'll have all the links in the show notes. But just head on over to lisatamati.com, hit the ‘Work With Us’ button, you'll see our peak epigenetics program. And this is the sort of people that we're working with Dr Cam, the CEO of ph 360, in Australia, and he's one of our great teachers. And this program is really, really beneficial for people who are wanting to optimise the genes, not just for stress and immunity and resilience, but also an optimal performance in every area of your life.
So thanks very much, Dr Cam, anything to add today before we hop off?
Dr Cam: Yeah, I will say one thing and that is your body is always on your side. Som and the thing that we think is that our body is fighting us or not cooperating with us or essentially our response to stress, whatever we think in our brain doesn't really matter what's going on in our body. And the information we take from that is very, very Very important. So when your body is genuinely tired, it's saying, ‘Hey, I don't have quite as much energy as what this activity requires, I need rest’, it's actually speaking to you and saying, ‘I need rest’, I'm saying, ‘Oh, my body sucks, I'm going to get better at not being tired’. Yeah, and I'm just going to have more coffee'. Your body is not deficient in caffeine, it's, it's actually deficient in the appropriate recovery for it.
And the biggest realisation that I had is that your body is always trying to do the best for you. And if you start listening, you'll find that that stress-recovery cycle is far easier to manage. And we didn't even get into resilience, which I'd love to talk about another time. Yeah, know how—when you're in that state of that balance between stress and recovery, you are able to mount an attack on anything that you want, from a very, very strong place. And so the—know that your body is always, always on your side, start listening to it more. Because you'll start getting keys into when you need rest, when you can push. There's a bunch of things that you can do around that. But I just want to really get you to start listening a lot more, because that's where this can, this can all start.
Lisa: And I think you know, especially for some of the audience, who are athletes and hard charges, and people that you know, go go go, it's all very well and good. But just remember, you still made of flesh and blood. And you need to respect the biology. And there are times when we can push outside the norms and do crazy things and amazing things. But then afterwards, you need to go into that recovery phase, and you're not bulletproof like you think you are. And there was one a good analogy, you know. Your body will give you a little tap on the head saying, ‘Hey, I need a raise, or I need something from you, and if you ignore it', then it will be a real hit on the shoulder, ‘Hey, I need a rest'. And next time it will be a mech truck that comes in flattened shoe. And it will be something major. And we don't want that. So listen to the little tests. Before you have to get a mech track to put you on your back.
Dr Cam: Absolutely. Just being a little bit fatigued after two hours of work is a little whisper in your ear. It's Yeah, very, very good to listen at that point. Absolutely.
Lisa: Yeah. And I'm going to do that just now go and go out for a walk in nature for 15 minutes and digest this wonderful information that you've given us today. So thank you, Dr Cam, really appreciate it.
Dr Cam: Thanks for having me on. It's great to be able to talk about this stuff.
Lisa: Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode with Dr Cam McDonald. He really is a mine of information. He is brilliant at the way he brings things across. He does it far better than I ever could. So I hope you enjoyed that session. If you're interested in doing the epigenetics program, we will discuss everything and learn everything about your specific set of genes and how they can be optimised through the right lifestyle interventions, the right diet, the right exercise, and everything that we've just talked about in this interview, then please head on over to lisatamati.com. Hit the ‘Work With Us button and you'll see our Peak Epigenetics program. Go over there, check it out. If you've got any questions, please reach out to our support@lisatamati.com. Happy to jump on a call with you want me, or one of my colleagues can jump on a call, explain more about what it's all about and how it all works. So make sure you do that.
And thanks very much for listening again, we really do appreciate your time and attention. We don't take it for granted. And we love you. Thank you very much for all the help you've given this podcast.
That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
As the powerhouse of the cell, mitochondria are associated with producing energy. However, studies regarding the function of mitochondria suggest that it does way more than powering the cell.
In this episode, Dr Elizabeth Yurth discusses the function of the mitochondria in our overall health. For instance, it signals the nucleus to repair the damage done by oxidative stress. Furthermore, the role of mitochondria is also to facilitate improvement in metabolism. Dr Elizabeth also explains how increasing butyrate levels in your gut microbiome is beneficial. This stimulates your mitochondria to release PGC-1α and NPK. As a result, it will have a greater capacity to eliminate waste and harmful substances in the cell. Additionally, we discuss fat tissue, blood sugar levels and metabolism.
If you want to know more about the function of mitochondria and how it informs your overall health, this episode is for you. Listening to this podcast will also help you understand your digestive health.
For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, your goals and your lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or are wanting to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, a NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that is capable of boosting the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements that are of highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combat the effects of ageing, while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘I'm gonna make the case that actually every single disease, from cancer, to cardiovascular disease, everything related to ageing, osteoporosis, everything comes down to mitochondrial dysfunction.’
‘I’m just a big advocate with diet, and with exercise, with everything, everything's done cyclically. Because we want to go through phases all the time where we're getting rid of bad stuff and then regrowing.’
‘We’re able to use the butyrate for fatty acid oxidation and actually improve aerobic metabolism.’
’As you're learning, the gut is everything. And now we're learning it may even be imperative to the mitochondria.’
‘I think what it's going to come down to when we look at this mitochondria, it's not going to be trying to figure out what is my perfect dose of antioxidants. It's gonna be figuring out how do I get that mitochondria with the pores, letting the good stuff in and letting the bad stuff out?’
‘What it's really trying to get across is just, you know, sensible stuff, we just did a thing you know, about just taking a walk after dinner, right?’
‘That little bit of stress, like I said, what you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.’
Elizabeth Yurth, MD, is the Medical Director and co-founder of the Boulder Longevity Institute. This institute was established in 2006. Dr Yurth is double board-certified in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and Anti-Ageing/Regenerative Medicine.
She also has a Stanford-affiliated Fellowship in Sports and Spine Medicine. Here, Dr Yurth specialises in Sports, Spine, and Regenerative Medicine. Additionally, she also has a dual-Fellowship in Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine (FAARM) and Anti-Aging, Regenerative and Functional Medicine (FAARFM) through the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M).
Dr Yurth serves as a faculty member in SSRP (Seeds Scientific Research and Performance) with 25 mastermind physician fellows. Here, she allows herself to stay abreast and teach others in the emerging field of cellular medicine.
An active athlete herself, Dr Yurth has worked with numerous sports teams at both the collegiate and professional levels. At present, she works as a consultant for high-level athletes from across the country. She aims to aid them in recovery and optimise performance.
Dr Yurth resides in Boulder, Colorado, with her husband and five children.
To know more about Dr Yurth’s work, visit Boulder Longevity Institute and connect with her on Instagram.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn more about mitochondrial health and include butyrate in their diets.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.
Lisa Tamati: Lisa Tamati your host here at Pushing The Limits. Super excited that you're here with me again today. Thanks for tuning in. I do love and appreciate your loyalty. And I would love to hear from you. If you've got something to say about the podcast, you’ve got some comments and questions about some of the topics that we have raised, please do reach out to us. We love hearing from our listeners. And if you can give us a rating and review if you're enjoying the content, that really really helps the show.
We've also got our Patron VIP premium membership now open. If you love our show, if you love what we do, what we stand for our values, our principles, the work that we put into this podcast, which we've been doing now for five and a half years, without any money or any—just for the love of it and for the passion of it. If you want to help support us and keep us going and want to get a whole lot of premium membership benefits, then head over to patron.lisatamati.com. I would love you to join our VIP tribe. That's patron.lisatamati.com. For the price of about a coffee a day or a little bit more, you can be involved. There's two tiers in there, with different levels of premium member benefits. And we would love you to join us there. So if you can please do.
Now today's superstar is Dr Elizabeth Yurth. And if you follow the podcast, you might have remember that name because she was on just a few weeks ago. And she is now one of my favorite teachers. I have been learning from her at the Bone Longevity Institute of Human Optimization Academy. And she is a brilliant teacher, and a brilliant orthopaedic surgeon and longevity expert. And she offers the world's most advanced research-based health care. And it's all customised to you. And the information that we're going to share with you today—today's topic if you like, is all around mitochondrial health. Now we do deviate a little bit because as we do in these conversations, we go off on a few tangents. But it is really all about understanding what your mitochondria are, why you need to know about it, how to keep them healthy, because these little bacteria if you like, and these little powerhouses of our cells are absolutely crucial to health and longevity.
And Dr Yurth says that the mitochondria, she thinks, are at the very basis of all diseases. So when these little guys go awry, that's when diseases come into play. And everything from cancer, chronic fatigue, to all of the diseases right across the spectrum can be affected by mitochondrial health. So we do a bit of a deep dive into that today. So I hope you enjoy this session with Dr Elizabeth Yurth. She's a lady who walks the talk. She's an incredibly amazing person, athlete, orthopaedic surgeon. She loves this. She breathes it the way she loves, as you know, in complete alignment with what she also teaches, so make sure you check out all her links in the show notes. Right.
Now before we go over to the show. Just want to also let you know about our NMN, our supplements. They’re longevity and anti-ageing supplement. We are into longevity. We are into health span. We are into increasing our lifespan and healthspan. So if you want to get into having—to boosting your NAD levels in your body, we've recently done a couple of episodes with Dr Elena Seranova on this topic, then head over to nmnbio.nz. And grab your NMN supplements over there to get your longevity regime underway.
And in today's podcast, we talk a little bit about this. We talk also about spermidine, which we've also mentioned in other podcasts. There are some amazing compounds out there that are going to help us stay healthier and longer. And there's a lot of techniques and things that we can actually engage in. We don't have to be passive bystanders to our ageing, we can do things about it, we can slow it down, and even reverse it in some places. So I hope you enjoy this episode. So do check out my Longevity Supplement over at nmnbio.nz. And enjoy today's show with Dr Elizabeth Yurth.
Lisa: Well, hi everyone and welcome back to Pushing The Limits. Super excited to have another wonderful guest that we've actually had on before and back by popular demand. That was a very, very popular episode. So I have Dr Elizabeth Yurth with me. Hi, Dr Yurth, how are you doing?
Dr Elizabeth Yurth: Lisa, thank you for having me again. I love being with you.
Lisa: Oh, it's just that, our last episode was just so full of information that I've had it on repeat going, for me, because there's so much in there and so many people have written and have been asking questions. So I want to get started by saying if after this interview, you want to talk to Dr Yurth and one of her team at the Border Longevity Institute, you can do that even when you're in New Zealand or Australia, you can do teleconsults. And yeah, so if you are facing some difficult health problem, and you really want some help, make sure you do that. And we'll have all the links in the show notes and so on. And before we get underway, there is a Bold Longevity of—what is it called, optimisation?
Dr Yurth: Human Optimization Academy, right? Yeah, from the Border Longevity site, or just go to bliacademy.com and sign up. But you guys have definitely signed up for that we actually are trying to really put together tons—and all the information you guys need to try. And you'll have one place where you can go get all of these things that we talked about, and all the things that Lisa talks about, and really be able to learn about them. Because as we know, doctors don't really learn this stuff very well. So you guys have to do it yourself. And so we're trying to give you a place to do. It's coming from a very experienced...
Lisa: Yeah, and if you want on the latest, so make sure bli.academy.com. And I'll put that in the show notes too guys, so you can find it.
Now today's subject is mitochondria, one of Dr Yurth’s favorite subjects. Okay, for starters, what is a mitochondria?
Dr Yurth: What's really so cool about mitochondria, right, is they're actually they were actually their own little bacteria. So they invaded us back when we were threatened to kind of moving from an anaerobic to an aerobic environment. So when we went from sort of anaerobic organisms to actually living in air, we couldn't do it. And so these little bacteria got into the cells, and they formed a symbiotic relationship, so that we could survive outside of water and air. And so they were responsible for us being able to move out of the ocean and into an air or an aerobic environment. Well, they're actually their own little organism. Right? I mean, that that is weird, right? That we have this essential part of our cell. Now our essential part of survival is actually its own organism.
And it was a one celled organism, it gone to formed a symbiotic relationship, it allowed the bacteria to survive living inside ourselves. And if we allowed ourselves to survive, so amazing. And that's why they're so unique is that they actually contain a whole genome that is separate from your nuclear genome, right? So they have a mitochondrial genome that's completely different. And it's only inherited from your mother. So that mitochondrial genome is not inherited from your father at all. It's probably one of the reasons your mother's health at the time, because even though the mitochondria has its own genome, that genome is impacted by things you do. So if I have a baby, and I'm super unhealthy, I've altered that mitochondrial genome. And then I've transferred that mitochondrial genome only from me—the dad was great and doing everything right—to my children. So that's one of the...
Lisa: So that’s the epigenetic…. Because I'm just about to go through IVF, as I said before, very interesting for me. So even though I'm going to have an egg donor...
Dr Yurth: You wanna make sure she’s healthy, right?
Lisa: Yeah, she's just—she is, and we've got her on everything. Her DNA is coming into the egg, but actually, my mitochondria will be a part of this baby, if we have one.
Dr Yurth: So you will alter—so basically, she's, you're going to be, the baby will have her mitochondrial DNA. But because you will be growing this baby, you will be altering that mitochondrial DNA by epigenetic influences that you're doing, right. So now you're going to be changing some of that DNA structure, or the genome of that mitochondria by things you're doing. The mitochondria, so even though it's coming in, and again, you want her to come in with this great mitochondrial DNA in the first place. Right? So we want this good genome in the first place, which is why you do want her to be healthy and fit and all those things. And younger.
But then you know all about the epigenetics, and so you're going to be potentially altering some of that, too. So that's one of the really amazing things. Now, what we used to think is, all the mitochondria did was do oxidative phosphorylation, and make energy, make ATP. And that's what they did. They were our energy powerhouse. That's all we ever learned, right? High school was like, ‘Oh, the powerhouse of the cell’.
So we now know, they do a whole lot more than that. So they're not just responsible for aerobic metabolism, and making ATP. So they're not just energy production. And in fact, there's the communication back and forth between the nucleus of ourselves and these mitochondrial DNA that's imperative to health. Well, I'm gonna make the case that actually every single disease, from cancer, to cardiovascular disease, everything related to ageing, osteoporosis, everything comes down to mitochondrial dysfunction.
Lisa: Wow. So this is pretty–
Dr Yurth: It's imperative and, and you're gonna start reading more about this, is that the key to fixing our health is going to be fixing the mitochondria. And we've already figured out like, you know, you I know you're big into NAD that, improving NAD and I know you have a product that does that. And that is— that's critical, right? To mitochondrial health. We know that's critical to mitochondrial health. But there's more to that story. And the big thing is that is that piece of communication, that mitochondria sends messages out to the nucleus, and the nucleus sends messages back to the mitochondria.
Lisa: Okay, so what are these messages that they’re sending backwards and forwards? And why does this have to do with the function of the mitochondria itself?
Dr Yurth: Well, there's, as the body goes through the oxidative phosphorylation pathway, that Krebs cycle, that cycle that makes energy, right. And we know that we create these free radicals. And that's been one of the big theories of ageing is this free radical theory of ageing, that mitochondria produce all these free radicals, as free radicals overwhelm the body, they damage cells, and we get damaged tore into our DNA? Hmm.
Lisa: So we all thought that antioxidants would be the answer, recommended…
Dr Yurth: Right. We just take a bunch of antioxidants into the mix, and you're going to be great, because now, all those free radicals, you're not going to have any damage. The problem is that we know that there's been this—the mitochondria has a very, has a way to handle this oxidative stress. So there's a few things that happen. Obviously, stress is really critical to the mitochondria’s health. So as it creates these free radicals, and and it's rust by things, it actually produces what are called mitochondrial peptides. So it has its own genome, right, that's now been activated by this stress. And it creates these—its own peptides that no other structure in your body can produce. So it's producing these little chains of amino acids.
And there's quite a few being developed now or that or that we were learning about, but the sort of the three main ones that we kind of have a pretty good knowledge about right now are something called MOTS-c. There's another one called humanin, and another one called SS-31. And those are what—the SS-31s, and a group of them are called small humanin-like peptides or SHLPs. Those peptides, so once the mitochondria is stressed, it encodes this DNA to say, ‘Oh, you need to go out there and tell the nucleus to do some good stuff’.
So these mitochondrial peptides now go outside of the mitochondria, and they tell the nucleus to to heal things and get stronger and do better. And then that sends messages back to the mitochondria. So that stress, that oxidative stress actually, it's just like, you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Lisa: And actually it’s a fact on this.
Dr Yurth: It’s really a fact that mitochondria health, that these medical peptides are imperative to health. In fact, humanin which were first developed actually was looking like a cure for Alzheimer's. And it may be really—well, it may be actually very, very baffling here, but very, very helpful in dementias and a lot of other diseases. We know that higher levels of humanin, people who live to be a hundred and above have much higher levels of humanin, so we know that these mitochondrial peptides, the higher they are, the healthier you are. No mitochondrial stress. If I just impound my body with antioxidants all the time, then I'm actually probably doing some damage. So cancer, right, so where—now again there, I can also overwhelm, right?
There's also another response, the mitochondria have, it's called the UPR, unfolded protein response. So as the mitochondria are stressed, and these damaged proteins that are produced when we're under stress, right, we get damaged or proteins, that's where we're kind of linking that to Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and some of the plaques that form...
Lisa: The tau proteins and things.
Dr Yurth: Yeah, yep. When the mitochondria is stressed, it actually sends messages out to the nucleus to activate what's called the UPR, the unfolded protein response. A little protein response actually takes these bad proteins and it strings them back out and makes them normal. Or it says, ‘These guys are so damaged. Let's just get rid of that mitochondria and initiate basically autophagy or mitophagy, eliminates the bad mitochondria that are too damaged. There's too many damaged proteins. We've overwhelmed the unfolded protein response’. Now it initiates this response to kill off the bad mitochondria.
See, if I'm just now taking a ton of antioxidants. Maybe I've blocked this response to get rid of all these bad proteins. Right. And I'm actually inducing more of these bad, abnormal proteins that are going to cause damage.
Lisa: I've talked on a couple of episodes with Dr Elena Seranova about—who is a molecular biologist on autophagy. And I think we talked about it too last time. So that's getting rid of the damaged proteins in the cells or in the mitochondria itself, getting rid of it. And we talked about fasting last time and how critical fasting is for autophagy in getting rid of these bad proteins and clearing things out.
So if we—so you're saying we can overwhelm this protein, and what do you call unfolding...
Dr Yurth: Unfolded protein response, UPR.
Lisa: Yeah, we can overwhelm it with too many antioxidants and actually stop it...
Dr Yurth: Stop the UPR from being activated. So now we don't actually kill it, we don't actually—either fix the damaged protein or get rid of the cells that are too damaged.
Lisa: Wow, okay. And so in this is this two-way communication between the mitochondria and the DNA, this is the nucleus of the cell. This is all within the—if we picture a big, nice fat round cell, and inside, you've got thousands of mitochondria per cell. And you've got the actual nucleus, which has that nice double helix, you see in the graph–
Dr Yurth: Where all the DNA is.
Lisa: –where the DNA, your code for life is–
Dr Yurth: Right.
Lisa: And these are talking backwards and forwards to each other to keep the health of the cell good. And then when we do autophagy, or mitophagy, we're getting rid of the damaged parts of the proteins that have been damaged through—is this through, so the damage that occurs in the cells is happening because of DNA breaks? And what are toxins and things like that, right?
Dr Yurth: Exactly, these reactive oxygen species that you know, they're starting to damage the DNA too much inside the mitochondria and creating abnormal proteins. Right? So now we've created these dysfunctional proteins that are going to do damage, so the body tries to get rid of them. And it's not, I'm not gonna say there's no place for antioxidants, right? But what you have to be careful of, is sort of cycling through phases where you're off of your antioxidants, and maybe inducing more autophagy, right. So we now want a little more oxidative stress to induce this healing response to give the cell some stress, and then maybe going on antioxidants for a little while to make sure that we don't ever have too many.
Lisa: Yeah, if you've gotten a lot of antioxidants, or sorry, or oxidative stress, because maybe you're exercising a heck of a lot or you've had an infection, or you've got something other high stress...
Dr Yurth: You eat like crap, or you're fat or… Then you might need extra antioxidants. And just to support the baseline of your functional health. But even those people, right, need them off and on, they should not be constantly. They should do phases, right? They should cycle it. I'm just a big advocate with diet, with exercise with everything, everything's done so quickly. Because we want to go through phases all the time, where we're getting rid of bad stuff, and then regrowing and getting rid of bad stuff and regrowing. Right?
It’s just like cleaning your house. You got to get rid of all the crap, but then you're gonna…
Lisa: Bring the new groceries.
Dr Yurth: Yeah, right. It's get cluttered again. And then you got to go clean it all out again, and things get cluttered again. Yeah, I mean, that's the world's clutter wouldn't happen, but it does, right. Even the most pristine non hoarder person, there's still clutter that happens, and you still have to do your spring clean outs.
And that's—so I like to think about the body in the same way, you know, going into the spring clean outs where you go through a big autophagy phase where you're fasting, we're using hydro spermidine, where you're using things that will help to really clear out all the bad cells, all these damage, mitochondria that are producing too many reactive oxygen species, right? And then going through growth phases, where where I'm now maybe I'm inducing a little bit more toxic stress, I'm exercising harder, I'm lifting more weights, I'm running more, right, I'm inducing more oxidative stress. Maybe I'm eating more calories during that time. Now there's more oxidative stress cells a little bit stressed that actually initiate some growth and some healing. Right. And then I can do the same thing over and over again.
But there's really interesting new research leads when you kind of look at ‘Okay, well, how does this all make sense’? So it's probably going to come down more to this. This is what's called the MPTP or mitochondrial permeability transition pore. And what they've now found is that that's probably where we need to focus is this little pore is letting stuff in back and forth through the mitochondria. So the right amount of things get through. So we know this little pore opens and closes. As we're in worse health, or older, it stays open longer, allowing more bad things to go In and out. So it's designed to open periodically, closed periodically. So for brief periods.
So what a lot of focus now is on anti-ageing. And mitochondrial health is focusing a little bit on this mitochondrial transition pore. In fact, there's a really cool study just came out where they're actually taking out these mitochondria and actually changing the pore structure for treating cancer. So they can actually make the pores in these cancer cells more permeable, so they can get drugs with a little nanobot that's poking holes in the mitochondria.
But on our home base, is what we really would rather do is keep these little mitochondrial transition pores closed most of the time, let them open periodically. So there's some interesting things that do that, melatonin does that? Oh, so higher dose melatonin seems to work primarily on this pore to actually regulate keeping it closed more often. So it’s spermidine, that's one way spermidine induces cellular or mitochondrial biogenesis is by restoring this pore structure.
Lisa: And we're big into augmenting spermidine. I've just got my first shipment, I'm working on getting that down here guys.
Dr Yurth: Spermidine is kind of amazing. Because it really is so good for mitophagy, getting rid of bad mitochondria, but also mitochondrial biogenesis probably because it does focus a little bit more on this pore. Making more mitochondria, right. Right, make more mitochondria, we need more mitochondria.
The other thing interesting, I don't know how many of—how you or your listeners have looked at things like minocycline, right? Antibiotic, we always think antibiotics are bad, right? Yeah. Well, interestingly, minocycline and doxycycline. And minocycline is a little bit better, probably actually has a very nice anti-ageing effect, used periodically, to actually close off these pores, and let the cell kind of develop and grow more than mitochondria grow more. So minocycline has a really distinct effect on the mitochondrial transition pore as well, for this permeability pore. So there are a few simple things that you can use, and I like.
Lisa: And it doesn't want your good microbes and stuff when you take them.
Dr Yurth: You know, definitely antibiotics have the downside of changing the gut microbiome. And we know that there's downsides to that, which is why you're not going to stem minocycline all the time. But like anything, it appears to have some very significant benefits in our cell health. So by doing that, maybe twice a year, doing like a 10-day course of minocycline, you can actually restore cell health. Now, after that, do you have to really work on gut health? Probably depends on how bad your gut is. So if my gut is super healthy, it's probably gonna regenerate, divide, right? Otherwise, it would, I have a lot and I know you're really interested in some gut microbiome stuff. Because you're gonna be a really—you're gonna see a really big connection coming up here soon between the gut microbiome and mitochondria even. But we know the gut microbiome is most affected by butyrate.
So using tributyrate, which is sort of pre-butyrate that can turn to be right in your intestine. So if I had somebody on an antibiotic, do I throw—I'm just gonna throw probiotics into the mix? Well, no, because the probiotics aren't gonna survive. So what you have to do is first throw butyrate into the mix. Remember what the good bacteria in our gut do that we eat fiber? The anaerobic bacteria. Turn that fiber into butyrate. Butyrate has all these far reaching effects. Number one, it's imperative for the colonocytes, the colon cells to be healthy, that's what they—that's what they use for energy is butyrate. So they're different from your other cells, they use butyrate for energy. So when they use butyrate, for energy, I have these nice healthy colonocytes, they create a nice anaerobic environment where my anaerobes can thrive. And they can make more butyrate. And you have this nice cycle.
But butyrate has some really interesting effects. There was a great study for your distance runners using butyrate to increase performance. Because higher levels of gut butyrate also seemed to help the cell, the mitochondria, and actually produce you actually, were able to use the butyrate for fatty acid oxidation and actually improve aerobic metabolism by having higher levels of butyrate.
Lisa: Was it like yeah, the athletes with keto. Yeah, because butyrate is like, isn't butter got butyrate in it? Or am I? Butyrate, butter.
Dr Yurth: Oh, butter. So butter does have butyrate in it, yes. So you can even increase butyrate by eating a whole lot of butter. You'd be—so your medium chain triglycerides, the short chain fatty acids do have butyric acid in them. The problem with when you eat butyric acid, when you eat butyrate, it doesn't really reach this lower intestine very well. Okay, and so even though it has some benefits, probably some other places, you really have to get the gut bacteria. And so the only way to really get butyrate to the lower intestine is either to take a pre-butyrate form, which is I like tributyrin, one has research behind it, or to use it rectally. So that's the other thing you can do is use it rectally.
Lisa: Okay, then that gets direct into the colon and then can get the right to the cells there.
Dr Yurth: Yeah, and this actually has a genetic—do you remember your PGC alpha gene? So when you get hired to get butyrate, you actually upregulate PGC alpha. And that's one of the things that improves aerobic endurance in your long distance athletes. You can actually—they did a study with butyrate on improving endurance in sort of your distance runners, your higher level endurance athletes, and besides, it's significant improvements. Also in race horses. Same thing.
So butyrate does affect mitochondria in other places, including skeletal muscle, and around that. So there is this big connection that we're just learning about between the gut microbiome and mitochondria. So if I'm going to put somebody into minocycline. I'm going to also make sure I have them on tributyrate so I'm keeping that nice anaerobic metabolism going. I'm making sure I'm getting butyrate to myself. Now I've repaired the mitochondria. I've given it another source to work better. And I'm going to have overall better endurance, better health, better aerobic metabolism. Better Vo2max.
Lisa: Yeah, wow, that's just crazy. So butyrate—but if we just taking butyric acid or in through butter or that type of thing. Brother just arrived in the background. It’s all good. Podcast life. At least the cat’s not running from down as well.
So butyric acid, when I take it in the form of say medium chain triglycerides or butter and stuff, it's not going to help my colonocytes and my colon, but I still get through to the mitochondria and help.
Dr Yurth: Yeah. I mean, there's significant benefits to it, but you really want to replenish the butyrate in the lower intestine, where you really need that for overall health. You really have to either do it rectally, or take it as a pro butyrate or a pre-butyrate form or tributyrin–
Lisa: Tributyrin. I'll put that in the links.
Dr Yurth: You know what is interesting, my patients who have the worst, now are the sickest, like I take care tributyrate. I have no problems with it. I'm fine. I feel good and most people. But if you're sick or not well or have a bad gut and you take it, you'll feel pretty miserable. Because you actually can't turn it into butyrate very well and it actually causes a lot of GI distress. So some of those really sick people the only way to replenish butyrate first is to do a rectal suppository. So you can get rectal suppositories of butyrate right. You do like a high dose, like two grams of a rectal suppository, butyrate, replenish the butyrate then you throw like a spore probiotic or probiotic and now I've created this nice anaerobic environment I've replaced the good bacteria. Now actually they do fine as a maintenance with the tributyrate now that I've restored the gut health.
For people who are not well, and I'll tell you, if any of you patients or your people, you talk to your clients, you talk to them use him take tributyrin, and they get they're like, ‘Oh, I'm nauseous, I can't take it’, or ‘Gives me diarrhea’, but it's because they have a bad gut and you've got to work, you know, right? Yeah. So tells you, right, that you need to replenish the butyrate. And again, the only way to do is rectally.
Lisa: Can you buy that as a consumer without a doctor who's until….
Dr Yurth: But there is a company and I don't know that, here in the US that's called MitoZen. That does make a pro-butyrate, it's a suppository. It's a two-week course, you have a high dose butyrate and it's actually pretty cool as a spore biotic mixed in. So I use that product a lot. It's on the pricey side like all this stuff. But I really find like a two week course of it. People do pretty well. All you do is two weeks of it, and then you can get them into the oral much less expensive form. The rectal butyrate smells bad. One of my patients, like ‘All my dogs are following me everywhere’. Other people—when you're doing I don't think other people can smell it on you but you can kinda smell it when you do it. It’s kind of like urine. Some people don't like the smell of, I don't mind the smell of that, but some people say they don't like the smell of that either.
Lisa: Okay, men and tributyrate, so if he’s not really sick, so if they’re really sick. So if you've got something like Crohn's disease, or IBS, or something–
Dr Yurth: Those people you wanna do the rectal, and they do amazing. I will tell you, they do amazing. There's a big stage just coming out with Crohn's being a mitochondrial disorder, too. It's got mitochondrial disorder, but IBS, your SIBO patients, you put them on the rectal butyrate, two weeks so that they do absolutely amazing. Honestly, it's incredible how well they do in a lot of illnesses. I mean, it's been our go to for a whole lot of different disorders. And it's amazing how well it works. As you're learning the gut is everything. And now we're learning it may even be imperative to the mitochondria.
Lisa: So how does it connect with mitochondria? So that piece here I've sort of like, haven't quite got in my head. How does—like you said, mitochondria are the basis of health, because they are the ones that are producing the energy for the cell, talking to the nucleus, they're causing this cascade of different events in the cell. They're actually producing ATP, which is our energy. So if you look at things like say, as you get older, your EGFR goes down, your function of your kidneys, in other words, starts to deteriorate. And this is, as an ultra endurance athlete, we smash the crap out of my kidneys with rhabdomyolysis a hundred times. I've had real battles getting my EGFR back up and managed it to quite a good degree, but it's still a problem. And as we get older, we sort of lose about 1% a year they say, of kidney function.
So then it’s just another example of it's actually the mitochondria that in this case, and the kidney cells that are not able to do their energy production to do what the kidney cells should be doing. So how can we reverse that train and get our kidneys working in this case, or our brain or in another case, or heart cells? All of these areas are affected by the mitochondrial function. And how does that link connect to the gut situation?
Dr Yurth: So it connects to the butyrate because what butyrate does, at the mitochondrial level, is increases PGC-1 alpha and AMPK. And so you're, you're inducing on a genetic basis, a better oxidative capacity, right? So you're restoring the oxidative capacity to the cell, the mitochondria healthier. And so it's really working—the butyrate and searching fatty acids are really working on a genetic level, probably primarily at PGC-1alpha, I think we'll probably find more and more because this is very new. But it looks like that PGC-1 alpha is where it's happening is a very distinct effect on mitochondria. And then the AMPK through the ACC pathway.
So basically, I think, if you think about it, probably from your training and everything, think about it as an epigenetic influence changing genetic output, right. So that's probably where the short term fatty acids are working in terms of mitochondrial health, I think there's going to be more to that story. You're right, kidney disease brain to these, everything comes down to we have to have mitochondrial health. So exactly what you said, first, have a healthy gut, let's replace the butyrate. Because we know that that's important for those pathways, then, what we have to do is go through phases where we really induce mitophagy. That's where you're fasting and your spermidine comes in, right. So we've got to basically induce, get rid of all the bad mitochondria. So that's gonna induce mitophagy right. So get rid of all the bad stuff.
And then we want to do more of a build up phase. So what I'll do is all patients go through different courses, 6-12 weeks of really kind of more real time food restrictions, and using spermidine at a higher dose, and I'll get them sort of clean slate right. Now I want to regrow and that's where I want to actually regrow in. So I'm gonna have them now, get a little bit less out of eat a little bit more a little less calorie deficit, I want to create a little bit of oxidative stress because now I'm going to induce those humanin-like peptides, those mitochondrial peptides, my MOTS-c, SS-31, the small humanin-like peptides, humanin itself. So we know that those are so imperative for ageing, and that when those peptides are released, they induce your nucleus to have a healthier genome. So now I'm going to have everything else be healthier, because it's going to send messages back to the mitochondria, mitochondria is going to be healthy, but then that's gonna get overwhelmed after a while. So then we go back into our, you know.
So when you think of things that way, always that sort of breakdown-cleanup, breakdown-cleanup, kind of an easier way to live right? Don't get bored. Always live in this super restricted capacity.
Lisa: Especially with calorie restriction and things.
Dr Yurth: Yeah, like caloric restriction and right eating very low calories. Yeah.
Lisa: It makes you miserable too.
Dr Yurth: That’s right. And so when you can tell—when you tell people listen, I want you to do this for 12 weeks, and then we're gonna let you kind of, you know, have a little me, I'm not gonna tell them go eat cake, but we're gonna be able to, you know, do a little bit more and go through growth phases. And people feel better, and they look better and they have more muscle mass, if you're always in that AMPK state right, that break down, but not really break down state but that more longevity stat, more catabolic state more, yeah. Which is good for longevity, right? But when you look at those people, they always look so healthy. I'll look at someone's people. And you're like, I mean, sometimes they don't have much muscle mass, their hair is thinner. So we do want to go through these phases where we allow the body to kind of grow a little bit, right, especially if you want some muscle, we know that muscle is imperative to health.
And thenI think we're sort of in the long term now they've got the mitochondria in this good homeostatic balance state where I've gotten it, but how do I keep that reactive oxygen species as low as possible? That's going to be where you look at them. That mitochondrial transitional pore, where, how do I keep that balance? And I think that's where maybe a lower dose spermidine every day, like one or two tablets every day of spermidine but I love melatonin for that purpose.
Lisa: I wanted to come back to melatonin. So I understood like melatonin—I was a little bit hesitant to take melatonin because it can change or can fix your circadian rhythms and so on. But after listening to you a couple of times talking about melatonin, why is it not a problem then? Do we take it at nighttime? And what sort of dosages do we need to take?
Dr Yurth: It’s interesting. I mean, we will dose—so for my osteoarthritis patients who have, for instance, high levels, most patients who have diffuse arthritis, or degenerative discs have very high levels of a cytokine called interleukin 1 beta. Interleukin 1 beta is very damaging in mitochondria, that's probably one of the reasons you get cell death and, and your chondrocytes all die off. So one of the things we know blocks interleukin 1 beta is higher dose melatonin. We also know that that's very anti-cancer, right? Probably for the same reason it's creating this balance, this homeostatic reaction in the mitochondria. So I actually like, in those patients, high dose melatonin, a high dose melatonin sounds interesting. Unlike the lower dose melatonin, it sometimes actually has more of a stimulating effect. But it actually does help restore your own circadian balance at a higher dose.
I have a lot of people who take it in the morning, because if they take it at night, they actually are stimulated by it. If you take in the morning, they're sleepy at bedtime, and they sleep through the night. While I'm working with your own. Your super charismatic nucleus and tinea, we're kind of brain level, a kind of balance you back out.
Lisa: So what sort of level is like, I'm at the moment, just me personally, anecdotally, I'm taking a five milligram dose of melatonin at night time to optimise my sleep. And is that a low dose? Is that or is that a high? Yeah, what is the high dose?
Dr Yurth: So high dose is like 20 milligrams. We use the high doses in our people who have osteoarthritis primarily, cancer, we use high dose melatonin, especially your breast cancer patients will use high dose melatonin. So we'll use that, you know, as a trigger adjunct. Not always, you really have to kind of work with people, there's people who do great take in at night. One of my sons does great, it's 20 milligrams of melatonin at night. Sleeps through the night and wake up early in the morning. Me, I actually take it in the morning. If I take it at night, I'm wide awake all night. But if I take in the morning, I have a really nice, good sleep with good deep sleep on my Oura ring. I get a good hour and a half of deep sleep. So it seems very different in different people and how it's interacted. And I'm sure that has to do a lot with kind of genetic, what are your clock genes? So I think that that probably has a little bit of a genetic influence. And I do have people who just don't follow—can only tolerate very low dose. You know, but we're finding more and more reasons to be very cautious with oh, you don't really want to take more than three to five milligrams of melatonin. Yeah, really finding that the higher doses seem to have a very advantageous effect on...
Lisa: Without putting your body clock out. You're super right.
Dr Yurth: Actually, potentially really benefiting your body clock, your circadian rhythm, which is critically important. And right now, that's one of the sort of easy things we can do that we know is going to be working. And as I said, I think what—it's going to come down to when we look at this mitochondria, it's not going to be trying to figure out what is my perfect dose of antioxidants. It's gonna be figuring out how do I get that mitochondria with the pores, letting the good stuff in, letting the bad stuff out?
Yeah, in the right sequence because we know that, for instance, cancer cells that port stays open all the time. There's this very imbalance in this other mitochondria are really getting all this stuff all the time. So we know that a huge factor to health is trying to restore this normal port. I think that we're—there's a drug that's coming out. I can't remember the name of it. Yeah, I can't remember the name of it, but that will probably be actually really, if we can get it will be actually really interesting. It's actually coming out for the treatment of ALS. But that looks like it might be really helpful for that pore.
Lisa: They’re shutting the mitochondrial pore.
Dr Yurth: Yeah, I mean, if that will be something we can get. I don't know. But we'll find more things. Like I said, I think minocycline is a really nice thing to go to, like twice a year, I'll use a 10-day minocycline course, really benign.
Lisa: Minocycline. How do you spell it?
Dr Yurth: So, minocycline, M-I-N-O-C-Y-C-L-I-N-E. Cheap antibiotics. I mean, it's like a $10 antibiotic. Right. And that has, but it has really—and it's been looked at in the anti-ageing field for a while, but we kind of weren't so clear of its effect on the mitochondria. Well, now we actually have found it's actually working on this pore, to actually balance out and keep the pore closed more, which is what you really want. When we're young, the pore is not open as much as it does when we’re old, there's less bad stuff coming through the mitochondria.
Lisa: So itis getting porous, isn't it? So basically, the membrane is getting porous.
Dr Yurth: Exactly, that's probably where—like some of the mitochondria peptides like SS-31, which was the cardia lipid membrane, which helps them that endoplasmic reticulum inside the mitochondria to be healthy. So that's why peptides like that are so beneficial.
Lisa: Yeah, yeah. And there's lots of, you know, we can't get these fancy peptides, unfortunately, that easily. The caveolae pan is an enzyme that is a very important enzyme for us. It's a stabilising enzyme, isn't it? So, we want more of this and this is what one of these peptides is right. And so hopefully, there's going to be more research around that and more drugs even coming out around that.
Dr Yurth: Yeah, and remember that one of the ways we induce some of these mitochondrial peptides is exercise. Right? MOTS-c is a little bit of stress for our body, right and so it reduces the mitochondria to produce some of these mitochondrial peptides. MOTS-c which is kind of considered exercise in a bottle because you can actually give at least mice you can give them MOTS-c— basically this mitochondrial peptide and it acts just like exercise.
Lisa: Exercise hermetic.
Dr Yurth: Yeah. So it's very cool. Of course, it's very expensive and... But way cheaper to go exercise, but it's a nice thing to offer people who can't exercise for some reason. Like, you'll have an injury or elderly people who are just so sarcopenic and trying to get them to do anything until you build a little bit of muscle is almost impossible. So things like that are going to be really nice in that realm as peptides like MOTS-c.
There's a whole company here that is actually just working on these mitochondrial peptides as drugs for treating things like this. Right now, we know that one of the best ways to produce MOTS-c is to exercise, stimulates your mitochondria to be a little stressed. Mitochondria produces more MOTS-c. MOTS-c helps with glucose metabolism, it helps with fat loss, it helps with turning white fat into brown fat helps. It helps with kind of overall aero metabolism.
Lisa: Just briefly on that. What is white fat versus brown adipose tissue, you know, brown fat? And why is brown metabolically active?
Dr Yurth: Yeah, so you know, white fats what—that fat we get as we get older and you know, it's really doing nothing beneficial. Brown fat is what little kids have, right? Brown fats—we look at babies or you look at little kids and they have that little chubbiness. Well, that's usually brown fat. Why? You know, maybe boys made fun because I'm always cold and so I'm way overdressed. My kids, but little kids don't get nearly as cool. We don't have to like them quite so bundled up as we do, because they're really covered with brown fat, which is metabolically active, that's what it was designed for. And when you're born you have this brown fat, you can stay warm. I mean, really, we were meant for survival, right? These babies who are born, they need something to keep them you know. Also there when you were caveman and you were just laying there in the cave, you survived.
So brown fat is metabolically active, it's helping for warmth and heat production. It's actually burning calories. White fat is what we get as we get older and we just eat too much and we sit around too much. And all it does is coat our organs and do nothing beneficial. So brown fat actually you can convert white adipose to brown adipose, so you can turn it into metabolically active tissue. Then you're actually going to be able to burn more calories and you'll be way more metabolically active. You actually want brown fat. You can convert white fat to brown fat. You know, and that's probably does come down to—that's one of the things that when you looked at butyrate it was one of the places that butyrate actually worked was actually helping to convert more brown fat and white fat. So there was a big problem putting people on butyrate can really help with fat loss using butyrate and if you're overweight people who are all have metabolic their guts are horrible. Yeah, uterine those patients can really help with fat loss.
Lisa: I just had Dr Austin Perlmutter on you know, probably… And he was talking about the white fat cells, the visceral fat cells having not a consciousness but they have an ulterior motive to keep themselves alive. So they seem that all these—make you hungrier, send out inflammatory compounds and so on to make sure that they stay alive. They end up killing the host in the end. But like a cancer cell, they although they have their own agenda independent of what was actually healthy for your body. So they don't want you to do fasting. They don't want you to do any of these things, because they're not going to get knocked
off.
Dr Yurth: Yeah, I mean, fat is metabolically active too. Remember it converts—fat cells have—they convert testosterone to estrogen. So men who are fatter will start converting all their testosterone into estrogen. So it's one of the places that that we have, you know, aromatase is inside fat cells. White men tend to have bigger breasts, and you know, is that fat cells actually are converting very mostly into this bad estrogen. So even your testosterone, you put them on testosterone, a lot of them just convert it to estrogen.
Lisa: Wow. So that's independent of your innate genetic pathway for your hormones.
Dr Yurth: Fat cells have aromatase. Fat cells have aromatase.
Lisa: Oh, wow, that's—I didn't realise that. I mean, I thought your genetic pathway was your genetic pathway. And you'll be converting your testosterone to estrogen is more if you have that genetic predisposition.
Dr Yurth: It's certainly genetic there. But yes, that fat guys have breasts, right? You look at breasts because they're very estrogenic. And so if you try and get—if you take some of your overweight males, and you put them on testosterone without using things to block estrogen or getting rid of fat first, then you just keep making more estrogen, making more fat. They’re making it worse, right?
Lisa: So okay, so it's not just to do with your genetic pathway, but also to do with how much fat you have. And the more fat tissue the more estrogenised you’ll be. That's in the new—okay. So that's why. Because you see, a lot of young people nowadays are thinking over probably growing up with less quality food than what we grew up with in our generation, seem to be more estrogenised and have more of these issues, and the actual body shape, the phenotype, the way it secretes, is this more estrogenised than past generations?
Dr Yurth: We're seeing a lot of twenty-year olds who come in, who have high estrogen levels, low testosterone levels. I think drugs have to do with that, too. I mean, here in Colorado, we have legal marijuana, which is unfortunately not very good for testosterone.
Lisa: Oh, wow. I didn’t know that either. Marijuana is not good for testosterone.
Dr Yurth: It's not good for testosterone levels at all. And then our food, right, bisphosphonates all these things that are so we're seeing this you know, these really young guys with testosterone levels that that you're a god awful.
Lisa: And then estrogen levels higher than the...
Dr Yurth: Estrogen levels that are high, right?
Lisa: Yeah, I just did my estrogen levels and my—I know mine are low because I'm going through menopause and so on. And I was looking at my husband's and I was thinking, ‘Oh, it was about…’
Dr Yurth: You do start good to see that right. You start to see that these men—these older man look like woman, it switches. Yeah. You know, and they start taking on more female build, right? They get the bigger breasts and bigger bellies and they start getting this more female build to them.
Lisa: I mean, I've had lots of things so that it's not it's you, going the other way and there's testosterone is good and bad. Yeah, that is what you see in older and older men is that tendency to go and eat. It's really really hard to get testosterone replacement therapy or hormone replacement therapy for men or—for woman a little bit easier. They've seen you know, the doctor seems... I am willing to give it to woman but well, this integrated medical fraternity for bioidentical hormone replacement? And, you know, it's so easy...
Dr Yurth: It kind of kills me because I get this—we're putting together this course called what to fix for us to kind of help people. In this journey of getting healthy, what do I do? Because I'm overwhelmed. And as I was putting together, I was like, ‘Okay, well, you start with exercise’. And that's it. No, actually, you kind of have to start with hormones. Because if I take somebody who has no testosterone, and no hormones, they have no progesterone, so they can't sleep, they have no testosterone, this is both men and women. So you know that their joints hurt, because there's progesterone receptors on joints, they've no testosterone. So trying to get them to go into the gym, and is impossible.
So for me to say, follow a good diet, do exercise without replacing hormones. It's really kind of not right, right. I mean, as I was putting together a talk, I said, you know, actually, the first thing I do is get these people hormone stabilised, because then I'm going to go to motivate another, their testosterone levels are good, they feel more motivated, they're going to build muscle, they're going to lose fat, they're going to feel like they can actually exercise, you know, they’re making progress, they can sleep. And that starts young.
And so to listen to, you know, your story of people not being able to get access to these things, and just, you know, it is almost criminal in my mind. To just say, you know, well just eat better and go exercise. Well, you can’t get it like that, right. You can't, right. You can't get out of bed much less go to the gym.
Lisa: And I know you'd like in my life, you know, when I was doing ultra marathon running and doing absolutely ridiculous amounts of training, I got fatter, because my hormones were going out of whack and my adrenals were totally, yeah, and fluid retention, and so on. And so, it's so counterintuitive, and now I train, it’s still hard, but it's short. And I'm not knocking the crap out of my hormones, and I'm on hormone replacement therapy. And, and I can get leaner on a 10th of what I was doing. So it's not all about exercise. In that case, I should have been skinny before and I shouldn't be so now.
Dr Yurth: Yeah, it's not, you know, I mean, obviously, exercise is critical, but not—you don't have to be doing extreme exercise. What I’m really trying to get across is just sensible stuff. We just did a thing about just taking a walk after dinner, right? The metabolic control of taking a walk after... Nobody does it. But it makes a huge difference in fat storage. And so there's some simple things you can do. You know, we always talked about all these big, you know, cool things and that are amazing. Yeah, peptides and hyperbaric and all that cool stuff. But there's some really simple things that cost nothing.
Lisa: So let's talk about that briefly. Because the blood sugar levels we're talking about in this case. So regulating your blood sugar is absolutely crucial. And nobody like—when I talk to the average person around me and clients and so on, that I'm working with, none of them have even ever taken their blood sugar once. Or maybe the doctors done at once every year and they don't understand the—and this is what I take constant glucose monitors. I mean, I want to get one, one year.
Dr Yurth: Pricey. But they're cool.
Lisa: Exactly. Yeah. Again, it's always a matter of where to put my results first. Constant glucose monitors give you that feedback of where your blood sugars are, what's causing them to go up and it's not just food by the way, it can be your emotions and your stress levels and so on and get like—I've been taking—I you know, prick my finger 10 times a day just to see where I'm at and to keep an eye on it.
Funny story: I thought I was getting, I was becoming diabetic, right? Because I was getting up in the morning and my blood sugar levels were very high. And I was like, ‘What the hell you know, I'm really slim’. What's going on? And I've been through a very stressful time and I thought maybe that's it. I've been doing in the morning cold showers and then Wim Hof sort of breathing. I was getting my blood sugar levels high, which is fine for the…
Dr Yurth: ...short periods. Fine, right. And again, those of those little stresses mean is that what about the mitochondria? Right? That's one of the things that causes mitochondrial biogenesis is that cold shower for the same reason. That little bit of stress, like I said, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And that's what that cold shower, the cryo does or you know, just taking that two minute cold shower. It creates that little shock response to mitochondria like ‘Shit!’, and they start producing more mitochondrial peptides which creates more mitochondrial biogenesis. So, you are right and just like the blood glucose going up, these little temporary stressors are good for us. It's the big long stressors that aren't.
Lisa: Yeah, and so regulating our blood sugar is really porting and understanding what does that and I just found out that doing that tumor breathing in the morning and stuff does. And that's fine. It's a great old story. So that's for a specific reason. And for my cortisol levels to go up in the morning isn't a bad thing, because that helps… etcetera, etc. But I did panic thinking that I was hitting towards diabetes. ‘I don’t want to see peptide tiers? Because I must have type one because I can't even type two’. And it's just a funny story.
But when you're measuring these things, you can actually see what things are doing. Yeah, like you might eat a banana thinking a banana is a healthy food, but it seems your blood sugars right through the roof. And when you know that you're going to avoid bananas. You know?
Dr Yurth: I mean, I think they're going to be sort of a critical piece to understand because, you know, it is hard to figure that out. I mean, there are things that like, in certain people, you can't figure out why their blood sugar is out of control. It could be very specific activity or something like that. That's doing it. So I do love the CGM. I wish they weren't so expensive. I wish there was some access to them. You know, it was not so pricey, because, you know, again, that's like $400 a month for the CGM.
Lisa: You can't afford it, and so many people.... And we could be like, this is like, for me from a regulatory perspective wouldn't that be great if we did this prevention stuff. And then we wouldn't have so many people with diabetes, because diabetes is the entranceway to cardiovascular problems, and urine, and all the rest of it. This is why blood sugar levels are really, really important.
So one of the things that Dr Yurth did recently was to challenge everybody listening out there on Instagram, when you've had your evening meal, or your big, big meal at lunch is big, to go for a 20 minute walk after, a 10 minute walk even. And that will actually slow the release, so you won't get that big sugar spike. And so I've started instigating that as well.
Dr Yurth: It’s so easy, right? And it's really nice and peaceful. My family took everything to drag them out. But you know, it was like, because of COVID, my kids are done at home. And you know, and but we don't talk, we don't see each other. And actually these little walks at night, were such a nice thing. I say that I got them to do for the week, and then we're done.
Lisa: But there are a couple of other things that we can do to lower our blood sugar levels. What do you think about things like Vanadyl and cinnamon and chromium and these sorts of things that can actually lower blood sugar levels as well, just to help you….
Dr Yurth: They can work really—honestly I used them a ton. I tell people just to use you liberally you can use it until, you know. I think chromium works on some people really well. And some people not so well, there's probably a bit of a genetic basis, or just if you're depleted it kind of basis to that. So that can be really helpful for glucose maintenance too. I do think people forget about cinnamon, put some on your coffee, put some on your oatmeal, but you know, you know it.
And then I just did a little Instagram thing yesterday, because there's a very interesting study that came out from American Diabetes Association of eating your protein before your carbs. So if you've got a plate with broccoli, and a little piece of bread, and some grilled chicken, what they did was they took people and they had them for one week, eat the protein first, actually at the car person, their salad and their bread first and then the protein. And then they measured blood glucose and insulin levels at 30-60-120 minutes. The next week, they did the opposite. They ate the chicken first. So the protein first and then the carb, the impact was 40% difference in blood glucose and insulin levels at 120 minutes. And the people went just by eating the protein…
Lisa: That makes sense, right? Proteins a little harder to break down.
Dr Yurth: So you start the digestive process and you know, yeah. Very simple, right? So if you're going to eat some carbs, if you're eating and remember carbs, even your vegetables, that you're gonna have lot less glucose impact and insulin impacts simply by eating the protein first and then in the carb. Or if you want to have something—I mean, what do we do right here in the US, at least we eat our salad first and then you know, hey, then we're eating the breadbasket. And then we eat our chicken last. Switching that around, so even if you're gonna have your little bread, your little ciabatta roll or something, you eat that after you finished your protein, and eat that last there was much less glucose in that.
Lisa: Wow. And then this is also true for fat and sugars. And I mean, not that we're advocating but if you having Coca Cola or some terrible drink my bed versus—which you shouldn't, I'm not saying that but—versus having an ice cream. Because the fat is in the ice cream, it will slow the response to the sugar compared...
Dr Yurth: Exactly, right. You’re actually, right. You're better off eating something like fatty sugar loaf than you are just eating a Coke. Which is why Coke is so bad for you. It's just so bad. Yeah, those are just easy things, right?
Lisa: Oh, yeah. I'm never—I'd sort of—what about enzymes like a lot of people are dealing with not having enough betaine, hydrochloric acid. Not enough digestive enzymes from the pancreas. And some of this is genetic. And some of this is age related, not breaking the proteins down and so on. Is there a rule of thumb without having tests and testing for all your pancreatic enzymes and so on.
Dr Yurth: There's some evidence that—maybe like the gut, a lot of things start with dysfunction and bile acids. In fact, one of my friends who's a physician, or medical practitioner, that takes care of a lot of very sick ALS patients, really has a belief that things really begin with the dysfunction of the bile level, you know, the bile acid level, and that we really do need to focus on that more. And I love betaine, you know, and I will—in any of my patients who are sick, or who have kind of more neuromuscular weakness, things like that, or I'm building muscle, I will always focus a little bit on, even if you're not testing digestive enzymes, I'll focus on actually having them use a digestive enzyme. So using just the sort of mass proteases and lipases and using that with their meals, because I do think there's a piece of that we are way overlooking in a lot of people. And that may be the start up of a whole lot of diseases. Is that that level?
Lisa: Yeah, yeah. That makes sense to me. Because when you look at the protein levels, a lot of people or you know, working with a lot of athletes, of course, you're stressing yourself—a lot of repair and so on, having enough protein in the body…
Dr Yurth: Having it low in a lot of people, right.
Lisa: And you're given a new globe and are very important for longevity. And it's not always related just to what you've eaten, but the right function. But having optimised protein breakdown, so the amino acids, so a lot of—I think I've mentioned this before, but I had Dr David Minkoff on the show who's a really amazing doctor. And he has a product called Perfect Aminos that I've got a lot of my athletes on. And that just breaks down within 20 minutes into the body into the amino acid. So if they've got problems with absorption, they can't digest steak very well, they can at least get these perfect tomatoes, and they can get through and do their jobs specifically within a 20 minute time period. The recoveries that I've seen from injuries just from taking the Perfect Aminos blend has been fantastic.
I had a ripped hamstring performance and just your injury for five years and couldn't—oh, we have to have surgery and so on. I was on the Perfect Amino for a few weeks, and it was gone. So this is a big piece. Because if you're not absorbing your proteins, you're not going to be repairing a heck of a lot.
Dr Yurth: Curious to see how many people to—if you actually just went back that butyrate gut microbiome level, how much then that would sort of downplay into the—I think you probably want to tap on both—but I do wonder how many people you might, if you if you get the gut, the microbiome healthy again. And again, you guys are just throwing probiotics in the mix is not gonna work, you've got to get the colonocyte healthy. The only way that I do that is to fix butyrate. For please remember that remember nothing else. I see all people throwing tons of probiotics, I see doctors all the time say, ‘Oh, just take a probiotic’, the good bacteria, the anaerobes can't survive. Unless there's butyric acid, that for the colonocytes to have a nice healthy colon. So you're just throwing things in that aren't going to survive. You've got to fix butyrate and then you can throw the probiotics in if you want. But I do wonder how much—if you fix that how much the digestive process would correct or not? I don't know.
Lisa: Exactly. probably Yeah. Right. Make sense? And you know, the probiotics just as a last thing before we wrap up, so now we have to go. But the probiotics, they can have a histamine response, can't they? I’ve compared to a couple of clients who have put on probiotics. And then I've actually had an adverse reaction to probiotics, because they're histamine levels of…. What's going on there? Is our spore based probiotics in that case, better?
Dr Yurth: Yeah, that's probably a little bit better. But I think what you're doing again, is if you don't have this healthy gut lining, right, and you're now throwing a bunch of bacteria into an immune system, remember that all your immune systems are in the gut, serotonin levels are off, everything's off. The anything you put in is going to be being seen as a foreign thing and you're going to create an immune response or histamine response but not immune, basically an autoimmune response. Just because your body's seeing this stuff right now is a foreign invader because you don't have any—it's not it's not a normal environment for it yet. So you gotta quit. environment for it so that you know you have this nice—you don't want this where you want that gut bacteria in the, in the gut. So if I have bad claws, sides and it's leaking out of my gut into my bloodstream, not where they belong, right? They create this histamine immune response, right?
Just think of your colonocytes as you want this nice thick layer of cells, they're all bound together really tight. And the only way you can have healthy colonocytes is to have high butyrate levels, right? Wow, it's a really interesting study that came out that people who had good butyrate levels actually were more popular. So even came from a pheromone perspective. We can sense that those people are healthier. So you actually are actually liked better if you have higher butyrate levels?
Lisa: Wow. Okay, another reason to take butyrate inhibitors. So butyrate either, as tributyrin, as a pre-butyrate, right? Or rectally would be really better for two for two weeks if you can afford it, and you can get that. Which I'm gonna do…
Dr Yurth: A good way of doing it. It's just people don't like suppositories. But it is a better way of getting it there initially.
Lisa: Hey, whatever it takes, you know? Gonna stick something up your bum? Do it. I do use ozone every couple of days. So for me it doesn't work.
Dr Yurth: You’re used to it.
Lisa: Yeah. Dr Yurth has been absolutely amazing again today. This conversation went in directions I had no idea and I'm…
Dr Yurth: That's right, Lisa. We just go here, there. But that's kind of—but that's a cool thing.
Lisa: Yeah, that's a really cool thing. And people please go to bli.academy.com or the Boulder Longevity Institute. You will also find the direction there. And that's the education arm of the Boulder Longevity Institute. And it's free at the moment so go and hurry up, get in there, get the courses, get the information from Dr Yurth. She is really, I mean I've come, I've worked in, had on my podcast, hundreds of doctors and scientists. You are one of my favourites. I just have to say, because I just learned so so much from the academy and the work that you're doing and even on your Instagram and stuff. I just love watching that every day.
Dr Yurth: I appreciate that. Thanks, Lisa. You know what you're doing because you're amazing too. I love being on your show. Thanks.
Lisa: We'll have you back again and we'll keep people coming with this great information. So thank you very much, Dr Yurth.
Dr Yurth: All right. Stay well. Bye.
That's it this week for Pushing The Limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends. And head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
Challenges, obstacles and painful experiences — these are just some of things life throws our way when we least expect them. But no matter where you are in life right now, remember that you can push past the hard times. You can learn how to rise above life’s challenges. And if you feel lost, here’s a little secret: help others. Being of service to other people can help you find strength and a way out of your problems.
In this episode, Robert Joseph Cappuccio, widely known as Bobby, joins us to share his inspiring story of defying hardships and helping others. It’s easier to succumb to self-sabotage and addiction. But you have the power to make your experiences an opportunity for change and hope. Bobby also shares the importance of helping others, especially as a business owner and leader.
If you want to learn how to rise above trauma and be inspired to become a force of good to the world, then this episode is for you!
For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, your goals and your lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or are wanting to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, a NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that is capable of boosting the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements that are of highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combat the effects of aging, while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘When you know that there's somewhere you want to go, but you don't know exactly where that is. And you don't have complete confidence in your ability to get there. And what a good guy does is they help you go just as far as you can see.’
‘We form and calibrate and shape our sense of identity in the context in which we navigate through the world off of one another. And when you're isolated with a distorted sense of reality, and you lose your sense of self, you become highly incapacitated to take action in this situation.’
‘So I started focusing on things and a mission and people outside of myself. Who's going through something similar to what I have gone through, even if it's not precisely the same situation? How do I help them find their way out? And by helping them find their way out, I found my way up.’
‘I never saved anyone; you can't change anyone but yourself. But the reason why he called me that is anytime someone would think about joining the gym...I approached it from a transformational perspective.’
‘And your job is to create and keep your internal customer by serving them with at the very least with the same tenacity, sincerity and intention that you are serving your external customer. If you don't do that, you're going to be shit as a leader.’
‘I think the only people who don't have impostor syndrome are imposters. Because if you're fraudulent, you wouldn't engage in the level of self-honesty, and humility, and conscientiousness, to go, “Am I fraudulent; is there something that I’m missing?”’
‘Anything I've ever accomplished, it's totally through other people. It's because I hired people that were a lot smarter than me.’
Robert Joseph Cappuccio, or Bobby, is a behaviour change coach, author, consultant, speaker and fitness professional. He is a trainer of trainers and at the forefront of the life-altering and ever-evolving industry of coaching.
For over two decades, he has been advocating and pushing the industry-wide and individual shift of perspective in development. Behaviour change is rooted in a holistic approach, not just goals to health and fitness. With his vision, he co-founded PTA Global. It has now become a leader in professional fitness development.
No matter how successful Bobby seems, it didn't start this way. His childhood was filled with neglect, abuse and traumas that could lead anyone on the path to drinking and addiction. Bobby is no stranger to hardship and challenges, but he uses these experiences to connect and relate to others, using his past hardship as a way to help others. Bobby is also the former head of training and development at David Barton Gym, former director of professional development at the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM), content curator for PTontheNet, development consultant for various companies including Hilton Hotels, Virgin Active, Equinox, David Lloyd Leisure and multiple businesses nationally and abroad.
With his forward-thinking mindset and work ethic, Bobby champions practical programs that help both corporate and industry personnel, including individuals, get what they truly want. He advocates the process of change mixed in with the mantra of ‘you can be free to play’.
Interested in Bobby’s work? You can check out his website and listen to his Self-Help Antidote Podcast!
Reach out to Bobby on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends to offer them one way to rise above their trauma.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.
Lisa Tamati: Welcome back to Pushing the Limits, your host Lisa Tamati here, and today I have a fantastic guest all the way from America again, this man goes by the name of Bobby Cappuccio. And he is a world-famous fitness professional. He trains a lot of the trainers that are out there. But Bobby has an incredible story that I really want to share with you today. So, Bobby was born with a severe facial deformity. And he also had deformed legs, and he was given up for adoption. His mother couldn't care for him, and he ended up being adopted by another man. But he had a very, very abusive rough childhood. He also developed Tourette Syndrome at the age of nine. In all this adversity you'd think like ‘oh my gosh, what sort of a life is this guy going to live’? But Bobby has had an incredible life. He's a fitness professional, as I said, he's worked in many gyms. He was the founder and co-owner of PTA Global, which does a lot of the professional fitness development. And he has devised his own strategies and ways of educating people. And his programs are just second to none. When I told my business partner, Neil, that I just interviewed Bobby Cappuccio, he's like, ‘Oh, my God, he's a legend in the space.’ So yeah, he was really a bit jealous that I got to speak to him. So I hope you enjoy this interview. It's some rough topics in there. But there's also some really great gems of wisdom. And the funny thing is what Bobby is just absolutely hilarious as well. So I do hope you enjoy it.
Before we head over to the show, though, just want to let you know that we've launched a premium membership for the podcast. This is a patron membership so that you can become a VIP member of our tribe, help support the podcast. This podcast has been going now for five and a half years. It's a labour of love, I can tell you. It takes up a huge amount of my time and resources in both getting these world-class gifts for you, and also in study and research so that I can talk really, and interview very well all these crazy, amazing doctors, scientists, elite athletes and performers. So if you want to support us in keeping the show going, and like what we do in the world, and you want to keep those valuable content being able to be put out into the world, we'd love your support. And for that, we're going to give you lots of member, premium member, benefits. So, check it out at patron.lisatamati.com. That’s patron.lisatamati.com. That’s P-A-T-R-O-N dot Lisa Tamati dot com.
And I just also wanted to remind you about my new anti-ageing and longevity supplement, NMN. I’ve co-worked together with molecular biologist, Dr. Elena Seranova, to make sure that you get the best quality NMN there is now. I searched all over the world for this stuff, when I learned about it, and researched about it, and how it works and what it does in the body, and there is a huge amount of science on it. A lot of it's up on our website, if you want to do a deep dive into all things NMN and the NAD precursor, then check it out. It's all about longevity. It's all about slowing down the ageing process and even reversing the ageing process.
So if that's something that interests you, and you want high performance, you want help with cardiovascular health, with neuro protection, with metabolic disorders, then this is something that you should look into as well. So check that out at nmnbio.nz, that’s nmnbio.nz, and go and check that out. The supplements have been so popular that I haven't been able to keep up with orders. So on some of the orders, there is a bit of a backorder. But bear with me while we will scale up production. But go over and check that out at nmnbio.nz. Right over to the show with Bobby Cappuccio.
Lisa: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Today I have another very, very special guest and I was recently on this gentleman's show and now we're doing a reverse interview. I have Robert Cappuccio with me. Robert, welcome to the show.
Robert Cappuccio: Oh, thank you. When you say you had a very special guest, I thought you were bringing someone else on.
Lisa: You are a really special guest.
Robert: Had a lot of anticipation like who is this person? What a surprise!
Lisa: Well, you're a bit of an interesting character. Let's say that, throw that.
Robert: Just the microphone.
Lisa: No, I'm really, really interested to hear your story and to share your story with my audience, and to give a bit more of a background on you. And share gems of wisdom from your learnings from your life, because you've done some pretty cool stuff. You've had some pretty hard times and I'd like to share those learnings with my audience today. So Robert, whereabouts are you sitting at the moment, whereabouts are you in the States?
Robert: Okay, so at the moment, I'm in a place called Normal Heights, which is probably a misnomer. It's not normal at all. But it's a really cool, funky neighbourhood in San Diego.
Lisa: San Diego, awesome. And how’s lockdown going over there, and all of that sort of carry on?
Robert: Oh, it’s great. I mean, on St. Patty's day, I've got my skull from our own green. I've just had a few whiskies. So far, so good.
Lisa: This is a very interesting interview.
So can you give us a little bit of background? Because you've had a very interesting, shall we say, difficult upbringing and childhood. And I wanted to perhaps start there and then see where this conversation goes a little.
Robert: Is there any place you want to start, in particular? How far back do you want to go? Do you want to start from the very beginning?
Lisa: Please go right at the very beginning, because you're intro to your backstory is quite interesting from the beginning, really isn't that?
Robert: Okay, so I was born, which is obvious, in Manhattan, and I moved to Brooklyn early. So I was born, rather deformed. I was born with a significant facial deformity. And my lower extremities, my legs, quite never— like, if you saw my legs now, they're great. I have a great pair of legs at this moment. I'm not going to show you that because that would be a little bit rude. But my legs were kind of deformed and contorted. I had to walk with braces for the first couple of years of my life.
I was given up for adoption. I'm not exactly sure, I have the paperwork on why I was given up for adoption, but I'm not really certain about the authenticity of that story. And I wasn't adopted for a while. So as an infant, I was parentless and homeless and really not well-tended to. I'm not going to get into why I say that because it's pretty disgusting. And then I was adopted. And then my adoptive father, this is kind of interesting, he had cancer, and he knew during the adoption process that he was probably not going to make it. He wanted to make sure that I found a home because nobody wanted to adopt me. Because when they came in, I was physically deformed. It's like, ‘Oh, this baby’s, it's broken. Something's wrong. Do you have a better baby’? And when he saw that, he thought, ‘Right, I've got to give this kid a home.’ So he passed.
He passed when I was two. I didn't know him for more than a few months. And I hardly have any memory of him at all. My mother who adopted me, to be fair, she's developmentally disabled, and so she was a single uom with not a lot of skills, not a lot of prospects, terrified. And she basically, I think she met a guy when I was five, who I don't know if there's a diagnosis for him. He was mentally disturbed. He was a psychopath. I don't know if clinically he’s a psychopath, but that's pretty much how it felt.
Lisa: You were a child experiencing this. Yeah.
Robert: Yeah, I'm not like, I'm never sure in what direction to go with stuff like this. Never sure what’s valid, what's relevant. I spent my childhood in stressed positions, being woken up in the middle of the night with a pillow over my face, having bones broken consistently, and a series of rape, emotional abuse, physical abuse, and just every sort of trauma. Like imagine when I was nine years old, I was diagnosed, on top of that, with Tourette Syndrome. So I was physically deformed, going through shit like that at home. And then on top of it, I started losing control of my bodily functions. I started exhibiting tics, I started exhibiting obsessive compulsive behaviour. At some point, it was uncontrollable, like lack of control of my impulses, of the things that I would say, vulgarity. At some point, the doctors just thought that perhaps I was Scottish.
Lisa: And you’re funny as well.
Robert: And they put me on Haldol, which damaged my brain. That and the fact that, it's estimated, I've had at least over a half a dozen major concussions within my childhood —
Lisa: From the abuse.
Robert: — half a dozen to a dozen massive concussions. Yeah.
Lisa: Absolute horrific start into life.
Robert: When I was 10, I started binge drinking. And I thought this will help, this is a solution. But you know what? It's not. It's a little bit weird when you start a story off like this, because in some sense, it's not me being delusional, or Pollyanna, because I tend to think that I'm a little bit of a realist, sometimes too much, sometimes to the point of walking a fine edge between being hopeful and being a cynic. But I have to say that a lot of things that I experienced when I was growing up, turned out to be quite beneficial. It’s shaped me in a way and it helped me engage in certain career paths and certain activities that I don't think I really would have sought out, had this stuff not happened. So it's not like me, delusionally trying to create like all silver lining about stuff, it was shit. I understand the severity of what I went through. But I also understand where that led me. And I understand the good fortune that I had of running into certain people that resonated with me, and I resonated with them, largely in part because of my history. I don't think I would have related to these people had I not come from where I came from.
Lisa: So you’re talking like people along the way that were, ended up being mentors, or teachers or friends or helping you out and through these horrific situations? Is that what you're meaning, sort of thing that would actually helped you? Because I mean, given a background like that, if you were a complete disaster and drug addict, and whatever, nobody would blame you. You didn't have a good start in life, whatsoever. I mean, look at you now. Obviously you don't have any facial deformities, and you don't exhibit, right now, any of that stuff that actually you were and have been through. So how the hell did you get to where you are today? Because you're a very successful person, you have a very successful and a very strong influence in the world. What, how the heck do you go from being that kid, with brain problems and concussions and Tourette’s and abuse and rape and all of that, to being the person who comes across as one, number one, hilarious, very crazy and very cool? How the heck do you get from there to there?
Lisa: Just listening to, I can tell that you're someone who's highly intelligent, perceptive and an amazing judge of humour. So thank you for that. I think a lot of it was quite accidental.
So I had thought when I was younger, that I wanted to be a police officer, originally. And I wanted to be involved with special victims, even before that was a TV show. Brilliant show, by the way, one of my favourite shows on TV. But even before that was the TV show, I thought, if I'm going through what I went through, and it's very hard because I had Child Services in New York City, they were called ACS. They were at my house consistently. But the problem is, I believed at a young age that my stepfather was nearly invincible, like nobody could touch him.
Lisa: You were powerless against him. Yeah.
Robert: And when they came to the house and like, look, I had broken bones, my arm was in a sling. A lot of times, I broke my tibia. They won't take me to the hospital because they thought they would suspect stepdad of doing it. I couldn't even walk. And these people were sitting down, said, ‘Well just tell us what happened.’ And I somehow knew that, at a critical moment, my adopted mother would falter. She would not have my back. She would rescind on everything she says.
Lisa: She was frightened too, no doubt.
Robert: She was frightened. I don't think she had the emotional or intellectual capacity to deal with the situation. That's all I'll say on that. But I knew once they left, I just knew they couldn't do anything, unless I was all-in. And if anything went wrong, he would kill me. So I would have to just say that, ‘Well, I fell.’ And it’s like, there's no way a fork, like I would go into camp and I would have stab wounds in the shape of a fork. And people are like, ‘What happened?’ And I said, ‘I was walking, and I tripped, and I fell onto a fork that went through my thigh and hit my femur.’ It's like, okay, that's just not possible. But I kind of knew. And I kind of felt like nobody's coming to the rescue. And I thought, if I was a police officer, and I was worked with special victims, maybe I could be the person that I always wished would show up for me. But then, there were issues with that. So I think I got like, out of a possible 100 on the police test. I did fairly well. I think I got 103, there were master credit questions. And I thought, right, yeah, I'm going. And then I took the psychological and by some weird measure, I passed, that seems crazy to me now. It kind of seems problematic. I think they need to revisit that. But then when I took the medical, and with Tourette's, it was kind of like, ‘Ah, yeah.’ It was a sticking point. So I had to petition because otherwise I would be disqualified from the employment police department.
And during that time, I started working in the gyms. And when I was working the gyms, I kind of thought, there's no way I'll ever be as intelligent as some of these other trainers here. I'm just going to make up with work ethic what I lack in intellect. I would run around and just tried to do everything I could. I would try to clean all the equipment, make sure that the gym was spotless. But again, kind of like not like having all my wits about me, I would be spraying down a machine with WD-40. And what I didn't account for is, the person who was on the machine next to me, I'd be spraying him in the face with WD-40 when he was exercising.
Lisa: They still do that today, by the way. The other day in the gym and the girl next to me, she was blind, and she was just spraying it everywhere. I had to go and shift to the other end of the gym, is that right, cause I don't like that stuff.
Robert: I mean, in my defence, the members were very well-lubricated. And so, people would go upstairs, and like there is this fucking trainer just sprayed me in the face. And the owner would say, ‘All right, let me see who this guy is. What do you talk? This doesn’t even make sense? Who hired this guy?’ We kind of had like the old bowl, the pin. And like you could walk up top and look down into the weight room, and there I was just running around. And there was something about someone running around and hustling on the gym floor that made him interested. He's like, ‘Get this kid up into my office. Let me talk to him.’ And that forged a friendship. I spoke to him yesterday, by the way. So we've been friends for like three decades. And the owner of the gym became kind of like a surrogate dad. And he did for me what most guides do and that is when you know that there's somewhere you want to go, but you don't know exactly where that is, and you don't have complete confidence in your ability to get there. And what a good guy does is they help you go just as far as you can see, because when you get there, you'll see further. And that's what Mitchell did for me. And he was different because I have a lot of adults.
So I grew up with not only extreme violence in the home, but I grew up in Coney Island. I grew up living on the corner of Shit Street and Depressing. And there was a constant violence outside the home and in school and I got picked on. And I got bullied until I started fighting, and then I got into a lot of fights. And you just have these adults trying to talk to you and it's like, you don't fucking know me. You have no idea where I come from. You can't relate to me. When you were growing up, you had a home, you were being fed. You were kind of safe, don't even pretend to relate to me. And he was this guy, who, he was arrested over a dozen times by age 30, which was not why I chose him as a mentor. But he had gone through some serious shit. And when he came out on the other end of it, he wanted to be somebody other than his history would suggest he was going to be, and he tried harder at life than anybody I had ever met. So one, I could relate to him, I didn't think he was one of these adults who are just full of shit. I was impressed at how hard he tried to be the person he wanted to be. So there was this mutual respect and affinity, instantly.
Lisa: Wow. And he had a massive influence. And we all need these great coaches, mentors, guides, surrogate dads, whatever the case may be, to come along, sometimes in our lives. And when they do, how wonderful and special that is, and someone that you could respect because like you say, I've had a wonderful childhood. In comparison to you, it was bloody Disneyland, and so I cannot relate to some of those things. And I have my own little wee dramas, but they were minor in comparison to what you experienced in the world. So how the heck can I really help you out if you're a young kid that I'm trying to influence. And not that you have to go through everything in order to be of help to anybody, but just having that understanding that your view, your worldview is a limited, privileged background. Compared to you, my background is privileged.
Robert: Well, I don't think there's any ‘compared to you’. I think a lot of my reaction to adults around me who tried to intercede — one, if your intercession doesn't work, it's going to get me hurt, bad, or it's going to get me killed. There have been times where I was hung out of an 18-storey window by my ankles.
Lisa: You have got to be kidding me.
Robert: Like grabbing onto the brick on the side of the building. I can't even say terrified. I don't even know if that encapsulates that experience as a kid. But it's like you don't understand what you can walk away from once you feel good about interceding with this poor, unfortunate kid. I cannot walk away from the situation that you're going to create. So it was defensive mechanism, because pain is relative. I mean, like, you go through a divorce, and you lose this love and this promise, and somebody comes along, ‘Oh there are some people in the world who never had love, so you should feel grateful’. You should fuck off because that's disgusting. And that is totally void of context. I don't think somebody's pain needs to compare to another person's pain in order to be relevant. I think that was just my attitude back then because I was protecting my existence. I've really changed that perspective because, like, my existence isn't threatened day to day anymore.
Lisa: Thank goodness.
Robert: So I have a different take on that. And I understand that these adults were well meaning, because I also had adults around me, who could have probably done something, but did nothing. And I don't even blame them because my stepfather was a terrifying person. And the amount of work and energy, and the way the laws, the structure, and how threatening he was, I don't blame them. And me? I’ll probably go to prison. But I don't blame them for their inaction.
Lisa: Yeah, and this is a problem. Just from my own experiences, like I said, this is not even in childhood, this is in young adulthood, being in an abusive relationship. The dynamic of the stuff that's going on there, you're frightened to leave. You know you are going to be in physical danger if you try and leave. So, I've been in that sort of a position but not as a child. But still in a position where people will think, ‘Well, why don't you just go?’ And I’m just like, ‘Have you ever tried to leave someone who's abusive? Because it's a very dangerous thing to do.’ And you sometimes you’re like, just, you can't, if there's children involved, even, then that's even worse. And there's complicated financial matters. And then there's, whatever the case may be or the circumstances that you're facing, it's not cut and dried. And as an adult, as a powerful woman now, I wouldn't let myself be in a position like that. But I wasn't that back then. And you weren't because well, you were a child. See, you're even more.
Robert: I just want to comment on that a little bit. And this is not coming from clinical expertise. This is just coming from my own interpretation experience. I think, obviously, that when a child goes through this, you would think, ‘Okay, if this started at age five, what could you have done?’ But a lot of times we do look at, let's say, women who are in severe domestic violence situations, and we say, ‘Well, how could you have done that? How could you have let somebody do that to you’? And I think we need to really examine that perspective. Because powerful, confident, intelligent women might be especially susceptible.
Lisa: Apparently, that’s the case.
Robert: Because you have a track record, and you have evidence to support that you are capable, and you're intelligent, and you find yourself in a situation that you didn't anticipate. And I think it's easier to gaslight someone like that. Because it's like, ‘How could I have had a lapse — is it me?’ And it creeps up on you, little by little, where you doubt yourself a little bit more, a little bit more, and then you become more controlled and more controlled. And then your perspective on reality becomes more and more distorted. So I think we have to be very careful when an adult finds themselves, yes, in that position, saying, ‘Well, why didn't you just leave? How could you have let yourself very easily?’
It can happen to anyone, especially if you have a strong sense of confidence and you are intelligent, and because it becomes unfathomable to you, how you got into that situation.
Lisa: Looking back on my situation, which is years and years ago now, and have no consequences to the gentleman that I was involved with, because I'm sure he's moved on and hopefully, not the same. But the fact that it shifted over many years, and the control shifted, and the more isolated you became. I was living in a foreign country, foreign language, unable to communicate with my family, etc., etc. back then. And you just got more and more isolated, and the behaviour’s become more and more, more radical ways as time goes on. It doesn't stop there. Everybody's always lovely at the beginning. And then, as the power starts to shift in the relationship — and I've listened to a psychologist, I’ve forgotten her name right now, but she was talking about, she works with these highly intelligent, educated women who are going through this and trying to get out of situations where they shouldn't be in. And she said, ‘This is some of the common traits. They're the types of people who want to fix things, they are the types of people who are strong and they will never give up.’ And that is actually to their detriment, in this case. And I'm a very tenacious type of person. So, if I fall in love with someone, which you do at the beginning, then you're like, ‘Well, I'm not giving up on this person. They might need some help, and some, whatever’. And when you're young, you think you can change people, and you can fix them. And it took me a number of years to work out and ‘Hang on a minute, I haven't fixed them, I’ve screwed myself over. And I've lost who I am in the process.’ And you have to rebuild yourself. And like you and like your case is really a quite exceptionally extreme. But like you, you've rebuilt yourself, and you've created this person who is exceptional, resilient, powerful, educated, influential —
Robert: And dysfunctional.
Lisa: And dysfunctional at the same time. Hey, me, too.
Robert: And fucked up in 10 different ways.
Lisa: Yeah. Hey, none of us have got it right. As our mutual friend, Craig Harper would say, ‘We're just differing degrees of fucked-up-ness’.
Robert: That would be spot on.
Lisa: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And totally, some of the most high functioning people that I get to meet, I get to meet some pretty cool people. There's hardly any of them that don't have some area in their life where they've got that fucked-up-ness that's going on, and are working on it, because we're all works in progress. And that's okay.
Robert: The thing you said that I really caught is you lost your sense of self, and the isolation. And that is what abusers do, is progressively they start to isolate, and create enemies out of strong alliances and allies. And when you lose your sense of self, and you're so isolated — because as much as we want to be strong and independent, we are highly interdependent, tribal people. We form and calibrate, we shape our sense of identity and the context in which we navigate through the world off of one another. And when you're isolated with a distance sense of reality and you lose your sense of self, you become highly incapacitated to take action in this situation. And you develop, I think what Martin Seligman, called learned helplessness. And I think assigning fault or blame or accusation either to yourself or doing that to somebody else, not only does that not help, it stops people from coming forward. Because it reinforces the mental state that makes them susceptible to perpetual abuse in the first place.
Lisa: Yeah, it's so true. So how did you start to turn around? So you meet Mitchell, Mitchell was his name, and he started to be a bit of a guiding light for you and mentor you, and you're in the gym at this phase stage. So, what sort of happened from there on and? So what age were you at this point, like, your teenage years, like teenagers or?
Robert: I met Mitchell when I was like 19 years old. And what he allowed me to do, and it wasn't strategies, he allowed me to focus outside of myself. Because every emotion, every strong emotion you're feeling, especially in a painful way, resides within you. So if you feel a sense of despair, or you feel disgust, or loneliness, or isolation, or any type of pain, and you would look around your room and go, ‘Well, where's that located? Where's my despair? I searched my whole desk, I can't find it’. It's not there. It's not in your outer world. It's your inner world. And what he gave me the ability to do is say, ‘Okay. I grew up physically deformed. And despite everything I was going through, my physical deformities were one of the most painful things’. But the irony, more painful than anything else because you could see me out in the shops and go, ‘Okay, this is a person who has been severely physically sexually abused, who's suffered emotional trauma’. You could see that as I walk through the aisles, because you say, ‘Okay, this is someone who doesn't look right. This is someone who —', and I can see the look of disgust on people's face when they saw me physically. And then there’s nowhere to hide, you couldn’t mask that. I started thinking, ‘Well, what about people who feel that about their physical appearance and they don't require surgery? What are they going through? And how do I focus more on them? How do I take a stand for that person? What's the areas of knowledge? What are the insights? What are the resources that I can give these people to be more resourceful in finding a sense of self and finding their own way forward?’
Lisa: Being okay with the way that they are, because it must be just—
Robert: People are okay with the way they are, seeing an ideal version of themselves in the future. And engaging the behaviours that helps them eventually bridge that gap, where their future vision, at some point, becomes their current reality. So I started focusing on things and a mission and people outside of myself, who's going through something similar to what I have gone through, even if it's not precisely the same situation? How do I help them find their way out? And by helping them find their way out, I found my way up.
Lisa: Wow, it's gold. And that's what you ended up doing then, and within the gym setting, or how did that sort of work out from there?
Robert: Well, I became a trainer. And in the beginning, I was like an average trainer. But I became, what Mitchell called, like the person who saved people. I never saved anyone; you can't change anyone but yourself. But the reason why he called me that is, anytime someone would think about joining the gym, if they would sit down with someone, they approached it from, ‘Well, what can we do? Can we give you a couple of extra months? Can we give you a guest pass to invite some —‘. They approached it from a transactional perspective, where when I sat down with these people, I approached it from a transformational perspective. ‘What did you want most? What do you want most in your life in this moment? And what hasn't happened? What missed? What was the disconnect? Where have we failed? What did you need that was not fulfilled in your experience here and how do we give you those resources? How do we support you going forward?’ And it was also like, ‘Look, if you want to leave, we totally respect that. You've given us a chance to help you. And obviously, the fault was ours. I never blamed anyone. But if you had the chance to do it again, what would have made the difference? And give us that opportunity’. It’s like, ‘Oh, this person is like a retention master’. It's not that, my focus wasn't in retention, it was the intention rather, to relate to the individual in front of me.
Lisa: I’m hearing about the actual person and their actual situation and their actual wishes and goals, rather than, how can I sweeten the deal so you don't leave?
Robert: Precisely, and that had some unintended consequences, because it put me in a bad situation, because I got promoted against my will. And I didn’t want to get promoted. And I thought, ‘I'm just getting a reputation for being somewhat good in my current job. And now they're going to promote it to my level of incompetence. And now I'm going to disappoint Mitchell, he's going to find out this kid's actually an idiot, he's a fraud — ‘I was wrong.’ And the one person who believed in me, I'm going to lose his trust and his faith, and that's going to be damaging.’ So me being promoted into management led to a series of unpredictable events that shaped my entire career.
Lisa: Okay, tell us about that. Tell us about it. So you were pushed out of your comfort zone, because you just got a grip on this thing, the crazy worker.
Robert: So Mitchell had a consultant, and his name was Ray. His name still is Ray, coincidentally. And he said, ‘Yeah, I think you should promote Bobby, just a small promotion to head trainer. Not like fitness manager, just head trainer’. And when they approached me, it was almost like they told me like, I had to euthanise my pet. It was horrible. I was not excited about this. I was like, ‘Oh, thanks. But no, thanks. I love where I'm at.’
Lisa: Yep. ‘I didn’t want to grow.’
Robert: Well, they had a response to that. They said, ‘There’s two directions you can go in this company, you could go up, or you can go out’. And they fired me that day.
Lisa: Wow! Because you wouldn’t go up?
Robert: They’re like, ‘You've chosen out. And that's okay. That's your decision’. And I was devastated. Like that my identity is connected to that place. And on my way out the door, Mitchell's like, ‘Come into my office.’ And he’s sitting across from me, and he kind of looked like a very muscular, like an extremely muscular version of Burt Reynolds at the time, which was very intimidating, by the way. And he puts his feet up on the desk, and he's leaning back, and he's eating an apple. He says, ‘You know, I heard a rumour that you're recently unemployed. And so I would imagine, your schedules opened up quite a bit this week. You know, coincidentally, we're interviewing for a head trainer position. You might want to come in and apply because you've got nothing to lose’. What a complete and total cock. And I say that, with love, gratitude, gratitude, and love. So I showed up —
Lisa: Knew what you needed.
Robert: I remember, I showed up in a wrinkly button-down shirt, that is not properly ironed, which was brought to my attention. And I got the job. And I was the worst manager you've ever met in your life because first of all, my motivation was not to serve my team. My motivation was not to disappoint Mitchell. And that was the wrong place for your head to be in, if you have the audacity to step into a leadership position. Whether you tell yourself you were forced into it or not, fact of the matter is ‘No, I could have chosen unemployment, I would have done something else. I chose this. Your team is your major responsibility.’ And that that perspective has served me in my career, but it well, it's also been problematic. So I had people quitting because for me, I was in the gym at 5am. And I took two-hour breaks during the afternoon and then I was in the gym till 10 o'clock at night, 11 o'clock at night. I expected you to do the same thing. So, I didn't understand the worldview and the needs and the aspirations and the limitations and the people on my team. So people started quitting.
I started doing horribly within my position. And then Mitchell brought in another consultant, and he gave me some advice. I didn't take it as advice at the time, but it changed everything. And it changed rapidly. This guy's name is Jamie, I don’t remember his surname. But he sat me down and he said, ‘So I understand you have a little bit of trouble’. Yeah, no shit, man. Really perceptive. ‘So, just tell me, who do you work for?’ So, ‘I work for Mitchell’. He said, ‘No, no, but who do you really work for?’ I thought, ‘Oh. Oh, right. Yeah. The general manager of the gym. Brian, I work for Brian’. So nope, who do you really work for? I thought it must be the fitness manager, Will. So, ‘I work for Will’. He’s like, ‘But who do you work for?’ And now I'm starting to get really irritated. I'm like, yeah, this guy's a bit thick. I don't know how many ways I can explain, I've just pretty much named everybody. Who do you reckon I work for? He said, ‘No, you just named everyone who should be working for you?’
Lisa: Yeah, you got that one down.
Robert: ‘Have a single person you work for? Who are your trainers?’ He said, ‘Here, let me help you out. Imagine for a second, all of your trainers got together, and they pooled their life savings. They scraped up every bit of resource that they could to open up a gym. Problem is, they're not very experienced. And if they don't get help, they're going to lose everything. They're going to go out of business. They go out and they hire you as a consultant. In that scenario, who do you think you'd work for?’ I was like, ‘Oh, I'm the one that's thick. I've worked for them’. Because in every interaction you have, it made such a dip because it sounds counterintuitive. But he said, ‘In every meeting and every interaction, whether it's a one-on-one meeting, team meeting, every time you approach someone on the floor to try to help them, or you think you're going to correct them, come from that perspective and deliver it through that lens’. And things started to change rapidly. That was one of two things that changed.
The second thing that changed is Mitchell believed, because he would listen to self-help tapes, it inspired him. So he would have me listen to self-help tapes. And he believed that oration in front of a group public speaking was culturally galvanising. And in a massive team meeting where we had three facilities at the time, where he brought in a couple of hundred people for a quarterly meeting. He had me stand up and speak. Oh, man. I know you've done a lot of podcasting and you do a lot of public speaking in front of audiences. You know that experience where you get up to speak but your brain sits right back down?
Lisa: Yeah. And you're like, as Craig was saying the other day, ‘It doesn't matter how many times you do it, you're still absolutely pecking yourself.’ Because you want to do a really good job and you go, ‘This is the day I'm going to screw it up. I'm going to screw it up, even though I've done it 10,000 times. And I’ve done a brilliant job. Then it’s coming off.’
Robert: If you’re not nervous in front of an audience, you've got no business being there. That is very disrespectful. I agree with that. I mean, this is coming from, in my opinion, one of the greatest speakers in the world. And I'm not just saying that because Craig's my mate, and he gives me oatmeal every time I come out to Melbourne. I'm saying that because he's just phenomenal and authentic in front of a room. But I had that experience and I'm standing up brainless in front of the room. And as I start to realize that I am choking. I'm getting so nervous. Now this is back in the 1990s, and I was wearing this boat neck muscle shirt that said Gold's Gym, and these pair of workout pants that were called T-Michaels, they were tapered at the ankles, but they ballooned out. You know the ones I’m talking about? And I had a lot of change in my pocket. And all you hear in the room, as my knees were shaking, you can hear the change rattling, which wasn't doing anything for my self-confidence. And just instantly I was like, ‘Right, you're either going to epically fail at your job right here. Or you are going to verbatim with intensity, recite word for word, like everything you remember from Dennis Waitley’s Psychology of Winning track for positive self-determination’. Sorry, Dennis, I did plagiarize a bit. And I said it with passion. Not because I'm passionate, because I knew if I didn't say it with fierce intensity, nothing but a squeak will come out of my mouth,
Lisa: And the jingle in the pocket
Robert: And the jingle in the pocket. And at the end of that, I got a standing ovation. And that’s not what moved me.
Lisa: No?
Robert: What moved me was weeks ago, I was clueless in my job. I got this advice from Jamie on, ‘You work for them. They are your responsibility. They are entrusted to you. Don’t treat people like they work for you.’ Now I had this, this situation happened. And my trainers avoided me a month ago when I got promoted. But now they were knocking on my office door, ‘Hey, can I talk to you? Would you help me’? And it just clicked. The key to pulling yourself out of pain and suffering and despair is to focus on lifting up others.
Lisa: Being of service.
Robert: That was it. I thought I could be good at something. And what I'm good at is not only, it's terrifying before you engage in it, but it's euphoric after, and it can help other people. I can generate value by developing and working through others.
Lisa: This is like gold for management and team leaders and people that are in charge of teams and people is, and I see this around me and some of the corporations where get to work and consultants stuff is this was very much this top-down mentality. ‘I'm the boss. You’re doing what I say because I'm the boss’. And that doesn't work. It might work with 19-year-olds who have no idea in the world.
Robert: It reeks of inexperience. You think you're the boss because you've had certain qualities, and that's why you got promoted — do what I say. You are a detriment to the company — and I know how many people are fucked off and calling bullshit. I don't care. I mean, not to toot my own horn. Like anything I've ever accomplished, I've learned I have accomplished through hiring the right people and having a team that's better than me. But I’ve been in so many management positions, from the very bottom to the very top of multiple organizations I've consulted all over the world, you are only as good as your team. And to borrow from the late great Peter Drucker, ‘The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. And your most valuable customer’s your internal customer, the team that you hire. Because unless you are speaking to every customer, unless you are engaging with every customer complaint, unless you are engaging in every act of customer service on your own —' which means your business is small, which is fine. But if it's a lot, you're not ‘— you could scale that, it is always your team. And your job is to create and keep your internal customer by serving them with, at the very least, with the same tenacity, sincerity and intention that you are serving your external customer. If you don't do that, you're going to be shit as a leader. And honestly, I don't give a fuck what anybody thinks about that. Because I have heard so many opinions from people who are absolute — they've got a ton of bravado, they beat their chest, but they are ineffective. And it's extraordinary what you can accomplish when you know how to be, number one, hire the right person. Number two set expectations clearly — clearly, specifically. Number three, understand what motivates each individual, as an individual person and as a team, and then develop that team's capacity individually and collectively to channel that capability towards the achievement of a common vision, of a common monthly target. Period.
Lisa: Wow. So that's just, that’s one whole lot going on in one.
Robert: That is leadership in a nutshell.
Lisa: Yeah. And this is the tough stuff because it's easier said than done. I mean, I'm trying to scale our businesses and grow teams and stuff. And number one, hiring the right people is a very big minefield. And number two, I've started to realize in my world that there's not enough for me to go around. I can't be in 10 places and 10 seats at once. You're getting overwhelmed. You're trying to help the universe and you're one person, so you're trying to replicate yourself in the team that you have, and provide the structure. And then you also need those people where you're weak, like I'm weak at certain aspects. I'm weak at technology, I'm hopeless at systems. I know my weaknesses. I know my strengths, so.
Robert: I resemble that comment.
Lisa: Yeah, In trying to get those people where you, that are better than you. Not as good, but better than you. And never to be intimidated because someone is brilliant at something. They're the ones you want on your team, because they are going to help with your deficits. And we've all got deficits and blind spots and things that we're not good over we don't love doing. And then trying to develop those team members so that you're providing them and treating them respectfully, looking after them, educating them. And that takes a lot of time too, and it's really hard as a smallish business that's trying to scale to go from there wearing a thousand hats. And a lot of people out there listening will be in similar boats as ours, like, wearing a hundred hats and trying to do multitasking, getting completely overwhelmed, not quite sure how to scale to that next level, where you've got a great team doing a whole lot of cool stuff. And then realizing the impact that you can have as tenfold or a hundredfold.
Robert: Absolutely. And I'm not really a good business person, per se, like I've owned a few businesses myself, I've worked within quite a few businesses. And I think what I'm good at, and this goes back to another person that I worked for shortly after Gold's Gym. So Gold's Gym was sold, that's a whole story you don't need to get into. This is an interesting guy. I was doing consulting, I was just going out and doing public speaking, I had independent clients. And I crossed paths with an individual named David Barton. This is someone you should get on your podcast. Talk about an interesting individual. And David Barton had the one of the most unique and sexy edgy brands in New York City. And that's when you had a lot of competition with other highly unique, sexy, edgy brands. And he was the first person — he coined the phrase, ‘Look better naked,’ it was actually him. That's the guy. It was on the cover of New York Magazine. I mean, he was constantly, like his club in Vogue, at Harper's Bazaar, he ended up hiring me as his head of training. And his company at that time in the 1990s, which is quite the opposite of the mentality, the highest position you could ever achieve in his company was trainer. It was all about the training, and it made a difference culturally, and it made a difference in terms of like we were probably producing more revenue per club and personal training at that point than almost anyone else in the world, with the exception of maybe Harpers in Melbourne. So this is how far me and Craig go back actually.
Lisa: Wow. It’s that right.
Robert: Yeah, because we had found out about each other just a few years after that.
Lisa: Some of that Craig Harper.
Robert: Craig Harper, yeah, when he had his gyms. So we were introduced by a guy named Richard Boyd, a mutual friend who's like, you got to meet this guy, because he's doing what you were doing. And it all started when I went into David Barton gym, and I just thought, this is a different world. This is another level. Am I in over my head? So again, it was that doubt, it was that uncertainty.
Lisa: The imposter syndrome.
Robert: But I did. Yeah, and I think we all have, and I think the only people who don't have imposter syndrome are imposters. Because if you're fraudulent, you wouldn't engage in the level of self-honesty, and humility and conscientiousness, to go ‘Am I fraudulent, is there something that I’m missing’? Only a con artist never considers whether or not they're fraudulent, it's ‘Does that keep you stuck? Or does that help you to get better and more authentic, more sincere?’
So I had the presence of mind to ask David a very important question. And I said, ‘David, if there was like two things, or three things that I can do in this company, exceedingly well, what two or three things would best serve the member, the company as a whole, and of course, my career here with you?’ And David leaned back and he did one of these dozens of things he gave me, literally. And he sat there for — it must have been like five seconds — it felt like an eternity and I'm thinking, ‘Oh my god, that that was the stupidest question I could possibly ask. He probably thinks I should have this whole, like sorted out. After all, he hired me, or am I going to get sacked today?’ And then I was like, ‘I can't get sacked. My house just got ransacked by the FBI’. That was a totally different story. He comes, he leans forward. And he says, ‘Two things. Two things you got to do. Number one,’ and a paraphrase, but it was something very similar to, ‘I want you to be a connoisseur of talent, like a sommelier is a connoisseur of wine. I want you to hire interesting, and great trainers. That's number one.’ And he just sat there again. And I'm like, I think it was a power move. Looking back, it was a power move.
Lisa: Using the silence.
Robert: What’s number two, David? And he said, ‘Train the shit out of them. And when you're done with that, here's number three, train them again. Number four, train them again. Number five, train them again.’ And that stuck with me. And a year later, I wound up leaving David Barton, and I come back to work with him periodically over the course of many years, and I personally loved the experience every time. We’re still good friends today. And I went to NASM, and I became a presenter, senior presenter, and eventually I became the director of professional development for the National Academy of Sports Medicine. And I brought that with me. And trust me, there was times when I was quite a weirdo, because I thought quite differently than then a team of educators and clinicians. But it helped, and it served me well, and served me throughout my life. So I am shit at so many aspects of business. But I am really good, and probably because I'm very committed to recruiting people with the same level of insight, precision, intuition and sophistication that a sommelier would approach a bottle of wine.
Lisa: Oh, I need to talk to you about my business at some point. I need the right people because I keep getting the wrong one.
Robert: That, I'm very confident I can help. When it comes to recruiting and selection and hiring and training and development, that is my world.
Lisa: That’s your jam.
Robert: And because anything I've ever accomplished, it's totally through other people. It's because I hired people that were a lot smarter than me. It's funny because that's another piece of advice I got way back in my Gold Gym days, where one of the consultants was in the room and said, ‘You'll be successful to the degree that you're able and willing to hire people that are more intelligent than you’. And Mitchell quipped, ‘That shouldn’t be too hard for you, Bob’. Okay, yeah. Thanks, Mitchell. Yeah.
Lisa: Oh, yeah, nice, friend. You need those ones, don’t you? Hard case ones.
Hey, Bobby, this has been a really interesting and I feel like we probably need a part two because we haven't even touched on everything because you've had an incredible career. And I just look at you and how you how far you've come and there must have been so much that you haven't even talked about, have been all the really deep stuff that you went through as a child —
Robert: No, I've told you everything. There's nothing else.
Lisa: But how the hell did you actually turn your mindset around and how did you fix yourself and get yourself to the point you know where you are today, but I think we've run out of time for today. So, where can people engage with what you do and where can people find you and all of that sort of good stuff?
Robert: Okay, well, I just started my own podcast. It's decent.
Lisa: Which is awesome because I've been on.
Robert: So if you are looking for, like one of the most dynamic, interesting and inspiring podcasts you've ever encountered, go to The You Project by Craig Harper. If you still have time after that, and you're looking for some decent podcast material, go to The Self Help Antidote, that is my podcast. And I'm on Facebook. Social media is not really where I live. It's not where I want to live. It's not where I like to live, but I'm there. I'm on Facebook. I mean the rest of the older generation, yeah, piss off kids. And I'm on Instagram. I'm occasionally on LinkedIn, but not really. I will be on Clubhouse because I got to find the time
Lisa: What the hell is Clubhouse? I'll never come along.
Robert: Clubhouse — you know, it’s funny, I'm going around talking about Clubhouse. I'm promoting Clubhouse. I don't even know exactly how to use it. I don't know what it is. But I've been invited on it a couple of times to join in and to speak in a seminar. I'm like, “This is amazing. This is a game changer. I love it.” I don't even really talk about, but I'm intending to get on Clubhouse. It's one of those things where, it's like you see someone across the room. It's like, I don't know who she is or what she's about, but there's chemistry.
Lisa: We'll have to look in the Clubhouse.
Robert: I just realized, I'm way too excited about Clubhouse but anyway yeah.
Lisa: It's the beginning of a love affair, you always get over excited at the beginning.
Robert: It’s going to burn out quickly. I will wind up using all the social media platforms.
Lisa: So Bobby, so The Self Help Antidote is your podcast. It's the best way to connect to you. You’ve got a website, too, that people can go to?
Robert: Okay, I'm constructing a Self-Help Antidote website. My website developer is moving a lot more slowly than I thought. I'd have to sack them.
Lisa: Welcome to my world. Everything moves slower in the world of, the new world today.
Hey, Bobby, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for sharing so openly and vulnerably about your past, your childhood, some of the dramas that you went through, and I love your sense of humour. I love what you stand for and how you help people, and you help teams be the best that they can be. And I really appreciate you and I'm very glad that Craig has connected us and Tiffany. Thanks, guys. You guys rock. And we'll get you back again, alright then.
Robert: Thank you so much, Lisa.
That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
Sleep is the time for our mind and bodies to reset, regenerate and repair damages that may have accumulated during the day. Undoubtedly, this is a part of our daily routine that is important and can impact our health. Sleep affects our emotional well-being and mental ability, as well as our physical health and energy levels. If you want to face the day with your best self, a good night’s rest is what you need. Thus, we need to learn how to optimise our sleep.
Unfortunately, millions of people worldwide suffer from sleep problems, including snoring and sleep apnoea. These disturbances in your nightly rest prevent you from making the most out of your sleep. Furthermore, you most likely don’t have the tools or knowledge on how to optimise sleep. Frances Anderson is with us today to share her story on how she decided to create a solution for sleep problems after not being able to find one for her snoring.
Listen to this episode of Pushing the Limits to hear more about Frances’ tips on how to optimise sleep.
Visit the Patney website for more information on Frances Anderson, her story and her products.
Use the code: Lisa for a 5% discount on Patney products for a good night’s sleep!
For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, your goals and your lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or are wanting to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, a NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that is capable of boosting the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements that are of highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combat the effects of aging, while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘So it's opening up their whole airway. Because when we’re snoring, you know, we have a normal pillow [and] we’re snoring, what's actually going on [is]—there we are tipping our chin forward onto the chest and blocking off these airways.’
‘And so what often happens is people get woken up by their own lack of breathing, and they've been constantly pulled out getting into that deep sleep phase, which is just absolutely crucial if you want to avoid neurodegeneration.’
‘If you're not sleeping well and getting good quality sleep, you're really going to age quicker. You're really going to damage your cognitive abilities, your memory. And you know, neurodegeneration is a likely chance of it happening further on down the road.’
‘But it's also a relationship issue too. You know, you've got the clinical issues with habitual snoring and sleep apnoea. But you've got relationship issues, too, that there's more than one person involved with this.’
‘But we knew we had a product that was going to solve a problem. And that problem was habitual snoring and mild to medium sleep apnoea.’
‘Without good sleep—all of those things: you can be eating perfect, you can be exercising perfect. But if you’re sleep’s out, you're not going to get the optimum out of your body.’
‘So it’s a wellness product, absolutely… While it was developed for snoring, you don’t have to be a snorer to use it.’
Frances Anderson, the founder and Managing Director of Patney, had suffered from snoring for most of her life.
She has experienced the negative effects caused by interrupted sleep and consequent fatigue. Frances could see the detrimental impact snoring was having on her health and her relationships. But it wasn’t until Frances’s husband told her one morning that she had scared the life out of him during the night because she had stopped breathing; this comment meant she was heading for sleep apnoea.
She had tried various anti-snoring products, including surgery, without success. So she decided to take things into her own hands. She set out to solve a problem that she and millions of other people experience.
Fast forward to today, the Patney Sleep Positioner pillow is no longer a dream. With the product being non-invasive, comfortable, and individualised, it is proven to control snoring for thousands of customers.
Connect with Frances and learn more about the Patney Sleep Positioner on her website. You can also send her an email at goodnight@patney.com or find her on Instagram.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can know how to optimise sleep.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.
Lisa Tamati: Lisa Tamati, your host of Pushing the Limits. Welcome back again for another excellent episode. I hope you're going to enjoy this one. I have Frances Anderson, who is the founder of Patney pillows, to guest today. You may think, ‘What? Sounds really weird’. But this is a very important topic. This is all about sleep optimisation, how to stop snoring, looking at sleep apnea and helping improve your health through correct sleep.
So, Frances is the founder of a company called Patney pillows that has sleep positioners. And this has all been clinically tested to help people with snoring, and this is an episode around sleep optimisation basically. So I do hope you enjoy this. If at the end of this interview, you're interested in trying out one of Frances's pillows, you can use the code ‘Lisa’ at checkout for a 5% discount on the actual product too. I don't usually do episodes where it's all based around a particular product. But this invention is pretty unique in the world. And it is helping people with their health and their sleep. So I'd really like you to listen to this and get some good information if you're dealing with anyone who has snoring, anyone who has sleep apnea, if you want to optimise your sleep, then this is the episode for you.
I'd also like to refer you back to a couple of other episodes that I've done around these topics. One are with James Nestor, one with Patrick McKeown and one with James Morris: two on breathing, and one on sleep apnea. If you're interested in further finding out more about optimising your sleep. There's also one with Dave Liow, on the science of light and how that affects your sleep. So make sure you go and check out all those podcasts as well in the back catalogue.
Before we head over to the show a reminder we have launched our premium membership group, our VIP group. If you want to come and join us at the pushing the limits podcast if you want to support us getting this great content out and we would love you to come and join our membership group, our patron group. It's only a few dollars a month. You know, really is a cup of coffee a month to be involved, and we have a lot of member benefits and we would love you to check it all out. You can go to patron, P-A-T-R-O-N patron.lisatamati.com for all the information on that.
And another reminder to check out my latest and greatest longevity and anti-ageing supplement NMN, which stands for nicotinamide mononucleotide. Now this is a supplement that helps upregulate the sirtuin genes which are longevity genes in the body. Without going into all the science. If you want to check out the episodes that I've done on this with Dr. Elena Seranova, a molecular biologist, then check those out on the podcast as well. And if you want to find out about this longevity and anti-ageing supplement if you're like me and you're getting on in, but long in the tooth, and you want to make sure that you slow the ageing process down and that you optimise your your health and your vitality and your lifespan then head over to nmnbio.nz, nmnbio.nz. And I highly recommend going and reading the book Lifespan by Dr. David Sinclair, a Harvard Medical School researcher. That is why I got into this. So if you want to know and do a deep dive into the science behind NMN and upregulating the sirtuin genes in autophagy, and know all about the sort of stuff that's going to help you live a longer, healthier life, then please go and check out all those resources. Right, now over to the show with Frances Anderson.
Lisa: Welcome back to Pushing the Limits today. And I have an amazing, lovely guest. And we've actually got a bit of a backstory. We already recorded this interview and then I went and lost it all on my computer somehow. Don't ask me how.
So Frances Anderson, thank you very much for joining me again. Very embarrassing situation when you go and delete an entire interview. So I know you probably want to throttle me but, today we're going to be talking a little bit about your story and this amazing invention. I want to call it invention that you've made. Now Frances is the founder of the Patney pillow or sleep positioner. And this is going to be an episode all about optimising his sleep and why snoring is bad for you and all of that sort of good stuff.
So welcome to the show, Frances again. So I think we'll start with a little bit of a backstory. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and then why you got into this, making this invention?
Frances Anderson: Well I'm the snorer, it's as simple as that. I had tried all sorts of things, including surgery, and that lasted about as long as it took the swelling to go down, so that wasn't effective. And I've tried most things and they just didn't solve the problem. And it got to the stage where I was beginning to get sleep apnea, so stopping breathing and my husband, one morning said to me, ‘You frightened the living daylights out of me last night, you stopped breathing. You got to do something about this.’ And so I sort of walked away and thought, ‘I don't know,’ What am I going to do, I’ve tried everything’.
And so I set about trying to find a solution for my snoring. And that took a little bit of time. I have to say it's not a great thing to try and invent something to sleep on, at two o'clock in the morning you're busy trying to design this thing, how the hell do you stop snoring. So eventually I did and then I felt that I'd solved my problem and carried on working like everybody else in my normal job and then a couple of friends said, ‘Can I have one’? And at that stage I thought I was the only female that snored.
Lisa: Let's dig into that little bit for a second. A lot of people have issues with snoring and for me that's sort of acceptable. Sort of it's like one of those things, I mean sort of, ‘Yeah, you snore, so who cares’? For women it's a little bit more embarrassing and like you thought you were the only woman who snored, and you're a tiny lady, very slim and, you said you struggled with snoring even in your young years, like in your teenage years. How did that make you feel?
Frances: Well I first knew that I snored at 13 when I went to boarding school. And of course you're in dormitories, and got horribly ostracised, and found I found that incredibly embarrassing. But also incredibly stressful because I didn't know how to solve it. And you know it's fine for people to say, ‘Stop snoring’, but how? So I went to the boarding school years and but still the snoring was a problem, but as I got older it became kind of a more of a problem and but I inherited from my mother, so it's probably not quite right that I thought I was the only female that there was that snored. My mother did and she was a chronic snore and with the knowledge we have now, obviously she had sleep apnea or really bad sleep apnea. And my problem, she died of dementia, and they are now looking at links between dementia with—sorry, with chronic snoring or sleep apnea, you're starving your brain of oxygen. Because it can stop breathing as much as 100 times an hour. So sleep apnea is huge.
Lisa: And we've done a—I've got a backstory with us too with my mom having sleep apnea after her stroke and I think she probably had it before it even, and doing a sleep assessment and realising that her SpO2 levels were down at around 70% at their worst time in the night, and that she was stopping breathing hundreds of times a night and actually knocking off her brain cells at a point we you know after the aneurysm which he didn't have a heck of a lot left.
And so this work came on my radar then and getting a sleep apnea assessment and realising that she was in deep trouble and having to have a CPAP machine and this is a problem that, as you know, not really well understood people sort of think snoring is just annoying. It's not just annoying, it's disrupting the sleep of the partner, obviously, in the bed which has its own health consequences for that person as well, or the other people in the dormitory in your case. But it is also really damangeling your health and there is a huge correlation now between Alzheimer's and dementia and neurodegenerative diseases and sleep apnea. This is—hence doing this podcast because it is a very important health topic.
Snoring is not just a pleasant thing and it's not just overweight old men that snore, Which is the common sort of perception. And we had a couple of experts on the show breathing experts, James Nestor and Patrick McKeown have both best-selling authors of breathing books, Breath and The Oxygen Advantage. And they talk about, you know, just how important the breathing is to the whole health and, you know, nasal breathing and in the talk of how important that piece of the puzzle is. And, you know, they go so far as to tape the mouth shut at night, which I do, actually, in order to help with the nasal breathing, which is optimising my breathing. I don't have sleep apnea, I don't snore. But that helps optimise if you like.
So you managed though, without doing, having a CPAP machine, to get on top of your snoring. And I think a lot of people would be interested in this because having a CPAP machine is brilliant. And thank goodness for them as I don't think my mum would be here now. But they're also very intrusive. A lot of people just won't comply with them. You've got this big mask over your face. And it's a very important machine. And the invention that you've made, the sleep positioner that you've made, doesn't replace CPAP. CPAP has its place. We need those. But for certain people this can help.
So you managed to—what is the sleep positioner? What is the special pillow that we're talking about?
Frances: Yeah, well, it's interesting. It took me four years to actually bring it to fruition. While I solved my own snoring within a few months, I had only just made it out of retail materials. So to commercialise that I needed to have a molded product. And so that took even more time to be able to then move it into latex. And we chose latex because of the properties. Because it's antibacterial, antifungal, anti-dust mite, it's temperature neutral, and it’s got a long life to always make from the rubber from the rubber trees, it’s close to memory foam which is made from petroleum.
Lisa: Yeah, I didn't know that. That's amazing.
Frances: So we wanted a natural product. And when I got in touch with the manufacturer, I thought I could just show them the drawings, and they could whip me up a mold, and hey, we'd have our pillows. But no, I had to say instead about trying to cut latex and build it into a shape that could be molded. And I learned that I could only do that with a scalpel. And I saw—I had made about 60 of these and my trialists would have a gallery session and let me know, said there are wedges on all sorts of exotic and make it the right shape. So eventually then we went and got the bulk made.
So the pillow is about—we call it a pillow because—sorry, we call it a sleep positioner. But in pillow is short for your life. So it looks nothing like your normal pillow. And some people get a bit of a surprise when they see it because it's a slightly different shape. But then your normal pillow doesn't solve snoring. So obviously has to be a particular shape and design. If I said to stand up straight, you find your chest comes up and out a little bit when you do that. And so there's a shoulder pad. And so the shoulder pad lifts your chest so that you can breathe right through your nasal cavity right down and into your lungs. So it's opening up your airways, like you do when you stand up straight. And then the main body of the pillow has a magic spotlight, if you like, called the sweet spot. And by positioning yourself here, in this shoulder pad, we can control the snoring.
Lisa: So it's opening up their whole airway so—because when we’re snoring, you know we have a normal pillow and we’re snoring, what's actually going on there? Are we tipping our chin forward onto the chest and rocking off the airways? There's probably a number of reasons, people who are overweight or have a big circumference of the neck, bodybuilders and so on. They have a lot of pressure going on to the airway just from the size of their necks. So is there you know is this is this really just it's repositioning that whole airway so that it's opened up. That's the whole premise behind it.
Frances: Yes, it is. It's about good sleep posture, and about opening up your airway and it's for both back and side sleepers, and sort of half tummy sleep on it. But it's not for pure tummy sleepers. And so the shape of the pillow supports the jaw when you sleep on your side, and on your back. And of course, keeping yourself in that nice position so that you can’t easily drop your feet down. The whole thing is to prevent the feet from dropping down and cutting off your airway. And getting—ike people who wake themselves up in the night. They sometimes hear themselves snore. Yeah, but they've actually stopped breathing, and they’re hearing themselves actually gasping for a breath..
Lisa: Wow. So they've actually been working out and saying, well, you know, on the podcast that I've done around sleep and breathing, when we, when we sleep, we need to get into this deep sleep phase, which as we get older, gets more and more difficult. We have not, you know, non-REM sleep and REM sleep. And we have different levels where we're in a deep, deep sleep where we're actually paralysed and unable to move, and their body does it in order to, we have all these dreams, otherwise we'd be living them out. But when we're in this really deep unconscious state, we're completely unaware of the position of our body and what we're actually doing and what's actually happening with our circulation and our breathing and, and so what often happens is people get woken up by their own lack of breathing, and they've been constantly pulled out of or getting into that deep sleep phase, which is just absolutely crucial. If you want to avoid neurodegeneration, you need that deep sleep.
So when you're being pulled out, and you're in only getting into a shallow state of sleep, and then being pulled out again, as you have to gasp for air and wake yourself up, the body is waking yourself up, so you don't bloody suffocate, basically. And it does it very well, but it is stopping you getting that really restorative, important deep sleep happening, which is really going to have effects on things like your emotional state, your ability to deal with stressors, your ability to function properly, basically, during the day.
And as time goes on, then it can affect your memory. And then it can affect, you know, the whole neurodegeneration side of things where you're not cleaning out the tau proteins that they talk about in relation to Alzheimer's. And we're doing this, there's something called glymphatic cleaning at night. And you know, I'm not an expert on sleep, I'm going to get Dr. Matthew Walker, I hope, on who can explain this way better than me. But there is this brainwashing effect that's going on when we're in certain levels of sleep, and it's the glymphatic system. And if we're not getting that really deep, you know, continuous sleep, we're not getting that. And so we're not cleaning out these damaged proteins, if you like, and they start to accumulate in the brain. And these can lead into neurodegenerative diseases. And I've probably butchered that from a science perspective. So, but you get the whole point.
If you're not sleeping well and getting good quality sleep, you're really going to age quicker, you're really going to damage your cognitive abilities, your memory, and you know, neurodegeneration is you know, unlikely chance of it happening further on down the road as you experienced with your dear mum. So this was really crucial for you because you didn't want to go down that same path having seen your mum go down there.
Frances: No, absolutely not. But it's also a relationship issue too. You got the clinical issues with habitual snoring and sleep apnea. But you've got relationship issues, too. There's more than one person involved with this. There’s generally two people involved with this.
Lisa: The one is the sufferer.
Frances: Oh it’s the sufferer. And so it's really important to try and resolve this for your partner's sake. Because while you're not sleeping well, and you will find that he'll be tired in the daytime, really tired sort of mid-afternoon, falling asleep at night,before bedtime, if you like. And it also, just that general well-being that fuzziness in the head and and such like. But your partner is also suffering from sleep deprivation. They're the ones that have been woken on a regular basis while you supposedly sleep through.
And you know, there's that lock in the morning that says, ‘Here's your star rating from a’... Generally the partner that has to go to the spare room, because they're the one that's being disturbed. So they're having to go and get into a cold bed somewhere else in the house. And or, you know, people don't necessarily have a spare bedroom and they're sleeping on a couch to try and just actually get some sleep. So it is, it's a social problem within your own home. And, you know, it creates arguments.
Lisa: It definitely does.
Frances: It’s very disturbing and, and you've got two people feeling very tired during the day. So it is important to get both parties to get a good night's sleep. And so now and again, you may store a little, but just turn over and you know, reposition yourself on the pillow and you're satisfied again. And so we have an 86% success rate, which we're really proud of.
Lisa: Yeah, absolutely.
Frances: And you know, we've sold thousands of these now. So we know our statistics are right, because we give a 30-night money back guarantee if somebody is not happy. So we know for a fact that we have the same 86% success rate. But also we didn't go into this blindly there and just you know, hit the back with a second session. We put it through the Otago University, the WellSleep Center, at Berlin Hospital in Wellington. And a wonderful lady, Dr Angela Campbell who was in charge of that study. And it came out really, really well there too. In fact, we wouldn't have commercialised it if we didn't put all these resources into it, if we didn't believe in our product. But we knew we had a product that was going to solve a problem, and that problem was habitual snoring and mild to medium sleep apnea. We don't advertise it as a product that's going to solve serious sleep apnea because those people do have a serious condition,
Lisa: It can be a neurological thing. So in the case of mum, it's actually brain switching off in the wrong times in the night. Yeah, you know, so we can’t affect that. However, you know, like, even in a situation like with mum, I get up at four in the morning to check on her. And often she's taken the mask off, because she's had enough of it. And her argument to me is ‘Well, I'm not sleeping properly. You know, like, I'm not in the deep sleep at that hour. So it's okay.’ I’m like, ‘Mum, when you're asleep, have no idea what level of sleep you're in. And why would you think that in the early morning, you are not going to have sleep apnea, whereas at midnight, you are? This will be an extra backup system for me.
Frances: We do, we get people that buy the pillow because they know that they whip off this CPAP machine during the night. And so some people sleep with the CPAP machine and the Patney when they whip that CPAP off, they still have some protection for the rest of the night,
Lisa: Because neither—you know, like, even the CPAP machine isn't 100% coverage, you know, like it's blowing air down into your lungs, which you know, has its own certain amount of problems. You can't nasal breathe really when you've got a sleep apnea machine or at least mum can’t. And it dries your mouth out, and it does all these, it's not very nice having this you can't turn over very easily et cetera, et cetera. So it's, it is a little bit difficult having one of these. But in combination, and this is the perfect, you know, situation to be able to have it as a backup. If she does take it off in at least hopefully her chest is more open. Hopefully she'll breathe better, if not 100% perfect.
Frances: I mean, we talked before about big people being the snorers. Yeah. That's a bit of a fallacy. I believed that too. But no, I'm 58 kgs. Yeah. So I'm not a big person. And probably 25% to 30% of the sales that I make to a woman in that size bracket. So our problem is narrow airways.
Lisa: Yes.
Frances: But then if I look at it, the male, my male customers, majority of them would be five foot nine up to six foot and be in that 80 to 100 kg bracket. So they're not huge. They're not huge men. And they’re not overweight. You know, the big fellas, I don't see that much of.
Lisa: Really?
Frances: Yeah. But also, you know, if you're looking at females in particular, 42% of my customers are female, and 58% male. So that's quite a big number of females.. And also, after menopause, about 60% of women snore. But yeah, something else to look forward to ladies here.
Lisa: Yeah, we're in the middle of it. Thanks very much. It's awesome fun, this menopausal thing. So when your estrogen levels drop, and there's a big correlation between menopause and then worsening cardiovascular outcomes and so on. I wonder if part of that has to do with the sleep issues that come along with that, or whether it's because of the drop in the estrogen, which is particular for the heart. It's probably a combination of many things. But as your health starts to deteriorate because you're not getting good sleep, then you get things like, when you're not sleeping well, like shift workers for a start.
For example, you know, I've been dealing with this issue with my husband as well, he's doing shift work, shift workers die earlier. But that's pretty much a given. They are more prone to diabetes and cardiovascular, metabolic disorders and cardiac neurodegenerative disorders. If they're doing shift work where they have to be awake at night, they tend to be more overweight, they have problems with their appetite regulation, their hormone situations, all of these things are affected by sleep. So okay, that's for shift workers. And we need our shift workers because they keep the country going when we need them to be. But they need extra help. And then they also—we need to realise that, okay, so that's what's happening if you have to stay up all night, and your Circadian rhythms are all out of whack. And the rest of us get to sleep normal sort of hours. But if we're not sleeping well, again, this is going to have all of those knock-on effects.
And this is why I think this episode is really important. I don't usually do an episode with something on a particular product. But I think that this is a product that I've found that is actually going to help change people's lives. And therefore, it's really worth doing a whole episode on this because it's something that's easy to try out and see whether it works for you and see if it improves your thing, because it's the basis of all health is sleep.
As a health coach, as a running coach, before I deal with what exercise I'm going to get you to do or what nutrition I'm going to get you to eat or what times a day and all that sort of thing. I have to look at your sleep first. Your sleep is the basis. Without good sleep, all of those things, you can be eating perfect, you can be excising perfect, but if your sleep’s out, you're not going to get the optimum out of your body. So I think this is actually at the base. This is the thing we need to sort out first is your sleep. And a part of that is making sure that you're not snoring. And so I think trying their Patney pillow is a really good thing to have a go ahead if you are dealing with this.
And I haven't seen this type of product anywhere else in the world. I mean, I haven't searched the world. I'm sure there's somebody else maybe in the world has come up with something similar. But is this pretty unique?
Frances: Yeah, it is. We have actually paid into it and several countries and the major countries, because it is quite unique. I suppose the other thing I should tell your listeners about or your viewers about is that it's actually individualised. As far as we know, we are one of only three commercialised individualised pillows in the world. And so the pillow is unique to the user. And so we have an algorithm and we're developing that further and further all the time to determine what weight and size, well the size doesn't change. But what weight the pillow is, in the depths of it. So we compression test them, we know exactly what height it is. And so we measure that to the customer.
So we ask our customers some basic questions like, do they have a broad, very broad, average narrow shoulder. And if you cut them other questions like that, they don't need to measure themselves, all they have to do is compare themselves to their peers who are their height, roughly their height or weight. So we've been able to do that. And that is incredibly unique.
So our biggest customers being two meters tall and 170 kgs, so a fairly big boy. But we can cater for bigger still. And for everybody underneath that they're smaller, slightly about 4 foot 6 and about 45 kgs. So from the teeny, tiniest little lady who did snore, and through to the biggest fellows so we can cope with any body shape. In particular, we get a lot of tradies, strummers, sportspeople in particular, who have built up a lot of muscle around the necks or shoulders.
Lisa: Bodybuilders have issues with this.
Frances: We can deal with that though. So it's quite a unique product.
Lisa: Now I want to dive into a little bit the story of the name because this was a very cute story. It's called the Patney pillow. When I first talked to her I thought your name was Patney. You said it, but it's not quite right is it? Tell us about the story behind this.
Frances: My surname is Anderson, so very Scottish surname. Patney is a made-up name. My mum's—because my mum was a major snorer, and I inherited it from her. We were trying to think of what we would call the pillow. And so one day, one of my grandson—not my grandson, my mum's grandsons—walked into the house. Her name was Patch and he called ‘How you going Patneyneckers’? And she grabbed hold on for calling her that. The Patney stuck. And the grandkids used to call her Patney, and so we thought well what better name for the company and the product. We’ll call it Patney.
Lisa: What a lovely tribute to your mum. It's a cute name so the Patney pillow and it sort of sticks, rolls off the tongue quite nicely. And you know, this is the thing like you lost your mum to dementia. You were fearful that that was the track that you were going to be going on, and therefore you came up—and this is what I love the number eight wire mentality of you like, ‘Okay I've got a problem no one else can fix this for me I've had surgery I've tried every other thing there is around, I'm gonna fix it myself’. Are you very much like that, is that your approach to life?
Frances: Well I get all the things yeah. It has to be non-invasive, that was the other thing that was really important to me. Because I had tried a lot of invasive products like surgery and found that that didn't work. And so for me, it was really important that it was non-invasive.
It’s interesting we did a survey before we commercialised and asked people what was the most important thing about a product that could stop snoring and the partner said, ‘Stop snoring’, that was the most important thing, that they would stop snoring. We had a list, then it was ‘Comfort and such’ like. The snorers said ‘Well comfort is the most important thing’. For the partner, they didn't give a toss about comfort. They just wanted it away and if it's a torture chamber, I don't care you know. It's non-invasive, it's very comfortable and it has to be both for me that was for sure.
Lisa: Yeah and you know I sent you a photo of my husband using his one and you know he's loving it. He stopped snoring and that's you know improved my sleep knowing and improved the marriage because I'm not hitting him in the middle of the night waking him up because he's snoring like a trooper. And I'm worried, like your husband like when he would be snoring in and he would stop breathing and that would terrify me because I'm like, you know ‘When are you going to take a breath, are you gonna take a breath?’ And then you're like this the whole night you know worried that they're not gonna breathe. So I think it's just fantastic. I don't have to worry about that now. Now he just does the occasional sort of *snoring noises* and then when he's turning over and that's about it and then he goes back and he's good.
And he's very much like, because I, you can imagine in my household I'm the biohacking queen, right. I've got every gadget known to man. And I come home with all of these things for him to try and he's like, ‘Okay here we go again another thing that I'm going to have to add to my daily routine and regime of what Lisa is telling me I've got to do, you know whether it's from hyperbaric to ozone to you know shaking machines and all sorts of infrared light things that you stick up your nose’. And he's always like my guinea pig but he's taken to this like a duck to water.
So I was stoked because I did think he might go, ‘Nah, not doing that’ because you know very much he does that on occasion and ‘I'm not doing it’ you know. I tried to get into the mouth taping thing, that was never in a bar of that. But this is at least something that he's actually adopted. So sorry poor husband he's not here...
Frances: Yeah it reminds me of a story when I had trials when I was back in the prototype stage, and so I've given out these prototypes to the testers and I thought back about four days later to follow them to see how they were, how he was going. And he wasn't there but his wife was there and she said, ‘Oh’ she said ‘I had a terrible night's sleep the first part’. I said ‘What didn't work?’ She said, ‘No I've listened to him snore for 20 years and I thought he was dead’. So I was like, ‘What’s happened?’ ‘He's not doing it!’ Yeah, that upset you.
Lisa: Because you can get actually quite used to that sound a little bit it becomes quite comforting in a weird strange way. It's a bit like that white noise apps that you have. You turn on the white noise to help you sleep sometimes, a little bit like that. But yeah, you slept pretty quite, quickly if they’re not snoring.
So Frances, where to from here for your company? We're going to share the links and so on in the show notes. But can you tell everybody, where can they find out? Where can they reach you, there is a 30-day money back guarantee on this sleep positioner if people want to try it out, where can they find you?
Frances: They can find me on www.patney.com. That's P-A-T-N-E-Y dot com. And there's a wealth of information on our website about how to use. There’s not a lot of testimonials, there's blogs. And there's the story there too. But obviously, we will be offering some special through Lisa as well, too.
Lisa: Yes, we're gonna have a discount code. And we will organise that afterwards. And I'll put that in the show notes too, guys. So if you want to try this out, if you're dealing with snoring, if you're dealing with someone who is snoring, try it out, it's risk-free. Give it a go, it might change your life.
Frances: I think the other important thing too, is you don't have to snore to use it.
Lisa: This is the point.
Frances: Absolutely not. And we get a lot of people who their partner has one. And they've come back to us for one for themselves simply because it just opens up your airways, gives you good sleep posture and breathe easily through the night. And so a lot of people buy it because for more about wellness, as opposed to just snoring. So it’s a wellness product. Absolutely. As well as, while it was developed for snoring, you don't have to be a snorer to use it.
Lisa: A question, and this may be outside the remit of it, but would it help with people with asthma? Because when I was severe asthmatics, especially as a child, I used to sleep like half up, because it would take—would be less pressure on the lungs. Have you had any experience in that realm with asthma at all?
Frances: We've had people with different medical ailments, if you like, like reflux and aspirin and things like that. But we haven't done a study on that to say, ultimately, we get a lot of anecdotal evidence of it. But also people where they've got a really big cold or flu, they find it helps open up their airways as well too, during those years. So I can't say you know, from a medical perspective, that it's going to help. But because it does put you in that very good sleep position, and it does maintain an open airway, it may well help with. Like I said, we have anecdotal evidence.
Lisa: And I think, when you're trying out new things, especially when it's you know, something like a pillow, it takes a little bit of getting used to, isn't it? You'd need a couple of nights for sort of I know with Haisley, he—the first night he was like, ‘Not sure not sure’. And then after that, after a couple of nights he got used to it. And it's the same with mum’s CPAP machine. I've tried to change the mask that she wears so that it's less invasive, but she actually just wants to go back to the thing that she knows, you know, so it is very much a habit-forming thing. And once you push through that initial sort of pushback that you get when you try anything new that can help.
So what do you think—I mean, I think an 86% success rate is huge. And the 14% would just be people who aren't willing to push through that little difficult phase or just don't, you know, aren’t willing to try it. I bet you get a lot of partners buying them and then the person won't even try it out.
Frances: Yeah, the odd one. I mean, there's a myriad of reasons why, you know, that 14%. If I said it was 100% nobody would believe me. Yeah. Nothing, nothing is 100%. So we believe that you know, 86 is pretty good.
Some people have quite complex health issues. And there's more going on than just just the snoring. Some people will, they just can't get used to it. And some of the perhaps the older folks, you know, find that a little bit. But majority of people, it's fine. And we can’t solve everybody's problems. Sometimes plain doesn't solve the snoring problems. And they get their money back, and so there's no loss. We've tried it and for some reason, it doesn't work. There's some people who I believe have got serious sleep apnea. And I advise them to go to a sleep clinic and actually get there what's causing their problem, their snoring to be actually diagnosed and and sorted.
Lisa: Especially if it’s neurological—absolutely obstructive sleep apnea, and then there's neurological reasons for it like mum’s. Like where the brain’s been actually damaged, the brain stem’s damaged, and we can't fix it. And I've just had mum at the sleep clinic last week assessing her data because they record her data every weekend. Unfortunately, she hasn't improved everything else and your brain sort of come right but that aspect hasn't. So she can't ever get off that machine. We need it for life. And thank goodness we have access to that. So there is things, but she can still benefit from this pillow, especially when she takes it off in the middle of the night.
So I think all of these aspects—I really encourage people to go and listen to the episodes with Patrick McKeown and James Nestor. To understand more the whole, ‘Why our jaws even have developed differently than our ancestors, the different reasons for that the foods, the breathing, the nasal breathing, all of those aspects are also very crucial, important pieces of this particular puzzle. And I also did a episode on sleep apnea with James Morris, who used to own all the eating clinics throughout New Zealand and was very instrumental with us and with mum’s situation. So those are—if you're interested in this topic, make sure you go and check out those episodes as well. And try out the Patney pillow just go and order one find out. See if it works for you. If it doesn't send it back.
Frances: Well, you talk to us first.
Lisa: Yeah, find out, ask Frances all about it. See if it's going to be for you. Try it out. And then yeah, see how it goes and give us some feedback.
Frances: But the other thing is too, that if somebody does have a question, we’re only fire ways to telephone. And we've got lots of tips and tricks anyway. Because of course, we don't know what your bedroom environment is like, we don't know how old your mattress is, things like that. But we can overcome those problems as well.
Lisa: Yeah, brilliant. Thank you so much, Frances, for being somebody who thinks outside the box. And, one number eight wire mentality. I've got a problem. I'm gonna fix it. Now I'm going to fix it for everybody else, because this is exactly how I am too, and that's how I've come to do when I do. Have a problem, fix that. Okay, now I can help other people with it. So thank you very much for your time.
Frances: Thank you, Lisa. Thank you.
Lisa: Hi, again, it's me. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Frances. I actually got the code wrong. It's actually a 10% discount. If you want a 10% discount on the Patney pillow, then use the code ‘Lisa’ at checkout. I said 5% in the intro, but I got it wrong. It's actually 10%. So thank you very much Frances for the discount, and go over there and try it out now.
That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
Failure happens to everyone; we will experience it at some point in our lives. Despite our sacrifices and hard work, we may not achieve what we set out to do. It is, however, important to approach failure not as the end of a journey but as a crucial lesson. And it doesn’t matter how many times you fail—physical, emotional and mental resilience will take us one step forward towards our eventual success and victory.
Laura Penhaul joins us in this episode to share the story of her expedition across the Pacific Ocean. She describes the preparations she undertook, from planning the expedition to gaining financial support. Laura also talks about the importance of breaking down the journey and being clear with team dynamics in the expedition’s success.
If you want to know more about the makings of strength and mental resilience in a person, then this episode is for you.
For our epigenetics health programme all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries
Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles?
Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler?
Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, your goals and your lifestyle?
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you.
If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or are wanting to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless.
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, a NAD+ precursor
Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time.
What is NMN?
NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that is capable of boosting the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life.
Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements that are of highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today.
We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today.
Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all
Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combat the effects of aging, while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘There's people that can go through the same type of thing. And yet one person wakes up, being so thankful that they're alive’ they're now going to make the most of life. And then somebody else that wakes up and they're like, they wish they didn't wake up’.
‘How can I put myself in a situation which is completely unknown, that's kind of gonna make me want to give up? And I want to understand what it is we draw on when we can't give up [and] we've only got one option’.
‘It's all about perspective, isn't it? And it's all about the context that you're in. And this is the thing that I get really passionate about is, I want to optimise people's own elite performance’.
‘It is not a failure unless you don’t learn from it. And leaping sometimes is exactly what you need to do, and it's just not being scared to fall, like just knowing that, you know what, if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. It's got you one step further. And one step closer to finding what the next thing might be’.
‘You kind of just got to crack on and then there's no going back, you can't row backwards, sort of, it's only about having the confidence to step into taking on the Pacific’.
‘You've got to understand that there are things you can't control. So you've done everything you can control. And now the rest is up to the gods, basically. And you're going to have to be able to be adaptable and flexible’.
‘The girls hated confrontation. They weren't used to giving and receiving feedback. That was always felt like a personal threat. I just had to put myself in the barrier first. I be like, “Right, cool, okay, if you're not going to give it and you're going to say everything's rosy when it's not, I’ll pull it out”’.
Laura Penhaul is one of the world's most respected physiotherapists. She helps train many of the top athletes in Olympic sailing and the Paralympics.
Laura is known for her nine-month, 9000-mile crossing of the Pacific in a rowboat. She managed a team of four women known as the Coxless Crew; she was the expedition's team leader and organiser. The expedition is featured in a documentary called Losing Sight of Shore.
Connect with Laura through Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn more about stories of strength and mental resilience.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.
Lisa Tamati: Hi everyone, and welcome back to Pushing the Limits once again. Today, I have another world-leading, actually world-record-holding, superwoman. Now, this lady is Laura Penhaul from England, and Laura is one of the world's most respected physiotherapists. She helps train many of the top athletes in Olympic sailing and in Paralympics with people with disabilities. She's done an awful lot in high-performance sport. But what Laura is really known for is that Laura did a 9,000-mile crossing of the Pacific in a rowboat, you heard that right. Right across the Pacific. Nine months it took and she was the team leader and organiser of this whole expedition. She got four women together to do this epic event. And there is a documentary out called Losing Sight of Shore.
And today we discuss this mammoth expedition that Laura undertook. The funny thing is that Laura hadn't even been a rower before she took this on. But because she had worked so much with high-performance athletes, people pushing the limits of endurance, and people with disabilities doing crazy things. She wanted to understand what is it that makes some people so resilient and strong, and other ones want to give up when they're faced with a trauma. And she thought, 'I don't need to wait until something drastic happens in my life, and my health has taken off me or my mobility, or I have an accident or I have something to wake up. I can actually take on some mammoth task so that I can start to understand what it actually takes and what resilience and strength is all about'. And she felt like she didn't have the right to be leading and guiding other people if she didn't have that experience herself. So she set off on a mission, what she thought would take them a year to do for a status to organise this expedition across the Pacific.
And they knew that taking it four years of preparation, we go into the, all the details of putting together such a high-performance team, it's a fantastic interview. She really is a superwoman. I'm in awe over here, I can't imagine being in a 29-foot boat for anything more than about two hours, I reckon, before I'd start going nuts, so she's pretty impressive, this lady. And before we head over to the show, just want to remind you, we've launched now, our patron program for the podcast. So if you want to become a premium member of our podcast tribe, if you like, we'd love you to come and join us here on over to patron.lisatamati.com. And we'd love to see you over, the, it's all about keeping the show going. We've been doing it now for five and a half years each and every episode takes me a long time to put together to chase these world-leading experts, to do the research that I need to do, especially when it's dealing with scientific topics, and a test takes an awful amount of time.
And to keep it going we need your help. And we wanted to give you lots of benefits too so people who do get in behind the podcast and help us provide this super valuable content to everybody get a whole lot of exclusive member benefits. So we'd love you to check it out. Go to patron.lisatamati.com for more information on that. And on that note before we just hit over to Laura, I just want to remind you about my new longevity and anti-ageing supplement NMN Nicotinamide Mononucleotide. You would have heard a couple of times in the podcast I had Dr Elena Seranova and we're going to have her on more often. She's a molecular biologist and tells us all about the ways that we can help with anti-ageing. And one of those things is by taking Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, which is a very, very powerful supplement. It's an NAD precursor that helps up-regulate the sirtuin genes, helps provide a bigger pool of NAD to every cell in the body and helps on a very, very deep level. The ageing working against the ageing process and who doesn't want to know about them if you want to find out all about it and all the science behind it, please go to nmnbio.nz. Right, now over to the show with Laura Penhaul.
Lisa: Well, hi everyone, and welcome to Pushing the Limits. Today I'm super excited. I have an amazing, amazing guest for you. I really do find the most incredible people and this lady is a superwoman. So welcome to the show. It's really, really nice to have you Laura. Laura Penhaul is sitting in Cornwall in England. Laura, how's your day going? Well, you're not going.
Laura Penhaul: Oh I was gonna say yeah no, it's been great. Do it. Yeah, it's now eight o'clock in the evening. So yeah, no, it's all good. It's been a beautiful sunny day.
Lisa: Oh lovely, lovely. So Laura is an amazing person who does expeditions and as a physio, Laura, can you give us a little bit of background? I want you to tell your story in your words, give us a bit of a synopsis about what you do and what the critical things. I mean I've done a bit in the intro so, but I really want your words, if you like.
Laura: Yeah, no props well, firstly, yes. Thanks, Lisa for having me on the show. It's been an honour because I think you're a superwoman more than me.
Lisa: Hell no.
Laura: But no I mean yeah, my background is I worked in elite sport, in Olympic and Paralympic sport for over 14 years. Sort of went to Vancouver, London, Rio, Tokyo cycles. And yeah during that kind of journey, and that was as lead physio in different sports, whether that was downhill skiing, whether it was with British Athletics Paralympic team. And more recently, I was with the British sailing team. And during that sort of journey as a physio like, the role that we have, as physios, physical therapists are very much kind of, you know, you're seeing somebody through a journey. And like when I worked with them and we've worked with patients in trauma, worked versus kind of, you know, in spinal cord injuries, and then straight to Paralympic sport, I've been surrounded by people that have been faced with significant adversity.
And it's sort of, it's always along my journey of my career, have I been fascinated by understanding the person in front of me and kind of going, there's usually two types of people when they've been thrown a massive curveball, like an RTA or road traffic accident, or something horrendous, that is completely changed their life for the rest of their life. Those two, there's people that can go through the same type of thing. And yet one person wakes up, being so thankful that they're alive, they're now going to make the most of life. And then somebody else that wakes up and they're like, they wish they didn't wake up.
And as a physio dealing with those two people, you've got to have a very different approach. And in the, kind of—to me, understanding that person that wants to give up and actually being able to change their mindset and facilitate, go shoulder to shoulder with them is really powerful. And then those people that do wake up and want to thrive, like they're the ones that have inspired me to do more stuff, because I'm like, why do we wait for adversity? Why do we wait for something to be a curveball before we then, like, start to go, ‘Oh, my God, I need to make the most of life like I’m fit. And I'm healthy. I need to make the most of life because clearly stuff could happen in an hour’s time.
Lisa: At any time.
Laura: Exactly. So that's kind of what then drove me to start to do more and more personally, and kind of a bit of exploratory expedition space. And then the real, so that led me to ride the Pacific Ocean, which is kind of you know what, we're talking about.
Lisa: You said it again, you just rode the Pacific Ocean is, I just dropped it as a, to yeah, and then I rode the Pacific Ocean. So you were into sailing and into rowing and into all of that sport, as prior, this was your thing?
Laura: No. Well, that's the thing, no wasn't in all honesty. I was, I'm kind of a jack of all trades like I love anybody, any athletes, anybody that I work with, I want to understand them. And I want to understand the sport, the environment that they're in. So when I was working with skiers, I went off and did a ski season. I learned to ski when I, and I'm somebody that, yeah, I love to do different sports and outdoors, the sort of outdoor environments. And if I was working with marathon runners, I was like, I can't fully treat them if I don't understand, if I haven't run a marathon like, to me, I need to experience what they've experienced, even in a small way to kind of get a glimpse of the environment.
So I would run a marathon, same with triathletes, and, you know, not to the extent of your, sort of did a half Ironman, and then the point was the Paralympic cohort when I was working with them. I was like, this is an area that I can't untap you know, yeah.
Lisa: Yeah.
Laura: I can do it, but I can't understand what it is to be a Paralympian.
Lisa: Yep.
Laura: However, how can I put myself in a situation which is completely unknown, that's kind of gonna make me want to give up. And I want to understand what it is we draw on when we can't give up you know, we've only got one option.
Lisa: Yep.
Laura: So I kind of, that's what I was searching for, for a couple of years of searching for something that was going to be out of my comfort zone completely and was going to be a challenge on multiple levels.
Lisa: Sure must have been.
Laura: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I guess at the time, I was doing, sort of, triathlons. I was enjoying them. But anything that was cycling, running, swimming, I felt like this would be expected and I kind of would already be a bit familiar with it. So when I suddenly heard about ocean rowing, I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is ideal'. I've always wanted to row but never did it. Then never got a chance to, so I'd never rode before. I've never lost sight of shore. Like, you know, I've never been out at sea properly, never sailed or any of that stuff. Well, a bar like going on a few trips. But yeah, not a sailor by anyway, shape or form.
So it was, I was, and that just connected, you know, when something, an opportunity comes up and you're like, ‘This is exactly what I've been looking for'. And it was a proper light bulb moment. And the thing for me, it's the one time in my whole life that I've been so focused, like, ‘I have to make this happen'. Because I know, in my heart of hearts, I know what I'm going to get out of this is going to be huge.
Lisa: Wow.
Laura: And that basically is why starting point with it, it was kind of, I didn't know how to row, I went from being a marathon weight of like, something stupid, like 58 kilos up to, I had to go up to 72 kilos to grow on mass, you know, to be not skinny, because we lose a lot of weight out there. I had to put a team together, whereas, in my personal sport, I was doing quite individual sports. So, you know, I had to work out the team cohesion, the whole team dynamics, and recruitment. I had to figure out what the boat was, get it built, like then set up this as a business, you know, so. So yeah, so the whole journey it was, I mean, now on reflection, there's so many learnings from it. But I absolutely thrive from the self-awareness piece, how much I've learned about myself, and the different perspectives. And you know, approaching that row, my approach is very much like, this is all brand spanking new. So if I can approach it with a blank canvas, if I can have a real adaptive mindset, and if I surround, if I've now gone on the other side of the table, rather than surrounding athletes, if I surround myself with the relevant expertise, how far can I get? And how far can I really experience that athlete?
Lisa: Yeah, sorry, just my brother's just come in the middle of the podcast it’s all right. There. Come on Mitch, get around the other side. Yeah, this is podcast life for you. Didn't tell your brother you’re recording.
There was so much here that I wanted to unpack. Because there was like, you just skipped over a ton of stuff. Number one, you had no idea. So what gave you the confidence, what was the little voice inside you saying, ‘I can do this’, when you're in a completely unknown sport? Like what was it that made you think, ‘Oh, yeah, I can ride across the Pacific on a row across the Pacific, you know, for nine months, and that all worked out well'. You know, how did you even come up with a concept for something so audacious?
Laura: Well, I mean, it's all about small pieces, isn't it, and kind of reaching out to those that have done stuff and those that you respect and have the expertise. So it was basically breaking it, breaking the journey down. First of all, one is that route even possible? So initially, somebody had asked me to be part of the Indian Ocean, and they were putting a team together and then I evolved it into the Pacific. And then somebody, I was like, well, actually, originally, it might have been the new ocean wave race, which just goes from San Fran to Hawaii. And I was like, well, that's not the Pacific. That's a third of it, like so if I'm going to say I'm going to row the Pacific. I want to row, can I row all of it?
Yeah. So it was then reaching out to somebody from a logistical point of view and a support structure point of view saying, ‘Is this even feasible? And what would it look like?’ And when they said, 'Yes'. I was like, right, okay. So that's route can get involved, this is what it's going to look like. We're going to need to start, we're going to need to replenish, but it's doable. But it's going to take this time frame. And then it was kind of like right, in order for me to get prepped and the team to get prepped, what's the time frame that it's going to take to do that? Let's be realistic. And I wasn't realistic. I was naive, I thought it would only take us about a year to get to the start line. And hell no. It took four years to get to start, like four years.
Lisa: Four years. That’s massive.
Laura: Yeah, so it was. But interestingly, there's so many parallels, you know, like working in Olympic sport, everything's in four-year cycles for the Olympic cycle. And so there's so much that I learned through that process of, I thought I was only going to go in a year's time. That didn't happen. We didn't have the funding. I didn't got the team, the boat wasn't finished, you know, it was like, right, I need to go again. I need to reset. I need to sort of keep the ball rolling. But I need to learn from what failures have had here. And how do I overcome them?
Lisa: Wow.
Laura: The second year, I didn’t quite have to win I thought it was but it's all that sort of stuff. You go, yeah, you can give up why it's such a clear vision with it. And the question in my head was, ‘There's going to be an all-female team that is going to do this at some point. Like, why can't it be me? And I'm sure that will happen in my lifetime'. So what am I missing? What are the things that I can't see? That's in my blind spots. And that's where I started to reach out, to pull in different people to say, right, ‘This is the problem I've got, how can you help me’? How can you see and it was that reaching out for help with the right expertise that got us to the start line? It wasn't me. It was the collective bigger support team around us.
Lisa: How did you even, like the resources and the money in the financial and the sponsorship, when you didn't have a—I mean, you had a backstory as a high-performance expert, and helping other people in training and so on. But, you know you didn't have, you weren't—there were no huge amount of resources behind you. How did you—I know what I had to go through to get to the races that I did. And that was probably a heck of a lot less than what you had to go through. How did you face that? And what did you learn on the business side of the journey, the marketing, all of that sort of stuff?
Laura: Yeah, I mean–
Lisa: Selling the idea to people.
Laura: Yeah, the money. It kind of—it’s exactly that. I think it's showing the belief, like the absolute dogged determinedness, that this is going to happen, and you know, like, I put in my own swag to it. I paid for the boat built in the first place. So I'm like, I'm gonna do this, like, do you want to be part of it or not? But I want to do this regardless. Yeah.
Lisa: So basically, how I did too.
Laura: This is not my approach. But you know, I mean, I say that, but let's face it, I was useless at kind of asking for money, like, you know, it's great, you're doing it for charities. But to ask to support me, and like our journey. I was crap. You know, I'm a physio, I like to help people. I don't like asking for help. You know, at the time, I was very much in that poor sort of leadership style. And that's a big, that was a big learning point. But then reaching out to people that do work in business and do work in sponsorship. And they were the people that then helped me to shape sort of your sponsorship deck and how you need to brand it, what's your, you know, the colours, the language, all of that type of stuff.
Lisa: Wow.
Laura: And I loved it because I mean, I love learning. So suddenly, I was entering a snippet of a different world that I knew nothing about previously. Same with like the PR side of it, I had no idea but that was great fun, and, and the business model itself, like yeah became a business and I thought it was all about the physical and that was totally not it was 10% of like the project. And then yeah, so like you say, setting up a business no Scooby-Doo about and so simplicity was reaching out to people that had been successful had done it before. And the likes of, you know, Mark Beaumont, that we've talked about before like Mark. Mark is somebody that's an elite athlete, expedition athlete, he'd actually at the time rode the Atlantic, and unfortunately, they nearly died at sea. So I'd reached out to him to learn from his experiences from the actual failures, more, I don't want necessarily the successes, but, and he then was great at providing me with a bit more of the structure for you know, the timeline, the budget that this, that in the other room.
Lisa: Wow.
Laura: How you sort of need to get the sponsorship. And yeah, so I think to me, it's about as you know, if you hold, if this is a new space and you hold an ego thinking you're going to, then you're never gonna get anywhere.
Lisa: You’re gonna get your ass kicked.
Laura: Yeah, basically, just whereas for me, yeah, well, I don't mind. I don't mind saying I don't know something. I'm happy to ask why and how and who can help…
Lisa: You can be very humble, we can tell that five minutes of talking to you, you know.
Laura: Thank you very much.
Lisa: And how did you get a team together? Because you get four ladies, you rode the Pacific and people were talking like nine months and a rowboat unsupported, like from California to Cairns, wasn’t it? It's great. Yeah. There's a documentary out on it. If people want to find out we'll work out with it with the link sir. And how they can get hold of it perhaps afterwards. Four ladies in a rowboat, rowing across the lake. I mean, to the average person who doesn't know anything about rowing? It sounds absolutely insane. And I, like, I said to my husband, I was interviewing this morning and I said I couldn't last 24 hours in a rowboat. I probably couldn't last four hours in a rowboat. How do you comprehend nine months like that for me? Is, I mean, I've never done anything on that scale, of that long. You know, like, the longest thing I ever did was run through New Zealand which was a sustained effort over 42 days. And that well nearly bloody killed me, you know. But that's not nine months, you know, little logistics and all that. Wow.
Laura: Yeah, but you know what, I've been, flipping heck, you know. 40 odd days that you're running the lengths of New Zealand, like that is insane. So you could have...
Lisa: That’s a hell lot easier than rowing.
Laura: It’s not though! I mean, it's all about perspective, isn't it? And it's all about the context that you're in. And this is the thing that I get really passionate about is, I want to optimise people's own elite performance, like, not comparative to anybody else, like, what's your—so what you're really is your achievement of like, 42 days and everything else you've achieved is huge. Whereas somebody else's 42 days of running, will be running a marathon like that will be—it's about that gap analysis, like, where you'd got yourself to, to then be able to take on the 42-day sort of challenge. Like that was a big old leap, but you're already like, sort of—your experiences, and you'd prepped yourself for that.
Lisa: Yes, years and years.
Laura: Yeah, and where is somebody who's on a couch, but then is setting their sights of running a marathon. That's their 42 days, like, that's their elite performance for them. And the row for us? Yeah, it was a big old leap, but it was fundamentally, it was broken down. Like I think sometimes you must have found this with the run, you're talking about there and everything else. You've got to break it down, like you certainly in the preparation phase, you've got to plan every inch and every sort of crook of it within its life so that you don't leave any stone left unturned. You feel like you're best prepared, that gives you confidence, to then have capacity to deal with the unknown when you're faced with it. So to me, that sort of, I always wanted to leave, like, at least 30% of capacity in my headspace to make sure I can react to when I need to.
Lisa: You can handle it.
Laura: Exactly, and deal with the unknown. If I mean, if we'd gone on that row in that first year, Jesus Christ, like most of it was unknown, like that. I was so naive, it was ridiculous. But by the time you know, it's four years down the line, I felt so confident in actually we've trialed the boat, we've done 72 hours, we've done a couple of weeks. We've done team testing, we've done routines, we've done steep depot, we've done the training, we've done the site support, you know, all of those, every aspect of it. I feel like we took out and then it was a case of right, well, then we just need to do this on a day and day out. And then however long that's gonna last for it's just sticking to routines, which you know, the same in whatever you do.
Lisa: The more you do the more it becomes normal.
Laura: Exactly. And then it's kind of like, Well, actually, once you lose sight of shore, whether you're out there for five days, five weeks, five months, actually doesn't make much difference.
Lisa: You’re in this shit anyway. Too far from home anyway, you've lost sight of shore!
Laura: Yeah, you kind of just got to crack on and then, you know, there's no going back, you can't row backwards, sort of, it's only about, you know, having the confidence to step into taking on the Pacific. And for us, you know, yes, we rowed the Pacific literally, but to me, it was the essence of everybody's got their own Pacifics to cross like...
Lisa: Yes.
Laura: ...our film’s called Losing Sight of Shore because it's about having the courage to lose sight of shore, like, have that sort of courage to just step away from the comfort, step away from the knowns. And like, Oh, my God, you know, that's where life just opens up and expose.
Lisa: Because you know, I had Paul Taylor, who's a neuroscientist, and ex-British Navy guy, and exercise physiologist on the show last week, and he's talking about the small bubble where you can live in or the big bubble. And the big bubble is where we all want to be, you know, where we’re reaching our potential and we are filling and where are all these amazing things that we could do. We know that that bubble was there. But we're all scared living in this little comfort zone. And how do you push outside because that outside is risk of failure, and in your case risk of dying. You know, there was so much that you put on the line physically, mentally, financially, emotionally, relationships, you know. You name it, you put it on the line for this one thing, and that is living in that big bubble and scaring the crap out of yourself and doing it anyway.
Most people have this tendency to want to be comfortable in and I see this as a massive problem in our society today is that we are all cozy and comfortable and sitting on the couch watching Netflix and we are warm and we don't push ourselves for the gloom we don't push yourself. And this leads to disaster when it comes to resilience and being able to cope because you're been through this amazing adventure and expedition and you've risked everything, you must have an inner confidence that is just—and I know that you won't have it in all areas of life because this is certainly specific. And I know how that works because I'm really good and some things and really crap in others and I'm still working on my mindset in this area and that area or whatever, we're work in progress but you when you've lifted up your horizons to that big, nothing must daunt you in a way. Like he must be like, ‘Okay, whatever is coming at me, I can probably handle it'. Because you know, inside you have that resilience, which is so important.
Laura: Yeah. I mean, I think you're right. It's about context, isn't it? Like I—you know, I'm a risk-taker, but I'm a really calculated risk-taker, right.
Lisa: Yeah.
Laura: Exactly. So kind of the Pacific seems like it's ridiculous, and it's life threatening. I mean, I didn't leave any stone left unturned. I had military guys helping us to make sure we'd sort of not left stuff unturned. We went through survival practice. We, I mean, there was everything and the amount of sort of, you know, routines we had on the boat, leashes, and kind of safety equipment was next to none. Because I was like, the risk we've got is getting separated from the boat. So I'm risk-aware, really risk-aware. And, and kind of, and make sure that sort of don't leave any stone unturned so then I feel confident to go forwards. I wouldn't just leap into it like blindly.
Lisa: Yep, you shouldn’t.
Laura: Yeah exactly.
Lisa: Because you will die.
Laura: Yeah. But I mean, it's no different if you watch, I don't think like, you know, you watch Alex Honnold, climbing free solo, you know, the El Cap, sort of the climb, if anybody’s seen that film. I mean, it's phenomenal. And anybody would, you know, you watch it. You're like, ‘Oh, my God, that's insane. He’s free climbing that like, what if he just slipped’? What if this? What if that? But look at his meticulous approach to it.
Lisa: Yeah, one hand wrong.
Laura: Exactly. But then his meticulous approach, he hasn't just woken up that day one, right. So I'm going to climb up, you know, sort of freestyle at this thing. He's like, he's been off top-roping with it, he is kind of lead climbed it. He's, kind of, known every single holding place he's written it, he’s drawn it, he’s visualising it. And he's only done it when he feels completely ready, prepped. And that actually, there's no move in that that is going to be a risk. So, therefore, he's a calculated risk-taker. And it is extreme when you watch it, but the preparedness is totally there.
Lisa: I couldn't do it. I didn't put the parachute on as I'm halfway down. You know, you do learn from that, you know. I remember going out into the race in Niger, which was 353Ks across one of the most dangerous landscapes in you know, places on Earth, countries on Earth. And we were meant to have food come from France, and it didn't arrive. And I wasn't prepared. I didn't have my own stash, I didn't, my husband at the time, my ex-husband there. He did, you know, like, and when you're doing things like that, and you end up with food poisoning, and you're, you know, vomiting and shitting your way across the Sahara. And you realise, you know, you could have avoided that. That’s sort of a big lesson and do your preparation better, you know. Don't be so cavalier with your, ‘I am going to go and, you know, run 100 miles, and I haven't even trained for a marathon yet'. No, no, you know, and I had to learn those things the hard way because I had a tendency just to dive in. And this is all exciting. And let's do it.
Laura: But then you learned that didn’t you?
Lisa: Yeah, but it's not a good way to learn in the middle of the Sahara. It’s better to learn previously.
Laura: Yeah, that is sure. But yeah, I mean, you still but you learn and I think that's one of the biggest takeaways, of whenever we talk about failure and stuff. It is not a failure, if you, unless you don’t learn from it. And leaping sometimes is exactly what you need to do, and it's just not being scared to fall, like just knowing that, you know what, if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. It's got you one step further. And one step closer to finding what the next thing might be.
Lisa: Yeah.
Laura: So yeah, just it's having that like you say, that the sort of the robustness, the resilience or whatever it is to bounce back to kind of jump back up to ask the questions. ‘Well, why didn't that work? And let's try it a different way', or learn from it and do something.
Lisa: Yeah, like you said, You reached out to Mark and he'd had, you know, nearly died and had actually failed in that particular expedition, done lots of other crazy stuff, but you know, and that one and it is those things like you are risking failure and you have to understand it from the outset. That you can take care of all the things you can prepare. You can get everything and you're still risking because, if this was easy, everyone would be doing it. And you have to be okay with the—this is something I try and get my athletes to understand. When you're actually done the work, you've done the boulder, you've done the—all the hard stuff that you knew now standing at the start line, that's actually to have time to celebrate and go, you know, ‘I've done the hard work. Now it's up to whatever's going to come my way'. And like you say, being able to adapt and to have the flexibility to take whatever's coming at you, which isn't always easy, but you have to sort of give up those—I think the consequences of what if, what if, what if, because if you’re constantly asking yourself, for ‘What if I don't make that time?’ You know, say you're running a marathon, or I want to do it in under three and a half hours, or whatever the case may be, and then you're so like, ‘Oh, no’, and then it takes you three hours and thirty-two and you know, ‘I'm a failure’, you know, like, hang on a minute, no, hang on. That's not how it works.
Laura: Yeah.
Lisa: Yeah, you've got to understand that there are things you can't control. So you've done everything you can control. And now the rest is up to the gods, basically. And you're going to have to be able to be adaptable and flexible. And that was one of the things in your website, talking about adaptive, being adaptive in your performance. And I think that's a really good thing because we cannot control like… You can be having a bad day at the office and get up and you feel sick and your immune system’s down and you've got your period and you've, you know, whatever the case may be. And you weren't bargaining with that, you know, so you have to be able to work, ‘I need to still go because there's no way back. How do I deal with it’? You know?
Laura: Yeah, and I think it's a really valid point. Because I mean, even in the row halfway through, and it's in the films, it's not kind of confidential stuff. One of the girls, like, she just completely changed her personality, right, because that was exactly the problem. She thought she could control the boat. She thought, you know, she was a rower. Out of all of us, she was somebody that actually had rowed since she was a kid and stuff. She thought ocean rowing was, you know. She didn't want to lose the passion. Unfortunately, yeah, it killed her passion. She didn't know then, she lost the sense of identity, all of that stuff.
Lisa: Oh yeah, real tough.
Laura: Yeah, awful. And, but because she was trying to control the boat, you know, like, the current, the wind was against us, like, those are things you cannot control. It’s a one ton boat, not one person is going to be able to control moving that in the direction you want it to go in. And so, but it was the collective of the team that enabled us to be able to rally around and understand, first of all, recognise the change in personality, it was a behaviour, it was yeah, there was something underlying. It was not her—well, it was, but there was something emotional that she couldn't verbalise straightaway. So hence, she just changed her personality type.
Lisa: Wow.
Laura: And then it was like the strength of the team to be able to rally together to support that. So kind of come at it from the right approach that she was able to share it, to then collectively go, we just need to see a different perspective on this stuff. And I think that's where, you know, a vast dynamic sort of team, you know, a diverse team sorry is what I meant, has got so much strength in it, because you know, what, when you see it through your own lens, there's only sort of one way. Whereas if you've got some diversity there, I just think it brings a different perspective. And suddenly, you're able to see, you can't control the uncontrollable, you know, you can only control the controllables. You can't control what's out of control.
And those things are the weather that is, you know, yes will prevent being ill or injured. But that might well happen. That, you know, is what it is. And if the boat sort of fails, but you whatever, then those are only three things that are going to be out of our control. And if anything happened there, then I wouldn't be. I would have been upset, I would be upset, but I wouldn't be throwing my toys out the pram because it isn't something we could control. And if the row didn't happen, we didn't finish because one of those three things, that is what it is.
Lisa: Yeah, it is what it is. And you've done your utmost. And I mean, I've failed on different expeditions and things that I’ve done, like really fallen on my face, you know, with, you know, documentary crews there have captured all on film as you just absolutely completely faceplant. And, you know, and it takes a long time to get up again, and it knocks the crap out of you. And, you know, but it's part of that, okay, well, this is the game wherein, you know, we’re pushing the limits, and sometimes, you know, you are human and you don't have the resources or one of the things that I find really, really I'd love to and I think this probably needs its own podcast is the whole team dynamic thing. I mean, it's one thing to be a solo athlete that does things, you know, but it's a—couple of times when I've had to be in a team situation. I find it really, really tough because you were reliant...
I did one in the Himalayas, and we're trying to do the world's highest marathon ever done. And I was with a guy who was a mountaineer and used to altitude and very at home in that space. And I wasn't. And I don't—I've done a couple of things at altitude and sort of survive by the skin of my teeth. I'm an asthamtic and I don't really do well on the mountains. So take on, you know, the world's highest mountain. Good idea. And we'd be in shape. And I got sick. I got altitude sickness, and I couldn't even start my body. I couldn't even tie my shoelaces.
But the worst thing was that he changed. The person that he was down here was not the person that he was up there, and, it ended up being quite nasty, and quite, detrimental. And he's not here to defend himself. So I'm not gonna say anything too much. But it wasn't a nice situation to be in — I did not trust that if I was in the shutout there, that we would work together as a team to get through it. I felt like, now, he wouldn't do that.
And then so now I'm like, very, very always aware of if I'm teaming up with people like we've got at the moment, this weekend in my hometown, that Oxfam 100, it's 100-kilometre event where lots of just normal everyday people are doing 100Ks, which is like amazing, walking, and they're doing it in, you know, teams of four, and the staff are going to go through... And there'll be people that are, you know, expeditions bring out the worst and bring out the best in people. And you don't know until you're in the situation with them, which way are they going to go, and which way you're going to go. I mean, I can become, I've been a really horrible person on some of my, you know, with my crew on different occasions where I've just lost my shit because I'm in so much pain, sleep deprivation, motions are up the wazoo. And you just, you know, you're snappy, irritable, you know, just horrible. Afterwards, I’m heading to go and say, ‘I'm very sorry'. You know?
So how did you deal with that over nine months like that on steroids? Like the dynamic—four women—everybody's having their highs and lows at different points in there. How did you cope with that? I mean, you're obviously, you've mentioned the one person and how you helped pull together, it takes incredible leadership to keep a team like that together for nine months, no matter how wonderful you all are.
Laura: Yeah, that I mean, don't get me wrong, you still have arguments and stuff, but it was all in the preparation. And it was, we knew I mean, so it is a 29th version rowing boat, right. So it's kind of the size of Greg Rutherford's, it's got the world record for the long jump, right? So it is, kind of, his long jump is the size of our boat. So it's a really small space. And then when you're cramped into the cabin, there's two of you. And if it's stormy, then all four of you are either in that or two in each cabin. So it's a tight, confined space. So it was really clear from the outset that this team had to be, we had to be cohesive, we had to be really transparent. And something I was particularly pedantic about was, I never want to leave a permanent issue. Like if there's an issue, we need to confront it, we will have to step forward into it. We can't, I don't want any bitchiness like, there was, that was always been, sort of my approach to most things. Like, I can't stand the whole talking to other people, rather than talking to the individual that you've got an issue with. You just need to step into that as much as it might feel uncomfortable.
And I guess, working in a performance context, we're scrutinised on a daily basis, you know. We're kind of everybody's asking you why what are you doing, you know, type stuff, you've got to justify, you feel like you're under a spotlight all the time. So you start to feel this kind of separation, you know, look kind of right. No, this is they're asking me that because of the person in front of us or the, you know, the end goal, that's what it's about. It's got nothing to do with me personally. We're just trying to optimise what we need to do. So when, my, I pulled this, the sort of the team came together, a lot of it, I was like, how do we stress test this, like, we have to stress test it because–
Lisa: Hell yeah.
Laura: –exactly. And that's where I, you know, I started working with Keith, the performance psychologist. I reached out to him so I was like, there's got to be more depth to this, you know, we need tools we need to I need to know what I'm going to draw on when I'm wanting to give up like, what's going to be my go-to’s, I'm going to, I need to know how I can respond and react to different personalities and stuff and how they're going to react to each other.
So Keith was the absolute rock to the success of our journey, in all honesty. I worked with him for four years and I still worked with him. I still work with him, sorry, to this day. And Keith, sort o—he enabled us to sort of understand the differences in our personalities from the basics of just doing psychometrics and stuff, but pretty in-depth ones. And then analyzing that a little bit more and playing it out in different scenarios, and then really forcing us to kind of do the round table. Yeah, because—and the girls hated confrontation. They weren't used to giving and receiving feedback. That was always felt like a personal threat. Yeah. So I just had to put myself in the barrier first. So I be like, ‘Right, cool, okay, if you're not going to give it and you're going to say everything's rosy when it's not, I’ll pull it out'. ‘So this is what's not going so well. And this is not going so well. Right now give it back to me, hit me’, like because then as soon as I've given it they're happy to give it back to me because I think I'm being—yeah exactly. That's fine.
And then I would show them that I was learning from it because I was. And there was— I— they would call me, I would have Laura number one, Laura number two, my personalities. And they—I didn't realise that until sort of, you know, going through the row and they're like, ‘Oh my god, it's Laura number two'. And Laura number two is somebody that when she starts getting, like, tired, hungry, all of that gubbins and, and sort of just a bit over it, I start getting really assertive. I'm very tunnel vision, and my empathy just goes. Whereas normal time, like I've got heaps of the empathy, until it gets to a point…
Lisa: Yeah, yeah. So like me.
Laura: And so they’d be like, all right, Laura number two. Because we then had a language that was a little bit disconnected to the personal and it made a bit of fun of it, then we sort of were able to sort of take a pause, hear it and stuff.
But we had loads of loads of methodologies that we built, we'd worked on to try and get to that point. And that was sort of to the point with there, though, is that is not to say we didn't have any arguments, because we did like, I mean Nat and I, in particular, completely different personalities. She is like a, she's a beautiful character. She is Miss Mindful, she is in the moment, and she is just totally there. She's talking about the sky and the sea and the colours. Whereas I'm Miss Planner. Like I'm already in Cannes, I'm thinking about fear, I’m planning, and what do we need to do, what do we need to sort out? So, you know, when we did the team testing before, this was during selection of the team. I remember when I met Nat, I was like, ‘Oh, god, no, we are poles apart. There's just no way', you know because I was trying to see it through. I was only seeing it through my own lens of who I was getting a rapport with.
But I brought her onto the team testing weekend, which was, I'd gone to some ex-military guys. And I said, ‘Look, we need to be tested. I need to see what we're like when we're cold, we’re hungry, really sore, in pain. You need to physically push us. You need to mentally push us'. Well. And so we did like a 72-hour sleep depot type thing, you know, in the Brackens in Wales, yeah. On reflection that was like, yeah, that was it was great fun and obviously hated it during. I remember, like during it, sort of Nat in particular, as a personality that stood miles out because when she came on to it, I was thinking oh she can come along. But she's, I don't think that I’m going to be selecting her. And then Nat was the one that, you know, she might not have been the fittest. But even when she was struggling, and she was in pain, she had a sense of humour. When I was starting to struggle, she made me laugh. And I was like, ‘Oh my god, there's not many people that can do that while I'm in that space'.
Lisa: Yeah.
Laura: And I'm like, this isn't just about me. But for the comfort of the team, like we need that. Because otherwise, I will make this too serious. I will. When it gets into it, it will be too boring and serious. I need a sense of humour in this. And she is, she's got it in abundance. And she kept us at the moment.
Lisa: Wow, yep.
Laura: As well. Like, I needed that mindfulness when we're out to sea because otherwise, I wouldn't have remembered half the things that went on and I wouldn't have recognised and seen it.
Lisa: Isn't that amazing? So looking at the strengths and differences can actually end up being the thing that holds you together rather than pulls you apart.
Laura: A hundred percent.
Lisa: And I just think in this space I have to connect you with Paul Taylor, he will love you. He's a resilience expert that I was mentioning before and yeah, I think it when you have characters and I've started to do this just with for myself even now I have these different characters, you know, there's the good me and there's bad me and the good means like Wonder Woman, she can do anything and she's amazing.
And he has all these character traits that you know I aspire to and want to have and that side of me and then the other side's a real bitch, you know, she's a horrible, cynical, selfish person and those are both of me. And I know when you put this on—Paul talks about doing like cartoon characters and putting speech bubbles on them and actually giving them life and because it puts you outside of these characters that are fighting in your head, and you're trying to be that good one you want to be, but when you're hungry and cold and freezing, and you haven't slept in three days, and you're struggling somewhere, and God knows where. And you just want to go home and cry and hide under the covers and get mummy to give you a chicken soup. Well, you—it puts it outside of you, and it helps you see what you're doing.
And even in daily things like, you know, I've been rehabilitating my mum now for five years, seven days a week. And you know, beginning first three years, it was like eight hours a day. So it was just, it was full, full-on. And then even longer than that in the first year. And I catch myself sometimes being so short and irritable because I'm like trying to multitask and trying to run my businesses and she's waiting for me and you know, like, you just find yourself snapping at somebody when you just feel like, you know, that asshole is sure is present, you know, and you're just like listening to yourself going, ‘How the hell do I get a grip on this?’
We're all human. And we're all working on this. And, you know, I go to my mum and I put her in bed at night time and a cuddle. And tell her, I say, 'You know, I'm sorry for being a bitch today, Ma. I’m sorry for snapping at you'. And she's so lovely. She's like, 'Oh, that's all right'. Like, you know. But we have moments where we're just not nice, and when you're in these extreme circumstances fad, the ones that come out, and this is a part of the dynamic thing that I find really, really fascinating in that whole resilience and teamwork, and how do you bring it all together? So, you know, we're going to have to wrap up this one, because I've really enjoyed talking to you, Laura. But I really would like to have you on a couple of times, because I think there's much more to this actual story because we haven't even got to talking about well, what was it actually like to row? How did you, you know, do, what did you actually do on a daily basis? And how do you plan for such a thing? And how do you have such a big project and deal with it? And so I'm really glad that we've made this connection, and I'm very, very keen to have you on the show again, if you, because we've really just been part one, I think.
Laura: Let's see… No, I’ll be honoured to come back on. There’s so much I think we connect with in, and we can talk about for sure, especially in that headspace how we can be… What we've both learned from the experiences that we faced and continue to learn, I think is always an exciting journey.
Lisa: Yeah.
Laura: Yeah, I'd be honoured to come back on it. It’s been great.
Lisa: That would be fantastic because I think also the work that you've done with Paralympians and, you know, people that have worked with disabilities and trauma, we haven't even unpacked that either. Because I think that, you know, we can learn a heck of a lot from people that have gone through, you know, all these dramas and so on, me, I learn every day from Mum, like, her mindset is just like, incredibly strong, resilient. And so I'd like to unpack some of that stuff as well. So Laura, thank you very much for your time today. I think you're a rock star, where can people find you? And where can they get involved in what you're doing? And, you know, do whatever you got available? Because you've got some really good lessons to share with people. So tell us where we can find you.
Laura: Yeah, I mean, on usual social media, sort of, the Instagram or Twitter or LinkedIn, just @laurapenhaul. And that sort of, you know, P-E-N-H-A-U-L is my surname. So yeah, reach out to that we've also got our endurance book. So where we've sort of added science behind, kind of some of the endurance sort of focus is on GCN, which is a Global Cycling Network website, or our podcast is Endurance as well, which is where's Mark Beaumont, which I co-author on.
Lisa: So I'm very keen to meet and hopefully get on the show as well. Yeah, hook me up there.
Laura: Yeah, Keith will get you on that as well. I think you've got a lot to add and share their experiences for sure.
Lisa: I'd love to. That would be an absolute honor. Laura, you're one hell of a strong woman. I can't wait to see where you go and in the future in what you know, what you take on. God forbid is probably going to be big, and thank you for sharing. I think you have such great knowledge to share with people and you have a duty to get that information out there because this is the sort of stuff that helps people. So thank you very much for your time today Laura.
That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
From our physical appearance to our body's mechanical functions, our whole being is encoded into our genes and kept in each cell that makes us. These basic biological units have their system to keep everything functioning and our body alive and moving. They have housekeeping functions: cells perform autophagy to get rid of accumulated waste materials. Maximising the effects of these processes can help in increasing your longevity.
When the autophagic processes fail, it can damage important parts of the cell such as the DNA and accelerate ageing. In this episode, Dr Elena Seranova explains the science behind autophagy and how it connects to NAD and sirtuin genes. She also shares her own experience and research on using this knowledge to live a longer, fuller life.
Join us in this episode to learn more about autophagy and how this process is useful in increasing your longevity and giving you a boost in life.
For our epigenetics health program that is all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
You can also join our free live webinar on epigenetics.
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations.
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research, and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
‘Lysosome is another acidic organelle that contains acid hydrolases that are able to digest this cargo...and if it doesn't work, well, the cell is basically in trouble because you have all this garbage floating around, and there is nothing to remove them. So this is why autophagy is important.
‘When things are preserved across species, then that gives a scientist an indication that this is probably a very important biological function’.
‘I think that in order for your body to function properly, you really need to have a kind of a healthy routine in general’.
‘So I think that when it comes to being healthy, and activating your autophagy levels, and having a healthy lifestyle in general, you need to start with the basics first.’
‘Another small tip that I can give is to actually avoid sunlight, which is something that people don't really consider. What happens when we're exposed to sunlight, when our skin is exposed to sunlight for prolonged periods of time, we start getting the DNA damage’.
“The important part is not to just increase your age, it’s to increase your healthspan.”
‘And if you have if your mitochondria are not healthy, and they're dying, and you're not having enough mitochondria in your cells, then you are going to be sick.’
Dr Elena Seranova is a scientist, serial entrepreneur and business mentor who has founded multiple innovative biotechnological businesses.
She first studied at the University of Ioannina with a major in Psychology. She started a private practice before developing an interest in neuroscience. She continued her studies and earned her Master’s Degree in Translational Neuroscience at the University of Sheffield. She now also holds a Doctorate Degree in Stem Cell Biology and Autophagy from the University of Birmingham.
Her expertise in these fields has led her to become the co-founder of a biotech start-up, SkyLab Bio. She has written a number of peer-reviewed articles and multiple research articles on autophagy throughout her career.
Aside from these accomplishments, she started her own business, NMN Bio. Her own experiences with the use of supplements have inspired her to expand the market to supply the public with cutting-edge anti-ageing supplements. NMN Bio reaches New Zealand, UK, and Europe.
Dr Elena found her passion for drug discovery and autophagy. She has endeavoured to share this with the public through her research and work as an entrepreneur.
To learn more about Dr Elena and her work, visit her website.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends, especially those interested in increasing their longevity, so that they can practice the activation of autophagy in their lifestyle.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential, with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.
Lisa Tamati: Well, hi everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. This week I have Dr. Elena Seranova, who has already been a guest on the show. And today, we're talking about autophagy and NAD, and the interplay between these two. Now that might sound extremely boring, but it isn't. It's all about longevity and anti-aging. So, we're going to be talking about the science between about NAD precursors and the sirtuin genes, and how to upregulate the sirtuin genes, and all about autophagy, which is really the recycling of old and damaged parts and proteins of a cell that need to be gotten rid of. So, it's a bit like having a good garbage disposal unit happening. And there are many ways to activate autophagy, which we go into in this episode. We talk about intermittent fasting, we talk about cold and hot and hormetic stressors like exercise and yes, of course fasting. But also, mTOR independent pathways to activate autophagy, it'll all be revealed in this interview.
Now this does get a little bit technical in the first 20 minutes or so. But hang in there and listen to this a couple of times. Because if you want to slow down aging, if you want to slow down the generative decline of your body and you want to have a long and healthy lifestyle, then this stuff is really, really worth paying attention to and trying to understand.
We talk about NMN, which is nicotinamide mononucleotide, which is a supplement that is now available, is a longevity compound to upregulate the sirtuin genes. And we're really lucky to check that out. You can go and find that supplement, which has been made and produced by Dr. Elena Seranova and her company, NMN Bio. So if you head hop over to nmnbio.nz, we're now importing this into the country. So, this is one way that you can really fight aging and degenerative decline that we all fear and don't want.
And when you listen to this episode and really listen to it a couple of times, you'll understand some of the incredible anti-aging things that are coming down. This is not pseudoscience. Dr. Elena is one of the most amazing neuroscientists out there. So please listen to this episode, enjoy it, get a lot out of it and get the takeaway. So, if you don't understand some of the terminology, don't worry, keep going. And by the end, you'll start to pick up certain bits and pieces. And if you listen to it again, you'll be able to pick up a little bit more and a little bit more. And at the end of the day, it's about the takeaways, what can you do to slow aging down and all that information is in there. So, I hope you enjoy this episode with Dr. Elena.
Before we go over to that we are all about health optimisation, high performance, athletic performance. So, if you need any help with any of those areas of your life, please reach out to us, Support at lisatamati.com. Go and check out our website, lisatamati.com. You'll find all our programs, our Epigenetics Programs, our online run training system that's customised and personalised totally to you, and check out what we do. We love helping you be the best version of yourself that you can be. Now over to the show with Dr. Elena Servanova.
Lisa: Well, hi everyone. Lisa Tamati here and very excited to have you hopefully join us this morning. It's 7:30am in the morning here in New Zealand. And where Dr. Elena Seranova is, it's very late at night. How are you doing, Dr. Elena?
Dr Elena Seranova: Good, good. How are you? Happy to be here again.
Lisa: Yeah, very excited for today's topic. So, we're going to be doing a discussion around autophagy and NAD boosters and sirtuin genes. So it’s going to be a really interesting discussion that is really beneficial for you if you want to know how to live longer, live healthier, and optimise your body and your mind and your potential. So, Dr. Elena, can you just tell us briefly a little bit about yourself?
Dr Elena: Sure. So, I started my journey as a psychologist. So I'm an interdisciplinary scientist. I majored in psychology at first and then I had my own private practise for five years which turned out to be a successful wellness centre. And I really got fascinated by neuroscience and the brain. And for this reason, at first I started studying the brain myself and then I found an amazing master's degree at the University of Sheffield in Translational Neuroscience, which basically combined the research and neurodegeneration with applications that could translate into therapeutics. So, this is what translational neuroscience means, is basically the combination and the outcome of the research—the hardcore biology research that can be utilised for therapeutic approaches and patients.
I really enjoyed that. So that was quite cool, being in the lab and doing molecular biology experiments and so on. So, I kind of fell in love with the lab, and I decided to do a PhD as well. I continued my studies in autophagy and stem cell biology and it was quite challenging, but at the same time, I really enjoyed it. And I can definitely say that science is a big part of my life.
Lisa: Definitely your thing. Okay, so autophagy and stem cells. So in relation to neurodegenerative diseases in that case? Okay, but what is autophagy? Because a lot of people will be listening to it and go, ‘What the heck is that big word, autophagy’? It's sort of big word in biohacking circles, but perhaps not in the general public. Can you explain what autophagy is exactly?
Dr Elena: Yes, sure. So, autophagy is a catabolic pathway that degrades dysfunctional organelles in the cell or protein pro aggregates. So, any material that is basically unwanted in the cell, autophagy can degrade. It's like the stomach of the cell.
Lisa: So, it’s like eating it? It's eating, sort of...
Dr Elena: Yeah, exactly. And what happens when autophagy is activated, we actually have the formation of the so-called phagophore, which is a membrane structure that basically engulfs different organelles and materials that need to be degraded to form the so called autophagosome, which is a round organelle that basically has this cargo that needs to be digested. That eventually fuses with lysosome.
And lysosome is another acidic organelle that contains acidic hydrolases that are able to digest this cargo. And this process is very essential for the cell, it’s very vital. It's evolutionary conserved in all species, from yeast to models. And if it doesn't work well, the cell is basically in trouble because you have all this garbage...
Lisa: Floating around.
Dr Elena: ...floating around and there is nothing to remove them. So, this is why autophagy is important. And we have different pathways that autophagy can be activated through as well. So, one of those pathways is mTOR, mechanistic target of rapamycin. And then we have other pathways that can activate this process such as AMPK, GSK3, and so on.
Lisa: So is this like, sorry to interrupt, but like because I know that people out there might be like, ‘Wow, that's a lot of big words and a lot of information’. So, is it like that the cell has to do a housecleaning, and it's got stuff inside the cell that is not working optimally, and needs to be gotten rid of, or is it the whole cell? So, it's not apoptosis. So it's not where the host is disintegrating?
Dr Elena: No. Yeah, it's actually a—it's a pre-apoptotic pathway. So, before apoptosis is activated, we have autophagy. And if autophagy fails in what it needs to do, then we have activation of some apoptotic pathways. So, it's one step before that. And if everything goes well, and autophagy is functional—and by the way, in different diseases, we might be having different autophagy impairments at different stages of autophagy. So, it's either the initial phagophore formation, for instance, that it's not working well, and it can’t engulf the cargo, or it's insulator stages of autophagy, such as the acidic hydrolysis and the lysosomes that are actually not that acidic. So their pH is not acidic enough to digest the cargo. So, we might be having different defects in the autophagy pathway in different diseases.
Lisa: That leads to apoptosis. Am I right?
Dr Elena: And yeah, if autophagy is not doing its work correctly, then eventually we will have apoptosis. And actually, this is what we're seeing in in vitro models of neurodegenerative diseases as well. So, for instance, if autophagy is not working well.
And we have, let's say, dysfunctional organelles, such as mitochondria—dysfunctional mitochondria that are not working well. Let's say they are depolarised. And there is an excess production of reactive oxygen species going on. Now, if nothing can degrade these dysfunctional mitochondria, you'll keep on having this accumulation of reactive oxygen species, which eventually will lead to DNA damage and deactivation of PARPs. And it's basically a death spiral that will keep on leading the cell towards death.
Lisa: Okay, so what is a PARP? You mentioned PARP there. And just for the listeners, too. So, apoptosis is basically cell death, programmed cell death. So, this is not—what's the other one necrotic or something?
Dr Elena: Necrosis?
Lisa: Yeah, necrosis, where the cell dies for—necrosis. But this is sort of a natural programmed cell death. But we only want that if we're actually renewing the cells and we are wanting new stuff. So, before that, the body tries to do this autophagy process, is that how it works? And then what so what is PARP? What is PARP, because that’s the word again...
Dr Elena: PARPs are a class of enzymes, and in order for them to function, they need a molecule called NAD, so nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. And they're actually competing for NAD in the cell. And whenever we have increased DNA damage, we would have the PARP activation as well. And this would lead to NAD depletion, which kind of brings me to my next point about what other enzymes consume NAD. And one of those enzymes are sirtuins, which are the so-called longevity genes that are basically responsible for multiple processes in the cell, including epigenetic regulation of gene expression.
So, they do—because sirtuins are a class of enzymes that are also dependent on NAD, and they're all the deacetylase enzymes, meaning that they remove acetyl groups from the DNA. And as a result, they control which genes will be expressed in which tissues, which is very crucial for the cellular identity and for the proper function of different cells.
So, sirtuins in a healthy cell, so sirtuin should be upregulated and they should be having this housekeeping gene—housekeeping function where they basically control what's going on with the DNA repair and also with the gene expression as well. And if we do have—when we do start having impaired autophagy, and let's say there is increased reactive oxygen species, because there are increased dysfunctional mitochondria in the cell, you will have in more activation of PARPs, and all of the NAD will start being drained from... And sirtuin will not have enough energy to function. So, those are actually quite an elegant interplay between autophagy and NAD and sirtuins.
Lisa: Okay. Okay, can I just want to like put that back to you, so that we can slow down because we are going technical quite fast. And I think a lot of people might be like, ‘What the heck are they talking about’? So, the sirtuin genes, basically longevity genes, and then one of the jobs is DNA repair. And another of the jobs is to say which genes are actually being activated right now. And these sirtuin genes are also responsible, I think, for cell replication, is that correct?
Dr Elena: The sirtuins are responsible for multiple functions, directly or indirectly. So, for instance, the sirtuin 3 gene is also responsible for mitochondrial biogenesis. And it's implicated in the amount of mitochondria that are being produced by the cell, which is related to cell replication eventually, because you do need to have enough ATP levels to replicate.
Lisa: Right. Yeah. So, this has definitely to do with ATP production as well and mitochondrial health. So, these are doing all of these jobs, the sirtuin genes, they're very, very crucial genes in our genome. And these are preserved across every species, I believe? Every species on the planet?
Dr Elena: Yeah. Also from yeast to humans, it's also—sirtuin genes are preserved very well.
Lisa: And when things are preserved across species, then that gives a scientist an indication that this is probably a very important biological function and we need to have a look at this one because it's—from what I understand.
Okay, so when you have activated PARP because you're not doing autophagy well and there's things going wrong, it's taking the NAD. So NAD is basically like a fuel source that both the sirtuin genes. And when PARP is activated, it's using to fuel its job. And so, this is competition for competing fuel sources. So, like if you imagine, you've only got one tank of fuel for your car, but you've got to go in two different directions and do two different jobs. You go, ‘How am I going to divide up my energy’? So, then it becomes important as to how much NAD we have in the body? So, what is NAD again? That says nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide? But what is that and how does it work?
Dr Elena: Yeah, it does serve as a substrate for all of these enzymes, including sirtuins and PARPS and is basically a master regulator of metabolism. So, it's a very important molecule and it serves as—without NAD, the cell is not able to function properly just because this crucial molecule is implicated in so many different reactions. So, NAD is found in all living cells and organisms. This is also evolutionary conserved across species. And it exists in two forms, NADH and NAD+, which is the reduced and the oxidised form, respectively. And both of them are important. And both of them are implicated in multiple cellular reactions.
Lisa: Is it going backwards and forwards in a cycle, NADH, NAD+, by donating electrons back and forth, sort of thing?
Dr Elena: Yeah. Through electron transport chain in the mitochondria, yeah. So, this is why it's so important. And so, what we're seeing now in the latest advancements in longevity research is that we actually can supplement with different precursors of NAD, such as nicotinamide mononucleotide, for instance, NMN. And this is the supplement that my company...
Lisa: See, you've now got that available on the market because this is such a crucial thing.
Dr Elena: Exactly. And I think that it's really interesting to also say that when it comes to the interaction between autophagy and sirtuins, there is also another regulation of autophagy there. So sirtuin 1 is actually responsible for activating some transcription factors such as TFEB and FoxO3 that have to do with initiation of the autophagy process.
So, for this reason, when we do have dropping levels of NAD, decreasing levels of NAD, and there is not enough NAD for sirtuins to do their job. And let's say again—let's talk about that previous example in neurodegeneration when you have increased reactive oxygen species, and you have increased the level of stress and oxidative stress and decreased activity of sirtuins.
And not only the situation is already bad, but because sirtuin 1 doesn't have enough energy to function and to activate the TFEB and the FoxO3 transcription factors to initiate autophagy, now you have all of this dysfunctional mitochondria floating around and autophagy starts being impaired as well because we activated enough. So, it's a negative feedback loop which actually accelerates the scenario where the cell is going towards cell death, basically.
Lisa: So that means like, if you don't have enough NAD, then your sirtuin 1 gene is not going to be able to initiate autophagy and clean up the cell and you're going to have dysfunctional mitochondria. Is that independent of the mTOR pathway? Or is that—am I getting confused?
Dr Elena: So, okay. So, good question. So, what happens is there are some molecules that activates sirtuins. So, for instance, sirtuin 1 is activated by resveratrol, and this is something that has been demonstrated many years ago. So, when you have sirtuin 1 dependent activation of autophagy, you will be having it through an mTOR independent pathway.
Lisa: So it's a fasting mimetic resveratrol.
Dr Elena: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, because we now know that the mTOR activity is not affected by intake of resveratrol. And this is quite crucial because actually, even if we want to activate autophagy, we shouldn’t do it through the mTOR pathway, this is not the preferred way, because mTOR is also responsible for growth and translation in the cell. So, this is not—it's also quite a key player in the cell. So it's a serine threonine kinase, and you actually don't want it to be activated at all times because this may lead other conditions. So, what we're focusing on at the moment is to find molecules that can activate autophagy in an mTOR independent manner.
Lisa: Okay, so. So if the mTOR—cause MTOR is usually what's for growth it’s anabolic, it's causing growth. So for example, a bodybuilder goes to the gym, they're in an anabolic state, they are in an mTOR growth state. And when you have autophagy, that's sort of the opposite. So, it's a catabolic state where it's starting to eat itself. So, it’s mTOR, most people like do fasting for that reason to activate autophagy?
Dr Elena: Yeah, this is another good point there. So, when we're fasting, and there is actually conflicting evidence out there as to when autophagy is fully activated. Usually, people say that around 24 hours, you start having the autophagy activation. There are others that swear by the ketogenic diet, and say that if you don't consume any carbs, you will get autophagy activation anyway. However, from what other researchers have found is that, if you are in a ketogenic diet, and you do consume meat, it depends on what kind of meat you consume that will either activate autophagy or not. And it all has to do with levels of different amino acids in the cell because autophagy is quite sensitive to nutrients and to nutrient starvation to be activated. If you have an abundance of amino acids, again, it will not be activated.
So, for instance, one amino acid that activates autophagy very well is leucine. And if you're eating certain meat that are rich in leucine, this is probably not good for your autophagic state. Something else to keep in mind, and I've heard, I think it was Dave Asprey saying that if you can manage to be on under 15 grams of protein per day, you will probably keep the autophagy going.
Lisa: Because a lot of people on keto think I can eat a lot of protein, which is a mistake, really. It isn't about having—that's interesting, because I had Dr. David Minkoff on my podcast, Pushing the Limits a while ago, and he has a product called PerfectAmino, which is really a 99% usable form of amino acids and combination. And I was interested, ‘Well hang on, if I'm heading there, which is going a lot of good things in the body. But is that going to inhibit my mTOR, or autophagy’? Sorry, because I've got too much leucine in there?
Dr Elena: This is a very good point for all of this process food as well. So, for instance, there are some ready meals you can get or some protein bars that claim to have all the low carb and everything. And then they slam a badge on their pack saying that it's vegan as well. But then, why is it vegan if it has all the amino acids because that's one of the selling points when you're actually on a vegan diet, or you have some days where you are on a vegan diet. You want to get yourself in a state of partial amino acid depletion to get this beneficial effect of enhanced autophagy. And on intercellular toxins and so on.
Lisa: Right, so for certain periods of time, you want to do this, and it's a cycling thing, you don't want to be completely deficient of aminos for too long because then your body will start to break down.
Dr Elena: This is what I do personally as well. So, during the week, so I am a fan of cattle/carnivore diet. So, this diet is quite comfortable for me and I enjoyed it quite a lot. But then during my week I try to have some days where I'm either vegetarian or vegan, just because I want to have those benefits.
Lisa: Yeah. Up and down. And then this seems to be a theme in biology all the time is that it's not one thing. It's not staying on keto for ever and ever, amen. It's about doing cyclic keto or cyclic vegan and it’s cyclic. And our body loves this push and pull—when there’s recovery and there’s growth and then clean up phase, growth clean up. So autophagy can be activated through fasting. It can also be active through having resveratrol and upregulating the sirtuin 1 gene, how else can we activate autophagy?
Dr Elena: So there are different ways, there are different things you can really implement in order to activate autophagy. And I think that it all has to do with how you build your lifestyle in general. So, I think that in order for your body to function properly, you really need to have a kind of a healthy routine in general. And an analogy that I can give you there is that there are people that would buy a couple of supplements, and then they would be so proud of it. And then they would say, ‘Oh, yeah, but I'm taking those supplements now, and I'm so healthy’. And then their biorhythms are all off. They sleep at 5am every day. And they're eating crappy foods or super processed foods.
Lisa: Yeah, it’s not going to work.
Dr Elena: It’s all good. So, I think that when it comes to being healthy and activating your autophagy levels and having a healthy lifestyle in general, you need to start with the basics first.
So, the intermittent fasting is definitely the first step to take in order to become a bit healthier. And from the research that I'm reading, and from the things that I'm implementing, I definitely believe that both anecdotal and scientific evidence point towards the fact that intermittent fasting is actually the way to go. I mean, there are conflicting opinions out there and there are pros and cons in every diet, and so on. And I get that. But I personally believe that with intermittent fasting, if you try to narrow down the window where you're uptaking food, this is very, very good for you. So, this is step number one.
But then again, so either you're trying to raise your NAD levels, or you're trying to activate your autophagy, because those pathways are quite intertwined. And what you eventually want to do is you want to have increased levels of sirtuin, and sirtuin 1 in particular, and sirtuin 3, of course, and so on. And for this reason, in order to preserve this pool of NAD that is available for the sirtuin 1 to activate itself and activate the autophagy pathway.
Another small tip that I can give is to actually avoid sunlight, which is something that people don't really consider. But what happens when we're exposed to sunlight, when our skin is exposed to sunlight for prolonged periods of time, we start getting the DNA damage. And when you get the DNA damage, you have PARP activation, and then again, you NAD pool...
Lisa: Wow. I never connected those dots. That's really interesting. So, because—I mean, we need sun. We need sun for vitamin D and for our mood and all that sort of stuff. So, you're not saying don't have any sun.
Dr Elena: Yeah, sure.
Lisa: But because the sun is causing DNA damage, it's going to cause more PARP activation, it’s going to have the sirtuin genes going to repair the DNA, that's going to use up the body's resources is what you're saying.
Okay, wow, that makes sense. Makes sense. And then by the same token, like things like smoking that breaks DNA, like no tomorrow. This is why smoking ages you is because of all the DNA breaks. And this is why, when you're in the sun for hours every day, you get wrinkly skin and you get collagen lost and all the rest of the things that are happening. So, anything that's going to be causing DNA breaks is going to cause you to age quicker.
Dr Elena: Exactly.
Lisa: Using up the resources basically. Wow, okay.
Dr Elena: So it's obviously—you don't have to become a vampire and dissipate walk in the sun when you want to go somewhere. But sunbathing for hours is definitely not something you want to do with—to get your body go through, basically. So that's another tip.
And then something else, really, really simple that can be implemented on a daily basis in order to maintain your sirtuin levels, and as a result, your autophagy levels, and your NAD levels is also to take a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, which contains oleic acid. And it basically does the same job as resveratrol. And it's interesting—I think that there's been a recent research article out that shows that like oleic acid might even be more efficient than resveratrol, in terms of activating sirtuin 1, which I think it's really, really cool.
Lisa: So yeah. Well, combine the two. I do.
Dr Elena: Yeah, absolutely. You can do that. And then, you need to make sure that the extra virgin olive oil is actually of a very good quality because there is a bunch of...
Lisa: There is a bunch of rubbish out there. So, make sure it's from an orchard that you know, it's cold pressed, it's all those extra virgin, it's all that sort of good stuff. And not—how do they do it with solvents and stuff? Or that it's come from multiple orchards and being cut with other oils. It's a really, really important point. And then oleic acid does so much good things in the body. But isn’t that fat, Elena? Like lots of people are like, in their minds are going, ‘But oil is fat. It’s the same with MCT oil. Isn’t that going to make you fat when you eat fat’? Just going to put that around.
Dr Elena: There are good fats and there are bad fats. So, olive oil is good fat. MCT oil is a good fat. Avocado is a good fat. So, not all thoughts are made equal. So, this is definitely something important to keep in mind, especially with a good quality extra virgin olive oil.
Lisa: Because each one of our cells is a membrane that has a phospholipid, isn't it? So we need that, actually, this building of ourselves into the integrity.
Dr Elena: We have a phospholipid layer in the brain as well. And this is why we actually supplement with omega 3 fatty acids, because this is what it does. So, this is what omega 3 fatty acids do. They go into the phospholipid membrane, and then they basically...
Lisa: Make the integrity of that membrane better.
Dr Elena: Yeah, they contribute to the healthy phospholipid layer in the brain.
Lisa: So that's why it's very important for neurodegeneration to have omega 3s going in and again, people get quality omega 3s. Not your cheap supermarket ones that are perhaps oxidised and have been sitting on the shelves for six months. So really important to get a reputable source here. And omega 3 is of course in fishes as well, and krill, and so on.
Okay, so but is there a downside to fat? Because I studied epigenetics and a lot of people's profiles come back with don't have too many fats. And it's been one of those things in my head is like ‘Why would some people not come back with you shouldn't have too much fat’? I mean, there are things like gall bladders been removed. That's a pretty specific thing. But is there a genetic component? And probably not your wheelhouse, really, but is there a genetic component to your ability to process fat?
Dr Elena: There is a genetic component, and I've actually seen this with a family that has a history of very problematic digestion of fat, and so on. Absolutely. But yeah, again, not all fats are made the same. And when you cut off the bad fats from your life, things change and everything changes really.
Lisa: Yeah, it really is very satiating, too to have a little bit of fat and that can really help with cravings and blood sugar spikes—we're getting off topic.
So you have a company, NMN Bio, which produces nicotinamide mononucleotide supplement. And you've got a whole range of other stuff coming as well. Why did you decide like, you need to get this out there on the market? Based on your research and your knowledge around this area, why is it important that people take NMN if they're serious about slowing aging?
Dr Elena: So first of all, I came across the biology of NAD and NMN during my PhD studies and my research kind of led me into this field because I was studying autophagy neurodegeneration. And actually, I still cannot disclose my research.
Lisa: Yeah, it’s not published yet.
Dr Elena: My research paper from my PhD is not published yet, but hopefully soon, so we're about to submit it quite soon actually. So for this reason, I started studying the biology of NAD and I actually saw how important and how crucial NAD is to the cell and what happens when we have a lack of NAD and depletion of NAD pools in the cell. And I've been supplementing with different kinds of vitamins and supplements my whole life really. So, I was watching closely this space for a while, and I was taking different supplements myself for a while.
And so, when I came across NMN and I realised that actually there is this strategy where we can supplement with a precursor in order to increase our energy levels, I found it really, really interesting. And I thought to give it a go myself and try it out and see the results. And then what shocked me was that the immediate effect of the supplement—so within a few days, you can already feel a difference in your energy levels and your focus. And this comes from the fact that sirtuins are responsible for so many molecular processes in the cell. And this is why you have this effect, including the mitochondrial biogenesis, which gives you basically increased ATP, consequently.
Lisa: You get actually more mitochondria. So, like, if you got heart disease...
Dr Elena: The production of more mitochondria, and then they produce more ATP as a result. And then you have this magic energy, yeah. This is why I thought to bring this product into the market. And the other reason was that there was not enough reliable suppliers on the market, which is crazy, because it's actually quite a popular supplement. It's been on the rise, the interest was rising for the past couple of years, but what we're seeing is there is a lot of white labelling companies that don't offer any certificates of analysis and so on. And also, you have even big companies not offering proper certificates of analysis, which was me like, it was…
Yeah, I don't understand. You have a big company, and you have just the purity report from like, 18 months ago, and you don't have any other analysis, such as heavy metals, or pH or microorganisms. So, the consumer is actually not confident in buying from you. And I wanted to deliver the best quality for myself and my family. And then I said, ‘Wait a minute. This is not done, right’. And this is why I launched the company because I wanted a company that was completely transparent. And I even say it on the website, that if you're interested in finding out who our suppliers are, and so on, and have any questions about our supply chain, just feel free to reach out to me. And I would be happy to disclose all of those things.
There are other companies that you can't find any registration number, or who the founder is, and so on. And it's quite confusing, really, because like you— you don't know who you deal with.
Lisa: This is the same with the whole supplement industry. On the one hand, it's good that it's not regulated by the FDA, and whoever else, there are authorities around the world. Because like, then—they are turned into the pharmaceutical industry, which don't get me started. But on the other hand, there's not enough regulation around the quality control.
And one of the things when I was searching for NMNs, searching the world for it, I had to go overseas and import it to friends in America and get it out of there. And this is why I like—was super excited to discover your work. And then, we've since now made it available down here. So, we're going to branch down here in New Zealand for New Zealand, Australia. And I wanted someone who I could trust, who has all the scientific knowledge behind it, there's all lab tests, etc. And that was really important for me for quality.
Just on a side note. So I've been taking NMN now for—I think—so five, close to six months. I've had a massive weight loss and so as my mum. Why would that be? Like, I didn't take it for weight loss. I wasn't overweight, per se. But I had a couple of kilos that I was quite clear to get rid of. And what I've noticed—because I'm an athlete, that's my background—I haven't lost an ounce of muscle, which has been really awesome because most people are struggling to keep muscle mass, lose fat mass. My mum has lost 11 kilos. And she is of a genetic body type that really struggles with weight loss. She's conservation metabolism, from a genetic point of view, very, very hard for her to lose weight. So, I've never seen this in the history of her entire life, since I've been around. The weights just dropped off her.
Is this some sort of upregulation in the metabolic pathways? Is it improving the insulin resistance? What's it doing there to cause such weight loss without muscle loss?
Dr Elena: Well, in my study so far, there's definitely evidence that it does improve insulin sensitivity, and it also improves the lipid metabolism profile. So those two are very important. And unfortunately, we don't have those studies in humans yet. But more clinical studies are on the way, and hopefully we'll have very good results this year with the NMN besides the safety studies that we already have in humans.
So in mice, what we're seeing is that there is basically a reverse of type two diabetes, which is really impressive. And if you want to correlate this data into humans somehow, I would say that, obviously, I'm not a medical doctor, and this is not a medical advice, but I would say that it does have to do something with the metabolism, and it basically improves the way your body metabolises everything. And...
Lisa: Worth trying and there's no downside to NMN. There's no, it's a vitamin B derivative, well then you will say to me, ‘Well, can I just take B3 and be done’? and it's like, no, it doesn't work like that, which should be a lot cheaper.
Dr Elena: That’s the other impressive thing about this compound is that it actually doesn't have, if any, side effects at all. So even in studies with mice, where the dosage that they use in mice is actually much higher than it is in the one that we usually have in humans. So, for instance, if someone would take 500 mg, or one gram of NMN per day in humans. And then in mice studies, they use something like 200 mg per kilogram of weight, which is much, much more, and it still doesn't have any side effects.
Lisa: Does it mean that we need higher dosages? Like in the human, or has it only been tested to one gram and why has it not been tested higher, if that's the case?
Dr Elena: No, I think that there are studies underway for this as well. So eventually, we will find what is the ideal dosage for humans. I think that from anecdotal evidence, people can already see results from 500 mg or one gram and so on. There are people that take more. So, some biohackers say that they take two grams or four grams, and is still very well tolerated. But yeah, so far, it does not produce any side effects in terms of…
Lisa: Any downside.
Dr Elena: Basically. And, for instance, for myself, my stomach is quite sensitive. So, when I'm on an empty stomach, I can't take vitamin C or caffeine and I get nauseous and so on. And this is not the case with an NMN. So, I can take it first. It is very well tolerated on an empty stomach, very mild. I really love it. There’s so many reasons to love it.
Lisa: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have my morning and night. So, I'm on a gram a day. And is there any reason not to take it at night? So I split the dose—reasoning, thinking, keeping the levels up?
Dr Elena: I mean, I would probably take it all in the morning, I think. There's been a study out that it can affect the circadian rhythms as well. And interestingly, it actually affects NMN—sorry—NAD levels affects the circadian rhythm. But it's not the other way around. So, NAD actually dictates the circadian rhythm in the body. So, for this reason, I would suggest to take it in the morning because then your whole body synchronise, then you wake up and you tell to your body that look, it's the morning now, and we're going to have increased NAD level.
Lisa: Increase. Ohh okay. So, okay, I got that wrong. I haven't noticed that I've had worse sleep or anything like that, or any rhythm has been out. But I would definitely swap to doing—my thinking process around that was keeping the tissue saturated over a 24-hour period, as opposed to all at once and then perhaps dropping, but I don't know. What is the half-life of it? Do you know? Is there any sort of evidence around that?
Dr Elena: I actually, not sure. No, no.
Lisa: There’s no evidence yet. And so yeah, there's a ton of studies still being done that are currently, like this year, like going to be coming out, which is going to be really exciting. So that we're going to get more evidence. I mean, there's this stuff that I've been reading around fertility in animal studies, and they're starting to do human studies, which I personally am very interested in, in reversing aging of the ovaries and even with... I mean, the mice study was incredible around fertility, where the mice were postmenopausal, they actually knocked off any existing eggs with chemotherapy. And then gave them NMN and the mice went on to have babies. And there was a whole study.
Dr Elena: This is why I get so excited about NMN and this is why it's my first product because frankly speaking as a scientist, I've never seen results like that with a natural compound.
Lisa: No?
Dr Elena: Because there is a bunch of natural compounds out there, there is a bunch of other supplements. And what we're talking about spermidine the other day...
Lisa: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting.
Dr Elena: ...another autophagy activator. Quite an interesting supplement, yes. By the way, it's also an mTOR, independent autophagy activator, which is good.
Lisa: Another very good reason to take that as well. And we were looking into that aren’t we, Elena about adding that?
Dr Elena: Yeah, absolutely. We will look into this, but again, you don't see results, like the ones that you see with NMN in multiple studies from other compounds, it's really fascinating.
Lisa: Wow, so yeah, so there are other products that are going to... And this is a super exciting thing, like were our grandparents or our parents even didn't get the chance, like, with aging was aging, and there was nothing that you really could do to influence how fast you aged. They weren't aware of it. And later on, it's become well, if you eat better and you exercise a little bit more and you stop smoking and, and stuff, you’ll age slower. But now we're taking exponential leaps in our knowledge.
I mean, I fell into this realm when I was reading Dr David Sinclair's book, who is a very prominent scientist at Harvard Medical School, and made his book, Lifespan, which I totally recommend people reading. I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh, if I can stay healthy now’, because I'm 52, ‘if I can stay like, really, in top shape for another 10 years, by then we're going to have stuff that will help me live really long’. And that really excites me. And not just live long, but live healthier.
Dr Elena: That’s the important part. The important part is not to just increase your age, it’s to increase your health span. So, the time that you're spending being healthy. And what you're referring to is actually called the aging escape velocity, where basically we’ll have more advanced research coming in every year of our lives. And this will eventually expand our lifespan, which is amazing. And I also think that if we preserve ourselves well, we might as well see this in our lifetimes, which will be amazing.
Lisa: Absolutely. And I want another few decades, please. Listening to Dave Asprey, who by far, got...
Dr Elena: I want another like, few hundreds.
Lisa: Yeah, well, I mean, I know it sounds ridiculous right now. But if you listen to Dave Asprey saying conservatively, and Dr. David Sinclair, too, like, conservatively, we could live to 150, 180, and beyond. Then once they crack the code, and they're actually able to turn the cells back to which they are working on right now. And which they can actually go in the petri dish, from what I understand like with skin cells and make them immortal. And they can't do it in humans because it's too risky, they could turn you into a tumour and stuff. But with the Yamanaka factors that were discovered a decade or so ago, they're actually able to turn the clock back to the point of you being a 20-year-old again. And this is like, ‘Wow, this is pretty exciting. Being able to regrow nerves, spinal injuries, people who have gone blind from macular degeneration’ — all of these things are coming down the line. This is very, very exciting.
Dr Elena: There are several advancements in this field. So, as I said, my PhD is also in stem cell biology. So, I was working with human embryonic stem cells in the lab, and what they can do on a dish is just mind blowing. Because what I was able to do was to take human embryonic stem cells, and then dictate their fate, basically, with different growth factors, and then differentiate them into neural precursors at first. And then to push them further in order to become terminally differentiated neurons. And like four weeks later, you basically have a human brain in a dish and it's a primary human cells. And it's an amazing, physiological irrelevant human platform as well to study disease. And this is what I was doing during my PhD.
So, I’ve seen it with my own eyes. And every time I would do, I would go through this process, I would differentiate the human embryonic stem cells into neurons. It would be as exciting as the first time because of what it represents, because it does represent the progress that we've made so far. And I personally started human embryonic stem cells for the sake of drug discovery. So, I wasn't interested—my project was not focusing on different therapeutic applications. However, I know that there are many advancements in this field as well. So, we do have clinics in America, where you can have a total body rejuvenation, stem cells, and so on. And this technology is definitely advancing.
And I've been actually thinking about the application of this for myself. So as you know, I recently had a dental injury. This is something to keep in mind for the future. So perhaps in the near future, I can just inject myself with a bit of a stem cells there...
Lisa: And that’s already happening to a degree. I mean, I've got a doctor friend up north, who's doing stem cell replacement for joints, and so on, for degenerative joints. Because stem cells, basically, for people who don't understand why this is important. The stem cell is the original like cell, but before it decides, ‘Am I going to become a skin cell, or a neuron or a liver cell’, it differentiates. So, it's a pluripotent stem cell, it can become anything. And so, in the lab setting, you're going to be able to say, ‘Well I want your cell to become a liver cell’. Will we eventually be able to grow organs that can be used for transplantation? Is that sort of one of the end goals?
Dr Elena: Absolutely. And it's already been done with some organs. So for instance, I've heard that there is a research group that basically 3D-printed a functional thyroid gland from stem cells.
Lisa: Wow. 3D-printed. So, the printer gets these differentiated cells somehow, and then makes it into a functioning organ that they will eventually—they're going to be able to actually transplant this into people and save the whole organ donation, horrific troubles that we have currently.
Dr Elena: Yeah, exactly and I think that we're not too far away from this from whole organs being recreated in the lab. We already are able to actually do a 3D culture in the lab and create the so called organoids. So for instance, from stem cells, you can do a brain organoid, where you have a liposphere and it basically consists of different kinds of cells that you see in the brain. So it would have neurons, it would have glial, it will have astrocytes, and then it would have this brain organoid and then you can study it.
So, we're already getting there. We’re close, we’re much closer than we thought we were 20 years ago. And I think that we're not far away from having different kinds of organs being grown in the lab for transplants and so on.
Lisa: Hopefully not our brains because it's the seed of who we are. Honestly reading Dr Sinclair's book, I was like, ‘Am I in a Star Trek movie or something’? because it is pretty, pretty amazing. But when you do this, you also ask that to understand the whole process and how the whole thing functions, and then you can actually really slow down neurodegeneration and optimise things.
And so the NMN that we're talking about right now is the beginning of this really exciting road, which we're going to be staying abreast of. And hopefully adding to what we have available to the consumer right now for prices that are not moon money, that it's out of anybody's reach, but actually what you can do today so that you can preserve your health. So that in 10 years’ time, when the real crazy stuff starts coming on line, you'll be able to live longer and healthier lives. And that's the whole goal of it.
So before we just wrap up, I just wanted to reiterate again, so how is autophagy—can you just put that—how is autophagy related to NAD and sirtuin genes? Can you just put that two pieces together again, just repeat that a little bit?
Dr Elena: Sure. So basically, what happens is that you do need autophagy to recycle different damaged organelles in the cell when something goes wrong. So, and this is quite prominent in neurodegeneration because the reason we have—let's say, aggregate from proteins in neurons and dysfunctional mitochondria and so on is because neurons are terminally differentiated cells. This means that they don't divide anymore. So, they rely on autophagy in order to have their housekeeping function because they can't divide the junk away. Okay. So that's the reason why autophagy is important in terminally differentiated cells such as neurons.
Lisa: So there's no hay flick limit for a neuron. There is just only one—when a neuron becomes a neuron, that's a neuron. Okay.
Dr Elena: Yeah, yeah. And then that's it. And what happens with the activation of autophagy, one of the signals is—comes through sirtuin 1, which basically can activate the transcription factors that are related to autophagy activation, which is the TFEB transcription factor, EB and FOXO, which are basically influenced the activation of autophagy. And more specifically, the mitophagy as well. So, mitophagy is the arm of autophagy that is responsible for the mitochondrial clearance in the cell.
Lisa: Yep, so mitochondria, just for people, are the powerhouses of the cell. This is where a lot of—so all of the energy is produced, if you like. And so, this is why mitophagy, as opposed to autophagy, so mitophagy is doing the same process, but within the mitochondria to keep your mitochondria healthy. And if your mitochondria are not healthy, and they're dying, and you're not having enough mitochondria in your cells, then you are going to be sick. And that could be heart disease, it could be neurodegeneration, that could be anything. So, keeping your mitochondria healthy is the basis of all bloody disease, blatantly.
Dr Elena: Yeah, exactly. So then, if you have impaired autophagy in the cell, and then you also have some sort of DNA damage going on, such as the one from reactive oxygen species, for example. And then what you have is the activation of the PARP enzymes. And PARP enzymes heavily rely on NAD levels in the cell in order to function. And NAD is also a substrate for the sirtuin genes that are responsible for also regulating a bunch of very healthy, a bunch of processes in the healthy cell. And for this reason, if you do have increased activation of PARPS, you will eventually get this NAD drain out of the cell. And this will not be enough in order for the sirtuins to function properly. And this will also deplete your autophagy. So, both NAD levels and autophagy are important to the cell. And fortunately for us, we can actually replenish the levels of NAD by supplementing with an ad precursor such as an NMN.
Lisa: Okay, and so NMN has been proven to be by most of our bio available, because there's also like nicotinamide riboside which is used in a number of supplement companies that I know have nicotinamide riboside, but not many, there are some now, but have nicotinamide mononucleotide. Nicotinamide riboside is also a great molecule, but it's two steps away from becoming NAD. As long as it’s available.
Dr Elena: Yeah, so nicotinamide riboside needs to be phosphorylated and fast converted to nicotinamide mononucleotide first. And then this will enter the cell and then this will increase the levels of NAD in the cell. And for this reason—so first, this area of research was focusing on the NR molecule, the nicotinamide riboside. But then when they started studying NMN, they actually saw that there is increased bioavailability and there is increased levels of energy that come after supplementation with NMN.
Lisa: Can you take—because NAD is a molecule, you cannot just take it as a capsule, and then it's all good to go. Can you take it as an infusion because I have heard of NAD infusions. I mean, it’s not available here.
Dr Elena: Well, and I'm curious myself about this, and I haven't done it, I haven't tested it. And from what I've seen—so the concentration of NAD in those intravenous injections is quite low. And I think that the same way that we have many opportunistic companies in the supplement field, we also have many opportunistic clinics that offer this kind of treatments. So, again, this is not something that I have studied in depth, and I actually don't know how much will it help. But yeah, I mean, this is another way to boost NAD, I guess, and you can try it out.
But with oral administration of NMN, we do have evidence that it can boost the levels of NAD in the tissue and in liver tissue and muscle tissue, and so on. And also, it's much easier to do and it's obviously much cheaper because those injections cost a lot.
Lisa: Yes, yeah. Just one last question in relation to antioxidants, because I mean 10 years ago or so we used to think our reactive oxygen species ,oxidative stress happens through the electron transport chain. When we're metabolising, and so on, we get all these oxidative stresses and free radicals running around. And if we take antioxidants, we're going to be counterbalancing that. Does supplementing with antioxidants, like vitamin D, like glutathione, like vitamin C, and so on, alpha lipoic acid, is that going to contribute, too, to the slowing of aging, because it's going to down regulate the PARP enzymes?
Dr Elena: People were very optimistic about antioxidants, something like 20 years ago. And everyone was talking about it and so on. But actually, the big studies that have been done, have shown that by taking antioxidants, you actually do not suppress aging. And there are some biomarkers that might have changed in those studies. But most of the biomarkers that they measure stay the same. Basically, saying that antioxidant is not the...
Lisa: Not the holy grail.
Dr Elena: ...that everyone was thinking about.
Lisa: Was hoping, yeah. Not to say that antioxidants don't have their place because they definitely do. Especially if you have a lot of oxidative stress, and you need to, like with vitamin C, if you're infected, or—I've done a whole series on vitamin C. But then it's not the holy grail for stopping the aging process, but it probably does help with not having so much PARP activation. I don't know, as a non-scientific brain, I'm just connecting dots.
Okay, so I think it's probably we've— so from a lifestyle intervention, apart from taking NMN and resveratrol, and oleic acid or olive oil, intermittent fasting, is there anything else that we can add to our anti-aging regime on a lifestyle intervention side?
Dr Elena: Intermittent fasting, and then avoid exposure to sunlight, as we said. And sirtuin genes are being activated from any kind of stress. And what we can do is we can also induce some sort of an artificial stress, which could be done, let's say with cryotherapy. This is what cryotherapy does. When you're exposed to cold, you also have this stress signal that activates sirtuins, or the other way around, so you can try out a sauna. And this will also have the same effect. So, I think this is also something to keep in mind.
Lisa: Breathing, breathing. So, sort of tumour breathing, or, like what one half does all of that sort of stuff. So, there’s hormetic stressors, there’s exercise obviously, that cause a cascade of changes and make you stronger. And yeah, it's sort of a balancing act. You don't want to be doing exercise for Africa or really freezing yourself to death, but you just want to have a little stress to cause a change in the body. So these hormetic stressors can be very, very helpful.
Okay, well, I think we've covered a very, very, very complex topic and I hope we didn't lose everybody on the way. But at the end of the day, take NMN, take resveratrol, take olive oil, do your exercise, get in the sauna, if you have a chance to do cold therapy, do that as well. Get your exercise, get your antioxidants in there as well, to a certain degree and you're going to be able to live long enough but until other things come online, and you'll be able to improve everything.
Dr Elena: Sounds good.
Lisa: Brilliant. So Dr. Elena, thank you very much. Dr. Elena has been on the show, NMN Bio. So we have nmnbio.co.uk in UK and in Europe, and nmnbio.nz if you're down at this end of the world. We'd love to help you over the air. If you've got any other questions, please reach out to us. And thanks very much for being here today. It's been really exciting.
Dr Elena: Thank you, Lisa, thank you so much for having me.
That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate review and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.
We all want good health and a long life. That's why we subscribe to health fads that offer promising benefits to our bodies. But, for this same reason, we tend to neglect foundational health principles. While these are easily accessible to us, there is still so much we can learn and get from them. By going back to the basics, we can take better care of our health, prevent diseases and boost longevity.
Dr Elizabeth Yurth joins us in this episode to talk about the importance of cellular health in longevity. She gives an overview of the benefits of foundational health principles in the disease process. Dr Yurth delves deeper into fasting, autophagy and the specifics of spermidine.
If you want to know more about slowing the ageing process and boosting longevity, this episode is for you.
For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.
You can also join their free live webinar on epigenetics.
Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.
If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations
My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/
For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.
For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.
‘It is not that you run too much; you wear your knees. It's that there is a disease process going on in your body that is now making your joints wear out, and so you have to treat it systemically, or you're not going to make any progress’.
‘The cool stuff is cool, and there's a place for it in all of us. But you still got to start at the basic stuff’.
‘There's so much information in these really simple lab studies that you've gotten from your primary care doctor’.
‘I think even the functional medicine space sort of went beyond the step of looking at some very basic things that are inherent to life’.
‘You're never going to train doctors; you've got to train people’.
‘There's not really anybody who has one disease that does not have something else wrong; it's just impacted lots of times in different ways’.
‘We want to go back and forth between different things. And we want to make sure we're cycling. Any of you are staying on the same patterns all the time, that's not serving you’.
Dr Elizabeth Yurth is the co-founder of the Medical Director of the Boulder Longevity Institute.
She is a faculty member and a mastermind physician fellow in Seeds Scientific Research and Performance (SSRP). She specialises in Sports, Spine, and Regenerative Medicine and has double board-certification in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and Anti-Aging/Regenerative Medicine.
She has a dual-Fellowship in Anti-Aging, Regenerative and Functional Medicine (FAARFM) and Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine (FAARM). Dr Yurth is also an active athlete and has worked with numerous sports teams at collegiate and professional levels. She does consultations with high-level athletes to optimise performance and aid recovery.
If you wish to connect with Dr Yurth, you may visit her Instagram.
If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends!
Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can include more amino acids in protein in their diet.
Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.
To pushing the limits,
Lisa
Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati. Brought to you by lisatamati.com.
You’re listening to Pushing The Limits with Lisa Tamati. Fantastic to have you guys back with me again. I hope you're ready and buckled down for another great interview. I really do get some amazing people and this lady is no exception. So today I have Dr. Elizabeth Yurth, who I originally heard on the Bulletproof Radio Podcast with Dave Asprey, who I love and follow. And she is a longevity expert. But Dr. Yurth is also a medical director of the Boulder Longevity Institute, which she founded in 2006. And she's double board certified in physical medicine and rehabilitation and anti-ageing and regenerative medicine. So she's a specialist in sports, spine and regenerative medicine.
She's an orthopaedic surgeon, and she's also heavily into the whole regenerative stuff. So from stem cells to different supplements to working with the latest and technologies that are available to help us slow down the ageing process and to help people regain function. So it was a really super exciting episode and I'm going to have Dr. Elizabeth on a couple of times. She's also a faculty member of the 25 mastermind physicians fellows at the Seeds Scientific Research & Performance group, which allows you to stay abreast and teach others in the emerging cellular medicine field. She's also been an athlete herself and works with numerous sports teams and both of the collegiate and professional levels. She's a wonderful person and I'm really excited to share this interview with her.
Before we head over to talk to Dr. Yurth, I just want to let you know about my new anti-ageing supplement. Now this has been designed and developed by Dr. Elena Seranova, who is a molecular biologist who is also coming on the podcast very shortly. And this is an NMN. It has nicotinamide mononucleotide. I recently read the book Lifespan by Dr. David Sinclair, who's a Harvard Medical School researcher in longevity and anti-ageing. And he's been in this field for the last 30 years. And his book was an absolute mind blowing, real look into the future of what we're going to be able to do to stop ourselves ageing to slow the ageing process down. And very importantly, increase, not only our lifespan, but our health span so that we know we stay healthy for as long as possible and don't have this horrific decline into old age that most of us expect to have.
So Dr. Sinclair in this book talks about what he takes and one of these things is an NAD precursor called nicotinamide mononucleotide. I searched all over the place for this. I couldn't get it in New Zealand when I was searching for it. And so I went and found Dr. Elena Seranova, who has developed this product and I'm now importing that into New Zealand. So if you want to find out all the science behind it, please head on head over to nmnbio.nz. That's N-M-N bio dot N - Z and all the information is on there. And you can always reach out to me lisa@lisatamati.com, if you've got questions around that.
We've also updated our running coaching system. So the way that we are offering our online run training system is now on a complete new look. We are doing fully personalised, customised training plans for runners of all levels and abilities. So we will program you for your next goal doing a video analysis of the way you're running, improve your running form through drills and exercises. Build your plan out for you. You get a one-on-one consult time with me as well. And just really help you optimise your running performance and achieve those big goals that you've got. So head on over to runninghotcoaching.com to check that out. Right now over to the show with Dr Elizabeth Yurth in Boulder, Colorado.
Lisa Tamati: Well, hi, everyone, and welcome back to Pushing The Limits. Today, I have Dr. Elizabeth Yurth with me from Colorado—Boulder, Colorado, and she is a longevity and anti-ageing expert. She's an orthopaedic surgeon. She's a real overachiever. And I'm just super excited to have her on because I have been diving into Dr. Yurth’s world for the last couple of weeks since I heard about her on the Bulletproof radio show. So Dr. Yurth has kindly given up an hour of her time to come and share her great knowledge. I know we're only going to skim the surface, Dr. Yurth, but it would be fantastic if we can gain some amazing insights on how the heck do we slow down this ageing process. So, Dr. Yurth, welcome to the show.
Dr. Elizabeth Yurth: Thank you so much, Lisa. I've been actually stalking you ever since you asked me to do this. And I've been fascinated with all the things you've been doing and teaching and I love it. I love that there's people like you out there who are now getting the masses involved in this and interested in this because doctors aren't doing it and so it has to be that educate the public. And people like you are paramount to that, so thank you.
Lisa: Thank you very much. Yes, I think, yes, this is the beauty of podcasts and such things and will in the internet whenever we can go direct to the best minds on the planet, get the information direct to the consumer, cutting out all the middle people, so to speak, and really get this information out there. Because what I've found in my research in the last few years is that there is so much amazing, great science out there that has never seen the light of day and certainly not in local clinical practice being utilized.
So Dr. Yurth, can you tell us a little bit about the Boulder Longevity centre before we get underway and what your work there is all about and your background?
Dr. Elizabeth: Sure, I'd love to. So basically, I've been in the orthopaedic medicine world for 30 years. And about 15 years ago, I actually became very frustrated because I saw people coming in and they would get injured or just have arthritis, chronic pain and we would sort of patch them a little bit and nothing ever really got better, and then something else will get hurt. And it really was just this downhill process from square one. I mean, I tore my first anterior cruciate ligament in my knee at the age of 18 and subsequently, had torn two or three more times between the two knees, had four more surgeries and then it was just a downhill decline.
And so, we started looking at is there a way to stop this, because you don't learn it in medical school, and you don't learn in orthopaedic medicine. And when I started looking into—and this was a very early time in the whole functional medicine space, it was really early, there wasn't a lot. And so I went back to American Academy of Anti-ageing Medicine, which is really the only thing available at that time, and did a fellowship in functional medicine and regenerative medicine and tried to incorporate that into my orthopaedic practice as much as I could. But it's difficult in 10 to 15 minute appointments to do that. So we realized that you can't really do good medicine in that model, and so we opened Boulder Longevity Institute about 15 years ago now.
And I really sidelined did both practices, because what I found is that people are still looking for that insurance-based practice, and I try as much as I could to educate them there. And then some of them would transition over to here and over time for 15 years, Boulder Longevity Institute has really grown and developed, and subsequently is now my full-time practice. But we do a lot of orthopaedic regenerative care here, the targeting, taking care of people and getting them healthier in that realm.
But much like you, our focus is very much now on education and we have a whole, what we call, Human Optimization Academy. We're trying to bring the just like you said, the research to the people. Peter Diamandis, who runs Abundance360—is very well known, you probably know him — he has a great quote where he says, ‘Researchers don't do medicine. And doctors don't do the research and learn the research and use on their patients’. And so, there's a lag of about 15 to 20 years since when something is available to us that will make us better and ever getting to us.
Lisa: Exactly. I had the exact same conversation with another doctor, Dr. Berry Fowler and we were talking about intravenous vitamin C and I said, ‘Why is it taking so long and critical care to get this in?’ And he said ‘because it's like turning a supertanker’. He says, ‘It's just so slow’. And so people are not getting the benefit of the latest research. And for an orthopaedic surgeon to go down this anti-ageing functional medicine route is a very rare thing, or at least in my country, it would be a very rare thing.
Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, orthopaedics does not cross over this line at all. And ultimately, it's one of the reasons I had to leave my other practices because my partners were very much like, ‘Stop talking about medicine. That's not what we do here’. And you have to—even arthritis is a disease. It is not that you ran too much and wore out your knees. There is a disease process going on in your body that is now making your joints wear out. And so you have to systemically treat it or you're not going to make any progress.
Lisa: Oh man, people so need to hear that because it is an inflammatory process that's coming like out of the immune system. And I've heard you say a couple of times on some of your lectures, I listened to one on mitochondria. And mitochondria is sort of the basis of where a lot of other things are coming from, isn't it, and diseases are probably...
Dr. Elizabeth: Everything. Honestly, I think what we're going to find is that every single diseases—every single disease is going to come down to mitochondrial level. In fact, I was just reading a new research article on autism and mitochondrial dysfunction, that they're actually linking this mitochondrial dysregulation in even autism. I don't think that we're going to find any disease that is not linked first to mitochondrial dysfunction, which is fascinating because mitochondria are fascinating. So it's really my passion is, is how do we repair mitochondria. But that you start looking at—you can pretty much do that. You guys go out there and Google mitochondria and any disease you can think of and you will find research to support it.
So, in arthritis it is exactly the same, right, Lisa? You're right. It's damage to now the mitochondria and the chondrocytes. And that damage—you get these damage from chondrocytes, which then are actually spewing these reactive species that are damaging the next cell and the next cell. And simply sticking steroids in that joint is not going to help it.
Lisa: Wow. So we want to talk a little bit today, like we talked about our foundational health—a few foundational health principles so that we can then get on to some of the cooler, more sexier stuff that I want to talk about, like things like spermidine and peptides and NAD precursors, perhaps, and all of these sort of really cool things.
But what are you seeing in your practice—like you're seeing a lot of people who are becoming aware of their health, they're looking at everybody knows the basics about nutrition now, I think. Like, fried foods are not good for us, sugar is not good for us—the basics. But what are you seeing as missing in that foundational side of things?
Dr. Elizabeth: So I think this is the biggest thing I've seen over the past—probably a year. And as I've done more podcasts, and I've listened to more podcasts, and now you have all the bio hacker groups and the peptide group, so everybody is doing all this cool thing. So now, like, ‘Oh, I got to go do my hyperbaric and I have to go take my growth hormone, peptides’. And they come in to me, and I was just telling you about a patient I saw who literally had a worksheet, spreadsheet of all the things he was doing. And I said, ‘Well, are you taking testosterone’? And he was 56 years old, I said, ‘Are you taking testosterone’? ‘No’. And I said, ‘Have you ever looked at your nutrient pound’? ‘Nope’.
So, what I really want to encourage your listeners is the cool stuff is cool, and there's a place for it in all of us, but you still got to start at the basic stuff. So, when we look at people we have to go through and we have to fix—so we look at all the hormones and you just did a great podcast looking at hormone metabolism, right? Because people are so scared of hormones and they’re terrified that these hormones are going to cause cancer. And we know that's not true. It's how you metabolize the hormones that's important, which has genetic and environmental. You just gave an incredible podcast with your guests the other day on that.
Lisa: With Dr. Mansoor; he's wonderful.
Dr. Elizabeth: Right. And your epigenetic background, that the key is how these hormones are processed. So when we look at hormones, we actually do a urine metabolite test. So we know exactly where those hormones are going, and are they going down bad pathways or good pathways?
So you've got to repair all that, first, fix all the pathways, which you do, and you know your CYP genes and all that kind of stuff. How do you alter it? There's nutrients that you can use to do that. There's tons of things, exercise. So, fix all the hormones first. Men and women all need hormones. I think testosterone’s neglected in women all the time, right? They're on estrogen, progesterone, and I'm like, ‘You’re not on testosterone’? Like, ‘No’. And so even within the realm of our type of medicine, we are neglected in that realm. Right?
Testosterone is huge for women. If you want muscle, you need testosterone.
Lisa: I basically got good muscles.
Dr. Elizabeth: Right, that’s right. So, you've got your testosterone on board, and it has to be not alternating into estrogen—all that has to be involved. So you've got to fix that. And then, there's so much information in these really simple lab studies that you've gotten from your primary care doctor. So, a complete blood count, a CBC, a CMP. Everybody has them, and everybody's doctor looks at and goes, ‘Yep, looks good. There's no reds in there, everything's perfect’. You can actually take that—and Dr. Levine, anti-ageing expert, did a whole algorithm that just taking some of these blood work give you very comparable estimation of longevity as doing telomere length or doing methylation.
So, we have all these expensive tests to look at DNA methylation and telomere to look at age, and you could come up very close to the same number, simply by feeding some of these parameters, like your albumin level and your metabolic calculator that would...
Lisa: Wow! Is that available publicly, that calculator?
Dr. Elizabeth: I'm not sure how publicly available it is. We actually have access, and we utilize that in our patients to follow it. But it's great, because these other tests are expensive. And if I want to put you on a protocol and then see if I'm making headway, how do I follow that? So, I don't think people know that, for instance, what is one of the most valuable numbers on your CBC? It’s actually the size of your cells, the mean cell volume, and the rest of distribution?
Lisa: Yes, I'm just studying cell distribution.
Dr. Elizabeth: Isn’t that fascinating?
Lisa: We are completely unaware.
Dr. Elizabeth: And have any of your listeners have had the doctor ever mentioned what their MCV is? Or their RDW is? And those are very, very important. So is albumin. So albumin alone, which is not just dietary. There's a great study that you could predict who is going to get out of the hospital alive based on their albumin levels. And so simply looking at things like that. So if your albumin levels are low, maybe it's because you're not eating enough protein, but that doesn't—it tends to be something else wrong.
Lisa: Liver not doing something.
Dr. Elizabeth: Definitely. And sometimes that's the need for more beta carotene. Sometimes it's need for more copper. Copper has to help carry the albumin and copper deficiencies are super low. Nobody measures copper. So, you can look at a low albumin and try putting somebody on a little copper, it’s quite GHK copper as a peptide, I might get to the fancy stuff. Using copper as a peptide is an amazing peptide. It's very longevity promoting because copper is super vital to our health. And so sometimes just putting people on two milligrams of copper can markedly improve their health.
Lisa: But isn’t there copper’s also a toxicity problem? Isn't that quite a lot of people have high copper levels?
Dr. Elizabeth: Less than you think. So it's gotten a lot of market to that, right? It has to be that zinc copper balance has to be imbalanced. So that's one of the things. But actually, copper toxicity is pretty easy to tell. When people become copper—toxic on copper, you'll see the lunula, the fingernails start turning, a little discoloured, a little bluish in colour. So it is a little harder to get toxic in copper than people think. I use it a lot for wound healing in my patients. So, it really helps with wound healing. It's why it's in all skin, expensive skin creams, copper peptides are because it's so good for collagen function, it’s so good for wounds. So I think we may scare people a little bit from copper. But it actually has some value.
And a lot of times, it's not so much that you have too much coppers, you don't have enough zinc and that balance is not there. It has to be balanced between zinc and copper. So those are simple things that you can actually look at and measure. And you can—I don't have to do it on everybody.
So I see somebody who has a low albumin, I might say, ‘Hmm, we better look at your zinc and copper level’. So we take the CBC and CMP. And how about simply creatinine? If your creatinine is above point eight, that is not good for longevity. So, why is that?
Well, maybe you're eating way too much protein, right? We will erase any high protein diets, super high protein, the kidneys can only process so much protein and your kidneys depend on your genetics, maybe less. So that's all things I think you have to go back when you talk about foundational health.
I spend literally 30 minutes going through a CBC and a CMP with people. They’re so valuable, and those are $12 tests. Not these big, fancy, expensive tests, they don't cost $500 or $600. And by the end of that test, I can give them, this is what your biological age, your pheno age, this is where we really need to target and start with them some very basic, inexpensive things.
Lisa: Crikey dex, that's amazing. I didn't know we can get to that. I mean, I've only been studying blood chemistry for a couple of months and like it's a big topic isn't it?
Dr. Elizabeth: It has some really cool value to it that you can actually look at. Some ranges that—we have all gone from the normal range, right? All your listeners now know this the normal range, there's an optimal stage. Within that optimal range, right, there's one number above that you'll see you start to see a change in ageing. The curve on your projected longevity, you look at albumin levels, and you look at the curve on your projected longevity. If your albumin levels are less than 4.6, your projected longevity is five to 10 years less than somebody who's above 4.6.
Lisa: Crikey. No one's ever told me any of these things and I’ve been studying blood chemistry and from functional doctors, like that's all news to me.
Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, I think that that's the problem. I think even the functional medicine space sort of went beyond the step of looking at some very, very basic things that are inherent to life. And now start focusing, ‘Oh, let's look at hormones, right? Let's look at the gut microbiome’. All super important, but all going to be messed up, if the other stuffs messed up, right?
Lisa: You’re basically not in the right place.
Dr. Elizabeth: And so I—that's where I get a little frustrated. So now we're targeting back to that whole cellular health, it all comes back down to the cell, fix the cell. As the cell gets fixed, the mitochondria get fixed, everything else falls. So once you've refined that now, we can look at gut microbiomes, if the person is not doing well. We can look at things like micronutrient profiles, and I love micronutrient profiles because I don't know if how much vitamin D you need or how much vitamin B12 you need. Micronutrient profiles, particularly one that gives me intracellular and serum levels, as you know genetics plays a huge role in your micronutrients.
Lisa: Yes, vitamin D, for example. I mean, I know I have bad vitamin D genetics, so I need to supplement with vitamin D. Right?
Dr. Elizabeth: And B12, you've got the SUV people of B12. I’m one of those who need a lot of B12. It's all very genetically based. So, you can predict it from genetics. But then are you accomplishing your goal? I think you need some…
Lisa: Measurements. And this is where the combination of what I'm—like the combination of doing your genes and finding out your innate pathways and what they do, and then seeing actually where you are, getting that snapshot of ‘Okay, we are actually in their hormones and stuff’. And it's quite complicated.
And this is the problem is that you go to your local doctor, at least here where I live, and none of this is offered. And none of this is—and so you left as a lay person trying to work this stuff out yourself. And that's quite frustrating and quite difficult.
Dr. Elizabeth: It's hard. And it gets caught up again, in the glitz and glamour. I'm going to be attracted to my podcast that's talking all about the coolest, newest thing, it's just our nature is to want the coolest, newest thing. And we just talked about that. We want that cool new thing, because that is on the forefront. And we use those cool new things to help fix the basics. But you still got to know where you are in that standing, and that's really now become, I think, one of my frustrations as I'm seeing more and more people walk in my door, who are doing everything they’re thinking of.
And so we are trying to teach people this. We're trying to teach people how do you interpret your own blood work? How do you look at every one of those parameters and say, ‘What should my albumin be? Okay, it's too high, it's too low. What can I do to fix that’? Whereas, if my MCV is, mean cell volume. If your mean cell volume, and you look at your own. As we age, I look at my 19 year old son, he has a mean cell volume of 83. If I look at your average person who's in their 50s, and 60s, who's our age, it's going to be 97, 98. So the higher that number goes, the more your stem cells are wearing out, the more your bone marrow is wearing out, the more that whatever you're doing isn't working.
So we can use those things, like you can use your infrared, you can do all those great things. Me, I infrared, I cryo, I do all that. But I will tell you some very basic stuff that sometimes has been the things that made changes in those numbers. I want people to know, that's them that, honestly, is why we decided you're never going to train doctors, you've got to train people. But we've also got to get people back to understanding that you've got to sort of learn these things and kind of a fashion of can learn this, learn this, learn this. When I understand everything about how hyperbaric oxygen improves my cell function, have I really learned how to just look at the cell at that molecular level from looking at basic labs? And that's what we're trying to teach people. Start there, and then we give them tools.
Lisa: Fantastic. So people can join Dr Yurth, and get us some of this education. And I've started delving into it and I can't wait to see what else comes along because I mean, this sort of stuff, I'm like already going, ‘Oh my god, I didn't know that’. So I've learned something today already as well. And I'm very definitely guilty of going after the shiny object and love it.
Dr. Elizabeth: It’s human nature. That’s human nature.
Lisa: Yes. And so people can go to the Boulder Longevity website and I'll put the links in the show notes and there is a Human Optimization Academy, join up for that and it's actually free at the moment, isn't it, Dr. Yurth?
Dr. Elizabeth: Right. Right now, it's free. And we'll start putting together—so right before COVID hit, we actually had an in-person course. We're actually going to teach how to look at your own CBC and CMP. And COVID hit, and it all sort of fell apart. But we'll be putting that back into sort of a virtual course with people so you can actually get your bloods run. We will walk you through. So, here's how to interpret every one of those little numbers you see on there because I will tell you, every one of those little numbers is important. Everybody just looks at it as a piece of paper, and there's no red marks highs or lows, they sort of discard it. And we'll show you how to look at that and give huge value.
And just from those simple things, you can now say, ‘Maybe I better get a micronutrient panel’, or at least test a copper or zinc or a B12, or D based on some of those numbers that you see being off. And then take the tool, now fix the basics. ‘That's not working? Okay, now, maybe I need to add this, this, this’.
Lisa: And then now we can get fancy. Well sign me up for that course because I need it. And I'm already up on some of it, but I wasn't that familiar with some of the things you've just said. So like, that's just like, well.
Okay, so we're looking at foundational stuff. Now let's go and look at cellular health, per se, because it all comes down to the cell. The more I look into things, the more everything seems to be about mitochondria in the cell, and what they're doing. and when we're made up of what? 10 trillion cells or something ridiculous. So cellular health, can you give us a bit of a view—it's a big topic, isn't it? But where should we start?
Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, well, I'm going to start with first kind of explaining what that means. So, functional medicines, we went from a disease-focused medicine, right? And then we all got very savvy—well, not the doctors—but the rest of the world who got very savvy said, ‘Oh, this isn't working. It's making somebody money, but it's not working to make anybody happy’. So we went to a functional medicine part. Let's look at organ systems and let's start. So then we went to the organ system, let's look at the adrenal glands and let's look at the liver in this and let's now fix the organ system that's dysfunctional. we got to fix the thyroid, we got to fix the endocrine organs and we have to do all that.
And then now, and this is really super recent, we're realizing that every organ system comes back to a cellular dysfunction. And there's not really anybody who has one disease that is not have something else wrong. It's just impacted lots of times in different ways. So if I have osteoarthritis. So if you have osteoarthritis, your risk of dementia is about fivefold higher. So why is that? Right? Osteoarthritis... because I ran 800 miles a day. But that's not the case, I have patients who run 800 miles and they're fine.
Lisa: Oh, I'm fine. Like, my joints are fine, and I haven't got any osteo.
Dr. Elizabeth: And then you have people who are like, ‘Oh, yes, I just wore myself out because I ran too much’. No, not the case. So, there's something wrong. So now we have to go back and look at what is wrong in the cell. So if you think about what power, what is the cell all about? It is the mitochondria. Mitochondria, what gives the cell energy, right? And so as we start getting damaged to our mitochondria with time and life and environment and genetics, and we start getting damage at the mitochondrial level. So, now have these damaged mitochondria. And now we start getting these cells that are in this altered state of energy. And that's when you start getting that senescent cell—cells that are basically sitting there…
Dr. Elizabeth: They’re zombie cells.
Lisa: And there's zombie cells, right? And they're producing these reactive oxygen species. And that's why they're called zombie cells, it's because the things that are being spewed out, are now toxic to the cells around them and then toxic to those cells. And so, it truly is like a zombie takeover.
So that's where we look at when we're going back to a cell level. First thing we have to do to try and heal any disease is clean out the bad cells. Clean up the zombie cells. That’s why fasting has been utilized for years in every disease process because we know that fasting causes autophagy, causes bad cells to go away, and now we can rebuild. I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is that if I start throwing a lot of rebuilding things into my network, tons of NAD and I'm trying to always be in this state where I've got a lot of antioxidants going. I'm throwing a lot of NAD and well then, I'm actually contributing to that cell senescent state. I've got to get rid of that first.
Clear out the bad stuff and do that periodically. And we use things like rapamycin, you can use it for fasting. And most recently what my go-to has been this spermidine for that talk. And I fell in love with spermidine a few years ago, actually and couldn't get it here in the US. That basically—it came onto my radar because there it worked at a very sort of primal level. Every single organism has spermidine. Anything that every organism has, is vital to life. And so we know that—and then all these studies that show that well, if you have higher level spermidine, you live longer, so.
And it was only available in—I don't know if you guys could get it—but it was available in Europe.
Lisa: I’ve just got my first order on its way. But I had to get it via Colorado, and I've actually being in contact with the guys in Austria. So, working on that one, I'm getting it down here.
Dr. Elizabeth: We couldn't get it. And like six months or so ago, we finally could get it here in the US. And it works as an autophagy inducing agent. It basically tells the cells to get rid of the bad stuff, it helps to restore the good parts of the cell. And really, at a baseline level is probably the one supplement that I know of, and probably the only one I know of, that is going to be actually balancing cell health continuously.
Lisa: So it's homeostasis as opposed to...
Dr. Elizabeth: The homeostatic state. Right.
Lisa: So like, just to backtrack a little bit there because we covered a heck of a lot of ground in a very short time there. So, fasting, I mean, we've heard, like fasting and intermittent fasting and longer fasts are very, very good for us and all that. While a lot of us don't want to do it because it's not very nice... I do intermittent fasting, but I must admit, I don't enjoy it. And I certainly—when it comes to doing longer fasts, I struggle. So I'm always like, fasting mimetics, how can I get some fasting mimetics going? Because like you say, if I'm going to put in the antioxidants, the precursors, which I do as well, which are very important piece of the puzzle, but just that is not enough. So, this is like we've looked at in the past, like resveratrol as being a possible fasting mimetic. And wouldn't it be great if spermidine turns out, and it looks like it is going to be another fasting mimetic that's actually even more powerful. So, I know you do a lot of fasting, you're very disciplined, unlike myself.
Dr. Elizabeth: No extra weight, I still have extra weight so fasting’s easier for me.
Lisa: But yes, it is a difficult thing to do. So intermittent fasting is probably for me is the easiest go-to because I can sort of coke for it.
Dr. Elizabeth: Time-restricted eating. Really, yes, more doing a 16, 8, kind of thing as opposed to the longer fast. And there's a lot of questions, we don't really know, do you need to long fast? We actually don't know the answer to that. There's a lot of people who say, ‘Oh, you've got to be hit the 48 to 72 hours to really get the full autophagy phase’. There's not a lot of data that actually really says that. You may still be able to get the same benefits from doing time-restricted eating. So we don't know the answer to all these questions.
Lisa: But so what we're targeting with fasting is autophagy. So, autophagy, just to define what autophagy is, is getting rid of the bad stuff, basically. The bad proteins that are damaged, the mitochondria, or mitophagy, in that case. And recycling the parts that we can reuse and getting rid of it. Does the body sort of lock at it when you're fasting, and you haven't got anything coming and going up, ‘I've got no fuel supply, I better start recycling the old stuff’.
Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, exactly. Yes, autophagy is self-eating. And so basically, the cell basically says, ‘Oh, I need to preserve. I'm going to take the good things from the cell, get rid of the bad stuff I don't need. It’s a waste of energy. Getting rid of cells that shouldn't be utilizing my energy’. So and then really by going into a ketotic state, and that's, not utilizing glucose has a huge benefit.
Lisa: So ketosis and autophagy, are they hand in hand? Are they part of the same thing? Can you have autophagy without being in ketosis, or are they very much married together?
Dr. Elizabeth: No, you can actually have autophagy without being in ketosis. And you can basically be in ketosis and not necessarily have autophagy. So that all kind of depends on the cell, the state the cells in.
One of the problems with resveratrol as a fasting mimetic, you mentioned taking resveratrol continuously, is there's also very potent antioxidant. Remember, one of the benefits of fasting is oxidative stress. So, I want oxidative stress while I'm fasting. If I'm taking resveratrol, for instance, while I'm fasting, I'm actually not getting as much of the oxidative stress. So, it's working a little different level. That's why I like spermidine a little bit better as it doesn't have that same effect to sort of negate the oxidative stress.
Lisa: And for how long for people to get their heads around? I know because I mean, I've been struggling with this one, like the antioxidants sort of paradox. Yes, sorry, you carry on.
Dr. Elizabeth: I think the key to remember is you really don't want to be doing any protocol continuously. I was just talking to a guy and he said, ‘What do you do to look like you do’? because I have more muscle. And I said, ‘I don't do anything continuously’. There's nothing—workout, nothing continuously. My food, my eating is never continuously, my supplements are never continuously.
And I think it's a problem as people get in these patterns where they are taking all these antioxidants continuously. I always am going through build-up, breakdown phases. So there's only a few supplements that I will continuously take. One is, I will take spermidine at a baseline level. But if I'm doing a sort of a fast autophagy phase, where I really want to do a big tie up off of everything, I want a very high dose spermidine, much higher dose than just until that time of day.
Lisa: Because spermidine works at a level lower if you like, at the base level. So, when we're talking about antioxidants, what the job is in the cell is to basically scavenge and donate electrons to where you got oxidative stress, and reactive oxygen species and to get rid of it there. But we're actually going a step back and actually stopping the reactive oxygen species, or oxidative stress from happening in the first place. And this is why spermidine at that base level, seems to be one that you can take continuously. And it even builds up to some degree, perhaps in your body or upregulates some of the bacteria in the microbiome. And whereas, antioxidants, we want to sort of cycle in and out. It's like exercise, isn't it? Like when I go to the gym, I'm not going to have my vitamin C right next to when I go to the gym, because that's going to mitigate that cascade of effects that vitamin C has. Yes.
So I'm doing things. I'm taking my vitamin C away from that. And so there's, none of this is good or bad, it's cycling. And I think the more I've looked into things, the body likes this push and pull. It likes a medic stress. It likes to be cold. It likes to be hot. It likes to be pleasant, but it likes to be fasted. It likes to have a good amount of food. It's this whole—because that's how we've evolved, isn't it?
Dr. Elizabeth: That's the way life for it was, yes.
Lisa: We didn't come from this neutral environment where the temperature is the same all the time. And we're sitting on comfy couches, and we're not exercising and we're not cold, or we're not hungry, and we're not hot, and we're not not anything, and we've got an abundance of everything. And therefore, if we look at our evolution, and how we've come about that sort of a push and pull seems to go right through nature.
Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, you're exactly right. Remember, there's that balance between mTOR and AMPK, right? We know that AMPK is breakdown. And we know that when we block mTOR, our lives are longer, but we also don't build as much muscle and we don't have as much energy. And what you do is go through phases, build up mTOR, build up AMPK, build up and do that balance, so that you keep things in a very homeostatic state. And you said exactly right, there's great benefits to being hot. You have all the, how great being cold is and doing our cold showers in our cryo and everything. But there's a study that came out recently, I think I quote it in some podcasts I was in recently, that showed that in hotter environments, bone density is much better. So why is it that?
Lisa: Yes, I heard that.
Dr. Elizabeth: There's some effects from the warmth on our body too. So you're exactly right. We want to go back and forth between different things and we want to make sure we're cycling. Any of you who are staying on the same patterns all the time, that's not serving you. Your body needs to have this back-and-forth balance. And you're right, that is—whenever you give the quote of well, ‘That's how cavemen lived’. You're like, ‘Well, but cavemen died in 18 whatever’.
So how our evolution occurred, right? It's still what, what got us to survive. And it really is how our world is designed, and it's how our cells are designed.
So I think that the use of thinking about your body as ‘Okay, I'm going to go through a fast, autophagy phase, and then I'm going to build up and I’m going to build my muscles’. You can build muscle while you're in a fasted state, but it's not nearly as easy as it is when you're eating a lot of food.
Lisa: Yes. And but we're wanting to keep everything in balance so that it doesn't get just mTOR because, if we're in a state of like, activated mTOR all the time, then we are growing, but we were possibly growing things like cancer cells and things like.
Dr. Elizabeth: And we know that mTOR activation all the time is closer to death.
Lisa: But isn’t it weird, like there's nothing simple about...
Dr. Elizabeth: It actually, honestly, it makes very little sense to me, right? The things—the mTOR, everything's muscle building. Super high IGF all the time and it is muscle building. You would think it would be kind of pro longevity, right, and healthy, and yet, it's not. And the only way I can really—in my mind, reason that out is that if the zombie apocalypse hits, you're better designed to be able to survive without any food and without any—nothing just huddled away in your little house, right? And so maybe the evolution of our body that's for longevity, the genes have kind of stayed there are the ones that really make us survive through famine, right? And yet, that's probably not where we all want to be. We don't want to be huddled in the back of our houses not moving.
And so yes, if you look at Valter Longo and his research on—really low IGF people live longer, they don't have cancer. Yes but they actually don't necessarily feel great. And they don't necessarily see low IGF people all the time, who are fatigued, who don't have good energy, who can't build muscle, who don't exercise. So I think that the thing here is build your IGF, bring it back down, build it up, bring it back down. So, I think that that's where we really need to look at things, as this kind of waxing and waning of everything we do.
In our cellular medicine fellowship program, it's one of the things we're really, really focused on is that's what the cell needs, is a push and pull to it, to really help it become a healthier entity. And I think if we start doing that, we're going to start seeing that that's really where we're going to see that big focus to health and longevity occurrence. It's not going to be ‘Everybody eat this diet’.
Lisa: No, no. And this is like, even as a coach of athletes and stuff. And I did this in my athletic career where I didn't know all this stuff. I ran long, because that's what I do, it was ultra-marathon running. And that's all I did. I didn't train at the gym. I didn't do—and I was not fit. And I was not healthy. I could run long because I've trained that specific thing, but I wasn't healthy. I was overweight. I was hormonally imbalanced. I ended up with hypothyroid. I couldn't have sat on the couch and ate chips all day and probably come out better than I did. Because I'd been doing one thing and one thing that was actually not suited to my genetics either, ideally. And so understanding all of this is not as simple as well, ‘I'll go and do the same old thing, same old and then we'll be good’.
I want to sort of flip now and go a bit of a deep dive into spermidine because I think spermidine is the one thing that, this is going right down to the base level of before. Because we want anti-ageing. I mean. We compared ages before this podcast and I mean, I won't share your age, but I was shocked. You look amazing. And I'm like, ‘I want a piece of that’. What is it that you're doing? So spermidine is a part of your—that is one of the things you do take on a pretty much a daily basis. Can you dive into the research? There’s 10 years behind the spermidine and it's only just becoming available. Guys in New Zealand, it's not here yet. I'm working on it. Give me time, I'm getting, I'm working on it.
Dr. Elizabeth: So, what we know is as we talked about spermidine is on every single living organism. So, we know it's critical to life, it's what's called a polyamine. It's what a three poly means is spermidine, spermine, and putrescine. And they all have some value. Putrescine is what's in rotting meat. You're probably not going to go eat rotting meat. But there's actually some value to putrescine in our bodies, too. Spermidine appears to have—spermidine is converted typically this into spermidine. Spermidine is innately in our gut. So, it's made by our gut bacteria but it's also in some foods. It's in some a lot of fermented foods, in wheat germ extracts. It's in some peas and mushrooms. It's in some algae.
Probably the richest source of it is a specific type of wheat germ extract. It's apparently very difficult to extract, it's only a certain type of wheat germ that has it's difficult to extract a pure form of it. And so, there is companies that make it from algae as well. But you have to take—actually before we could get spermidine from spermidine life which is wheat germ extract, we actually bought an algae extract one. You really had to take 40 of these little green pills. I mean your hands are green, your teeth are green all the time. 40 of them, I mean, I did that because I wanted it but once we got spermidine.
I get the question all the time about well, it's wheat germ extract. Interestingly, I've celiac patients on spermidine and even though it's not advised for celiac patients, it probably actually is perfectly safe because it's actually working on one of the pathways, that's what makes the gluten exactly unsafe those patients. So, it's probably even if you're—I'm very gluten sensitive, I don't do gluten. I have no problems in spermidine. So, it tends to be pretty well-tolerated in those people.
Lisa: Yes, but I've got a brother who’s recently examined and she said, ‘Yes, I can’.
Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, I have two celiac patients on who've done fine. And again, the bio says not to take it if you're celiac, but I think cautiously, there is some research that supports it actually may be useful in treating some of the celiac patients.
So basically, the study is now—there's so many studies on it. In terms of preventing almost every disease in the book, and that's where you and I come back to that whole, is mitochondria the answer to everything? Because we've seen spermidine—you can Google spermidine. I do this. I mean, Google ‘spermidine and Alzheimer’, Google ‘spermidine and cancer’, there's not a disease that we don't have a study on where you can find some connection to higher or lower levels of spermidine being better.
Some of the major research has been on cardiovascular and its benefits and cardiovascular disease. It's one of the things we've been using when we see high inflammatory cardiovascular markers in our patients. We measure what's called myeloperoxidase, which is an inflammatory cardiovascular marker. It's interesting, we've seen it very high in our lot of our post-COVID patients. So patients who have had COVID recovered, coming for labs, we're seeing very high levels of myeloperoxidase. So, we think that's probably from some of the vascular damage that COVID seems to create in some people with certain genetics. And that’s very hard to bring it back down, and spermidine has been one of the things that's been really helpful there for us.
So, it's also any of your patients who have a high Lp little a. Yes, so by Lipoprotein little a, you'll know is basically genetic.
Lisa: Yes. And there's not much you can do.
Dr. Elizabeth: Nothing much you can do about it. You use high-dose niacin, but it's hard to take, the liver toxic. Spermidine actually has some research to support it in lowering Lp little a and we've seen that in our practice, it's one of the things we lower Lp little a. So the other place that's been really studied is an immune system support. So we've seen improvements in lymphocytes. So, one of the other labs that you want—when you're looking at that CBC is looking at your neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio.
Lisa: Yes, I've just like I've got a problem with my brother at the moment, lymphocytes, neutrophils down. No, sorry, your neutrophils down, lymphocytes, high.
Dr. Elizabeth: That's a little uncommon, that might indicate some kind of viral illness going on. Typically, what happens as we age is, we start to see the lymphocyte number go down and the neutrophil number go up. So that ratio, which should be around 1.3:1, 1:1, 1.3:1, starts climbing. If you look at the typical person our age is, 3:1. And so, it's hard to get—how do you get back lymphocyte function? You don't have thymus glands anymore. And so the two things that we've been able to utilize to really restore lymphocyte function in our patients who have ageing immune systems is spermidine. And then the other one is a peptide, thymosin alpha-1, which is a thymic peptide.
What our thymus gland does is it takes those two lymphocytes, it tells them what to do and, and once—your best immune function is at puberty. After that, your thymus gland starts getting smaller. And by the time you're 60, you don't really have much thymus gland. And so your immune system starts going a little haywire, it doesn't know what to do. And so what we can do, because really crazy people are trying to transplant thymus glands, or eat sweetbreads, which doesn't work. They do it in France, maybe they taste good, but I don't think it replaces your thyroid function. But you can get thymic peptides. So, two of the things that the thymus gland really makes is thymosin alpha-1 and thymosin beta-4. And thymosin alpha-1 is a very immune modulating peptide, and it really helps to restore normal immune function. So, the combination of spermidine and thymosin alpha-1 and your people who have immune dysregulation, autoimmune diseases. You could start normalising the immune function. So instead of attacking self they start attacking viruses.
Lisa: Wow. And autoimmune is just like, a huge, huge problem. I mean, it's just epidemic levels now.
Dr. Elizabeth: It is epidemic.
Lisa: Sorry, so this would help with that. Oh, my God. Okay. So that's another reason to take spermidine and the peptides. I mean, peptides are harder to get hold of like…
Dr. Elizabeth: It’s still harder to get hold of. Your people who are in Europe, thymosin alpha-1 is actually a drug. It's called Zadaxin. We can't get it here as a drug. We've made us a peptide but it actually is a drug. They use it in their chemotherapy patients in Europe and Asia. And so oddly, it's available as approved drug. Probably pricey.
Lisa: Most of these drugs are for some unknown reason.
Dr. Elizabeth: Yes. Spermidine—someone's early studies and where it actually sort of panned out, as people went after it initially was actually hair growth. And again, if you think about, the tissues, we're talking about, like cardiac here, those are all fast-growing tissues. And that's where spermidine sort of had its nice effect and sort of that whole regeneration process. And so even in guys with thinning hair, spermidine has huge benefits. Just taking on like a milligram a day dose will start the thickening of hair. I noticed when I first started, my nails grew really fast means, I mean, super fast. And so even in those basic things, like hair growth, nail growth, spermidine has some really marked effects.
Lisa: Fantastic. We’ve got to get it here.
Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, it is amazing. I mean, honestly, I feel a little—whenever I see my patients now and I see something wrong. I'm like, ‘Well, spermidine, oh’.
Lisa: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And this is all to confirm because it's such a wide panacea, and it works at base level of the ageing and pathologies and things…
Dr. Elizabeth: It’s too good to be true.
Lisa: It's too good to be true, but actually now, it makes sense. And so, it’s fantastic if we find something that is a panacea for many, many things. And also, I've got my first shipment coming from the States, and I'm super excited.
Dr. Elizabeth: One of the hard things in what we do, right, is it takes you awhile to feel better, and just starting from a low level, right. Or if you're like us, and you're at a high level, then making this little extra. And so, what I tell people to monitor, because one things I noticed was, when I started spermidine was a pretty—I don't sleep enough, I study too much. But I use my Oura ring, and I monitor my HRV. And so, I know a lot of your listeners have the Oura ring and HRV is very fluctuating. And so it's one of those things, it's very easy to see a change.
So, if I do something like start taking spermidine, I can say no, and you can look at the trend on your Oura ring. And you can say, you can take—started spermidine here, and I had about a 15 point jump in my HRV, which I won't say what it is because it’s just from starting spermidine. So I know it's doing something at a very basic level because HRV is predictive of almost every disease state; so low HRV, you know you have a higher incidence of all Alzheimer, we know we have a higher incidence of cancer. So I know if I'm affecting my HRV, I'm positively affecting my health.
So something really simple that you can do to say, okay, I started this here, and then look back in two weeks, go to your little trends thing and see ‘Wow, look, my trend is going this direction’.
Lisa: Wow, I can't wait to see that because yes, I mean, I haven't been able to move the needle on my HRV really.
Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, me neither. And mine's not good.
Lisa: Yes, and mine isn't great either.
Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, the downside of sometimes what we do is we're reading all the time and staying all the time and trying to do too much and…
Lisa: Brain doesn’t turn off.
Dr. Elizabeth: And that's not so good.
Lisa: Adrenaline driven.
Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, so it is really, honestly one of the first things I did that really made a dramatic change.
Lisa: Wow, I will let you know how I go.
Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, let me know.
Lisa: When mine comes, whether my HRV is now turning up.
Dr. Elizabeth: I will say sometimes you need a higher dose which gets pricey.
Lisa: And this is the problem with everything, it's the same with the deep precursors and all the stuff that's fantastic, it does cost. But you know what? I don't have money to burn but I would rather go without a fancy car, go without fancy clothes, go without cosmetics, go without all that to have supplements that work or to have biohacking technologies that work because that's my priority, it’s my health. Because what good does it do me if I have a fancy car, but I'm sick?
Dr. Elizabeth: I know. And it is funny, I was giving this lecture and this woman came in, she asked how much this program we do cost? And she said, ‘Well maybe when I pay off my Lexus, I'll be able to do that’. And I'm like, ‘You’re really willing to spend a lot of money, a $1,000 on an iPhone and’...
Lisa: Priorities.
Dr. Elizabeth: …and car and we just still have to keep putting this focus on your priority, absolutely has to be this your health? And it’s so hard to convince people of that.
Lisa: And I'm constantly shocked at people who expect to like, they take a supplement and they don't see anything change for three days and then they're like, ‘It didn't work’. And I'm like, ‘You've got to be kidding’. Like you know your hair is growing, right? But do you see it growing every day? No.
But if you keep going—and with my listeners have heard me rabbit on about my story with my mum and bringing her back from a mess of aneurysm. The reason I have been successful with her is, is not any one particular thing. I mean, yes, hyperbaric, yes, all of these things were a big part of the puzzle. But it was the fact that I keep going when there was no signs of improvement. And I keep going every single day for five years, and I still go. And that is the key is that persistence. And that just keep doing it and prioritizing this, even when you see no results. And that's a really hard sell because people want to see, how long will it take for this to kick in?
Dr. Elizabeth: I think it's one of the hardest things about our jobs is—listen, it is very hard. But this is stuff that I'm looking at a future that's 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years down the road, I know these things—I know that they do, they've been proven. So to say they're not working for you is why in every study did they work and oddly, they don't work for you? It just doesn't make sense. It's just that if you go back to that cell level, by the time my knee is arthritic, number one, I've already lost 25% my cartilage, that process started 30 years ago. Now I've got to go and fix the cells at the very base level and then start repairing that cartilage.
Lisa: And it takes time.
Dr. Elizabeth: A long time. Right?
Lisa: And you didn't wake up one day with wrinkles and grey hair, it happened as a process over time. But I know that if I'm doing all these things that I'm doing, in my anti-ageing strategies that in 10 years’ time, I'm going to look better, feel better than if I don't. And that's the bottom line, or hopefully still be alive and avoid cancers. Those are my goals.
Dr. Elizabeth: You have to trust the research to some degree, right? If something's—there's not research—and that's hard cause you have to weed through a lot of research, right? And you have to say ‘That study is trash, that study’s trash’. Well, actually, ‘Here is a good study. This, this, this, here's a good thing’, and then put it all together. And I do this. There’s a fresh article, I go, ‘Here's an article that says this, this, this’. And it's not until the articles that outweigh the articles that say that the negatives by a certain amount that I even say, ‘Okay, this is a reasonable thing to do’.
Lisa: And that's where you like your spermidine, there is 10 years now because it's 10 years of full-on research and in many places and in many different diseases, where like, now that you're willing to say, ‘Yes, this stuff is actually looking really bloody good’.
And we are learning all the time, the science is changing. And I think this is what frustrates people too, is that you can go on—I do this, go into PubMed, and I do a deep dive and then you end up like, ‘Whoa’. One contradicts the other one and some of them are poorly designed. And so, that's why we need people like you who can interface that for us and go, ‘Hang on. I've distilled down into the most important things. This is what you need to know, guys’.
Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, I'm involved with this group, it's called Seed Scientific Research & Performance among Faculty with it, and it's a group of really—we're doing a fellowship program in cellular medicine, but it's 25 mastermind doctors are kind of the group that we've been getting together and we meet quarterly. And we talk about the stuff and now you've got these brains, you have 25 brains of people who are not only reading and utilizing this stuff, and you can put it together and you can start weeding out what works, how does it work? Who doesn't work in? And that's what it takes. It takes people like that getting together and actually now meshing their minds and using their experience and all their knowledge and all their reading.
And so this group has been phenomenal for me because it's I'm forefront leading thinkers. Because even when you go to the conferences, if you go to my orthopaedic conferences, I just learned the same old stuff. So this fore group, but actually talking amongst ourselves.
Lisa: Such top-level people, I wish I could be a fly on the wall of such.
Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, I mean, it's amazing stuff. And that's where we're going to make a change. And then you have to trust that we will bring that to you guys, but you got to stay tuned to people like you, Lisa, and the people who are trying to bring this to you because if you rely on medicine to do it, and your doctor to tell you it, you're going to be dead before it happens.
Lisa: That’s exactly what’s going to be.
Dr. Elizabeth: Or feel horrible. I mean, I just lost both my parents in the past and also lost mum. They were in their 90s but my dad really kind of gave up. His arthritis has gotten so bad. He was a guy who at 80, he was climbing mountains, but at 90, he couldn't hardly walk because his arthritis was so bad. And none of us want to be that way.
Lisa: No, and this is why we're desperate.
Dr. Elizabeth: You've got to do this stuff now. Ideally, in your 20s.
Lisa: Yes, exactly. Oh, we've missed that boat. I’m so sorry, you lost your parents. I mean, I just lost my dad six months ago. And again, he was super fed, 81-year-old, but he smoked and I couldn't ever stop him smoking and had an aortic aneurysm. And then I was stopped in the hospital from giving him intravenous vitamin C because once again, they are way behind the eight ball in our local hospital, in our ICU unit, they'd have no idea of what vitamin C like they think it's an orange you take. And my dad died as a consequence of that.
And I can't say for sure, but I believe in my heart that if I had been able to give him the things that I wanted to give him from day one, ozone and intravenous vitamin C, and all the other stuff that I had up my sleeve, my dad will be with us still. And that just breaks my heart. And because I know that there's these things available, and we can't get it for our people?
Dr. Elizabeth: I know, it's horrible. And then you've got the doctors—I mean, like with hormones. I put patients on hormones, their doctor takes them off the hormones.
Lisa: Oh, my God. And you've looked at the genetic pathways, you're not doing this out of—you’ve looked at it all. Like you know the risk factors and stuff.
And so Dr. Yurth, do you do teleconsults? Because I think after listening to this, people are going to want to make sure...
Dr. Elizabeth: We do. In fact, I would say most of our—I'm licensed in a lot of places and we have a lot of people actually out of the country, too, Europe and Canada and Australia. And so we do almost everything now is telehealth. We have people come in because we do some procedural stuff, too. But we do tons. It's so easy now, because we can hook them up with labs that are close to them, they can get the labs, we can go through them and do these very detailed concepts. We can give you what is your biologic age, and then we can start following. You just follow that, every three months, you see, ‘Am I changing my biologic age’? We can help you look at parameters, like using the Oura ring or other devices to help look and see if what we're doing... But it does really come down to having somebody help you walk through some of the basic stuff. And once you learn some of it, there's a lot you can do on your own.
Lisa: Yes, yes. And this is why this is so exciting. So I'm sure there's going to be lots of people wanting to do that. And I know all this stuff costs, it will cost people. It costs but again, what do you want more? And what is more important to you? I would give away my house and my everything to get my dad back.
Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, to be healthy and live healthy.
Lisa: And I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on my mum, and I...
Dr. Elizabeth: And there's nobody who is 60—once people get sick... I just lost one of my patients, I've been taking care for 15 years to cancer but we kept her alive for 15 years in stage four cancer. But she gave—I mean, she spent a lot of money on her cancer. The problem is, none of us think like that until we have the disease and we have to think like that ahead of that.
Lisa: And this is where like prevention, prevention, prevention is just worth a ton of cure. Because it's just you're pushing so much that uphill, really, once you've actually got the cancer or you got the whatever. So, if we can get a—even just a simple blood test and work out a few of the basics and then later on.
Dr. Elizabeth: And I will encourage that there is a lot of inexpensive things that you can do as well. I mean, intermittent fasting, obviously, that's really cheap. Saves you money. But the lab perspective, you can do—get a lot of information. Like I said, from a basic blood panel that cost 20 bucks, and you can get a lot of information. When you say, listen, the suspicion is this, let's try doing this and see if these parameters change. So there's a lot of actually things you can do that are on the more inexpensive realm. You have to understand them and know them.
And then when things don't respond, that's where you do have to kind of pull up the bigger stakes and pull out the bigger guns and do things. And for those people who do have—I do think you have to look at where are you spending your money. And we have to show our change, and you guys are in a different place in the US. But medicine here is so messed up by insurance companies, basically. Now everybody expects that their health insurance is covered, and when something's not covered, well, no one pays for spermidine, so I want my health insurance to pay for something. So we're really have messed the whole game up.
Lisa: Yes. And the whole insurance. Yesh, and let's not even go there because the whole political—the mess that has been created over time is just yes. And in the States, it's really bad. And here, it's not a heck of a lot better, slightly better, perhaps, but not a lot.
But yes, and you know what? I was listening to somebody, I can't remember who it was, and I said, Dr. Perlmutter, Dr. David Perlmutter, ‘Stop cursing the darkness and light a single candle’, or something to that effect. And I thought, that's the attitude. Instead of banging my head on the brick wall, because sometimes I do feel like that, just keep bringing this information out to the people.
Dr. Elizabeth: That's what we can do and the people, and you help more people listen. And so yes, and I do love that you've brought your stories to light and you're a real person. It's funny, most recently, when I did a five-day fast, I actually brought in two of the girls who I work with who had never fasted before. And actually, when I Instagram post, I Instagram with them in that post. And people we’re like, we love that because they were like real people.
Lisa: Yes. ‘They’re like me’, then I want to be doing this.
Dr. Elizabeth: Like, well, she's not human. She'd like to do all this cool stuff. But if you can bring this stuff to the real people and have them really start spreading that word, it makes a big difference.
Lisa: Oh, absolutely. So Dr. Yurth, we'll have to wrap up in a minute. And I can honestly, I really love to have you back on again, if I can impose on your time the next month or two, to do a part two, because I think we didn't go into—I would really love to dive a bit deeper into the whole mitochondria.
Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, let’s spend a whole talk just on mitochondria.
Lisa: That would be great.
Dr. Elizabeth: That's an amazing topic. Yes, there's just so much cancer perspective, I mean, probably going to come down to mitochondria are the basis for a lot of cancer, so.
Lisa: Yes, so the metabolic—this is something I've been studying lately is the whole bit metabolic nature of cancer, as opposed to the somatic—what's it called? I’ve forgotten the correct term, the somatic theory of cancer. Genetic mutation theory. So, I'd love to yes, maybe do an episode on that.
Meanwhile, Dr. Yurth, where can people join you and your Human Optimization Academy, get teleconsults, get help from you if they want to?
Dr. Elizabeth: So if you just go to boulderlongevity.com, that'll lead you—there's a click for the Academy, so you can join the Academy, please do because we really are trying to get this information to people. We bridge that gap between research and actually using it so we can save lives. And just on that realm, the insulin—by insulin took 20 years and time it was discovered, think of the lives that were lost, and we have a whole lot of things in our realm that are like that. So please learn about this stuff, so that you can spread the word.
So boulderlongevity.com, go to the Human Optimization Academy, follow me @dryurth on Instagram. So we try and keep people updated there as well a little bit, and on Facebook. So just go to Boulder Longevity. But the Boulder Longevity website will guide you along from a learning curve, sort of helps you—and we're working on kind of where do you fall into this pathway? Where should you start? Am I somebody who knows everything already? I'm going to start here versus the basics. So we're trying to go... Yes, we'll try and get it, so it's more easy—easily managed from all of your people who are watching. So they know, where do I fall into this curve?
Lisa: And that is a lot of work. I know. I do this sort of stuff, too. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. So thank you. Thank you for being so amazing.
Dr. Elizabeth: That’s why I charge Lisa.
Lisa: I think you're absolutely incredible. I think the passion that you bring to everything, I just love—absolutely love having guests on of your calibre that just—like I had Dr. Mansoor Mohammed last week, he’s another—must connect with him, he’s amazing. And people like yourself that just are at the cutting edge and passionate about it and actually try to disseminate the information so that nobody has to go through things that we've unfortunately both experienced with our families. So, thank you very much for your dedication to your job.
Dr. Elizabeth: You’re welcome.
Lisa: And I'm really looking forward to having you back on the show.
Dr. Elizabeth: I'd love to. Thanks, Lisa.
That's it this week for Pushing The Limits. Be sure to rate, review and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.
The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.