The Man Who Can Predict How Long You Have Left To Live (To The Nearest Month): Gary Brecka | E225

1. 0:00 – 1:37

   Intro

   1. GBGary Brecka0:00

      If you wanna strip fat off your body, there is nothing, no type of cardiovascular or weight training that comes anywhere close to- Gary Precha!

   2. NANarrator0:10

      He spent 20 years working in life insurance, predicting when people were going to die to the nearest month. And now he's on a mission to extend your life.

   3. GBGary Brecka0:17

      Most people, they're walking around right now at about 55% of their true state of normal. There is an element missing from their body that would make the difference between them being an average person and being a superhuman.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett0:29

      How?

   5. GBGary Brecka0:30

      Everything that we put into our bodies gets converted into a usable form. If you cannot make this conversion, you have a deficiency. And it is this deficiency that leads to these conditions. They have accepted something as either a consequence of aging, stress, or their environment that's not a consequence of any of those things. I'm gonna tell you exactly how to find out what it is that's missing so you could thrive in a way that you probably never thought possible.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett0:53

      Let's use Dana White as an example.

   7. GBGary Brecka0:55

      So Labcorp calls us and says, "Hey, we have a life-threatening alert on a patient." He had all of these conditions. I've been talking to doctors, none of them could fix any of my problems. I said, "I'm surprised that you can even sleep through the night without choking, gagging." He's like slammed his hand down, "How did you know that?" And I said, "If you don't do what we're gonna ask you to do, you have a life expectancy of 10.4 years." And in 10 weeks, he had such a material change, and he was like, "I had no idea I could feel this good again."

   8. SBSteven Bartlett1:22

      And his life expectancy?

   9. GBGary Brecka1:23

      Almost tripled.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett1:24

       Someone who's just heard that at home, where do they start?

   11. GBGary Brecka1:27

       So-

   12. SBSteven Bartlett1:30

       I just wanna start this episode with a message of thanks. A thank you to everybody that tunes in to listen to this podcast. By

2. 1:37 – 10:36

   Why you should watch this episode

   1. SBSteven Bartlett1:37

      doing so, you've enabled me to live out my dream, but also for many members of our team to live out their dreams too. It's one of the greatest privileges I could never have dreamed of or imagined in my life to get to do this, to get to learn from these people, to get to have these conversations, to get to interrogate them from a very selfish perspective, trying to solve problems I have in my life. So, I feel like I owe you a huge thank you for being here and for listening to these episodes and for making this platform what it is. Can I ask you a favor? I can't tell you how much, um, you can change the course of this podcast, the, the, the course of the guests we're able to invite to the show, and to the course of everything that we do here just by doing one simple thing. And that simple thing is hitting that subscribe button. Helps this channel more than I could ever explain. The guests on this platform are incredible because so many of you have hit that button. And I know when we think about what we wanna do together over the next year on this show, a lot of it is gonna be fueled by the amount of you that are subscribed and that tune into this show every week. So, thank you. Let's keep doing this. And I can't wait to see what this year brings for this show, for us as a community, and for this platform. Gary.

   2. GBGary Brecka2:46

      Yes.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett2:47

      I... This is the first time I've started this podcast in this particular way. But I was... But this is where I wanted to start it. It's with, um, a slightly curious question, which is, there's people that have just clicked onto this podcast to listen now, right?

   4. GBGary Brecka3:01

      Mm-hmm.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett3:01

      YouTube, Spotify, Apple, wherever they're listening. Um, why should they stay and listen to the message that you have committed your life to spreading?

   6. GBGary Brecka3:13

      Because everybody wants to be better, right? I mean, everybody wants to improve their health. And most people, especially young people, probably don't realize that they're walking around right now at about 55%, maybe 60% of their true state of normal. There is a nutrient, an amino acid, a substrate, a compound, um, an element missing from their body, that if they knew what it was, would make the difference between them being an average person and being a superhuman. They have accepted something as either a consequence of aging or a consequence of stress or a consequence of their environment, something like brain fog, or repeated poor sleep, or, uh, weight gain, or water retention, or not the healthiest response to exercise, or brain fog, or poor short-term recall, or any number of things that they've accepted as consequence of life, of aging, of stress, or what have you, that's not a consequence of any of those things. It's a consequence of missing raw material. And I'm gonna describe that in detail and tell you exactly how to put that raw material back into your body and how to find out what it is that's missing so you could thrive in a way that you probably never thought possible.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett4:27

      Who are you?

   8. GBGary Brecka4:28

      Um, I'm a human biologist. Um, and, uh, a researcher, biohacker. My background is in, uh, of all things mortality science. Uh, you know, my undergraduate degrees were in biology. My post-graduate degrees are in human biology. I'm fascinated by the human body, um, its form, its function, how we can improve its performance. And I'm a researcher. You know, I spent 22 years, um, as a mortality expert in the insurance industry, which meant that if we got five years of demographic data on you and five years of medical records, we could tell the insurance company how long you had to live to the month.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett5:06

      To the month?

   10. GBGary Brecka5:07

       To the month. And I get a lot of flak about that. People say, "Oh, if you could predict death to the month, you'd win a Nobel Prize," or, you know, "Only God can tell you when you're gonna die." I mean, and that's very true. I mean, obviously, if we do a mortality prediction on you, it doesn't mean December 12th, you know, 2065, you're gonna drop dead on that day. But it is very accurate science. You know, if you think of the most successful financial institutions on the planet, as a category, are insurance companies. If you look at the failures during the 2008-2009 financial crisis, which was a global crisis, you know, in the US, we had 364 banks fail. You didn't have a single life insurance company fail. No other financial institution, no other investment enterprise, hedge fund, angel investor, um, venture capital firm would ever put tens of millions of dollars at risk on any kind of investment on one single variable. Yet every time a life insurance company bets on your life or, or issues an annuity or a reverse mortgage or any number of other financial services instruments that are based on mortality, they're only betting on one factor. They don't care where you are on a mortality curve. They wanna know how many more months does this person have left on Earth? And it is some of the most accurate science on the planet.And they have perfected this and the good news is that the science is very accurate, and I'm gonna share a lot of the details of that today. But the downside of this industry, and the reason why I left it, was that during my tenure in this career, I was not allowed to have any contact with the patient or any contact with the treating physician. Now, I'm not licensed to practice medicine. I'm a human biologist, but if I was reading a medical record and saw a life-threatening drug interaction, I could not contact the patient. And this database where this information is drawn from, if this database could see the light of day, I believe it would permanently change the face of humanity. It would upend modern medicine in a way that would be completely catastrophic, because you see, they have information that no other database has, no other research study, no other, uh, financial institution, no other, um, university has, and that is that they know the day, the date, the time, the location and the cause of death for hundreds of millions of people that they have all of these records on. You know, if- if I'm a cardiologist and you come in to see me and I put a heart stent in your heart, well, when you leave my office, I don't know what happens to you two months later, two years later, 12 years later. I don't know if you died as a consequence of something that went wrong with the procedure I did or if you died of something completely different. I don't know exactly a- what kind of impact on your life that procedure had or didn't have, um, unless it's contained in a very short-term clinical study. And, uh, not that I wanna go into the whole science of mortality, but if you had access to this database, you would realize the most common ailments that we suffer from are not diseases and pathology that are happening to us. They are things that are happening within us. You know, I always say that if I was to boil my entire career down to a single sentence, it would be that the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease. And nothing is more impactful than that statement. The presence of oxygen is the absence of disease. I have yet to find a single disease etiological pathway, something that's happening in- in the human body causing pathology, causing disease, dysfunction, that doesn't have its roots in a lack of blood oxygen or its roots is not a- aggravated by something called hypoxia, lack of oxygen. In fact, all human beings die of the same thing. We all leave this Earth the same way, right? We all die of hypoxia, lack of oxygen to the brain. That's the definition of death, only we tend to think of it as an event, right, a gunshot wound, a bus, car, a stroke, heart attack. But the truth is, we are on a hypoxic curve, meaning we are accelerating quickly or accelerating slowly towards the grave. And the second thing that we discovered in this, um, voluminous, data-driven industry was that when you deplete certain raw materials in the human body, you get the expression of that deficiency. So, what I mean is, you know, we've all heard that, um, uh, disease, you know, travels in families, or you might have genetically inherited hypertension, or genetically inherited hypothyroid, genetically inherited drug and alcohol addiction, diabetes, um, depression, anxiety. These things tend to run in families, so we've accepted the myth in most cases that these are genetically inherited diseases. But think about this. The next time one of your listeners gets told that, "Oh, you have genetically inherited hypertension," what we call, uh, idiopathic hypertension, or, "genetically inherited hypothyroid," or if you have this genetically inherited disease or that genetically inherited disease, stop your physician and say, "Well, wait a minute. We- we've mapped the entire human genome, um, so we know every gene in the human body. Can you tell me what disease I inherited from my ancestor that's actually causing this condition?" And watch their face go blank, because in the majority of cases, we have accepted that disease travels in families when it's actually not the disease being passed from generation to generation. It is the inability for their body to refine a certain raw material which causes a deficiency which leads to that disease. So, in other words, there's not a single compound known to mankind, not one, n- no mineral, vitamin, amino acid, protein, carbohydrate, no nutrient of any kind, no element known to man, that

3. 10:36 – 22:27

   Why are you so passionate about this?

   1. GBGary Brecka10:36

      enters the human body and is used in the format that we put it in. Everything that we put into our bodies gets taken in by the body and converted into the usable form. If you cannot make this conversion, you have a deficiency, and it is this deficiency that leads to these conditions. And so, if you go hunting for that deficiency and you supplement not for the sake of supplementing but you supplement for the sake of deficiency, magic things happen in human beings. There is a superhuman inside of every person listening to this podcast, and if they actually were able to test themselves, do a genetic test and look at what's called their methylation, how their body refines raw materials, and they were able to replace the deficiency that is holding their body back from creating adequate levels of neurotransmitter and achieving normal mood, moving, um, uh, contents through the gut and achieving normal gut function, um, elevating emotional state, deepening their sleep, quieting their mind, all of these conditions that society has labeled different pathologies and disease, uh, then they would begin to thrive in a way that they just never thought possible.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett11:45

      It's so blatantly clear how passionate you are about this subject matter, which begs the question... You know, I- I remember when I was reading through your story, I- I uncovered that you'd read s- by- hundreds of peer-reviewed papers. I think the quote was something along the lines of, um, if there's a peer-reviewed paper on the subject matter of biohacking and, um, disease and longevity and those kinds of things, you've basically read it. So, this begs the question to me, like, why is one individual so unbelievably passionate about this subject matter, and-I would like you to take me as early as you possibly can to answer that question, in your own life.

   3. GBGary Brecka12:23

      Mm.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett12:23

      Where did your obsession, passion, where was it fostered at, fostered and nurtured so that you spent and committed your life to this subject matter? Where did that begin?

   5. GBGary Brecka12:32

      So it actually began... I, I grew up on a, a very large tobacco farm. My f- my father was a navy captain, my mom was a flight attendant, she worked for the airlines. But we had a, uh, a farm that we leased out to other farmers, and surrounding this 300 acre tobacco farm were all kinds kinds of animal farms. There were cattle farms, there were chicken farms, there was horse farms. And I was an only child, um, my nearest neighbor was miles away. In fact, from my home you couldn't even see another house, from my parents' house, until I was in my early 20s. And so for me to, to play with another child, I had to get on a bike and spend half an afternoon biking to their house. So I got very familiar with the farm, and I was always just fascinated by the veterinarians that would come onto these farms and fix horses, and fix cattle, and fix sheep, and fix chickens. And I always thought it was so cool that these animals could be laying on the ground, seemingly about to die, and the veterinarian would come, come on board and do a bunch of stuff. And the next thing you know, this horse was up, and a few days later it was galloping back in the field. Or, um, you had all kinds of strange things that would happen on this farm, and there was always someone arriving to just fix it. And I started to get fascinated with medicine, I guess, in that way. I always found it as a way to take something that was sick and helpless, and sort of help it get back to normal function. And I found out in the eighth grade, uh, sometime during my eighth grade year, that, uh, I was clinically photographic. So I have a clinical level of photographic recall, which is different from just having a, uh, visual memory. I'm, I'm clinically photographic, so I have a voluminous capacity to recall things that I read, even if I don't understand them. Which is why I never read for pleasure. Um, I'm very cautious about what I read, I'm very cautious about what I look at, um, because I record everything. So I can't be flying on American Airlines and take the seatback magazine out and read the seatback magazine, because three months later I'll tell you where the sales center is for a condo project in Buenos Ares, you know? So I can, I can fill my brain with senseless things like that and record it and regurgitate it, um, or I can fill it full of things that, that fascinate me, and so I naturally gravitated towards science.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett14:46

      Is that what they call a photograph- photographic memory?

   7. GBGary Brecka14:48

      Photographic memory is usually someone that can remember seven numbers in sequence, they have extremely good recall for things that they visualize. Clinically photographic is being able to regurgitate voluminous amounts of information with incredible accuracy.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett15:05

      Oh. (laughs)

   9. GBGary Brecka15:05

      So I still remember, you know, section 15.2, sub-paragraph B of my first employment contract that I signed 28 years ago. Um-

   10. SBSteven Bartlett15:13

       Really?

   11. GBGary Brecka15:14

       Really. Yeah, I remember it, I remember that, it was actually with a trading firm, um, that I signed it with. So, you know, when I read peer-reviewed papers, um, in scientific journals, uh, it doesn't make me more intelligent than someone, because very often I can recall information that I don't understand, so I can regurgitate voluminous amounts of information. So subjects that rely on rote memorization like chemistry, biology, neurobiology, microbiology, a lot of these sciences don't actually make sense, right? They, you just have to memorize how they operate. Chemistry, in a lot of ways, doesn't make sense, right? Um, you just have to remember what happens when you put these two elements together, they create this. Or you know, when you pull a carbon bond, or you double a carbon bond here, or a hydrogen bond there, that you, you, that the molecule shifts in this way. And so I gravitated towards science. I got my undergraduate degree in biology.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett16:07

       How did you do? (laughs)

   13. GBGary Brecka16:08

       Um, I did very well, I actually found it quite a breeze (laughs) -

   14. SBSteven Bartlett16:12

       (laughs)

   15. GBGary Brecka16:13

       ... um, my, you know, when I was an undergrad my, y- you know, biology and chemistry were considered the toughest majors, and I went to Branch Campus, University of Maryland. A lot of my roommates were political science, not busting on political science majors at all, or philosophy, or psychology, and they got to party all the time, and you know, I had really intense classes, you know, morphology of thallopides and chemistry and, and you know, biomechanics and, and science and, and a lot of plant biology courses and human biology courses. But I was able to have the same kind of social life that they were because I would, you know, record a lecture and then I would regurgitate the lecture when I needed during, during a test.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett16:52

       Is it a gift or a curse? Because with all things in life that appear to be gifts, there's often some kind of hidden curse.

   17. GBGary Brecka16:58

       Well the curse is that I can't... I, I rarely read for pleasure. Um, it's very difficult to read for pleasure because I record all of that information, so when I'm going in to read a book, you know, a lot of people read a book that they didn't really like, and it doesn't stay with them, um, or they read a fiction novel that doesn't really give them any benefit and it's not, doesn't, doesn't feed them, but they do it to relax or they do it for entertainment. For me, it would take up storage, right? I would, I, I would record that information, so there's no need for me to have that information in my possession. I, I find other ways to, to relax and, and, and meditate and unwind, but reading for pleasure just, just not one of them, so I guess that could be a curse. But, you know, and then I went to grad school for human biology, I went to another four years of school for human biology, so I had eight years of science, and then I was, um, either going to go into chiropractic or into orthopedic medicine. I really liked the idea of orthopedics because, again, an orthopedic surgeon was somebody that fixed people and, you know, an internist was somebody that just managed disease. You know, they took a obese, hypertensive diabetic, uh, patient, and they just kind of managed their case throughout their lifetime, but I felt like an orthopedic was somebody that, you know, you came in and you had a broken leg and they, you know, fixed your broken leg and you were back to normal. I like the idea of fixing things and, and kind of returning function back to people. And I took some time off-... uh, you know, after I got my human biology degree, and I ended up going into a, a rare area of science, um, this mortality science, um, for life insurance and secondary life insurance where you would take medical records and demographic data, and you would use this in what's called a probabilistic model to predict life expectancy. And I was fascinated by it 'cause I loved the big data nature of it, and for years, I actually subscribed to the fact that this was just data, and that I had no influence on this person's outcome. I didn't put them in this position, nor am I responsible for getting them out of this position. But eventually, I think as both my faith grew and my awareness of the fact that there were human beings on the other side of these spreadsheets, I finally made a conscious decision to say, "What am I doing? I'm gonna spend the rest of my life just predicting death, um, for the monetary gain of an investor?" Versus taking this information and helping people live healthier, happier, longer, more fulfilling lives, because by studying medical records, and, you know, I read, you know, eight to 10 hours a day, six days a week, thousands and thousands and thousands of medical records and extracted from those how it would impact somebody's outcome of their life, you know, how, how it would impact the length of or the, the shortness of the duration of their life, their health span or their lifespan. And once you realize there's human beings on the other side of this spreadsheet, you start to feel like you're sitting behind a thick glass wall just watching blind people walk into traffic. And towards the tail end, I used to artificially kind of manipulate the record. I would say, "Well, what if I, what if I artificially fix this person's D3 deficiency? What if I cured the anemia? What if I actually, um, noticed that they had a gene mutation called MTHFR, and instead of trying to fix them with folic acid, I fixed them with methylfolate," and you would just see the life expectancy jump.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett20:27

       In the model?

   19. GBGary Brecka20:28

       In the model.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett20:29

       Yeah.

   21. GBGary Brecka20:30

       Right? And this model was based on very large data.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett20:32

       Mm-hmm.

   23. GBGary Brecka20:33

       So it was very likely to have a real-life impact. And when I say we predicted death to the month, it was b- based on that patient's current position, and doesn't mean they c- they couldn't walk out the, the next day and, and, and get hit by a bus or, or die in a commercial airline, you know, disaster or something like that. But there's, there were standard deviations that would account for those kinds of risks. What the insurance company wanted to quantify, or the annuity company or the reverse mortgage company wanted to quantify was, based on this person's... everything that we know about this person right now, the function of their liver, the slightly hypoxic-anemic profile that they have, the deficiencies that they have in vitamin D3, the suppressed immune system, um, you know, the elevated visceral fat, the body mass index, and the bone mineral density, all... Based on all of these things, when do these things all meet and actually cause a catastrophic event, catastrophic event? And there were things called mortality debits and comorbidity debits, and, you know, we put all these together, and I really liked the data of it. But realizing that there were human beings on the other side of this spreadsheet just woke me up, and I said, "You know, I have this chasm of knowledge. Even though I'm not a physician, I have a fundamental understanding of human physiology. I'm fascinated by human physiology and ways that we can improve, um, lifespan and health span, and so why wouldn't I take this gift and get into an industry like wellness or functional medicine where I could actually make a difference, where instead of predicting death, we could extend life, and in doing so, help people live healthier, happier, longer lives, more fulfilling lives, get rid of a lot of the ailments that people suffer from?" I mean, when you, when you start to peel back the way that modern medicine defines a lot of conditions that we have, you know, take, um, depression, or anxiety, or ADD, or ADHD, because a lot of your listeners are probably entrepreneurs, and a lot of entrepreneurs have very active minds,

4. 22:27 – 33:59

   ADHD & Anxiety

   1. GBGary Brecka22:27

      and they've been told they have attention deficit disorder, right, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Well, attention deficit disorder is not an attention deficit at all. Um, we've misdefined these things. It's an attention overload disorder, because you see, in the human brain, we don't just create thought. We also dismantle thought. It is just as important for you to be able to create a new thought or feeling as it is to dismantle it, right? And if you don't degrade thought, called catecholamines, if you don't degrade them, then there's a gene that governs this, catechol-O-methyltransferase. If you create thought at a faster rate than you degrade thought, then the mind gets very clouded. And so attention deficit disorder is attention overload disorder. It's too many windows open at the same time. So modern medicine says, "Well, if the mind's racing, let's put an amphetamine into the body, race the central nervous system to match the pace of the mind," and this is a very poor choice, right? Because eventually, this will burn you out. It can actually change the neuroplasticity of the brain. Rather than put the right amino acids back into the body, the right B-complex blend, um, the right methylated folates so that the mind can actually begin to quiet.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett23:36

      What would you say to someone that says that ADHD is also, in some ways, a result of some early trauma?

   3. GBGary Brecka23:42

      Well, you know, trauma's always fascinating to me. Trauma can trigger methylation. Trauma can interrupt the methylation cycle, right? But the, the idea in modern medicine that you have some kind of trauma, you have a disrupted relationship with your mother, for example, and that somehow, we're going to go and put neuroplasticity-altering chemicals into the brain, and it's gonna fix this 30-year broken relationship you have with your mother, to me, it doesn't-

   4. SBSteven Bartlett24:08

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   5. GBGary Brecka24:09

      ... make any sense. (laughs)

   6. SBSteven Bartlett24:10

      Yeah. (laughs)

   7. GBGary Brecka24:10

      Right? And so, uh, it's not at all to pooh-pooh trauma, to, to, to put trauma down. Depression really exists. Anxiety really exists. But, but if you actually look at how we define these conditions... Take depression, for example. We define depression, at least in America, we define depression as an inadequate supply of serotonin, right? So if you are low in serotonin, you're by definition depressed. So then you would think that the solution would be to raise serotonin.Right? If we define depression as low serotonin, you'd think that the solution would be to raise serotonin. But that's not what we do. We take people that are depressed and we put them on SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. And what these do is they ration what little serotonin these people have, so by definition, it never raises serotonin. So by definition, it never ends depression. I mean, I have, I have clients come in to see me all the time and, and, and in our clinical team, and then I'll say, "Well, how long have you been on antidepressants?" And they say, "15 years. 18 years." You know, my first question is, "Well, when did you think it was gonna kick in?" Right? So if we understand that serotonin is actually methylated in the gut, this process that I'm talking about is called methylation. We actually make serotonin from an amino acid called tryptophan, the one that's famous for making you sleepy after Thanksgiving dinner. I know you guys don't have Thanksgiving in the UK, but I'm (laughs) from America, but, um, so because we eat a lot of turkey on Thanksgiving, and turkey has a lot of tryptophan. So when you take, um, tryptophan, methylate it into the neurotransmitter serotonin, of which 90% resides in your gut-

   8. SBSteven Bartlett25:35

      Methylate is basically processing.

   9. GBGary Brecka25:37

      Yeah, the processing. It's like the refining-

   10. SBSteven Bartlett25:38

       Right.

   11. GBGary Brecka25:39

       ... process. Crude oil gets refined into gasoline. Amino acids get methylated into neurotransmitters.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett25:44

       Okay.

   13. GBGary Brecka25:45

       And so (clears throat) this process of methylation, when it's broken and, and it can be relatively easy to fix. When it's broken, it means that we have an impaired ability to create. We have an impaired ability to, um, refine a raw material, and it leads to this deficit. Well, serotonin, for example, 90% of it resides in your gut. So if you don't have it here, you can't have it here. So depression rarely begins in the outside environment. It usually begins in the gut. Now, it may be trauma that led to the deficiency, but the fix is not in a chemical or a synthetic or a pharmaceutical blocking the brain's capacity to uptake these neurotransmitters. The fix is in restoring adequate levels to the body so we can naturopathically make its way back up the vagus nerve and, and arrive to the brain. Simi- similar things are true with anxiety. I mean, if you actually have ever suffered from or know somebody who's suffered from anxiety, if you ask them three questions, you can find out very quickly that their anxiety is not coming from a cluster of symptoms. It's not coming from their outside environment. It is coming from within them. It's coming from their physiology. Right? I mean, if you know someone who's suffering from anxiety and you say, "Well, have you had anxiety on and off throughout your lifetime?" The most of the time, they'll say yes. And then if you say, "Can you point to the specific trigger that causes it?" very often, they'll say no. I'm, I mean, yes, I know some of my triggers, but I could be sitting in a podcast just like this in a very calm environment, there's no threats around, and all of a sudden, I get overwhelmed by anxiety. I can be driving home from work on an otherwise innocuous day and I can be overwhelmed by anxiety. Well, that is not coming from your outside environment, right? This is coming from a process called methylation, and it is caused from excess catecholamines entering the brain and an inability to down-regulate these, so the body's entering this mild fight-or-flight response without the presence of a fear. See, remember that as sophisticated as we like to think our brains are, it's really not. Our brain is very primal. You know what the brain cares about? The brain cares about survival, and so it doesn't care how fat or skinny you are, how pretty or ugly you are. It doesn't care about your skin, your hair. It cares about survival. And so when we understand that the brain does not know the difference between perception and reality, we start to understand how it can play tricks on us.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett28:01

       Mm-hmm.

   15. GBGary Brecka28:01

       So I always use the example that let's say you drove home tonight and you got out of your car. When you got home, you got out of your car and somebody was standing in front of you with a knife. It's a very real threat, right? You'd have a fight-or-flight response. Your pupils would dilate. Your heart rate would increase. Your extremities would flood with blood. Your hearing would get very acute. Your brain would flood with catecholamines. You are getting ready to fight or flight. But you could also be laying on the 30th floor of a condo building in bed and start thinking about getting eaten by a shark. There is zero chance of a shark getting out of the ocean, going up a 30th floor elevator-

   16. SBSteven Bartlett28:34

       Mm-hmm.

   17. GBGary Brecka28:34

       ... right? Coming into your condo and biting you in that bed, but you can have the exact same response.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett28:38

       If you're watching a movie or something.

   19. GBGary Brecka28:40

       Exactly. So one is entirely real. One is entirely perceived. The physiologic response is identical. So now once we understand this, now we begin to understand how I can feel the presence of a fear, which is what anxiety is. It's a fear of something happening in the future. Usually, it's not going to happen. Usually hasn't happened in the past and is not likely to happen. But it's, it's this fear starts to build up. You start to get very anxious. It can actually change your heart rate, um, to the point where you can... Panic attacks can land you in a hospital. Um, or it can be mild enough that it just causes you anxiousness and mild anxiety, but there's no presence of a fear. And so you start trying to correlate it to your outside environment. It starts to drive you crazy because you go, "Well, I don't get it. I'm on vacation with my wife and my, or my spouse and my kids and I'm in the resort of a lifetime. I've been here 1,000 times. I love this place. There's no reason I should feel like this." But all of a sudden, you have this feeling of anxiousness, anxiety. So these are, these are lack of raw material in the human body. My mission is to try to help people by taking a genetic test, um, once in their lifetime, find out where is methylation broken, and then stop supplementing just for the sake of supplementing and start supplementing for this deficiency so your body can thrive.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett29:57

       In the case of people that are listening to this now and they can pinpoint the moments where they've gotten anxiety, so say they've... I remember I had one guest on the podcast, (blows raspberries) maybe two years ago, and after he became famous, he developed social anxiety.

   21. GBGary Brecka30:10

       Mm-hmm.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett30:10

       So he, whenever he would be with, around a lot of people, he would feel that sense of anxiety. And then from that sort of catalystic moment, then when he was at home, he would get the same rush of anxiety. But he would point to that catalystic moment of becoming famous, and then some things had happened in his life, and then he'd get anxiety at home when nothing was going on.

   23. GBGary Brecka30:28

       Right.

   24. SBSteven Bartlett30:28

       In that situation, what's the, the nutrient-

   25. GBGary Brecka30:30

       So there you go. So, so now you've, you've, you've interrupted methylation because there's one where there's the presence of fear and there's one where there isn't, there's the absence of a fear. So...To be very specific, anxiety, true anxiety does exist, but you can point to the specific trigger that causes it. So for example, if you, if you have a fear of heights and you walk to the edge of a 30th floor balcony and look over it, you're gonna feel anxiety. Yeah. If you're claustrophobic and you step on a really crowded elevator, you're gonna feel anxiety. But if you're claustrophobic and you're sitting at home, and you start to become overwhelmed with anxiety- Yeah. ... this is actually not coming from that trigger. This is coming from your physiology. And the way that we deal with stress, right, like cortisol, when you measure cortisol levels, cortisol's not really a measure of how much stress is in your life. It's a measure of your body's reaction to stress. So why are some people more resilient to stress and don't have anxiety attacks, and why are other people not as resistant? Again, this is not to say that if you didn't have y- a violent attack in your life or, or a terrible car accident that sometimes when you've had a, you know, um, a, a vehicle accident, you approach an intersection, the, the, the re- the memory of having been T-boned- Mm. ... you know, recently and badly injured is going to give you anxiety. But the majority of people are not suffering from that type of hyper-specific situational anxiety. They're suffering from something called generalized anxiety or idiopathic anxiety, which means of unknown origin. So for somebody who's very famous and gets into a, a crowd and doesn't know who's coming at them, that's a very... I wouldn't even define that as anxiety. That's a very primal, instinctual reaction to a real fear. Mm. Right? Just like walking to the edge of a 30th floor balcony. What's not a primal reaction to a real fear is when there's no presence of a fear, especially if that incident has never happened and you aren't even sure what you are afraid of or why you are anxious or why you have anxiety, then this is coming from your physiology. So how would you treat that? You'd look at the different, uh, there, there are five major actionable genes that I like to look at and their, what's called their suballeles. And when you find out what they're deficient in, you start to supplement with things like SAMe, S-adenosyl methionine, um, methylated forms of vitamins, L-methionine, the, the proper balance of B complex, um, methylated forms of folic acid or folate called methylfolate. And what happens is now the body has the capacity to degrade these neurotransmitters that are causing this fight or flight, this group of neurotransmitters called catecholamines, and the anxiousness that follows. And you'll find that the majority of people that suffer from idiopathic anxiety or generalized anxiety, because of low serotonin, they also have gut issues. Um, you show me a person that's truly depressed, and I'll show you somebody that's also suffering from severe gut issues, either gas, or bloating, or diarrhea, constipation, irritability, cramping, because the same neurotransmitters that affect these emotional states also are responsible for the motility of the gut, the speed of the gut. This is the most overlooked thing in all of bariatric medicine, because people that believe that they have all of these allergies, "Well, I'm allergic to wheat, soy, corn, dairy, blueberries, bananas, uh, you know, gluten," yes, sometimes those individual allergies do exist, but the majority of time, even if you talk to somebody who says, "Yeah, I, I, I get bloated," or

5. 33:59 – 38:24

   Gut motility

   1. GBGary Brecka33:59

      "I deal with gas or cramping or diarrhea or constipation or irritability. I deal with all of these gut issues, irritable bowel syndrome, uh, Crohn's, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, all these names that we give to conditions of the gut," when you ask them, "Well, what are you allergic to?" And they give you this laundry list of things, and then you ask them another question and say, "Well, if you're really allergic to corn, is there ever a time that you can eat corn and not have a reaction?" The majority of the time people will say yes. Okay, well, right there, you know you don't have an allergy. Allergies are not transient. Allergies are consistent. All right? You don't wake up Monday morning and being allergic to milk, and then you're un-allergic on Wednesday afternoon and then re-allergic on Saturday morning. But what happens when people have gut issues that they can't explain is they always correlate it to what they last ate, and it's hard to make this connection. They're like, "Well, wait a second. I ate the same thing Monday and I was fine, and I ate the identical food on Wednesday and I blew up like a tick." So this is not an allergy. This has to do with the motility of the gut. So if you don't know what gene mutation you have that is causing a deficiency, then you don't know what to supplement with to restore gut motility. But once you do, the gut goes back to its normal pace. What's gut motility? It's the pace of the gut. So if you remember, Henry Ford was actually not made famous for the automobile. He was made famous for something called the assembly line. So the assembly line was just a glorified conveyor belt, right? And when you walked into his factory, they put a part on it on one end, and about every six feet, somebody stood and tinkered with that part. So it went to me. I tinkered with it. It moved to the guy to my right. He did something to it, moved to the guy to his right. And by the time it reached the end of that conveyor belt, it was fully assembled. This is very analogous to how the human intestinal tract works. It's 30 feet long. It's a giant conveyor belt. You put parts on it at one end as they exit the stomach in a very acidic environment, and it moves slowly towards the rectum. And before it exits the rectum, it's in a relatively alkaline environment. So instead of having people standing along a conveyor belt, you have bacteria that are graded by pH. The sequence is very important. So imagine what would happen if Henry Ford walked into his factory one day and doubled the speed of the conveyor belt. The entire assembly line would break down, not because there's anything wrong with the parts, the contents, not because there's anything wrong with the people that are working there, the bacteria, but because you changed the speed. What if he went in there one day and reversed the, the conveyor belt? What if he just ran it in the opposite direction? The- Screw up. It would screw the whole thing up, right? So by changing the pace of the gut, the speed of the gut, the conveyor belt, I've, I've ruined this sequence of events, and I spend a lifetime trying to figure out what's wrong with the parts, what's wrong with the workers, what's wrong with the conveyor belt itself. Nothing.It's how quickly or slowly it's running because the motility, this peristaltic activity is affected. And once you supplement for this deficiency and you return that activity to normal, you find that all of a sudden these strange allergies eviscerate and all of this gas and bloating and diarrhea, constipation and irritability and all of this inability to equate things that I'm eating back to what is going on in my gut seem to go away. It's, it's true with all kinds of conditions. You know, we, we have subscribed in this world to the fact that we are so affected by disease and pathology, and once I get you to, to subscribe to the fact that you have a disease, I can get you to subscribe to a lifetime of medication. You know, this is true in hypertension, you know, it's another huge, you know, we think genetically inherited disease. And a lot of families have, you know, grandfather had high blood pressure. Um, Dad had high blood pressure, now the son has high blood pressure. So they go, "Oh, it's genetic. Genetically inherited high blood pressure." Okay, well what gene is being passed down from these generations to cause this? Well, they don't know. Okay, well then we know all of the genes, so if we don't know what gene it is, then let's look at the methylation genes, and let's look at the genes in the human body that refine raw materials. Because if you have a certain deficiency, for example, in hypertension, very often, not always, but very often, it's, it's caused by elevated levels of an amino acid called homocysteine. You have it in your bloodstream right now, I have it in my bloodstream, every listener to this podcast has homocysteine in their blood. Because we, we... in, in the process of normally refining this amino

6. 38:24 – 52:42

   Vitamin deficiencies

   1. GBGary Brecka38:24

      acid into something called methionine, we, um, we keep this level at a reasonable level. But when you can't break homocysteine down, it rises. When homocysteine rises, it's very irritating to what's called the endothelial lining of the blood vessel. It in- it irritates the lining of the blood vessel. Well, when you irritate a blood vessel, it clamps down. Well, if you make the pipes smaller in a fixed system, pressure goes up. You have 63,000 miles of blood vessel in your body, it doesn't take much narrowing to drive pressure up. And so these people end up with hypertension, high blood pressure, and they go to the doctor and the doctor does an EKG, it's normal. An EEG, it's normal. Stress EKG, it's normal. Cardiac cath, normal. Heart and lung sounds, normal. Dye contrast study, normal. The entire cardiac workup's normal. And then they still start pounding on the heart with medication because they can't figure out why the blood pressure's up. But they never actually looked at what raw material was missing in their body, not allowing them to bring the homocysteine down and allowing the vascular system to relax. As the vascular system relaxes, pressure returns to normal.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett39:32

      You spent 22 years at that insurance company-

   3. GBGary Brecka39:35

      Yeah.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett39:35

      ... looking at the database that you describe. Um, and as you're, as you're saying there, you know, much of the sort of medical profession and I think most of society-

   5. GBGary Brecka39:45

      And, yeah, and I don't wanna attack the medical profession. I really... uh, you know, I'm in no pla- I am a huge lover and believer in modern medicine. It's saved people very close to me. I mean, and trust me, if I hit a windshield at 20 miles an hour, I want a surgeon, I want painkillers, I'm going to the ER. (laughs) Um-

   6. SBSteven Bartlett39:59

      But there's been this kind of, this... it's not a preventative approach to disease-

   7. GBGary Brecka40:02

      Right.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett40:02

      ... that we've taken over the last couple of decades. It really is, you know, to, to put a bandaid on something that's e- that's emerged. And as you said at the start of this conversation, these predicaments, these, um, diseases emerge d- decades before we even see the symptoms oftentimes. Um, at the end of your 22 years at the insurance company, you started to look at these things which you call modifiable risk factors.

   9. GBGary Brecka40:23

      Yes.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett40:24

       What is a r- modifiable risk factor and what are the most common modifiable risk factors in your view?

   11. GBGary Brecka40:30

       Well, I mean, one of the most common ones that I saw was, um... Modifiable risk factor is, it's a risk factor that you have and if you changed it, it would have modified it, it would have a demonstrative impact on the trajectory of your life. So for example, anemia, right? Low, low hemoglobin, re- low red blood cell count, low oxygen transport in the blood will exacerbate just about any condition that you have, right? So if you are hypertensive and anemic, if you are diabetic and anemic, if you are morbidly obese and anemic, um, meaning you have low blood oxygen because you have low red blood cells, low hemoglobin, what if you could modify the anemia? Well, if you could modify the anemia, carry more oxygen in the blood, you'd be much more resilient to all of these conditions, right? So the same thing is true with d- dementia and Alzheimer's and, and, uh, cognitive function. As you impair cognitive function, you increase the incidence of all cause mortality. So a modifiable risk factor would be something like, (clears throat) um, looking at the levels of vitamin D3 in the blot, blood, in the body. So it's estimated that roughly 50% of the world's population is clinically deficient in vitamin D3.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett41:44

       Why is that important?

   13. GBGary Brecka41:45

       Um, well, vitamin D3 is the only vitamin that a human being can make on our own. There's hundreds of vitamins in your bloodstream right now. You're only capable of making one. And it's vitamin D3, cholecalciferol. We make it from sunlight and cholesterol. You don't even need to eat to make this vitamin. There is not a single cell in the entire human body that does not have a receptor site for this vitamin. It also acts like a hormone. It's a calcium transport molecule. It's enormously impactful in your, um, immune system. Clinical deficiency in vitamin D3 was, at one time, the second leading cause of morbidity in COVID. You know, when they said COVID disproportionately affected minorities, if you ever heard that?

   14. SBSteven Bartlett42:24

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   15. GBGary Brecka42:24

       It's true. So how did COVID disproportionately affect m- minorities? It wasn't like-

   16. SBSteven Bartlett42:28

       It's their pigment.

   17. GBGary Brecka42:28

       ... the virus didn't start going after certain minority populations. Well, it actually did, but it wasn't because they were n- minorities. It had to do with the pigment of their skin. The darker the pigmentation of your skin, the lower the vitamin D3. The lower the vitamin D3, the more compromised the immune system. The more compromised the immune system, the more susceptible you are to attack.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett42:47

       That suggests that if you have darker skin like I do, that you should spend more time in the sunlight.

   19. GBGary Brecka42:52

       Yes, it does.It absolutely does. I mean, you and I, just based on our skin tone, if you and I in a pair of board shorts went out and spent 30 minutes in sunlight, I would manufacture about 25,000 IUs, international units, of vitamin D3, you would manufacture about 3500.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett43:07

       Fucking hell, that's not fair.

   21. GBGary Brecka43:09

       (laughs) It's not fair.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett43:10

       We can run fast.

   23. GBGary Brecka43:11

       But, you also...

   24. SBSteven Bartlett43:12

       Yeah, we can jump. (laughs)

   25. GBGary Brecka43:12

       You also look better older-

   26. SBSteven Bartlett43:14

       Yeah.

   27. GBGary Brecka43:14

       ...and you don't age-

   28. SBSteven Bartlett43:15

       Yeah.

   29. GBGary Brecka43:15

       ...you don't get wrinkles as much-

   30. SBSteven Bartlett43:16

       With great, great basketball.
7. 52:42 – 59:35

   Gene mutations

   1. GBGary Brecka52:42

      heritage or Native American Indian or, or what have you, I mean, those are ... If you did a 23andMe you'd be able to find your ancestry, which is also your genetic history. That's not actionable information. When you look at the g- genes of methylation, right? And there are several of them. I look at five majors and a few minors. When you look at the genes of methylation, these are the genes that code for how materials are taken into the body, are refined into the usable form. And th- these are not mutations that you're going to suffer from, but what they do is they, they, they cause deficiencies to arise in the body, and it's this deficiency that leads to the expression of these conditions. And so when you can't adequately metholate neurotransmitters, you have a deficiency in a certain neurotransmitter. Any mood, any emotional state that requires that neuro- neurotransmitter, you can't assemble. If you have a deficiency in the ability to quiet the mind, then you have excess, um, neurotransmitters in the brain which cause it to stay in awakened state.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett53:51

      So that gene that is responsible for my loud mind when I go to sleep-

   3. GBGary Brecka53:55

      Mm-hmm.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett53:56

      D- do you have any idea the amount of people that have that particular gene?

   5. GBGary Brecka54:00

      Well, 44% of the world's population has a gene mutation called MTHFR, methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase. This is a genetic mutation that impairs the ability to convert folate into methyl folate, or folic acid into methyl folate. And that might not sound like a big deal, but folic acid is one of the most prevalent nutrients in the human diet. And the thing about folic acid is that folic acid is an entirely manmade chemical. Folic acid is not found anywhere on the surface of the Earth. You can't find folic acid anywhere naturally in nature, and yet we give folic acid to pregnant women when they get pregnant because we tell pregnant women that folic acid prevents neural tube defects. Well, that's patently false. Folic acid doesn't prevent anything. Folic acid has to be converted first into tetrahydrofolate then dihydrofolate, but eventually it becomes something called methyl folate, and that prevents a neural tube defect. Well, what if, like 44% of the population and 44% of women, this woman has this gene mutation and you give her folic acid, the manmade version of folate, and she can't convert it?... into methylfolate. This is where postpartum depression develops, and you know, I have not seen a single peer-reviewed published clinical study linking elevated levels of, of, uh, hormones in female pregnancy to postpartum depression. But if you give a woman that can't methylate folic acid, 1400% of the daily allowance of folic acid, and she can't break it down, then she goes nuts. And then eventually, the pregnancy ends, the depression goes away, and so she blames it on the pregnancy, not on the vitamin. And you know, we do this over and over and over again. You know, we have in, in, in the modern industrial world, we try to synthesize what occurs naturally in nature in a laboratory. You know, there's three types of B12, right? The demethylcobalamin, hydroxycobalamin, methylcobalamin. These forms of B12 occur naturally in nature. There's one that we make synthetically in a laboratory, it's called cyanocobalamin. We make it from hydrogen cyanide. It is useless in the human body. The human body actually has to take it and convert it into the active form of B12 called hydroxycobalamin. And so a lot of times, the supplements that we're taking us are causing more harm than good, and we're taking them because a doctor said, "Well, I'm pregnant, my OB-GYN told me to take this synthetic chemical called folic acid" which it's always beyond me why anyone would think that something that we make in a laboratory that's entirely synthetic, that isn't natural, that isn't found anywhere on the surface of the earth could ever be required for optimal health. I mean, just in its, on its surface, that sounds strange to me. But you know, yet we do, and we don't understand this process of methylation. So if you... once you understand where your genetic mutations are, where the genetic inability to refine raw materials is, you can go about supplementing, targeted supplementing for that deficiency.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett56:55

      So you would recommend people take a genetic test to find out these answers, right?

   7. GBGary Brecka56:59

      I'd recommend everyone take that test once in their lifetime.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett57:03

      You know, I, I, I'm in the camp that we're... as humans, we're not broken. Like, we're not-

   9. GBGary Brecka57:07

      I totally agree with you.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett57:08

       You... do you know what I mean?

   11. GBGary Brecka57:09

       Yes.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett57:09

       And so whenever there's something going on in my body or, you know, a way that I am or a habit that I have that I'm like, "Oh, why do I do that?" I'm always trying to figure out the sort of, I guess, the ancestral reason why that might have helped me to survive or what's going on. So when I hear mutation, it soun- it sounds a little bit like broken to me.

   13. GBGary Brecka57:25

       Yeah, yeah. So I shouldn't use the... I mean, we, we use the term mutation, but basically, you know, in our ancestry, right, we pass on our entire genetic code, which a lot of that is hair color, eye color, skin color, um, you know, our, our, our heritage. But we also pass on how our body refines certain raw materials. And it's not to say that it's good or, or, or bad or, or broken or fixed, but there are certain, um, families and human beings that have an inability to refine certain raw materials. And if we could be aware of this, it is astounding what happens to human beings when you just give their body the raw material to do its job. You know, lots of people that have attention deficit disorder, have trouble sleeping, will... um, are... also have a tr- trouble with prioritization. They just don't know it. They'll say things like, "I work really well under pressure." Right? Most entrepreneurs say, "I work really well under pressure." Do you say that?

   14. SBSteven Bartlett58:21

       Oh my God.

   15. GBGary Brecka58:22

       Okay. So let me-

   16. SBSteven Bartlett58:22

       I only work when there is pressure.

   17. GBGary Brecka58:24

       Okay. So-

   18. SBSteven Bartlett58:25

       I was that kid in school that would only do the test when, you know, there was an hour left to go or, you know, the homework or whatever.

   19. GBGary Brecka58:30

       Yeah. So many entrepreneurs are that way. And, and when you say you work really well under pressure, physiologically, what you're saying is, "I lack the ability to set priorities internally. So I use external pressure to set my priorities."

   20. SBSteven Bartlett58:42

       Mm-hmm.

   21. GBGary Brecka58:42

       And why is that? It's because when you don't have the right methylated nutrients in the body, you lend equal weight to every thought that comes into your mind, right? So you could be working on, uh, you know, the deal, the joint venture business closing of a lifetime, right? And you got the contract, and you have 45 minutes to get it back to your lawyer. You know, the deal's permanently gonna go away. This is a life-changing deal. You've, you've waited for this your entire life. It's a very meaningful event. You're working your way through this legal document, and you look over at your phone, and there's an Instagram message. And you're like, "Oh, that's my neighbor's cousin's kid fishing in the lake."

   22. SBSteven Bartlett59:21

       (laughs)

   23. GBGary Brecka59:21

       You know, I wonder if he catches a fish. So you start looking at it, and you're like, "Is he still casting? Oh, he didn't catch it that time." Now meanwhile, this has gone from 45 minutes to 35 minutes, and now it's down to 25 minutes, and all of a sudden you go,

8. 59:35 – 1:10:17

   Saving Dana White's life

   1. GBGary Brecka59:35

      "Oh," you know, "Crap." You turn the phone off, which didn't mean anything anyway, and you focus all of your attention. And because you're very intelligent, and you, and you execute, and you can hyperfocus, you hyperfocus on this, and you worm your way through it. And one minute before the deadline, you hit the send button, the lawyer gets it, the deal goes through, and you go, (clapping) "I work really well under pressure." (laughs)

   2. SBSteven Bartlett59:56

      (laughs) What- what's that called? That process you've described there as... m- many people describe that as procrastination.

   3. GBGary Brecka1:00:01

      Mm-hmm. It's procrastination, but it's procrastination because you give equal weight to all of these different variants that come into your... um, that come into your, your field. So you actually give equal priority to very disequal events.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:16

      But also, you know, sometimes if I'm looking at that contract, the contract clause is a little bit difficult, and my attempt to maybe dis- uh, escape discomfort would be, "I'll just go do the dishes."

   5. GBGary Brecka1:00:27

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:27

      Right? And that... and so I had Nir Eyal on the podcast, he wrote a book called Indistractable, and he says, "We're creatures that... we're, we're not pleasure-seeking creatures. We're creatures that are avoiding discomfort, essentially."

   7. GBGary Brecka1:00:37

      I think that aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort. Could not agree with you more.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:44

      Let's use Dana White as an example.

   9. GBGary Brecka1:00:45

      Okay.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:46

       Because, you know, the reason why I came across your work is because of a clip that, you know, involved Dana White, and I'm sure you... I know you get this a lot because I've seen you, um, be asked about this in interviews, but for context for anybody listening, I don't know where I was or... ah, now I know what, what happened. My friend sent into a WhatsApp group a clip of Dana White talking about you.

   11. GBGary Brecka1:01:07

       Hmm.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:08

       And that's the clip that made me...... go down the rabbit hole.

   13. GBGary Brecka1:01:13

       Oh.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:13

       I watched that clip. I then did some research. I then watched a series of videos of you online talking about health. And I watched you asking audience members to stand up and name the pre- you know, the health issue they were suffering, and you on the spot told them what was missing from their, their life, their diet, whatever it might have been. You kind of diagnosed them in a way of, um... And then I reached out to you on Instagram, and that's why you're here. But if we go back-

   15. GBGary Brecka1:01:36

       Right.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:36

       ... to the start of that, it was that story that Dana White told that had me so compelled to, to reach out to you. For anybody that doesn't know, and there will be some people that don't know, Dana White is the president of the UFC-

   17. GBGary Brecka1:01:47

       Mm-hmm.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:47

       ... which is the, the, the big fighting tour- tournament where everybody kicks each other's heads in. So-

   19. GBGary Brecka1:01:51

       (laughs)

   20. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:52

       ... what's your take on the, the Dana White story?

   21. GBGary Brecka1:01:55

       So, Dana White is a, an example, I mean, he's just a celebrity example, but he is a shining example of the vast number of people, you know, men and women in his age category, that have given up on the capacity to thrive. They've accepted that they have hypothyroid, hypertension, they wake up sore and achy in the mornings, that they don't have a response to exercise, they have a little bit of spare tire, their brain foggy, they're on three or four medications. In his case, he was on seven medications at the time, three of which were for blood pressure. Um, he was on, you know, I think a thyroid medication. He was also on... He's been very public about this by the way.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:38

       Yeah.

   23. GBGary Brecka1:02:38

       And, and again, I have to say, I'm not licensed to practice medicine so it was my clinical team that, that came up with the diagnosis, and I communicated it to Dana. Um, I do train physicians to read blood work and genetic testing, but I can't practice medicine. But the, the point is that when I met Dana, all he wanted to do was for me to predict his life expectancy. And I hadn't done that in almost seven years. I left that industry for a reason. I don't do it anymore. The test that I do does not predict life expectancy. The genetic test and the blood work that I do will not tell you how long you're going to live. I have no interest in predicting death anymore. I only have an interest in extending life. And, you know, when, when Dana was only interested in me predicting his death, so I said, "Okay, for Dana White, I'll come out, I'll meet with you. I'll do a blood test on you, a gene test on you, I'll pull all your medical records, and I'll give you your life expectancy." But what I did was went out and got his blood work and his gene test, and, um, I was actually in bed at 1:30 in the morning, when the lab was running his blood work. And I've had seven life-threatening alert calls, um, in the middle of the night, because when you drop blood work off at the lab, the lab runs it through the night. If they find a life-threatening alert, they call the account holder, right? So, um, I owned the company, I was on the account. So Labcorp calls us at one o'clock, 1:30 in the morning says, "Hey, we have a life threatening alert on a patient." I was like, "Whoa. Um, what's the patient's name?" They said, "Last name's White." I said, "Dana White?" And they said, "Yeah." And I go, "Wow. What's the, uh, life threatening alert?" And they said, "Triglycerides are almost 800." Now, triglyceride is a measure of blood fat, okay? It shouldn't be above 149. At 200 or 300, this is a cataclysmic level in the blood, especially in a fasted state. Okay? We pulled his blood in a fasted state. They weren't 400, they weren't 500, they weren't 600, they weren't 700. They were like 768. So they were... I mean, this is an enormous number. And so I said, "Okay, uh, I need to get the blood work over to the, you know, to the doctor." When they sent the, um, the blood work into the portal, I then saw that he was insulin resistant. He was hyperinsulinemic. He was pre-diabetic. He had skyrocketing levels of cholesterol. He had... He was hypertriglyceridemic. He was hyper-, um, homocysteinemic. This homocysteine that I told you elevates and causes the blood vessels to constrict. Um, I mean, he had all of these conditions. I literally at that moment booked a flight for 7:30 or 8:30 in the morning to head out and see him and, um, because I said I need to go see him in person. And I remember, I think his assistant called me and I was at the airport and she said, "Hey, Dana wants to know if his life expectancy's in." I go, "Well, I'm on my way to see him." (laughs) You know? Um, and she goes, "Oh God, is it like that?" I said, "Yeah, it's like that." And, uh, so I flew out to see him, and I sat down with Dana. And when we talked about the blood work, I didn't even explain the levels. I explained the symptom. Um, I did not know that he was on a CPAP machine, but I said, "I am surprised that you can actually sleep through the night," because he was so hypoxic. Um, red blood cell count, hemoglobin levels. "Uh, I'm surprised he can even sleep through the night without, like, just waking up choking, gagging." He's like, "Dude, I'm on a CPAP machine. I wake up every night, I throw up in the middle of the night. I throw up so much I'm losing my voice." Um, and I said, "This level of claudication, triglycerides in the bloodstream, I'm surprised you can even bend down and tie your shoes that it's not painful to tie your shoes." Not that it's not restrictive to tie your shoes, it's not painful, like it doesn't feel like the skin's going to peel off your legs. And he went, "What the fuck?" I mean, he slammed his hand down and he was like, "How did you..." You know, "How did you know that?" And I said, "Dana, your level of brain fog and fatigue right now has got to be at a crushing level of fatigue. I don't know how... The only thing getting you through the day is your own stubborn willpower. And I'm surprised you can remember anything from one minute to the next." And his whole staff was like, "Dude, he's so forgetful. He passes out in meetings. He's sleeping in the planes. He's gagging and snoring." Um, these were not things I necessarily knew about him. So I began to describe all the outcomes of these kinds of conditions, and I said, "Look, um, if, if you don't do what we're going to ask you to do for the next 10 weeks, you know, based on this blood work and the medical records that we pulled for the previous 10 years and the demographic data we pulled for 10 years, you have a life expectancy of 10.4 years."Um, you know, for a 52-year-old man to realize that he's not going to make it out of his 60s, a big realization. And he flipped a switch, a level of discipline that, you know, I haven't seen in a patient in a long time. He goes, "Dude, I'll do whatever you tell me to do." So we wrote a prescription ketogenic diet. I- I- I'm a fan of the keto diet. I don't think everybody needs to be on the keto diet. But, um, um, by prescription ketogenic diet, we wrote a keto diet right down to the grocery list, keto reset diet. And I said, "If it's literally, if it's not on here, you can't eat it, Dana. This is your grocery list. You go to the store, you buy this. You send your chef to the store to buy this. You make this. If it's not this recipe, if it's not on here, you literally can't eat it. Your only leeway is water and the supplements." And, um, and we started a- a process of- of balancing hormones, controlling his glycemic index, of using amino acids to bring down his level of homocysteine to actually try to fix the insulin resistance, to reduce his triglycerides. And in 10 weeks, he had a- such a material change in his blood work. I forget how much weight he had lost. I think he had lost almost 28 or 30 pounds at the time.

   24. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:21

       Thirty pounds, yeah.

   25. GBGary Brecka1:08:21

       He's over 40 pounds now. Um, by the end of the fifth month, he was completely off of every prescription medication he was on. He's down 44 pounds. He lost the C- you know, he's no longer using the CPAP machine. He no longer is pre-diabetic. He no longer has insulin resistance. He no longer has life-threatening levels of triglyceride. In fact, they're normal. His kidney function improved. His liver function improved. His immune system strengthened. He feels like a 35-year-old man again. His skin tone all improved. Um, his blood pressure returned to normal. He's not on any blood pressure medication. Uh, so his blood pressure returned to normal. And he was like, "Dude, I had no idea I could feel this good. I feel fricking amazing."

   26. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:01

       And his life expectancy?

   27. GBGary Brecka1:09:03

       Almost tripled.

   28. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:05

       Almost tripled?

   29. GBGary Brecka1:09:05

       Almost tripled, just under 30 years.

   30. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:09

       When I heard this story about Dana White, and I saw he had gone from, respectfully, being a man that had a little bit of weight to-
9. 1:10:17 – 1:14:46

   Breath work

   1. GBGary Brecka1:10:18

      you can take off your shoes and contact the surface of the earth. And I'm talking about bare feet on soil, dirt, grass, sand. Because earthing and grounding is a very real thing. We actually discharge into the earth. We actually, human beings build up a charge. Do you know that pH, the acid-alkaline scale, pH stands for potential hydrogen? It's a charge. It's a complete fallacy that you can get alkaline by drinking alkaline water. That's the biggest marketing myth ever sold to the public. Um, but you can get alkaline by contacting the surface of the earth. So if you don't have 150 grand, which I don't expect anybody listening to this podcast to spend 150 grand, but he did. I said, "You need a mag- you need a PEMF mat so that you can be alkaline. You need to spend 10 minutes a day breathing, um, 95% O2 under mild exercise. And you need to lay in a red light therapy bed." So in the absence of the SuperHuman Protocol, you can become superhuman by contacting the earth and by learning to do breath work.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:15

      Let's talk about breath work.

   3. GBGary Brecka1:11:16

      I spend eight minutes every day doing a very specific series of breath work, and I'll teach it to you now. Your- you said your wife is certified in them?

   4. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:23

      Yeah, my partner, she's a-

   5. GBGary Brecka1:11:24

      Yeah.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:24

      ... she's a breath work practitioner.

   7. GBGary Brecka1:11:25

      Oh, your partner?

   8. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:26

      Um, I've done breath work with her. I've done breath work with a few people, but n- n- no one's ever had the profound impact on me through breath work that she has. I've never shouted her out before, so I probably should. Her Instagram is @meloai, for anybody that's interested in breath work.

   9. GBGary Brecka1:11:41

      People do not realize the power of something that is so accessible, so free, and so easy to do, right? They- they want things to be more complicated, but it's not. And when I said the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease, it's absolutely true. Remember that every elevated emotional state that a human being can experience actually has in its molecular structure, oxygen is a component of that emotion. So if you look at the difference between passion, elation, joy, arousal, libido, and anger, for example, it's usually only one neurotransmitter, and the presence of oxygen. The reason why no human being has ever woken up laughing is because you don't have the oxidative state to experience laughter right out of deep sleep. But can you wake up angry? Yes. Because anger doesn't require oxygen. So every morning, contact the surface of the earth and then spend eight minutes doing... I do a Wim Hof style of breath work. I give credit where credit's due. He's the father of breath work as far as I'm concerned. So I do three rounds of 30 deep breaths, like obnoxiously deep breaths. And I start by trying to take my belly button and pull my belly button out towards the wall. Imagine there's a string pulling your belly button towards the wall, and then you- you fill from the lobes of the lung to the apex of the lung, and then you exhale and just relax. (exhales) (inhales) (exhales) God knows what they think we're doing out there.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:09

       (laughs)

   11. GBGary Brecka1:13:09

       (laughs) Right outside this podcast, they're like, "A bunch of freako-... I knew it was a cult."

   12. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:13

       (laughs) I knew it was a cult.

   13. GBGary Brecka1:13:15

       I knew he was a cult leader. But, um, so you do three rounds of 30 breaths. On the 30th breath, you exhale and you hold.... allow the carbohydrate rep- receptor to reset. When you don't feel you can hold it anymore, you take a deep breath in (inhales deeply) , you hold again, and then you let it out slow (exhales deeply) , and you start again. I would suggest that you start with three rounds of five breaths, then work to 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30. If you get lightheaded, this is a good sign that the oxygen tension is changing in your brain. If your fingers and toes get tingly, this is a good sign that you're changing the oxygen tension. If you feel some kind of heat, uh, temperature change in your neck, these are all great signs. You will get to the point where you can actually hold your breath for two or three minutes, sometimes four minutes between rounds of breathwork. Um, and then the last thing is to expose yourself to natural sunlight. First thing in the morning, the first 45 minutes of the day, God gives us a very, very special type of light. It's called first light. There's no UVA, there's no UVB rays in this light, um, so that it's not the damaging rays from the sun. It still generates vitamin D3. It has a positive effect on cortisol, on vitamin D3. First light is the best way to reset your circadian rhythm. So by contacting the surface of the Earth, doing breathwork, and getting first light, you can get to the same place that Dana White did with a 150 grand in equipment.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:34

       What about oxygen masks? 'Cause I, I'll be honest, when I read, when I read, um, about the Dana story, I went on Amazon soon after and I was like, "I'm just gonna buy an oxygen canister."

   15. GBGary Brecka1:14:43

       (laughs)

   16. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:43

       Good idea, bad idea?

   17. GBGary Brecka1:14:44

       Um, so what you wanna do is,

10. 1:14:46 – 1:17:40

    Cold water plunging

    1. GBGary Brecka1:14:46

       um, you know, you get an oxygen concentrator, which takes 21% oxygen from... which is what-

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:50

       Mm.

    3. GBGary Brecka1:14:50

       ... the concentration at sea level, it turns it into 95% O2 and it fills this bag.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:55

       Right.

    5. GBGary Brecka1:14:55

       And it can refill this bag over and over and over again. Okay? I use one called the HyperMax. You can, you can see it on my Instagram. And, um, you turn... you plug it in, you turn it on, it fills this bag. And then you go and you put an oxygen mask on, and you exercise for 10 minutes, only 10 minutes. Cycle for three minutes, s-, uh, sprint for 30 seconds, cycle for three minutes, sprint for 30 seconds, cycle three minutes, sprint 30 seconds, and you're done. And what this does is it raises something called the partial pressure, the, the storage of oxygen in your blood. The only two-time, two-time Nobel Laureate prize winner in, in medicine, Dr. Otto Warburg, won both of his Nobel Prizes for his work in exercise with oxygen therapy. You wanna be a superhuman, do mild exercise every day while breathing 95% O2. It's important that you're exercising. And then after that, you move into a red light therapy bed, photobiomodulation. Um, so, you know, if you don't have access to a HyperMax oxygen machine, just do the breathwork. Get the breath in, you know, exchange the oxygen tension in the tissues, and expose yourself to first light.

Episode duration: 1:33:44