I Tested 100,000 People's DNA. This Diet Will Kill You - Gary Brecka

1. 0:00 – 2:18

   Intro

   1. GBGary Brecka0:00

      No one really tells people that have anxiety what it is, and this is why, very often, people don't have a specific trigger they can point to. So, they're trying to pin it on their outside environment, but the truth is that they are deficient usually, and... (instrumental music plays)

   2. SBSteven Bartlett0:15

      Gary Brecka. He's a human biologist. Who's spent 20 years working in life insurance, predicting when people are going to die to the nearest month. And now, he's on a mission to extend your life. A couple of days ago, someone did a swab inside of my mouth. What was that test and why did I do it?

   3. GBGary Brecka0:31

      You did it to look at whether your parents gave you a gene mutation, and it's one of the most overlooked things in all of modern medicine, because it's this deficiency that leads to some of the most common ailments that we suffer from, mental illness, ADHD, OCD, manic depression, bipolar, sleep disorders, very severe gut issues. I mean, there are so many that don't seem to be fixable with conventional therapies or dietary changes, because very often, disease is not happening to us, it's happening within us. And I'm not going to stop getting the message out to the masses, because I just think about all the times I could have made a real material change in somebody's life and I didn't have the opportunity to do it and felt like I was, you know, sitting behind a thick glass wall, just watching blind people walk into traffic. Now, I got a chance to make a difference.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett1:21

      So, what are, like, the simple things that we can be doing to prevent us even getting these chronic diseases?

   5. GBGary Brecka1:26

      So, there's five things that I would commit to doing on a regular basis. Number one is upon waking, I would... (instrumental music plays)

   6. SBSteven Bartlett1:34

      I wanted to invite in Dr. Carrie Sada, who's gonna give me those results of my test. I wanna know if there's any sort of health implications that I should be aware of.

   7. GBGary Brecka1:40

      Okay. So, that right there is an issue.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett1:43

      (instrumental music plays) Congratulations, Diary of a CEO gang. We've made some progress. 63% of you that listen to this podcast regularly don't subscribe, which is down from 69%. Our goal is 50%. So, if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted, if you like this channel, can you do me quick favor and hit the subscribe button? It helps this channel more than you know, and the bigger the channel gets, as you've seen, the bigger the guests get. Thank you, and enjoy this episode. (instrumental music plays) Gary.

   9. GBGary Brecka2:16

      Steven.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett2:17

       Good to

2. 2:18 – 9:20

   What We're Getting Wrong About Supplements & Deficiencies

   1. SBSteven Bartlett2:18

      see you back.

   2. GBGary Brecka2:19

      (laughs)

   3. SBSteven Bartlett2:19

      (laughs) Don't throw me off.

   4. GBGary Brecka2:20

      It's good, I know... You know... Yeah, I knew I threw your game off there, "Steven." Um, great to be back, man. It really is.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett2:28

      If someone's just clicked on this podcast-

   6. GBGary Brecka2:30

      Mm-hmm.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett2:31

      ... and they're wondering why they should stay and listen, you're gonna direct the conversation. I'm gonna go where you wanna go-

   8. GBGary Brecka2:35

      Okay.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett2:35

      ... I'm gonna follow my curiosity and ask questions, but what are they gonna get from this conversation today if you are at the driving wheel?

   10. GBGary Brecka2:42

       Um, just data on how to live a healthier, happier, longer life, and maybe answers to some of the most, um, pesky health-related challenges that they're having. And I... And when I say pesky health-related challenges, I mean everybody has these little tiny anchors off their stern, right? Weight gain, water retention, brain fog, lack of focus and concentration, poor waking energy, lack of deep sleep. And it's shocking how many of these conditions have a common repository. I mean, they... They're like the hub of the wheel, where they all meet. All these individual spokes come together at the common hub of methylation, and they... And, and methylation is essentially nutrient deficiencies in the human body. And I don't usually start off with this analogy, but I'll start off with an analogy. Um, when I was in grad school... Uh, first of all, I'm a human biologist. I'm not a physician. I... My undergraduate degrees are in biology. My postgraduate degrees are in human biology. But when I was in my second four years of, of grad school, getting a human biology degree, I had to, I had to take all these plant botany courses, which I hated 'cause I was like, "I wanted to study, like, anatomy and physiology in human beings, but I'm studying algae." And (laughs) , and... But the one thing that stood out to me about plant physiology was... Let's say you have a, a palm leaf that's rotting in a palm tree, and you call a true arborist, a true botanist out to your house, and they see that that leaf is rotting in the tree. They won't touch that leaf. They will core test the soil, and then they'll say, "You know what, Steven? There's no nitrogen in this soil." And they'll add nitrogen to the soil and the leaf will heal. Only we've stopped thinking about human beings this way. We've lost a lot of faith in humanity and mankind, the body's ability for this to heal this. And we believe very often, and this is true in some cases, that disease and pathology are happening to us, not something that happens within us. And if you go back to the tree analogy, you know, you could put a- anything you wanted on that soil, right? You could supplement for the sake of supplementing. And I think a lot of people get lost in this realm where, "Well, I heard NM- NMN is good and resveratrol is good and CoQ10 and St. John's wort and ashwagandha and vitamin C, and I should take a multivitamin," and, you know, and pretty soon, you have this paralysis of analysis because you're supplementing for the sake of supplementing. And in the tree's case, if you didn't find the nitrogen, the leaf never would have healed. And, and the reason why most of us supplement for the sake of supplementing is that we don't have data. We just don't get data on our bodies. You know, when, when, when I tr- bring... And you, you run into a lot of, a lot more young entrepreneurs than I do, but when I run into them, and I'll bring them up sometimes when I'm doing a stage talk, and you can question them, um, about their priorities, like, "What's the most important thing to you?" "My health." "Um, how important is health to you?" "Oh, it's the number one priority I have." And I say, "Well, then, come, come on up here and let's, let's talk about, you know, how much you're, you're prioritizing your health." And you say, um, you know, "What kind of business do you have?" "A marketing agency." "What does your business earn on a monthly basis?" "$148,000 a month." "What's your net income?" "$38,250 a month." "How many employees do you have?" "16." "What's your hemoglobin A1C?" Blank, right? "Where are your testosterone levels?" Um... "How much are triglycerides? Do you ever look at your C-reactive protein?" And their face is just blank. And we have more data on our businesses than we do on our temple.And, you know, I, I, I actually saw you on a stage talk, I believe it was, um, and you talked about how you could take anything away from me in my life, you know, y- y- you refer to your dog and your girlfriend (laughs) .

   11. SBSteven Bartlett6:14

       (laughs) Yeah, that's-

   12. GBGary Brecka6:15

       So-

   13. SBSteven Bartlett6:15

       ... I remember that one.

   14. GBGary Brecka6:16

       ... hopefully you still have the dog and the girlfriend, but-

   15. SBSteven Bartlett6:18

       Yeah.

   16. GBGary Brecka6:18

       ... you said, "You know, if you took my girlfriend away, or you took my dog away..." I don't wanna, I don't wanna get you in a fight with your girlfriend, so let's talk about the dog.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett6:24

       (laughs)

   18. GBGary Brecka6:24

       So, you took my dog away, I'd still have my business, I'd still have my life, right? But if you took away my health, I'd lose everything, right? And I think most of us don't realize the importance of it until it is taken away, and so recognizing that, that the temple is the most important vehicle that we have. I just really encourage people to get data, basic data, on their body so they have some kind of roadmap so they are supplementing for deficiency, not just the sake of, of, of supplementing, and that they're getting the most out of their body because that's what they're gonna get, that's how they're gonna get the most out of their business. You know what I mean? Just picking up these little tiny anchors that are nibbling away at productivity. You know, people that suffer from ADD and ADHD, th- don't really realize that ADD and ADHD very often are not attention deficit disorders or attention deficit hyperactivity disorders, they're actually attention overload disorders, and we characterize people that have ADD as, as not being able to pay attention, but the truth is they, they don't lack the ability to pay attention, they lack the ability to pay attention to so many things. And if we understand that this is an overactive mind, not a mind that's trying to pay attention to too many, uh, too many things, then we can go about quieting the mind and not stimulating the central nervous system to match that pace of the mind, which is kind of what Adderall and Vyvanse and, and, um, uh, amphetamines do when you, when you, when you take 'em for ADD and ADHD. So if we understood that as normal or as good as we think we feel, we have no idea how good normal feels until we find the missing raw material in our body and we put it back. You wanna see magic happen in human beings? Find the raw material that's missing and put it back in their body. And by raw material, I mean simple things, you know, I mean, depending on who you talk to, there's 72 minerals, I think 16 of those are essential minerals. There are, there are two essential fatty acids, there are eight essential amino acids. It is astounding how many people are clinically deficient in some of those basics, and then they go searching in all of the esoteric super supplements and red light therapy and, and NAD-boosting supplements, and they're actually just missing that one of those raw materials, basic essential amino acids, basic fatty acids, and basic minerals, and that's where all human beings should start, and then from there, we should do some testing, biomarkers in the blood, mi- in my opinion, every human being should do a genetic methylation test, the very same test that you did, w- w- w- whether they do it through me or not. A genetic methylation test is a test you'll do once in your lifetime, and it will tell you exactly what raw materials your body can convert into the usable form and what it can't, because in human beings, just like in that tree analogy, when you have a deficiency, you get the expression of disease.

3. 9:20 – 11:49

   Humans Aren't Functioning Optimally

   1. SBSteven Bartlett9:20

      You know, when we s- you talk about deficiencies-

   2. GBGary Brecka9:21

      Mm-hmm.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett9:22

      ... it brings me back to something that I think we talked about briefly last time, which is, it makes me feel like humans are being born broken. Is that true? Because if I've got, if I'm deficient in something that my body needs, then does that not mean that my body was born broken?

   4. GBGary Brecka9:36

      It's not that it's born broken, it's just not functioning optimally, right? And, and all of us have, um, genetic SNPs. We have these so they're called single nucleotide polymorphs. We have these, um, our genes which are coding for enzymes to conduct these different activities in the body. And what is astounding about human beings is, is how beautifully intricate the human body is. We take one raw material, we put it into a physiologic process, and then we take the waste product from that process and we feed another process and on and on. So for example, we'll take, um, folate from green leafy vegetables, we'll convert that into methylfolate. Methylfolate becomes one of the most prevalent nutrients in the human body. It helps to downregulate an inflammatory amino acid called homocysteine, which then turns into something called methionine, which then goes up to the brain and helps to quiet the mind. So you start with this green leafy vegetable, and it winds its way all the way up to helping you sleep, and it's not that the spinach leaf is helping you sleep, it's what the spinach leaf has become that's helping you sleep, and this sequence of events is called methylation. And what's astounding about methylation is that in many cases when it's broken, while we can't fix the gene, we can just supplement for its function. So the most common gene mutation in the world, which we talked about last time on your podcast, MTHFR, affectionately called the motherfucker gene-

   5. SBSteven Bartlett11:00

      (laughs)

   6. GBGary Brecka11:00

      ... um, 44% of the population has this gene mutation. I talk about it all the time, and it's a simple inability to c- to, to convert folic acid and its derivatives, um, folate into the usable form called methylfolate. Well, it's very easy to supplement with methylfolate and very inexpensive, I might add, to supplement with methylfolate, and deficiencies in methylfolate are, are linked to all kinds of conditions, including neural tube defects because it's not folic acid that prevents neural tube defects, it's methylfolate that prevents neural tube defects. It's what the body converts it into, the usable form. And so when we look at, um, methylation in the human body, we get an exact roadmap of what we need to supplement with so that we're not wandering around just supplementing for the sake of just supplementing.

4. 11:49 – 17:53

   The Biomarkers That Predict Your Health Outcomes

   1. GBGary Brecka11:49

   2. SBSteven Bartlett11:49

      You mentioned the entrepreneurs that you meet that you bring up on stage, and you ask them various questions, and then you ask them about sort of biomarkers in their body. What are the simple biomarkers you think that everyone needs to understand? Because listen, I'm not a chemist, I'm not gonna be a biologist-

   3. GBGary Brecka12:02

      Yes.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett12:02

      ... so if there's a couple of them, I can probably get my head around them and stay on top of them-

   5. GBGary Brecka12:06

      Yes.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett12:06

      ... but I can't stay on top of everything.

   7. GBGary Brecka12:08

      Yeah, so there, there, I would say three.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett12:10

      Okay.

   9. GBGary Brecka12:10

      Number one is, um, what's called glycemic profile, which is a, a check of how well your insulin and sugar metabolism is.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett12:19

       Yeah.

   11. GBGary Brecka12:19

       And it has three markers, glucose-... hemoglobin A1C, three-month average of your blood sugar and insulin. So, definitely your glycemic profile because blood sugar, I promise you, is the root of all evil. So first, I would- I would do your glycemic profile. Second, I would do, um, your hormones.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett12:37

       Can I just check on the glycemic profile? That's basically my relationship with sugar.

   13. GBGary Brecka12:41

       That's your relationship with sugar. And it's a- it's also your relationship with insulin because, you know, very often, even people that don't eat high amounts of refined sugar and Ben and Jerry's ice cream every night have issues with insulin sensitivity. And so, as insulin res- uh, rises, it causes a whole myriad of conditions. It's one of the hallmarks of something called metabolic syndrome, which we're seeing in younger and younger populations, and it's generally easy to catch early on. You have three markers that look at how well you're regulating your blood sugar. Glucose, which is a measure of your- the amount of sugar in your blood right now. Hemoglobin A1C, which is essentially a three-month average of your blood sugar. And then you have your insulin. And the higher your insulin relative to your blood sugar, the more insulin-resistant you are. Right? So the more insulin it takes to drop your blood sugar, then the more resistant you are to insulin, and this is an early warning sign of metabolic syndrome. But it's not just the metabolic syndrome. It's that when insulin rises, there's a whole downstream cascade of events because insulin's not just responsible for helping us metabolize sugar, it's also responsible for blocking other forms of energy use in the body, one of which is fatty acid metabolism. And so generally, people that have very high insulin have very high blood triglycerides. They have high blood fat. And high blood fat and elevated cholesterol are other markers for cardiovascular disease. So, by actually bringing down one biomarker, you have a positive effect all the way downstream. And I would say if you're only gonna look at three things, I would look at, um, your glycemic profile, your- your blood sugar, and your insulin, and your hemoglobin A1C hormone panel.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett14:20

       Okay.

   15. GBGary Brecka14:20

       Um, so looking at your hormones and then specifically looking at what contributes to healthy hormone production, DHEA and a protein called SHBG. And then I would look at basic nutrient deficiencies. Um, vitamin D3, magnesium, potassium, and, um, vitamin B12, which are on most blood panels. And that is a great place to start to get the basics. How am I regulating my blood sugar? Are my hormones balanced? What nutrient deficiencies do I have? And then the second piece of information I would get, which you only do once in your entire lifetime, is- is a methylation test, and these are- these are widely available, you know, all over the world. I'm sure they're very easy to get in the UK. And you wanna look at five genes: MTHFR, MTR, MTRR, AHCY, and COMT.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett15:11

       And just to be clear, so I- I can dumb this down for myself here.

   17. GBGary Brecka15:14

       Mm-hmm.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett15:14

       Those five genes relate to how my body processes the things that I put into it at different stages in that sort of processing line?

   19. GBGary Brecka15:23

       Yes. I mean, so- so take, for example, that gene at the top, COMT. Um, if you look at what COMT does, it stands for catechol-O-methyltransferase. So, it's a fancy way of saying it transfers a methyl group from the category of neurotransmitters called catecholamines, and that's a huge mouthful but essentially what this means is these four neurotransmitters that are called catecholamines are responsible for our fight-or-flight response. So, for example, if you drove home tonight and you got out of your car and somebody was standing in front of you with a knife.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett15:54

       Mm-hmm.

   21. GBGary Brecka15:54

       Right? You would instantly have a fight-or-flight response. Your pupils would dilate. Your heart rate would increase. Your extremities would flood with blood. You would begin to have a fight-or-flight response based on that stimulus. But you could also be laying in your bed at night, and you could start thinking about getting eaten by a shark, and you could have the exact same response because the brain doesn't really know the difference between perception and reality. The- the similarity between these two events, a very real fear and a reaction to it and an imagined fear, is they both meet at catecholamines. It's a rise in the same class of neurotransmitters. So now, some people are very slow to break these down, and what are the consequences of this? Well, if you've ever had anxiety or know some- somebody that's suffered from anxiety, no one really tells people that have anxiety what it is. They describe the feeling. So they say, "It's a fear of the future. It's, um, it's a sense of impending doom. It's a sense of anxiousness." But what is it? Physiologically, what's going on in the body? Well, very often, it is a rise in catecholamines, the same class of neurotransmitters that are- that are involved in a fight-or-flight response. And this is why very often people that suffer from anxiety don't have a specific trigger they can point to. They could be on a podcast like you and I are going- doing right now, and all of a sudden as those catecholamines rise, they get that sensation of anxiety. And they're trying to pin it on their outside environment. They're trying to look for a cluster of symptoms outside their body, but this is because they are deficient usually in a complex of B vitamins, um, a very specific form of B12 called methylcobalamin, methylfolate, these methylated nutrients that- that downregulate these catecholamines.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett17:38

       What else could it be?

   23. GBGary Brecka17:40

       Well, I mean, there are true anxiety disorders, right? Um, and generally people that have true anxiety actually know what the trigger is. They're afraid of heights. They walk to the edge of a 30th-floor balcony, they have an anxiety, um, attack. They have a fear of flights.

5. 17:53 – 22:16

   The Link Between Your Genes & Anxiety & Trauma

   1. GBGary Brecka17:53

   2. SBSteven Bartlett17:53

      Is this different from... So someone's been through a trauma in their life, say they had an early trauma, and then certain things in their adult life end up triggering that.

   3. GBGary Brecka17:59

      Mm-hmm.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett18:00

      D- this is- that's very different from what you're saying here?

   5. GBGary Brecka18:03

      So, some people that have, uh, trauma and they wake up, for example, consistently in the past, right? Their first thought of the day is about the pain that they are already suffering from. Well, these thoughts, fight-or-flight thoughts, these- these thoughts have a tendency to be worst-case scenario because they are also highly related to catecholamines. In fact, people that have that gene mutation fall into one of two categories. Think about it this way. If catecholamines rise very fast...You're a worrier. And the nickname for that gene is either a worrier or a warrior because as those catecholamines, they call it fast COMT or slow COMT. So, just looking at this one gene mutation, if you're slow to break these catecholamines down and they rise, what are the consequences of that? Um, I lay down to go to sleep at night, and I'm body tired but I'm mind awake, right? My mind is just clicking through the day, thinking about the most innocuous little thoughts. Um, I have a tendency when I consider scenarios to go straight to worst case scenario. I'm an overthinker. Um, I- I am prone to anxiousness and anxiety. I walk around at a six instead of walking around at a two, so things that would only move somebody from a zero to a two take me from a six to an eight. Very often, people in their surrounding environment will say, "The punishment doesn't fit the crime," the way that they react to certain situations. So, this means that the mind is in awakened state, a heightened state of alertness. Think about a fight-or-flight response, but not quite to that level, but they're in a heightened state of alertness, and this gives you that- that feeling of anxiety. Now, what's driving the catecholamines can have different drivers. It could be this gene mutation. It could be trauma. It could be the presence of a real fear. It could be that you're claustrophobic and stepping on a crowded elevator. But for people that have not isolated trauma in their life and they have a tendency to consider worst case scenario, and they find that their mind is very active at night, interrupts their sleep, or if they get up to go to sleep at night and they go back to bed and they can't fall asleep because their mind is awake thinking about the most innocuous little thoughts, they have a tendency to be anxious. They have a tendency to be a worrier. They have a tendency to have feelings of anxiety that are not tied to their outside environment. Those are all hallmarks of that gene mutation.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett20:20

      So, can I view this as a predisposition? I, you know, I- I often wonder why we can all be in the same situation but we can have entirely different experiences. Um, in the case of anxiety, some people, as you report, just for some reason, they're just more anxious in the na- in the modern world than some oth- other people are. The modern world has changed. We use screens, and we have notifications, and we have all these stimuli. They're struggling more in the modern world than others. Um, what you're suggesting is that they could have a predisposition to worry more because of these catecholamines?

   7. GBGary Brecka20:51

      Mm-hmm. Because of the catecholamines, yes.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett20:53

      Right.

   9. GBGary Brecka20:53

      Because of these catecholamines. Norepinephrine, epinephrine, ephedrine, dopamine, one of those we also call adrenaline.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett20:59

       Mm-hmm.

   11. GBGary Brecka20:59

       And so, you have the main driver of behavior and you have catecholamines, and we all know what adrenaline does in the body. So, when these four neurotransmitters are not down regulated, right, then our mind is awake, and it is very often fearful. Think about somebody who has a sensation of impending doom or anxiety without any, any trigger. And- and- and the other hallmark is they will have had it on and off throughout their entire lifetime, even when they were a child. When they were a child, they might not have understood the complex sensation of anxiety, but they had that sensation. And then as they grew to be an adult, they understood that this is anxiety. I mean, when you- when you're- when you're a child, you're just fearful, right? I mean, you don't know how to explain to your mom, "Hey, I'm worried about something that is- might happen in the future, that's probably not likely to happen, that's never happened, but I'm still afraid it's gonna happen." It's a very complex emotion, right? So, they've had it on and off their entire lifetime. It's very hard for them to point to the specific trigger that causes it. The majority of the time if they tried anti-anxiety medications, they don't work. They just make them feel like a zombie. So, this is time to look inside and make sure the body has the raw material it needs to do its job, which is the complex of B vitamins to dismantle catecholamines.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett22:15

       So,

6. 22:16 – 30:24

   Common Deficiencies That Keep Us Away from Our Optimal Health

   1. SBSteven Bartlett22:16

      if we went out onto the street now and I pulled in 100 people just off the street that were walking past-

   2. GBGary Brecka22:20

      Mm-hmm.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett22:20

      ... and we did these three tests on them to look at their glycemic profile, their hormone panel, their nutrient deficiencies, what are some of the most popular things that a random group of people off the street would be missing that are central to their high performance?

   4. GBGary Brecka22:35

      Um, so let's- l- let's take men and then we'll take women so-

   5. SBSteven Bartlett22:39

      Okay.

   6. GBGary Brecka22:39

      ... so we can be specific about hormones. So, in 50% of that population, you would see a clinical deficiency in vitamin D3.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett22:46

      I have to say, you've actually- you actually run a lot of tests every single month.

   8. GBGary Brecka22:49

      Yes.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett22:50

      Tens of thousands.

   10. GBGary Brecka22:51

       We run 20,000 in a month. We do about 20,000 gene tests a month. I mean, so we- so one of the uni- unique things about m- the perspective that I come from is we have voluminous amounts of data. You know, we see 20,000 of these new, um, patients a- a month testing for- for genetic methylation, and on a lot of these patients, we also have blood work. So, we have a full what's called a CBC, a comprehensive metabolic panel, a lipid panel, a hormone profile, a full thyroid panel. We have their nutrient deficiencies that I'm speaking of. Um, we have cholesterol triglycerides. So, we have a pretty- we have about 74 biomarkers on them. Then we also get this genetic test, and then we look at what happens to certain biomarkers on average when you- when you simply supplement for a deficiency. So, for example, I'm not saying that every person that has high blood pressure or hypertension has this gene mutation, but two of these genes are highly linked to poor homocysteine metabolism. And there have been plenty of peer-reviewed studies. We can put the link to the one below in the Journal of Hypertension, um, which linked higher levels of urinary catecholamines to an- and urinary homocysteine to, um, uh, cardiovascular disease because what happens is when you have a certain amino acid, in particular, rise in the blood called homocysteine, as this amino acid rises, it has a tendency to cause the vascular system to constrict. And if we make the pipe smaller in a fixed system, pressure goes up, but there's nothing wrong with the heart, right? And so think about the fact that 85% of all diagnosis of hypertension is idiopathic. It's of unknown origin. Well, of unknown origin means we can't find anything wrong with the heart, and we've tested the heart, EKGs, EEGs, stress tests.... dye contrast studies, cardiac cath, or what have you. But we, we haven't looked at the vascular system. We haven't looked to see, was there a simple nutrient deficiency keeping this person from breaking down homocysteine, which caused the vascular system to constrict? Because we know that there's a correlation between this amino acid, homocysteine, and its elevated nature and, and increased risk of cardiovascular disease. So, before we actually went the routes of chemicals and synthetics and pharmaceuticals, why wouldn't we just test to sweet- see if we have an issue, um, dismantling this amino acid, you know, breaking this amino acid down into, uh, something called methionine? And why don't we supplement for that deficiency and see if, by putting that raw material back into the body and bringing homocysteine metabolism into normal, we can normalize this person? S- so back to your question about the people in the street. You would see that 50% of them are clinically deficient in vitamin D3, cholecalciferol. You know, the sunshine vitamin. Um, the darker their complexion, the higher the, uh, risk that they would be clinically deficient in vitamin D3. And if, if you put di- vitamin D3 at the center of a hub of a wheel and looked at all of the different spokes, it's one of the only vitamins that human beings make on our own. I have argued and, and, um, people have counterargued, but, uh, I take the position that it's arguably one of the most, if not the most important nutrient in the human body. You need a- you need a lot of essential nutrients, but if you really start isolating them, you know, vitamin D3 is the only vitamin that human beings make on our own. Um, every cell in the body has a receptor site for vitamin D3, and when we're deficient in this vitamin, um, this nutrient acts like a hormone sometimes, it acts like a vitamin other times. We make it from sunlight and cholesterol. When it's deficient, we have a compromised immune system, we know that it leads to osteopenia, osteoporosis. There are all kinds of consequences that you wouldn't think stem from a simple nutrient deficiency, but they do.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett26:26

       One that we get from going outside in the sun?

   12. GBGary Brecka26:27

       We get it from going outside in the sun. We make it from sunlight and cholesterol. Um, and, and, you know, if you look at, you know, COVID statistics, it was the second leading cause of morbidity in COVID. Um, and so y- if... So first, you would see that they're D3 deficient. The majority of them are also B12 deficient. If you look at the vitamin B12, you'd see it's less than 500. Um, the higher end of B12 is around 1,250. And then you would see 25 to 40% of that population would be hormone deficient, meaning that their hormones would be out of the optimal range, but not because they have an endocrine system issue per se. Generally because they have, especially in younger ages, nutrient deficiencies. Things like elevated SHBG, sex hormone binding globulin, deficiencies in DHEA, raw materials that the body needs to manufacture hormones. So, a good hormone panel will tell you not only what your hormone levels are, but what some of the nutrients are that our, your body's using to make those hormones. And again, by, by putting some of these raw materials, very often DHEA, not all the time, but very often, putting DHEA and vitamin D3 alone back into men with deficient levels of testosterone or deficient levels of free testosterone, or looking at a protein that interrupts the conversion of testosterone into free testosterone, called SHBG. By actually just addressing these, you see that the hormone levels rise back to the normal range. They don't need to take hormones from outside the body and shut their production down. They need to put nutrients and raw materials back into the body so their body can produce hormones on their own. And then if you looked at their glycemic control, y- you would see a shockingly high percentage of people that are pre-diabetic. It is an absolute pandemic right now because the amount of processed foods... We th- we think that the pre-diabetes, um, you know, is only because people that are eating a ton of sugar. So, they must be drinking soda and eating chocolate cake and Ben and Jerry's every night, but that's actually not true. When we overload the body with high glycemic carbohydrates, even if they ate a lot of white flour, white rice, white bread, white pasta, white potatoes, and fruit, you know, they... I'm not saying any of those things are going to kill you, but when we eat diets high in refined carbohydrates, even things that we don't consider to be sweets, it overpowers our pancreas and our blood sugar gets out of control. But wouldn't you want to know that? Wouldn't you want to know that, um, do I have some of these nutrient deficiencies or hormone imbalances or poor blood sugar control that could be nibbling away at my performance? Am I maybe one raw material, one methylated multivitamin away, or an amino acid away from being in a state of being optimal? Maybe even not having to deal with little things like, um, intermittent feelings of anxiousness and anxiety, or poor focus and concentration, or even mild states of mood numbness. Remember that nutrients, amino acids for example, in our gut become neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters form the basis of all mood. They drive our emotion. They, they, um, they govern our behavior. And so, is it possible that an amino acid like tryptophan or phenylalanine or tyrosine, which become serotonin and dopamine, that deficiencies in these amino acids could lead to deficiencies in hormones, which could actually lead to deficiencies in neurotransmitters that would be labeled a mental illness? Yes. So again, I feel, I feel like I'm eating your face a little bit, but... (laughs)

   13. SBSteven Bartlett30:02

       (laughs) That's okay.

   14. GBGary Brecka30:03

       But, but what I, what I really mean to say is that, you know, if, if we would get basic information, basic data on the body, hormone balance, um, glycemic control, nutrient deficiencies, if we would actually look at what our body can convert into the usable form and what it can't and supplement for that deficiency, you would see your body begin to thrive in ways you never thought possible.

7. 30:24 – 32:00

   Working with High Profile People

   1. GBGary Brecka30:24

   2. SBSteven Bartlett30:24

      You work with a lot of high profile individuals as well.

   3. GBGary Brecka30:27

      I do.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett30:28

      What are some of the high profile names that you're, you have permission to share?

   5. GBGary Brecka30:32

      Well, clearly anyone that's shared their, their journey with me on, on, on the podcast. Um, there's a great hit piece on me on, in the Daily Mail that listed, (laughs) that listed a lot of them.... um, but, uh, Dana White, um, Steve Harvey, um, Stephen A. Smith, um, Steve Aoki, um... Kendall Jenner and, and I were on a, uh, one of her, uh, Hulu specials, uh, together running some IVs. There are a few others that will be public here very shortly that have d- got on podcasts with me. And I... And it's... I don't necessarily wanna be known as, like, a celebrity biologist or, or working with, um... just working with professional athletes and A-listers. It's... Uh, my message is for... is actually for the non-woke biohacker. Like, I don't feel like my job is to sit here and impress you with how smart I am. I feel like my job is to put information out to the masses that, that is educational enough to inspire them to make a change. And, and I think all too often, we... you know, we're, we're, we're all competing for eyeballs in this, in this space, and we're t- trying to become the biggest influencer, and we, we really forget about the mission of speaking to the masses, and we just start speaking to each other. Like, we, we want to get on podcasts, and stage talks, and interviews, and impress people with how much we know about the carboxylic acid cycle, or, you know, the electron transport chain, or something going on inside the mitochondria. And, and those minute nuances are not what's going to impact humanity.

8. 32:00 – 34:43

   How Your Life & Business Changed In The Last Year

   1. GBGary Brecka32:00

   2. SBSteven Bartlett32:01

      A lot has changed since we last sat down, in your life.

   3. GBGary Brecka32:03

      It has. Yeah, it really has. I feel like, I feel like I live somebody else's life (laughs) .

   4. SBSteven Bartlett32:08

      (laughs)

   5. GBGary Brecka32:08

      I really do.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett32:09

      What's, what's changed? I mean, when I, when I first reached out to you, it was because I saw a clip on YouTube which had 20,000 views.

   7. GBGary Brecka32:16

      Mm.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett32:16

      And that clip on YouTube I found really interesting, so I think I, I personally sent you a DM-

   9. GBGary Brecka32:20

      You did.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett32:21

       ... and said, "Hey, Gary. Do you want to come on my show?" Which I, to be honest, never personally send a DM.

   11. GBGary Brecka32:26

       Really?

   12. SBSteven Bartlett32:26

       Because... Yeah, because my team, th- the way our system works here is tha- um, they understand what I'm interested in and curious about right now-

   13. GBGary Brecka32:32

       Mm-hmm.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett32:32

       ... so they'll go out into the market and try and find people for me. They'll bring those peop- those people to me as a pitch.

   15. GBGary Brecka32:38

       Mm-hmm.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett32:38

       They'll pitch the individuals to me, and then I have to say whether I'm curious enough to sit down and have the conversation right now.

   17. GBGary Brecka32:44

       So I met you twice. All right. Awesome (laughs) .

   18. SBSteven Bartlett32:45

       So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So in this case, it was I- I seen something you, you'd done online, I don't know, more than a year ago now it feels like, and it was really compelling to me, so I wanted to sit down with you. Since then, I've observed your... you've kind of had this sort of meteoric rise, um, on loads of different podcasts, and social media-

   19. GBGary Brecka33:01

       Mm.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett33:01

       ... and your business has exploded. There is something different about you.

   21. GBGary Brecka33:05

       Mm.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett33:07

       And the thing that's different about you that strikes me is you strike me as a man that has been through some shit.

   23. GBGary Brecka33:15

       Oh, yeah.

   24. SBSteven Bartlett33:16

       Frankly.

   25. GBGary Brecka33:17

       Yeah.

   26. SBSteven Bartlett33:17

       'Cause, 'cause the, the Gary that I met the first time versus this Gary, slightly different, and it's the type of thing when someone's been through some shit.

   27. GBGary Brecka33:24

       Mm-hmm.

   28. SBSteven Bartlett33:25

       And with all good things come the opposite.

   29. GBGary Brecka33:28

       Yeah.

   30. SBSteven Bartlett33:28

       That it's unavoidable.
9. 34:43 – 41:51

   Life Insurances Know When You're Going to Die

   1. GBGary Brecka34:43

   2. SBSteven Bartlett34:44

      What pain?

   3. GBGary Brecka34:47

      You know, when, when, um... when I was doing life expectancies and, and, and mortality predictions, um, we were sort of brainwashed to believe that this was just data, right? You weren't responsible for it. You didn't have anything, uh, to do with this person. I was on a mortality team, and, uh, we were charged with predicting the life expectancy of people for, um, large life insurance and investment companies. So when you apply for a large life insurance com- policy, you know, everybody's on an actuarial curve, right? So you're on one. I'm on one. Everybody listening to this podcast is on an actuarial curve. What happens is when a life insurance company's getting ready to put $10 million, or $20 million, or $50 million worth of risk on your life, only one thing matters. How many more months do you have left on Earth? And the science of predicting that mortality is very accurate science. I get a lot of flak about it, but if you wanna know how accurate life insurance companies are at predicting death, just look at what happened during the 2008/2009 financial services crisis. We had, we had 364 banks fail. Not a single life insurance company failed. A valid death claim in the United States has never failed to have been paid. They are some of the most solvent institutions in the world. There's not another financial services enterprise anywhere on the planet that would take that level of risk on one variable. I mean, you have an investment fund. You wouldn't put that level of risk on a single variable, right? How many more months does this person have left on Earth? And they have data that no other m- medical enterprise has. They have data that no other collegiate university has, not even the government has. They know the day, the date, the time, the location, and the cause of death for millions and millions of lives, so they know what leads to early mortality. And so-

   4. SBSteven Bartlett36:41

      How do they get your sort of health biomarkers to overlap that with?

   5. GBGary Brecka36:44

      Well, first of all, they, they do a blood test on you, so if you've ever had a large life... I'm not talking about term life insurance where you get a $100,000 or 200,000 or even a million-dollar term life insurance policy. I'm talking about permanent universal life or whole life life insurance. Um, also annuities. When, when you, um... and there's something in, in the States called a, a SPIA, single premium immediate annuity, where you give the insurance company, for example, a check for a million dollars. They guarantee you an income stream for life. Well, how do you think they're determining that income stream? They, they're predicting how many more months you have left on Earth, and they, they use morbidity factors and comorbidity factors, and yes, they factor into, to your, your recreational profile, your demographic profile. It's not as simple as a blood test or a gene test, but essentially what you do is you start on a curve in a pool of a thousand lives that are similar to yours, and, and your life expectancy is the dead center of that curve. So, if your life expectancy is 200 months, that means in 200 months you have the exact same chance of being dead as you do of being alive. Now, what determines your increased probability of death are your mortality factors. Are you obese, diabetic, anemic? Do you have cognitive decline? Are you compliant with your medication? You know, there are all of these different debits. And then there are certain debits that we call comorbidities, right? So if you're hypertensive, that was a debit. If you were, if you were diabetic, that was a debit. If you were, um, obese, that was a deb- debit. But if you were hypertensive, diabetic, and obese, it wasn't one plus one plus one, it was one plus one plus one equaled 10, right? These were massive comorbidity factors. My job was to read the medical record and do the re- medical record extr- extraction, and we had incredible data on, on, on these people. You saw their trust, um, and you saw their wills, their trusts, their divorce decrees. You knew that they were treating their children differently in their, in their estate, um, bank accounts, brokerage accounts, tax returns, um, and their medical records, and you have recent blood work on them. But when you read a medical record on somebody, there's more than just their height, weight, and blood pressure, and the medications that they're on. You really start to get a profile for a lot, for the, for the person. And a lot of times, I felt like I was really getting to know these people, oddly, because I had so much personal information on them, and, you know, a lot of these people came alive to me. I know that sounds very strange, but when you're reading about their repeated, you know, visits to the doctor, and they're c- constantly talking about, you know, their grandchildren, and then all of a sudden you see in the medical record where the husband passed away, and then you see the antidepressants creeping in, and you see, um, their, their weight gain, their body mass index change, and you, you actually, as you're going through years of their medical record, you really s- get a real profile for them. And I started to realize that there were human beings on the other side of these spreadsheets, and there were cases where I knew that if I could have picked up the phone and just contacted that patient, I could have completely changed the trajectory of their life, and I was prohibited from doing so by law. And even at one point in my career, I was threatened with prosecution f- for threatening to call a patient and warn them about, um, a, a, a life-threatening, potential life-threatening drug interaction that I'd spotted in the medical record between two physicians that had written contraindicated scripts, and something called the MIB, the Medical Information Bureau, hadn't, uh, picked it up, and the data that I had said that this was gonna lead to a thrombolytic event, like a blood s- a blood clot, a stroke, you know, heart attack, an embolism. And, um, I remember calling the human resources director and just, you know, basically saying that I'm gonna contact this patient, and, and, and being threatened with prosecution, and I, I think about it a lot, and I just think about all the times I could have picked up the phone and just made a real material change in somebody's life, and I didn't have the opportunity to do it. And big part of my career felt like I was, you know, sitting behind a thick glass wall just watching blind people walk into traffic, and so I wasn't in service to humanity. All I wanted to do was be wealthy. I was very unauthentic, and then I just woke up one day and said, "What the hell am I doing?" I mean, I, I have so much information. I'm a human biologist, and I have s- I- I've been studying this database for 20 years. I could help people live healthier, happier, longer lives, and, and I quit my career, and I went home and told my fiance at the time, now my wife, that I wanted to start a wellness firm, (laughs) and that was the, the, the genesis of, uh, my firm's streamline, and part of the trajectory that I'm on. And so-

10. 41:51 – 43:18

    I Knew Thousands of People Would Die but They Wouldn't Let Me Help Them

    1. GBGary Brecka41:51

    2. SBSteven Bartlett41:51

       It still sits with you?

    3. GBGary Brecka41:53

       Every day.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett41:55

       Really?

    5. GBGary Brecka41:55

       Oh, dude, it's, it's... Well, well, it, it sits with me in a good way, because, you know, whereas before b- it's, it's really hard to imagine, you know, somebody coming into your office and going, "Hey, you know, Gary, oh my God, remember the, um, you know, in the Mrs. Smith, the life expectancy we, we, we did 13 years ago, you know, where we, we... you did this life expectancy was 188 months, you predict 188 months, and she died in 184 months. Oh my God, you did a great job. It's amazing. That claim just paid." And I'm like, "Is it really amazing?" You know, um, when you start to realize that was somebody's, you know, it was like somebody's sister or somebody's daughter or somebody's mother, you s- start to realize that I, I allow myself to be brainwashed and just think that it was data, and, and forget that there was human beings on the other side of the, the spreadsheet. And so now...You know, I'm sorry, I'm getting emotional, but, but, um, you know, now I wake up every day and I, like, open my eyes and I go, "Fuck yeah. You know, I got a chance to, to make a difference." And, and I talk about the research and, and the fact patterns that we saw in Predicting Death. And I wanna counter those, so that we can extend life, um, you know, so we can help people live longer, healthier, happier lives.

11. 43:18 – 50:44

    Fixing Your Deficiencies Could Save Your Life

    1. SBSteven Bartlett43:18

       So, the counterarguments that you've experienced, you know, you use the word counterargument in hip- hippies, what do those sort of counterarguments tend to center on, as it relates to your work? Obviously, you talked about the doctor thing.

    2. GBGary Brecka43:30

       I definitely made some mistakes. You know, I've, I, I made the mistake earlier in my career of, of quoting articles and not, and not research, wh- which I regret and I, and I've made some of those mistakes. I think very often, what I try to do is, is simplify the message. I talk, for example, about a 2018 study, we should put the link to this, um, which was in the Journal of, um, uh, Headaches and Face Pain. There's a Journal of Headaches and Face Pain. I want to say it was 2018. There were 8,819 participants in this meta-analysis, so a very large, um, analysis. And they found a direct inverse relationship between sodium intake and migraine headaches and meaning that as sodium levels went up, migraine headaches went down. Now, by no means am I telling everybody that has a migraine headache that you need to take a little bit of salt and you're gonna be fine. What I'm saying is, you know, on your, on your comprehensive metabolic panel, you can see your sodium level. When your sodium level gets to a critically low level, which believe it or not, quite a few people have, people that regularly sauna, people that exercise and don't reminalize with electrolytes, people that drink, um, filtered bottled water in an effort to filter out fluoride and microplastics, but don't reminalize their water, get nutrient deficient sodium. And, you know, remembering that the brain actually doesn't have any pain receptors, but the covering of the brain does, you know, something called the dura. And the dura hates two things. It hates being stretched and it hates being contracted. And what, what determines whether or not it's stretching or contracting is something called the osmotic gradient, the movement of water across the membrane. And yes, it can be as simple as supplementing with sodium, um, my preference would be Baja Gold Sea Salt or Celtic salt, um, so that you get all of the other trace minerals as well, um, to permanently put migraine headaches in- into remission. And then, you know, out come all of the physicians saying there's n- no evidence of that. Well, there are clinical trials on that. And the other, the other tool that I have in my chest is for 20 years, I worked with one of the largest databases in the world. And we're at the point now where we see 20,000 new gene tests a month. I don't know many clinics that are that busy. So, we have voluminous amounts of data. We see what happens when you have a high homocysteine and you put them on, you put a patient on an amino acid called trimethylglycine and the homocysteine comes down and then they go to their doctor and their blood pressure is normalized. Not once, not twice, not anecdotally, thousands and thousands of times. You see what happens to people when you bring their hemoglobin A1C and their insulin back down into the optimal level and their triglycerides return to normal and their risk for cardiovascular disease declines. You see what happens to C-reactive proteins when people take simple things like silica clays, um, and activated charcoals. And so, I want to keep getting the message out that very often, disease is not happening to us, it's happening within us. And very often, it's happening because of deficiencies in the human body, not pathology in the human body. And, you know, in, in, in, in the United States, we're, we're by far the largest spender of, on healthcare. You know, we spend four and a half trillion dollars a year on, on healthcare in the US. We have the highest infant mortality rate, we have the highest maternal mortality rate. Um, even though we lead the, the world in flu vaccinations and breast screen- um, and, and breast cancer screening and colorectal screening, we also lead the world in cancer. Um, we're ranked 52nd in life expectancy, we're ranked 39th in, in healthcare delivery. Um, we're one of the most obese nations on the planet, twice the rate of obesity of any other civilized, um, nation. And yet, modern medicine being, you know, medical error being the third leading cause of death is where we're going to get information on how we extend our life. And I watched, in medical records, I've probably read thousands of times more medical records than most physicians, 'cause I read medical records all day, every day, six days a week for, for almost 20 years. And I would see what would happen when simple deficiencies would be mistaken as a pathological condition. And I've talked about these a lot. Um, like clinical deficiencies in v- in vitamin D3 for prolonged periods of time eventually h- m- m- present as rheumatoid arthritis-like symptoms. People get joint aches and pains and, and stiff and sore ankles and they have a hard time making a fist. And, and, you know, when you're speaking to the wrong physician, very often, a doctor will diagnose you based on your medical history. Not, before they do sed rates and rheumatoid arthritis, you know, actual blood, uh, checks. They'll say, "You know what, Steven? You've got rheumatoid arthritis," and they put you on, on things like corticosteroids. And in the mortality space, we had data, so we had data on all of these pharmaceuticals. So, we knew the trajectory of, of hormones and cell walls and cell membranes and, um, production of vitamin D3 when somebody took a statin and reduced cholesterol. And we looked at, you know, they, the studies will look at cholesterol in a complete vacuum. So, LDL cholesterol high, so that's bad. Let's bring LDL cholesterol down with a statin, so we decrease the risk of cardio- cardiovascular disease. But then, you have a concomitant outcome where you, you're reducing the ability for the body to make hormones and cell walls and cell membranes. And so, you buy yourself a consequence downstream when really, if we go back to just studying the physiology of the human body when we, w- w- in, in the mortality space, I don't think I saw a single centenarian.... once, and we processed hundreds of these death claims. I don't think I saw a single centenarian that, at the time of death, did not have clinically elevated levels of LDL cholesterol. So it begs the question, is simply having high LDL cholesterol a marker for, um, longevity, or is it a m- a marker for cardiovascular disease that needs to be intervened with a chemical or a synthetic? And, and these corticosteroids that people are put on, you know, very often they, they, they're, they're anti-inflammatory in the beginning, but then they eat the joint like a termite. And, and so these were resulting in voluminous amounts of joint replacements so accurately that we would... We were able to predict that the course of some of these medications would result in a joint replacement in roughly six years. And so we would artificially advance people's age six years, and we would actually schedule the joint replacement for them, and then we would reduce what's called their ambulatory profile, how well they ambulated, how well they moved. And as we reduce their mobility, we could bring in all of these diseases that exacerbated with reduced mobility. In, in my mind, I'm just watching all this happen, going, "I wanted to call this, these people and say, s-" I'm not qualified to do that 'cause I'm not licensed to practice medicine, but I, I wanted to call them and just say, "Mr. Jones, stop taking the corticosteroid. Start supplementing with vitamin D3. Get your B12 level to here. Let's fix your hormones (laughs) because this is killing your red blood cell count, and this is what's leading you to be so exhausted." And it- and no one was looking at, at these basic nutrient deficiencies that we would see run in blood work that would cause all of these diseases to exacerbate, and people were succumbing much earlier to death or to the loss of their health span.

12. 50:44 – 51:57

    What I Learned Analysing Thousands of Medical Reports

    1. GBGary Brecka50:44

    2. SBSteven Bartlett50:44

       How many records do you think you saw in your time, where you saw the full picture?

    3. GBGary Brecka50:48

       I would be working on two or three of these, four of these cases at a time. Some were shorter cases, some were longer cases. Thousands. I mean, thousands. And in the tail end of my career, I started to manipulate the, um, record artificially just to see what would happen to the life expectancy. I would never submit that as a report, but I would say, "What if I fixed the anemia? What if I actually just corrected the D3 deficiency? What if, um, you know, I, I, I, and I was able to, um, take out the pre-diabetic condition or reduce their hemoglobin A1C, and you would see the life expectancy jump?" Right? And so these are modifiable risk factors, and I think how many times... You know, I would be reading a medical record and I'd go, "Well, I know that this is gonna happen. This is just gonna get worse 'cause this patient has anemia." Like, the classic treatment for some anemias is folic acid, B12, and, and iron, and they would give them folic acid, B12, and iron, and it wouldn't correct, then they'd give them folic acid, B12, and iron, they wouldn't correct. Folic acid, B12, and iron, it wouldn't correct. Then they wouldn't realize (laughs) that, um, that person can't process folic acid, and if they gave them methylfolate, methylcobalamin, and iron bisglycinate, (snaps fingers) the anemia would correct.

13. 51:57 – 54:52

    Fix the Simple Things Before It's Too Late

    1. GBGary Brecka51:57

    2. SBSteven Bartlett51:57

       But these are all sort of symptoms of further upstream issues, right?

    3. GBGary Brecka52:00

       Mm-hmm.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett52:00

       Like something that... A decision that someone has made in their life, typically, typically-

    5. GBGary Brecka52:05

       Mm-hmm.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett52:05

       ... that has caused them to develop these conditions which are far down the stream, like the tree you talked about with the bad leaf. Doctors then point at the leaf and go, "We need to fix the leaf."

    7. GBGary Brecka52:15

       Mm-hmm.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett52:15

       But it's down in the roots somewhere.

    9. GBGary Brecka52:17

       Mm-hmm.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett52:17

        So what are the s- what are, like, the societal and indi- individual-level things that we can be doing to prevent us even getting these chronic diseases? Like a- the simple, simple things.

    11. GBGary Brecka52:28

        I'll tell you the simplest thing that we can do. First, I, uh, you know, we should think about having an, an invisible fence around us, right? Like a f- like a little force field. And we should filter things before they make it to the temple, um, because either we can filter things for the temple or we can let the temple be the filter. So you can drink tap water, and if you drink tap water, your body will filter out the fluoride, the chlorine, the microplastics, the pharmaceuticals. Or you can filter your water before you drink it, right, and, and take one toxic load off your body. So what I would say is probably five things that I would commit to doing on a regular basis. Number one is upon waking, I would, I would drink a mineral, mineralized water. I would take 10 ounces of water, and I would add either a Celtic sea salt or a Baja gold salt to my water. The reason for that is that most of us are deficient in some or several of the trace minerals in our body, the boring ones, boron, manganese, molybdenum, selenium, and stir it up and just whack it back. The second thing I would do is-

    12. SBSteven Bartlett53:32

        Wait, you're not talking about table salt here.

    13. GBGary Brecka53:34

        No, no, no, not sodium chloride, no. I'm talking about Baja gold sea salt. That's probably the best salt that you can put in a human body because it has all 91 trace minerals. It's tested down to 250 parts per billion, um, from microplastics and glyphosates. Um, only about 75% of that sodium crystal is actually sodium. The rest of 'em is all of these trace minerals. You can get very close to that with Celtic salt, right? And if you can't get Celtic salt, then you could move to a pink Himalayan sea salt. The problem with pink Himalayan sea salt recently is that a lot of it has, um, heavy metals 'cause it's coming out of China. So I would say the best salt is Baja gold. A g- a great salt is Celt- Celtic salt, and a decent salt is pink Himalayan sea salt. Forget table salt. I would just get that permanently out of your life.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett54:21

        Okay, so number one, have my Baja salt.

    15. GBGary Brecka54:23

        Mineralize. Mineralize.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett54:24

        Mm-hmm.

    17. GBGary Brecka54:25

        Um, and then nu- number two, I would, I would take a DHEA/EPA fish oil supplement or a, a fatty acid supplement with DHEA or EPA oil. Um, an MCT oil. I would take a fatty acid, um, oil in the morning.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett54:41

        An omega supplement.

    19. GBGary Brecka54:41

        An omega, yeah.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett54:42

        Omega-3.

    21. GBGary Brecka54:43

        An omega-3-

    22. SBSteven Bartlett54:44

        Okay.

    23. GBGary Brecka54:44

        ... supplement. And then I would develop a morning routine that included the basics from Mother Nature, sunlight, grounding, breath work,

14. 54:52 – 1:00:02

    The Importance of Grounding for Your Blood Cells

    1. GBGary Brecka54:52

       cold shower.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett54:53

       Okay, so I want to f- zoom in here on grounding.

    3. GBGary Brecka54:56

       Mm-hmm. I'm a huge fan of grounding (laughs) .

    4. SBSteven Bartlett54:58

       My girlfriend grounds, and again, listen, my girlfriend's much smarter than I am at- at transpires because everything she says... I think I said this to you last time. Everything she says to me, eventually I sit here with like a neuroscientist a year later, and turns out she was absolutely right.

    5. GBGary Brecka55:10

       (laughs)

    6. SBSteven Bartlett55:10

       And I thought she was a bit- little bit cuckoo for thinking that getting outside in the morning and putting her feet on the ground were...... a- at all beneficial, but I've been told time and time again it is. What is grounding and why does it h- help?

    7. GBGary Brecka55:22

       So, we get three things from Mother Nature, right? We get magnetism from the earth, we get oxygen from the air, we get light from the sun. The further we get away from those things, the sicker we become.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett55:32

       Really?

    9. GBGary Brecka55:32

       Yes. Absolutely.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett55:34

        So, the, the magnetism piece, it sounds like, uh, like, uh, spiritual cuckoo stuff.

    11. GBGary Brecka55:38

        I, yeah, I mean, probably 10,000 years ago, they probably thought the same thing about gravity, you know? (laughs) But, um, but the earth has a low gauss current, right? I mean, we were meant to spend 85% of our time outside. We spend 97% of our time indoors now. The truth is, most of us are not getting enough sun. We're not getting too much sun, but we're not getting enough sun. And, you know, because of the way we eat and seed oils and everything that are, that are oxidizing in our skin, our cancer rates are, are, are exploding, but not because of our sun exposure. It's because of our, our diet, and we can talk about that later. But when you touch the surface of the earth, when bare feet touch bare soil, grass, sand, we discharge into the earth. And by that, I mean you actually change the polarity in the body, and this is measurable. In fact, if you wanna do a little experiment, um, find, find somebody that has a microscope, a basic microscope, and get a slide, and just take a prick, prick your finger and take a drop of your blood and put it on that slide, smear it around, and look at it under the microscope. I think I have a video of this on my Instagram. And what you'll see when you look at your blood in real time is you'll see most of your red blood cells are stuck together and clumped up. Not clotted, but they're attracted to each other. Because when cells have the same charge, they repel. When they repel, it increases the amount of surface area that that cell has to contact the outside environment, so now it can exchange waste, it can eliminate waste, detoxify, repair, it can regenerate. So, imagine that you have a bloodstream full of red blood cells and they start to get opposite charges, so they attract. And when they attract, they touch, and everywhere that they touch, that cell loses surface area to exchange with the outside environment. When you touch the surface of the earth for a few minutes, you will repolarize those. Prick your finger 10 minutes after you come inside, put it back on that same slide, look at your blood. It's gonna look like eggs slithering around in a bowl of oil. They will bump into each other and they'll be sliding around, but they will not be clumped together and stuck.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett57:33

        So, what's going on then? ... must be what coming through my feet, the charge coming through my feet?

    13. GBGary Brecka57:37

        Yeah, there's... So you're actually discharging into the earth. You know, you're exchanging, um, ions. It's a low gauss current, so like a magnet, you're exchanging ions with the earth and you're discharging. You're, you're, you're grounding, um-

    14. SBSteven Bartlett57:48

        What if I live on the ground floor? Do I still have to go outside?

    15. GBGary Brecka57:50

        Yes, you gotta touch bare dirt, soil, grass, sand.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett57:54

        Why can't I... If I live on the ground floor, why doesn't the floor and the lower floor of the house?

    17. GBGary Brecka57:58

        Because they, they, that insulates you from, um, from the earth's magnetic field. There's usually steel, concrete, wood. There's other barriers, tile, asphalt. There are things that actually prevent you from actually contacting the surface of the earth. You know, there, there are, there are grounding mattresses that you plug into the ground wire and then, um, that ground wire, if you, if you look at how, you know, grounding a circuit occurs, at some point is running directly into the ground. There will be a pole in the ground that is connected usually by copper to that wire and connected to your outlet to ground that outlet.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett58:31

        Can't I just get some kind of mat that d- has the same charge?

    19. GBGary Brecka58:34

        Yes, you could get a PEMF mat. But again, you know, o- o- one of the things I get a lot of flak of is, is saying that you have to buy all this expensive equipment. So, there's two ways to do it. You can buy a pulse electromagnetic field mat, a PEMF mat. I have one. Um, they cost about five grand. Um, so if you got five grand lying around, it's one of the best investments you can make. You put it in your bed, you go to sleep on it, you, you run it, you run a low gauss current at night, it will help get you into a deep sleep. You'll wake up alkaline every morning. Um, it will push the electrosmog right out of your, your body, um, 'cause PEMF gets rid of electrosmog, 5G, wifi, um-

    20. SBSteven Bartlett59:08

        When you say you wake up alkaline every morning...

    21. GBGary Brecka59:10

        So, when you change the, um... So the pH of the blood is a, it's a pretty narrow range. It's about, it's about 5/10ths of a point. It's about half a point. And it's a complete fallacy that you can change the pH of the blood by drinking alkaline water. Alkaline water will actua- not actually change the pH of your blood. If you wanna change the pH of your blood, amongst other things, you, you apply a low gauss current. pH stands for potential hydrogen, so charge. And so by running a low gauss current through the body or touching the surface of the earth, you actually can move the pH of the blood slightly.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett59:42

        And that does?

    23. GBGary Brecka59:44

        An alkaline state is a disease-free state. The more acidic we get, the sicker we become. And so, um, and so if we wanna move the pH of, of the blood slightly, if we wanna wake up alkaline, if we want to run a low gauss current through our body, we can either touch the surface of the earth or we'll buy a PEMF mat.

15. 1:00:02 – 1:04:26

    The Most Important Exercise to Oxygenate Your Blood Cells

    1. GBGary Brecka1:00:02

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:02

       So, so they've done tests where someone lays on a PEMF mat for a certain amount of time. They then do a blood test-

    3. GBGary Brecka1:00:07

       Mm-hmm.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:07

       ... and they find that their blood is more alkaline?

    5. GBGary Brecka1:00:09

       Yes.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:10

       All right.

    7. GBGary Brecka1:00:10

       Yes. And that, that separation of blood cells you can see instantly o- um, getting off of a PEMF mat. Again, I've got videos of me doing this to my production manager on, um, you know, in my house, breaking his finger, putting it on the, o- o- on a slide, putting it on the, uh, the PEMF and actually looking at it afterwards. The second thing I would do is I would learn to do breath work. I use something called a HyperMax, which is based on, um, Dr. Van Arden and Dr. Otto Warburg's, um, Nobel Prize w- winning work, and that is the... It's called multi-step oxygen therapy, where you actually take an oxygen concentrator, you fill up a bag full of 900 liters of 95% O₂, and you actually just breathe that 95% O₂ for 10 to 12 minutes while you're active on a treadmill. But if you don't wanna have an EWOT, exercise with oxygen therapy machine, you can learn to do breath work. Engage the auxiliary muscles of respiration, get oxygen down into the lobes of your lungs and out of the apex of your lungs. One of the, one of the articles that I quoted that turned out not to be a study, and I still can't find the reference for it was that after age 35, 90% of people will never sprint again. And again, I haven't been able to find if that came from a clinical study or if it was an, uh, an, an article, but...Whether or not that's true, the vast majority of people stop engaging their auxiliary muscles of respiration. (inhales deeply) You know, really exercising our diaphragm, using the intercostal muscles between our l- r- ribs, pushing air down into lobes of our body. And as our posture collapses and our CO2 rises, you know, if- if you think about the expired air in your body from the tip of your nose to the tip of your mouth, all the way down your esophagus, out your bronchials, into the farthest reaches of your lungs, that's all expired air. Until you get the oxygen all the way down and out to the edges of the lung, you're not getting oxygen into the bloodstream. So, as we age and our posture collapse, our respiratory rate gets more and more shallow. We're essentially hyperventilating carbon dioxide, right, and which is accelerating aging. I mean, aging is, th- the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease. And so by just learning how to do breath work, so one, I would ground, two, I would, I would learn to do breath work. I do a Wim Hof style of breath work. I do three rounds of 30 breaths with an extended breath hold every single morning. It is the one thing that I never, ever, ever, ever miss.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:31

       Why?

    9. GBGary Brecka1:02:31

       Ever. Because I make little promises to myself and I try to keep them, and I find that I lose confidence in myself when I consistently break really small promises to myself, um, and I think a lot of people do this. And our bodies crave consistency, and so ...

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:52

        You lose confidence in yourself?

    11. GBGary Brecka1:02:54

        You say, you know, "I'm gonna go to bed at, you know, 10:30 tonight," and you go to bed at 1:00 AM, you know. And then you say, "I'm gonna work out in first thing in the morning," and you actually don't work out. Or you get up in the morning and you say, "I listened to that podcast. I'm gonna do what Gary said, I'm gonna ground and get some sunlight and I'm gonna do some breath work," and then you actually don't do it. So, the little internal promises that you make to yourself, and I feel like a lot of people break these little promises to themselves, e- they're not making them to their spouse or to their kids or to their partners or, you know, th- they're, they're not the big promises that everybody knows about, and I think it nibbles away at our self-confidence and our own ability to trust ourselves. And so I have a morning routine, um, I'm very consistent with it, but the one thing that is portable for me is the ability to get outside and ground and do breath work, and I never, ever, ever miss. I can't even tell you how many years I've gone without missing a single morning of breath work. The other thing that it does for me because, you know, human beings crave consistency, so if within 30 minutes of waking every day, no matter what time zone you're in, you're doing three rounds of 30 breaths, your body begins to zero in on that and it begins to understand that that's the morning, this is go time. And so simple to do. You know, when I'm here, I wake up, I might be at a different time because I'm usually on the East Coast so I wake up earlier here, but I go, I open the door, I go out on the balcony, I sit on a chair, it's nice and cool outside, I face the sun, and I do three rounds of 30 breaths every single day.

16. 1:04:26 – 1:12:15

    The Incredibly Health Benefits of Red Light

    1. GBGary Brecka1:04:26

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:26

       My partner brought me one of those big red light panels for Christmas.

    3. GBGary Brecka1:04:30

       Mm-hmm.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:30

       It was my Christmas present. And funnily enough, guess what my Christmas present to her was as well?

    5. GBGary Brecka1:04:35

       (laughs)

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:36

       The fucking red light- yeah. (laughs)

    7. GBGary Brecka1:04:37

       Did you get a bed or did you get the panels?

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:39

       The panels. It was so funny.

    9. GBGary Brecka1:04:40

       What'd you get, like Juvexo or what'd you-

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:42

        I have no idea.

    11. GBGary Brecka1:04:43

        ... what'd you get? Okay. Um.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:43

        I have no idea the brand. But- but she bought me one, it's, like, a small one.

    13. GBGary Brecka1:04:47

        Mm-hmm.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:47

        And then I was like, "Babe, open your present," and then I opened them- she opened hers and hers was, like, a big one.

    15. GBGary Brecka1:04:53

        Yeah.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:53

        She's, like, literally half the size of me, so it's quite- so we swapped. Um, but- but we now both use it, it's a bit of a routine in the morning. We bo- wake up-

    17. GBGary Brecka1:04:59

        Amazing.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:00

        ... we go and sit down by it, and I'm not really sure what's- it's doing. I've just heard a lot of-

    19. GBGary Brecka1:05:06

        I'll tell you what it's doing.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:06

        ... positive things. I've done a little bit of my own research on it-

    21. GBGary Brecka1:05:08

        Yeah.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:09

        ... and how to use it to make sure I'm not, like, killing myself somehow.

    23. GBGary Brecka1:05:11

        Mm-hmm.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:11

        But, um, what is it doing and why should everyone consider getting one?

    25. GBGary Brecka1:05:15

        So, it's- it's referred to in the literature as photobiomodulation, photobiomodulation. So, if you wanna look up any of the clinical studies, put photobiomodulation, and then put "and dementia" "and Alzheimer's" "and skin" "and, um, inflammation" and- and the studies will come up. But basically, different nanometers of- of- of light have different effects in the body, and, um, so they are, um, well-researched and- and publicized to reduce inflammation, um, increase microvascular circulation, so the smallest of the capillaries in our body, uh, are affected by light. Um, they have a very specific effect in the mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell. So, if you actually went through the wall of a cell and into the cytoplasm and found the mitochondria and you went into the mitochondria, you'd see that there's a motor in there that's spinning around, it's called the Krebs cycle. And this motor, when it spits out energy called ATP, um, i- you know, essentially, it has two choices every time it makes a revolution, right? It- it can either create two units of energy or it creates 36 units of energy. It's either 16 times more efficient or 16 times less efficient, and what determines that is whether or not oxygen enters that cycle. So, one of the things that red light does is it goes through the wall of the mitochondria and it kicks out a gas called mitochondrial nitric oxide and forces oxygen to dock. So, when you get into a red light therapy bed or use red light therapy panels, one of the things that's happening is you're essentially forcing oxygen into the mitochondria. You're forcing the oxygen to use mitochondria and release a gas called mitochondrial nitric oxide. This is also measurable, by the way. You can get saliva nitric oxide strips, you could put it in your mouth, and before you got in a red light therapy bed, you could look at the saliva, um, the amount of nitric oxide in your saliva and you'd see it's, like, a pale kind of yellowish pink. Then you get in one of those red light therapy beds for 20 minutes, and about 10 minutes after you get out, test it again, you'll see that your nitric oxide levels are through the roof. That's a positive sign that the mitochondria has thrown this gas out and brought oxygen in. And it's- imagine what happens in a cell when you give it 16 times the amount of energy. So, imagine upstaging trillions of cells to allow them to eliminate waste, repair, detoxify, regenerate just by using light. It also has a very positive effect on collagen, elastin, fibrin. Um, it's known to improve angiogenesis, the new blood vessel formation.I was on, I was on the, uh, Joe Rogan's podcast a few months ago and, um, he ended up buying one of these red light, um, beds, uh, from me. And we installed it in his house and... He told me about four or five weeks ago that he's no longer wring- wearing readers anymore. Like his, his eyesight has improved that much. And he said he's starting to really notice the changes in his skin. So photobiomodulation is very real and it absolutely works. But, um, you know, without people having to think that they have to spend that kind of money on a red light therapy bed, you can also just expose your skin to sunlight, especially during first light, the first 45 minutes of the day when there's no UVA, there's no UVB, there's high amounts of healthy blue light. Um, you can still generate vitamin D3.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:25

        Let me just run that back so I'm clear. Um, on the point about Rogan's eyesight-

    27. GBGary Brecka1:08:30

        Mm-hmm.

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:30

        ... I, I did some... I was looking through some research about the impact of red light on eyesight and it said that it's good for eyesight. And so...

    29. GBGary Brecka1:08:36

        Incredibly good for eyesight. Yes.

    30. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:39

        'Cause I was wondering whether I should be looking at this thing while it's on.
17. 1:12:15 – 1:15:23

    How Hydrogen Gas Helps Your Body

    1. GBGary Brecka1:12:15

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:15

       We've been doing that as well at home, so I was just checking.

    3. GBGary Brecka1:12:17

       Awesome.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:18

       'Cause I, I did google to ch- to see if it was something that would wake me up, but no, you're right, bl- blue light is the thing that wakes us. Um, bit of a tangent, but I just saw you have a gulp of that water.

    5. GBGary Brecka1:12:28

       Mm-hmm.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:29

       What is in that water?

    7. GBGary Brecka1:12:31

       Hydrogen water.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:32

       Why hydrogen water?

    9. GBGary Brecka1:12:33

       This is a little hydrogen generator again. I don't know (laughs) if you can still see that, but there's, um... What it's doing, there's a, there's a little-

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:41

        P- pick it up here and he'll be able to see it in the camera.

    11. GBGary Brecka1:12:43

        Yeah, a little electrolysis pump down there and it's, and it's basically adding hydrogen gas to the water. There's not much left in there, but if you, if you fill it with water, you can see that. I mean, it, it is f- fascinating. I am so convinced that hydrogen water is the best water that you can put in the human body. And there's a, there's a website called hydrogenstudies.com that has about 1,350 studies, um, on the site. You can go to hydrogenstudies.com. When you get to that site, you can actually search, um, by human clinical trials or animal clinical trials so you could sort out and look at human clinical trials and look at all of the ways that hydrogen gas is used in therapeutic treatments, reducing inflammation, improving the absorption of supplements, impruding ath- improving athletic performance, delaying, um, the, uh, addressing delayed onset muscle soreness, reducing neural inflammation. I mean, there are so many clinical trials proving the efficacy of hydrogen gas in the body and people do hydrogen gas through a nasal cannulas, through ear cannulas, through eye cannulas as you can breathe hydrogen gas. But by drinking, um, hydrogen water, you have a very positive effect on inflammation in the body.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:52

        When you pump the hydrogen into there, doesn't it just come out the top?

    13. GBGary Brecka1:13:55

        No. It's sealed, so it's under pressure, so what it does is it forces the gas back into the liquid.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:01

        Okay.

    15. GBGary Brecka1:14:01

        And so the liquid actually gets... has a high part per million concentration of hydrogen gas. The colder the liquid, the more gas you can dissolve, so it takes about five hours for it to dissipate from that. Um, some people use hydrogen H2 tablets. Um, I just use this, this hydrogen bottle, and I take it literally everywhere I go. I notice when I don't have it.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:24

        How many of you started thinking about your long-term health when you hit 30? For me, this was a wake-up moment of me thinking to myself, "Okay, I probably need to start paying a little bit more attention now." I already felt a change in myself when I hit 30 with things like my metabolism, my energy levels, so this year is no different. ZOE, which is a company I've invested in but also a company that are a sponsor of this podcast, helps me to make smarter food choices, all based on their world-leading science and my own test results. If I'm ordering food, I know how to make my takeaways so much smarter by adding things like a side of vegetables to eat first or choosing the option with the most fiber. ZOE helps me to make that choice. It guides me and coaches me. It's my personalized nutrition coach that I have on me 24/7. And to help you start your ZOE journey and start making smarter food choices, I'm giving you guys 10% off when you join ZOE now. All you've gotta do is use code CEO10 at the checkout when you sign up. Enjoy, and let me know how you

18. 1:15:23 – 1:16:42

    The Issues with Ozempic

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:23

       get on. One of the subjects that's be- been really sort of pertinent in culture at the moment is this subject of Ozempic.

    2. GBGary Brecka1:15:30

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:30

       You know, since we spoke, it's got even more popular, um, and it's everywhere. I looked yesterday at the company that make Ozempic, and I believe if my Apple Stock app wasn't deceiving me, the company's worth trillions now.

    4. GBGary Brecka1:15:42

       Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. Ozempic, and... So Ozempic is, is, um, a peptide called semaglutide. Um, it's a GLP-1 inhibitor. There's an- there's another called tirzepatide which actually did better in side-by-side clinical trials than semaglutide, and that's the Wegovy version, um, or the Mounjaro version. Um, semaglutide I think is, is Ozempic and Wegovy. But these are great for, for people that have... um, that are Type 2 diabetics or that are morbidly obese and have issues with cravings, um, that have, that have either diabetes or, or, or significant obesity. I think that they've become drugs for vanity, and what people are realizing now is all of the issues with gastric emptying, paralytic gut, um, the fact that when you start to, uh-

Episode duration: 1:33:16