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Gary Brecka: Sitting All Day Can Lead To EARLY DEATH (Watch THIS If You Have A Desk Job)

Today, Jay is joined by Gary Brecka, the Co-Founder and Chief Biologist of 10X Health and the founder of The Ultimate Human.

Gary BreckaguestJay Shettyhost

Apr 1, 20241h 9mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

70 min read · 13,913 words

0:00 – 1:13
Intro
1. GBGary Brecka
  In the industry that I was previously associated with, which was large life insurance, if the database that I had access to could see the light of day, it would upend modern medicine in a way that would be catastrophic. We could tell the insurance company how long you had to live to the month.
2. JSJay Shetty
  The human biologist, Gary Brecka.
3. GBGary Brecka
  He's gonna make you superhuman. We know that sedentary lifestyle is the leading cause of all-cause mortality. You're breathing in that repetitively expired air, dropping that oxidative state. You're making the blood more hospitable to disease.
4. JSJay Shetty
  [dramatic music] Hey, everyone. I've got some huge news to share with you. In the last 90 days, 79.4% of our audience came from viewers and listeners that are not subscribed to this channel. There's research that shows that if you want to create a habit, make it easy to access. By hitting the subscribe button, you're creating a habit of learning how to be happier, healthier, and more healed. This would also mean the absolute world to me and help us make better, bigger, brighter content for you and the world. Subscribe right now.
5. GBGary Brecka
  The number one health and wellness podcast.
6. JSJay Shetty
  Jay Shetty.
7. GBGary Brecka
  Jay Shetty.
8. JSJay Shetty
  The one, the only Jay Shetty.
9. GBGary Brecka
  [laughs]
1:13 – 9:17
Predicting Your Lifespan
1. JSJay Shetty
  You talk about the ability to predict how long someone will live.
2. GBGary Brecka
  Mm-hmm.
3. JSJay Shetty
  And that sounds fascinating and crazy at the same time.
4. GBGary Brecka
  It does.
5. JSJay Shetty
  How is that possible?
6. GBGary Brecka
  Well, first of all, it's based on large data, and it wasn't me just looking at blood work and gene tests and saying, "I can tell you how many more months you have left on Earth." But if we got, in the industry that I was previously associated with, which was large life insurance, if we got 10 years of medical records on you and 10 years of demographic data, we could tell the insurance company how long you had to live to the month. And there are enormous companies that do this. Uh, the biggest one is probably a Fasano & Associates. But this is based on very, very large pools of data. And remember that life insurance companies have data that no other financial services enterprise has, no other, you know, bank has. CDC doesn't have it. Collegiate universities that are doing longevity studies don't have it. And that is that they know the day, the date, the time, the location, and the cause of death for hundreds of millions of lives. And they have blood work on these people. They have, um, you know, very in-depth, um, analytics on their demographic data. If you've ever applied for a large life insurance company or a large life insurance policy, let's say five million, 10 million, $25 million policy, there was, at some point, somebody determining not where you were on an actuarial curve, but your specific mortality. And the way that it's done is you start with an actuarial curve, right? So if you're a 35-year-old male, you have a life expectancy of X. If you're a 28-year-old female, you have a life expectancy of Y. The question is not where are you on that curve, but what is your specific mortality? And it's incredible how big data trends can actually predict and not only the onset of and the severity of, but how quickly you will succumb to certain disease conditions. And what became glaringly apparent to me was that, you know, if the database that I had access to during that 20-plus-year career could see the light of day, it would permanently change the face of humanity. It, it would upend modern medicine in a way that would be catastrophic because they have real data. You know, so i- if you went to your, um, cardiologist, for example, and he put, uh, some heart stents in your heart and you left his office, um, you may or may not ever see him again. He doesn't know if something happened to you three days later or 30 years later and you-- if you passed because of complications related to the heart stent or, or just died of happy ripe old age. But the insurance company know exactly day, date, time, location, and cause of death, and you can triangulate that back into the record, and you can see where the mistakes were made either in diagnostics, as we know medical error is the third leading cause of death, and that doesn't mean that doctors are out to kill people, um, or that the healthcare system is out to kill people. What we know that it's completely overburdened, and sometimes medical error occurs. It just happens to occur at a rate that, in the United States at least, is the, is the third leading cause of death. And if you ever wanna question whether or not insurance companies are good at predicting mortality, just look at what happened during the 2008 and 2009 financial services crisis. We had, we had 364 banks fail. You didn't have a single life insurance company fail. In the United States, a valid death claim in America has never failed to have been paid. Now, th-that's an impressive statistic, but y-you also have to realize that only 2% of life insurance policies ever pay a death claim. 98% of all life insurance policies lapse. So, uh, I guess I, you know, really belabor that point, but, you know, the, the science of mortality is some of the most accurate science in the world. And if you really boil it down to the sum of its components, you find that it's predicting where processes in the body that are running on parallel tracks will finally converge, right? What we call comorbidities. When that happens, there is a parabolic rise in the ability to predict the terminal end of somebody's life. We know that, for example, all human beings leave this Earth the same way. We actually all die of the same thing. It's called hypoxia, lack of oxygen to the brain. So when you can no longer sustain enough oxygen to the brain that you don't have brain function, that's essentially the definition of death. And we think of it as, uh, an event like a gunshot wound, a heart attack, a bus, a stroke, uh, you know, some other kind of event. But the truth is that this is a predictable curve. Um, we used to, uh, use an underlying what we call a hypoxic curve. How well is this person managing oxygen, or how poorly are they managing oxygen? And once we were able to predict that, looking at red blood cell counts, hemoglobin levels, hormone levels, nutrient deficiencies, you can very accurately discern whether or not somebody has a fighting chance of getting out of their condition or if that condition, you know-
7. JSJay Shetty
  Mm
8. GBGary Brecka
  ... uh, resulting in their demise. And, you know, two things were ... very trying for me in that industry. One was that, you know, I really began to realize that it wasn't just data. There were human beings on the other side of these spreadsheets. But the second immensely obvious point that came out of 20 years in that career was that the majority of the reason why people are not living healthier, happier, longer, more fulfilling lives is, were because of things that we called modifiable risk factors, just simple changes that they could have made to their daily routine that would've materially changed the trajectory of their life. In most cases, they had to do with simple, basic nutrients that were missing from their body that were causing the expression of disease, and, you know, anemias, D3 deficiencies, hormone imbalance, not because of their endocrine system had a, a particular, uh, disease or pathology, but because it was nutrient deficient. And it became so obvious to me that if I'd just been able to pick up the phone and call any number of these people-
9. JSJay Shetty
  Mm
10. GBGary Brecka
  ... you know, I could've, could've dramatically changed the trajectory of their life.
11. JSJay Shetty
  Wow.
12. GBGary Brecka
  Um.
13. JSJay Shetty
  I mean, when I'm hearing you talk about oxygen to the brain-
14. GBGary Brecka
  Mm-hmm
15. JSJay Shetty
  ... which sounds so obvious, but it's something that is rarely articulated.
16. GBGary Brecka
  Oxygen to the brain is not just gas entering the brain. You know, if you, if you look at the molecular structure of a lot of the states in the brain that we talk about, like, if, if, if you were to say, um, to me, "What is a mood? What is an emotional state?" Well, it's a collection of neurotransmitters, in most cases bound to oxygen. If you look at the molecular structure of some of these activated, deactivated neurotransmitters or some of these, the differences between different moods, elevated emotional states, passion, elation, joy, arousal, or suppressed emotional states, anger, you know, vengeance, despair, you'd find that a large reason, a large, um, difference between these two emotional states is the presence of oxygen. You know, one, one of the reasons why no human being has ever woken up laughing is because you don't have the oxidative state to experience laughter, but can you wake up angry? Very easily.
17. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
18. GBGary Brecka
  Lower-tier emotional states do not require the presence of oxygen, and so when... You know, if you wanna do a fun experiment tonight, just, just pinch your wife while she's in a deep sleep. She will instantly wake up angry, right? [laughs]
19. JSJay Shetty
  [laughs]
20. GBGary Brecka
  I, I actually don't suggest that. But-
21. JSJay Shetty
  And then I may laugh. [laughs]
22. GBGary Brecka
  [laughs] But if you wanted her to laugh, right?
23. JSJay Shetty
  Yeah.
24. GBGary Brecka
  If you wanted her to be joyous, um, if you wanted her to be elated, aroused, you, you would have to y- you know, wake her up, improve the oxidative state, and then allow those emotions to come in-
25. JSJay Shetty
  Mm
26. GBGary Brecka
  ... to play. And, and so, you know, I have a saying that the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease.
27. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
28. GBGary Brecka
  And so w- w- we know, and you know very well because you're, you're, you're in this space, that we feel emotion in an area of the brain called the amygdala, right? Little, two
9:17 – 12:54
What Is An Emotional State?
1. GBGary Brecka
  little almonds. Um, and the fascinating thing about this area of the brain where we experience every emotional state that we, we can experience, if you're angry, you're angry in the amygdala. If you're, you're, you're, you're elated, you're elated in the amygdala area of the brain, is that it is, according to MIT, the sole gateway to the hippocampus, which is where our memory is stored. And so when you start thinking about that from a physiological standpoint, you're like, "Well, the sole gateway to the hippocampus is through the amygdala," but when you start thinking of it from a practical standpoint, then the sole gateway to our memory is through our current emotional state. And if that's how we access memory, and memory is what we draw upon, you know, our prefrontal cortex and our, our, our consciousness, our future draws from our memories, then if the amygdala is what accesses the, the hippocampus part of the brain and, and taps into our memory, and then our conscious pulls from our memory, then this essentially means that your current emotional state determines your future.
2. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
3. GBGary Brecka
  And I just feel like if we could improve the capacity for people to experience elevated emotional states for prolonged periods of time, not like a heart monitor, right? Because you find so many people that are not in good physiological condition that are trying to become in better emotional-
4. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm
5. GBGary Brecka
  ... condition.
6. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
7. GBGary Brecka
  Right? A better mood. Um, and they are only able to reach these emotional states for short periods of time, like a, like a heart monitor. So, um, and they do all the right things. They wake up. They journal. They read self-help motivational books. They go to the right seminars. They try to, um, express gratitude, um, even, even fake their way through it, but as soon as they're done, that intentional focus, it drops back down into the state where they most comfortably exist. And I believe a lot of this has to do with the oxidative state in the brain, and it also has to do with nutrient deficiencies, right? I mean, we-
8. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm
9. GBGary Brecka
  ... every, every emotion that we c- can feel, every, every mood that we can experience is a collection of neurotransmitters. As we have imbalances and deficiencies in these, then we cannot manufacture the, the moods and the emotional states that we, that we really want to experience.
10. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
11. GBGary Brecka
  And then we're told we have a mood disorder-
12. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm
13. GBGary Brecka
  ... um, or a mental illness.
14. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
15. GBGary Brecka
  And, and I think very often we just have a lack of mental fitness. And so when, when you realize, like, the, the happiest people are the people that are moving the most, that have the greatest sense of purpose, and that they're not necessarily the, the world's greatest biohackers, but they're eating whole foods.
16. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
17. GBGary Brecka
  They're moving their body a lot. They have a sense of purpose. You look at the blue zones and, and some of the things that actually extend life, you know, we would see this in the medical record. Um, yeah, were those people actually having some alcohol? Yeah. Were those people actually having a little bit of elevated LDL cholesterol? Sure. Um, did those people eat, um, sweets once in a while? Yeah, they sure did. Um, but they moved on a consistent basis, and they had relationships, and they had a sense of purpose, and for the most part, they ate Whole foods and not any particular type of whole food, not any particular type of diet. It wasn't a carnivore diet that extended their life. It wasn't the keto diet that extended their life. It wasn't the raw food vegan diet that extended their life. It was the whole food diet, you know, just eating real whole foods. Um, so I kinda diverted there for a second, but [laughs]
18. JSJay Shetty
  No, no, no, no, no. I get where you're going. Yeah, how do I-
19. GBGary Brecka
  Sometimes my wife is like-
20. JSJay Shetty
  I love it
21. GBGary Brecka
  ... "You just eat people's face."
22. JSJay Shetty
  [laughs]
23. GBGary Brecka
  And like, you know, so-
24. JSJay Shetty
  I love it
25. GBGary Brecka
  ... government you sit next to me on like a commercial flight or something. [laughs]
26. JSJay Shetty
  Oh, yeah? I love it. I love it.
27. GBGary Brecka
  Just eat your face. [laughs]
28. JSJay Shetty
  So how, how do we, how do we, how do we do that
12:54 – 15:37
Sedentary Lifestyle Is a Health Hazard
1. JSJay Shetty
  though? Like, how do we get more oxygen to our brain? Like, what does that mean? What does that look like?
2. GBGary Brecka
  Well, I mean, we know that sedentary lifestyle is the leading cause of all-cause mortality, right? And why is sedentary lifestyle the leading cause of all-cause mortality? We know that, that sitting is the new smoking. Well, we know why smoking was bad for you, right? It destroyed the lungs. Um, but, uh, and then, you know, then, th- the nicotine caused permanent lung damage. And but it wasn't the, really the nicotine, it was the reduction in the oxidative state. And when the body doesn't have oxygen, it can't really defend itself. I mean, if you actually were to go in through the wall of a cell, go through the cytoplasm and, and, and find the little organelles floating around in there called the mitochondria, which there's probably 1,000 or so per cell and 32 trillion cells. So it's estimated we have 110 trillion mitochondria, uh, about 10% of your body weight are these little mitochondria. These are the, this is the true energy source for human beings. And when cells become metabolically sick, it usually begins in the mitochondria, um, including the genesis of, of, of cancer and, and forms of all kinds of different pathologies. So when the mitochondria does not have the right oxidative state, um, you have a 16-fold step down in its production of energy. And what happens when you take, you know, a 16-fold step down in the energetic state of a cell is now that cell can no longer eliminate waste to repair, detoxify, regenerate. And so you're becoming metabolically sick, mainly because of the deficiency in oxygen. It's not that linear, but that is the main component. And sedentary lifestyle means that, um, we have prolonged periods of where our respiratory rate is very shallow. When our respiratory rate's very shallow, the majority of the air that we breathe in and out is high in carbon dioxide, it's expelled air. I mean, right now, every time you let out a breath from the tip of your nose and the front of your lips, all the way down your esophagus, through the back of your pharynx, and all the way down and out to the bronchioles in, in your, in your lungs, this is all expired air. So when you breathe in and out, if it's very shallow, you're breathing in that repetitively expired air, and you're dropping that oxidative state in the blood. You're making the blood more acidic. You're making it more hospitable to disease, um, not alkaline and less hospitable and not full of oxygen, which is energetic. And so what are ways to get more oxygen? Obviously, things like breathwork, just simply moving your body.
3. JSJay Shetty
  Give us, give us one that... So I, I love what you're saying here because it's so fascinating to understand that the reason a shallow breath is reducing our lifespan is because of this idea of just how much can get stuck and lost in there. That's-
4. GBGary Brecka
  Changing in the gases.
5. JSJay Shetty
  Yeah. And so
15:37 – 22:44
Why You Need to Breath Deeper and Longer
1. JSJay Shetty
  what are some breathwork practices? Because I think what we don't realize today is with everyone dealing with anxiety, dealing with stress, dealing with pressure, we're all subconsciously breathing far more shallower.
2. GBGary Brecka
  Mm-hmm.
3. JSJay Shetty
  And we're breathing quicker.
4. GBGary Brecka
  Mm-hmm.
5. JSJay Shetty
  And you got these shorter, quicker breaths, and I think sometimes we're doing it without knowing at all.
6. GBGary Brecka
  Right.
7. JSJay Shetty
  What are some great breathwork practices that you stand by that-
8. GBGary Brecka
  So, you know, I don't have a breathwork practice that I, that I take credit for. I use a Wim Hof style of breathwork.
9. JSJay Shetty
  Love Wim Hof.
10. GBGary Brecka
  I mean, you, you, you could spend a lifetime going, and, and I encourage people to do so, I mean, a lifetime going down the, the just the breathwork avenue. There, there's breathwork to wake up. There's breathwork to go to sleep. But I think it's important, you know, as a, as a part of a really daily health practice, longevity practice. See, you're just taking a deep breath now. [laughs]
11. JSJay Shetty
  Now I'm like, I'm like, yeah.
12. GBGary Brecka
  The power of suggestion. He's like-
13. JSJay Shetty
  That's what I'm saying. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, let's get really deep.
14. GBGary Brecka
  [laughs] He's like, "I'm not dying anytime soon."
15. JSJay Shetty
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's good, yeah.
16. GBGary Brecka
  I'm not going, I'm not going down. [laughs]
17. JSJay Shetty
  I hope everyone listening and watching is taking a breath right now too. Everyone's like, everyone's doing the same thing I'm doing right now, yeah.
18. GBGary Brecka
  Yeah, they're doing it right now. [laughs]
19. JSJay Shetty
  Everyone's like counting how long their breath is right now.
20. GBGary Brecka
  The truth is, you know, it's better to b- breathe deeper and longer and less frequently than it is to breathe more shallow and less frequently. Um, in fact, Wim Hof in some of his teachings will do a very simple exercise where he'll say, "I just want you to look down at your watch, and I want you to count the number of times you breathe in and out in the next minute." And people will just, they don't know that they're actually being tricked. And, and what he's showing is that the majority of people are, are, are breathing 15, 18, sometimes 20 breaths in 60 seconds. And what this is showing you is if you're breathing that frequently, you're breathing that frequently because of the very little amount of oxygen that you're getting. And so you're breathing shallow, and your bro- buddy is trying to get m- more oxygen. Then he says, "Okay, count the number of breaths. In the next minute, I want you to only take four breaths for the entire minute, one every 15 seconds, and you're gonna breathe in, [inhales] and you're gonna pause, and you're gonna breathe out. [exhales] And so w- essentially what he's trying to demonstrate is that in that same minute, four breaths actually was equivalent to 15 or 18 or 20 breaths in the same period of time, but they were four deep breaths. W- as we age... I read a statistic. I don't know if there's any valid science behind this or not. Um, I actually got hassled online for, for repeating this, but I read a statistic that after age 30, less than 95% of people will ever sprint again.
21. JSJay Shetty
  Wow.
22. GBGary Brecka
  I don't know how much truth there is to that, but as I kind of just meander my way through the world, I, I, I, I have a tendency to think that it's a g- you know, fairly clo- and if it's not 95% of people, maybe it's 70% of people, but after age 30. And this means that we're not using our auxiliary muscles of respiration. We're not using our intercostals. We're not using our diaphragm to massage our intestines. We're not correcting our posture and getting, you know, air down into the lobes of our lungs and out of the apex of our lungs. And, and so what Wim Hof talks about is, is, um, I do three rounds of 30 breaths, um, every morning. Takes about eight minutes. There, that is the one thing that I do that I never, ever, ever, ever miss.
23. JSJay Shetty
  Three rounds of 30 breaths that, uh, every minute you're only taking four breaths?
24. GBGary Brecka
  No, no. So it's three rounds of 30 breaths. So he, he... The, the, the one minute of four breaths was just a way of showing you how you're actually hyperventilating yourself.
25. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
26. GBGary Brecka
  You're actually... You know, if you're taking 20 breaths in a minute or 15 breaths in a minute, those are really short breaths.
27. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
28. GBGary Brecka
  And which means that you're not drawing in a lot of oxygen, and you made it through the next minute breathing less than a quarter-
29. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm
30. GBGary Brecka
  ... of the, the amount of time, and it just shows you that it's because during those 15 or 18 breaths, you use the apex of your lungs. During those four breaths, you use the lobes of your lungs-
22:44 – 32:20
Why Mental Health Disorders are Often Misunderstood
1. JSJay Shetty
  I wanna go back to something you said earlier. What's the relationship between mental health and vitamin deficiencies?
2. GBGary Brecka
  Well, if you look at, um-
3. JSJay Shetty
  I don't think this is talked about enough
4. GBGary Brecka
  ... I don't think it's talked about enough either. Um, you know, when we talk about mental health, a lack of mental fitness, you know, so many mental health disorders are, in my opinion, poorly understood. They are defined one way and treated a different way. I just had Dr. Palmer from, from, uh, um, from Harvard on my podcast. It was fascinating how he was treating... And he's a board-certified psychiatrist, an MD, and a Harvard professor, and, and he's treating some of the most drug-resistant psychiatric illnesses, and I'm talking about the most awful of psychiatric illnesses. You know, paranoid schizophrenia, the, the, the, the, the conditions where people are literally tortured inside their own head, voices, what have you, and they're drug-resistant, and he treated them with, um, um, supplements and ketogenic diets.
5. JSJay Shetty
  Hmm.
6. GBGary Brecka
  And again, I'm not trying to oversimplify m- you know, mental health by any means and saying, "If you're suffering from de- severe depression, just get on a ketogenic diet." That's not at all what I'm saying. But if you look at the... If you keep digging in and you say, "Okay, what is a mood? What is an emotional state?" Um, these are collections of neurotransmitters. They're recipes, right? Um, what is anxiety? It's an excess, it's an elevation of a category of neurotransmitters called catecholamines. So if catecholamines rise in your brain, you will feel fearful. You will actually feel the presence of a fear without-
7. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm
8. GBGary Brecka
  ... the presence of a fear.
9. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
10. GBGary Brecka
  And when we understand that the brain can play tricks on us because it truly doesn't know the difference between perception and reality. You know, I use the example that if you drove home tonight and you got out of your car and somebody was standing in front of you with a knife Um, very real fear, right? You're-- You would begin to have a fight or flight response. Pupils would dilate, heart rate would increase, your extremities would flood with blood. But you could also be in your place here, and we're very high on the mountain in LA, um, and you could be laying in your bed tonight, and you could start thinking about getting eaten by a shark. You know that the chances of a shark getting out of the Pacific Ocean and making it up there, right at that, your hill [chuckles] even if he had an Uber, um- [laughs] ...would be-- are, are, are virtually- Uber shark ... zero. But you could have the exact same reaction. Mm. How is it that I could have the same reaction to the presence of a real fear as an entirely imagined fear? Mm-hmm. Because at their core, at the hub or all these spokes meet, it's the same thing. Mm. It's a rise in catecholamines. Mm. So if we know fear can be born from a rise in catecholamines, then we know anxiety and anxiousness can be f-from a rise in catecholamines. This is why so many people that have anxiety or experience anxiousness very often will say, "I've had it on and off throughout my entire lifetime, and I cannot point to the specific trigger that causes it." They could be sitting on a podcast like we are right now, very calm, their staff around, nothing to be afraid of, and all of a sudden become- Mm-hmm ... overwhelmed with anxiety. Mm-hmm. So, um, and then we take it a, a step further and we say, "Well, where do these neurotransmitters come from? How do we make neurotransmitters?" Well, the majority of these are made in the gut. Um, serotonin, for example, is methylated in the gut. We take a simple amino acid called tryptophan. We methylate it into the neurotransmitter serotonin. It travels up the vagus nerve, and it creates a mood. We take phenylalanine and tyrosine, and we turn those into dopamine, the main driver of behavior. So if we know that mood and behavior driven by neurotransmitters that are derived from amino acids, then why isn't it possible that deficiencies in amino acids could give rise to deficiencies in neurotransmitters- Mm ... which could then be interpreted as, as a mental illness? Mm-hmm. And again, I'm not trying to oversimplify mental illness by any, by any means. I believe in therapy. I also b-believe that, you know, meds do work in, in, in many cases. But, um, why wouldn't we start first if we define, for example, depression as an inadequate supply of serotonin? Then why are we not trying to raise the level of serotonin? Mm. If we define some addictive tendencies as an inadequate supply of dopamine, the absence of dopamine is the presence of addiction. One of the reasons why addiction has a tendency to shift is because we never treat the dopamine deficiency. We only treat the physical addiction, right? So these are why drug addicts become alcoholics, alcoholics become workaholics, workaholics become workaholics. Um, you know, you shift one addiction for another because that deficiency in dopamine drives you to feel-- want to feel normal. And, and this is where I believe most addiction starts is the search for normalcy, not the search for a high. Right? I don't believe that most, most addicts woke up one day and said, "I wanna get really banged up." They woke up one day and said, "I wanna feel normal." Yeah. Or numb. Or numb. Numb, yeah. Yeah. And in this search for that numbness or the search for that normalcy, whether it was alcohol or nicotine or promiscuity or what have you, um, they felt that, that either that numbness or that sense of normalcy, and then the addiction grew from that. And so they, they were then running from a low, not running towards a high. Mm. And this is one of the reasons why I have so much empathy for people that are trapped in the cycle of addiction, and I think that more addictive therapy needs to address these dopamine deficiencies. But now we're getting down to the, the possibility that, um, nutrient deficiencies could give rise to neurotransmitter deficiencies- Mm-hmm ... that could give rise to m-m-states of mental instability, and then we label this a mental illness. You have ADD, ADHD, you have OCD, you have manic depression, you have bipolar, you have schizophrenia, you have, um, generalized anxiety, you have generalized depression, which I personally think are, are nonsense. But again, I'm not attacking the mental health profession. When you deprive the human body of certain raw materials, you get the expression of disease. And we accept this in so many different areas of medicine, but we don't really accept it in mental illness. Mm. Right? I mean, how, how is a leading PhD from Harvard having success treating drug-resistant mental illness with diet? Because it's not the diet, it's the nutrients- Mm-hmm ... that they were deficient in. Um, and how is it that people that experience, um, high rates of anxiety and anxiousness and attention deficit disorder or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder can sometimes do something as simple as take a methylated multivitamin- Mm ... and experience a dramatic reduction in their symptoms? Mm. Because nutrients matter. The human being's such a f-- Uh, the human body is such a fascinating machine. You know, it's-- The, the more you, you study human physiology, the more you, you believe in God because there's no way that this was just assembled by accident or by chance over time, right? You'll never-- Y-I don't care how much time you give two bacteria in a mud puddle, you're never gonna get a human being out of it. [chuckles] And the intelligence with which it's designed, how one raw material enters a cycle, it gets used, it creates waste, and then that waste is, is accepted and taken into another cycle, and it's, and it's utilized. And it's like one man's trash is another man's treasure. And cellular metabolism is so fascinating because one amino acid enters a cycle, and it gets converted into something completely different. Homocysteine gets m- gets metabolized into methionine. Homocysteine then can be one of the most inflammatory compounds in the human body. This gets metabolized into methionine, which then goes up into the mind and quiets the mind by, by dismantling, by, by, by essentially downregulating catecholamines, these fight or flight neurotransmitters. So puts people into a calm state of being calm. So then you start to understand, well, the majority of people that have sleep disturbance have one or two types of sleep patterns. They are either lay down to go to sleep, body tired, and they are mind awake. Mm-hmm. So when their environment quiets, their mind wakes up. Why does the mind wake up when the environment quiets? Because you have excess catecholamines in the brain. There's a, there's a gene mutation called COMT, C-O-M-T, catechol-O-methyltransferase. It's a fancy way of saying the, the gene that codes for the enzyme that, that breaks down this class of neurotransmitters, that down regulates them. Well, let's say that this gene mutation, you have this and, and, and you have an impaired ability to down regulate catecholamines. That doesn't sound like a big deal until you realize that catecholamines create a wakened state-
11. JSJay Shetty
  Mm
12. GBGary Brecka
  ... in the brain. And so this wakened state usually happens at night, and somebody will lay there and they will just think about the most innocuous little thoughts-
13. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm
14. GBGary Brecka
  ... while they are exhausted.
15. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
16. GBGary Brecka
  They're just like, "Did I get everything on my grocery list? Um, did my belt match my shoes? We changed the, uh, Juni label to fuchsia from dark blue," you know? [laughs] And you're like, "Why am I thinking about this at 2:30 in the morning?"
17. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
18. GBGary Brecka
  Right? Or you get up to use the restroom and you go back to bed, and you lay there and your mind's awake.
19. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
20. GBGary Brecka
  And so you don't have a sleep disorder. You don't have a mental disorder. Um, you don't have generalized anxiety. You don't have a mood disorder. You have excess catecholamines in the brain, and very often these can be down regulated very simply with complexes of B vitamins, methylated, um, uh, B12, uh, methylfolate, the raw material that the body needs to down regulate these. And by, by not giving the body the raw material, we get this expression of disease, and then we say this person has this condition.
21. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
22. GBGary Brecka
  You know, it... I, I tell the same story all the time a lot about when I was in grad school and I took these, these plant botany courses, um, which, which I didn't like to take because I wanted to get a human biology degree and I had to study algae. Um-
23. JSJay Shetty
  [laughs]
24. GBGary Brecka
  ... which wasn't, [laughs] wasn't super, wasn't super interesting to me.
25. JSJay Shetty
  That, that's what was so interesting about
32:20 – 36:54
The Some Supplements Don’t Work
1. JSJay Shetty
  biology growing up. I re- I remember... There's so many subjects now where I'm like, if I knew that neuroscience was a part of, you know, looking at biology and so many other things, I would've been fascinated by it.
2. GBGary Brecka
  Right, right, exactly.
3. JSJay Shetty
  But when you were talking about plant biology, I didn't care.
4. GBGary Brecka
  Yeah, me too.
5. JSJay Shetty
  Yeah, yeah.
6. GBGary Brecka
  I re- I really could've cared less about plant biology.
7. JSJay Shetty
  Yeah.
8. GBGary Brecka
  But and then, you know, and then you have to study, uh, rock stratas and, and, you know, fossil lineages-
9. JSJay Shetty
  [laughs]
10. GBGary Brecka
  ... and all this other kind of stuff, [laughs] and I'm like, "Who, who makes a career out of this?"
11. JSJay Shetty
  I know, I know. It's-
12. GBGary Brecka
  Um, but, uh, but you can actually get a degree in, degree in traffic management too, so I guess that, that... I'd rather study rocks than traffic. [laughs] No offense to the traffic experts out there. You guys are killing it. But, um, uh, [laughs] but, you know, y- y- when you, when you start to realize that [both laughing] Sorry.
13. JSJay Shetty
  I'm just still laughing at you, bro.
14. GBGary Brecka
  I hope, I hope we cut that out. They're gonna be like-
15. JSJay Shetty
  You're cracking me up
16. GBGary Brecka
  ... "What an asshole."
17. JSJay Shetty
  You can do... No, you're just cracking me up.
18. GBGary Brecka
  Just lost half your audience right there.
19. JSJay Shetty
  Yeah. Yeah, I know.
20. GBGary Brecka
  Like, don't, don't offend the traffic guys, dude.
21. JSJay Shetty
  Yeah.
22. GBGary Brecka
  Somebody's gotta figure out when these lights go on and off.
23. JSJay Shetty
  Yeah.
24. GBGary Brecka
  Um-
25. JSJay Shetty
  Go on. Sorry I cut you.
26. GBGary Brecka
  So [laughs] I, I, I-
27. JSJay Shetty
  I'm just having a good time with you
28. GBGary Brecka
  ... I, I'm having a good time too.
29. JSJay Shetty
  Yeah, yeah.
30. GBGary Brecka
  But I, I don't know why, how we got down that road, but, but any case, you know, when you, when, when you're studying plants [both laughing] ...
36:54 – 44:30
The Science Behind Brain Fog
1. JSJay Shetty
  actually about that because I think a lot of people ... feel, and, and I wanna talk about some of the symptoms that I hear from our community, our audience-
2. GBGary Brecka
  Yeah
3. JSJay Shetty
  ... what people feel, and to get your take on how to-
4. GBGary Brecka
  Mm
5. JSJay Shetty
  ... combat that. So one of the biggest things I hear from people is, "Jay, I'm just feeling brain fog."
6. GBGary Brecka
  Oh, yeah.
7. JSJay Shetty
  Right? "I'm just feeling like I have no clarity, like I struggle to make decisions. I'm feeling a sense of low energy, and so like-"
8. GBGary Brecka
  Mm-hmm
9. JSJay Shetty
  ... "I'm lethargic." Like these are-
10. GBGary Brecka
  Mm-hmm
11. JSJay Shetty
  ... very common things. So with brain fog, what's going on there?
12. GBGary Brecka
  Well, I mean, everything that you, um, feel about energy, like when you say, "I don't have... I'm low on energy," physiologically what you're saying is, "I'm low on oxygen in my blood." Because everything that you perceive about energy is nothing more than oxygen in your blood. So if oxygen equals energy, which it does, then if I wanna raise your energy level, I need to improve the oxidative state. And how do I do that? Well, one of the ways, and I'm not saying this is the only way, but one of the physiologic pathways is, um, if we know energy equals oxygen, then we take it a step further and we say, "Well, um, what carries oxygen around the human body?" Well, red blood cell carries oxygen inside of a fluid, and I'm simplifying for you ultra-work biohackers. But the, you know, the red blood cell carries oxygen inside of a fluid called hemoglobin. So if I'm low on red blood cells, right? I'm low on vehicles to carry oxygen. If those red blood cells are further deficient in hemoglobin-
13. JSJay Shetty
  Mm
14. GBGary Brecka
  ... then the few cells that I have that are able to carry oxygen have less fluid to carry oxygen, therefore, I'm hypoxic, and it hides in plain sight. So then the question becomes, where, where are red blood cells and hemoglobin made? Well, they're made in the bone marrow. So how do I get the bone marrow to make more red blood cells and hemoglobin? I go to the bone marrow's boss, um, which is the hormone testosterone. Um, in men and women, uh, one of the, one of the roles of testosterone is erythropoiesis, to put pressure on the bone marrow to make new red blood cells. And in nearly every case where we see clinically deficient levels of this hormone, testosterone, free testosterone, we see red blood cells and hemoglobin towards the low end of the range.
15. JSJay Shetty
  Hmm.
16. GBGary Brecka
  And then you look at, well, what is testosterone made from? Well, I mean, it's made from several things, but largely from DHEA. So if I'm a deficient in DHEA, I should get that fixed. And, and, and w- w- what is the next m- macronutrient below DHEA? Vitamin D3. So you go oxygen, red blood cells, bone marrow, hormone testosterone, DHEA, D3. So if you start in the root and you raise your D3 level to the optimal funct- functional range, which I think most practitioners would agree is between 60 and 80, and then you raise your DHEA into the optimal range, and you wait to see if your hormones respond. Um, and if your testosterone rises, especially your free testosterone rises, your red blood cell count and hemoglobin will go up.
17. JSJay Shetty
  Hmm.
18. GBGary Brecka
  As your red blood cell count and hemoglobin level rise, the amount of oxygen that you transport in your blood will rise, and you will perceive that as more energy. You will perceive that as improved focus and concentration, and your sleep will deepen. Why? Because in l- low respiratory states, when our respiratory rate gets very shallow, um, we want our blood to be very good at carrying oxygen. Because if you're already poorly transporting oxygen, and then you try to get into a deep sleep and your respiratory rate drops, and you get to where you are hypoxic-
19. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm
20. GBGary Brecka
  ... your brain will wake you up.
21. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
22. GBGary Brecka
  It will wake you up by pulsing cortisol. And so you, y- people that have, that are exhausted sleep the worst. And ask a physician sometime, why is it that people that are the most exhausted sleep the worst? They very rarely connect the fact that they're low on oxygen, which is why they're tired and have brain fog, and they're low on oxygen, which is why they're not sleeping, because their brain-
23. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm
24. GBGary Brecka
  ... is waking them up. And then they do the worst thing. They go to their doctor and they go, "I can't sleep." And so then the doctor suggests something like isopalatinib nitrate, diazepam, you know, um, Lunesta, Ambien, and, and essentially they tranquilize you. And, and what's happening when you take a lot of these sleep medications, not all of them, but when you take a lot of these sleep medications is you're in a low oxidative state, so your brain's trying to save your life and wake you up. Um, and then you take a sleep medication, and you block the brain's view of blood oxygen.
25. JSJay Shetty
  Hmm.
26. GBGary Brecka
  So now the brain can't, isn't able to try to save your life and wake you up. And so now you get into a deep sleep, and then you wake up the next morning and you go, "Man, I hate taking Tylenol PM because it is... I am so groggy. Um, it's still in my system the next morning." That's actually not true. That, that drug's been out of your system for hours. You're feeling the effects of having suffocated for six hours. And so suffocating-
27. JSJay Shetty
  Wow
28. GBGary Brecka
  ... yourself to sleep, and then, and then now you've slept, but you get up from the sleep medication, and you are still exhausted-
29. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm
30. GBGary Brecka
  ... and you still have brain fog. So there are other potential causes, but, but, you know, that is the one... The one, w- the one nice thing about the clinics that we have is, you know, we see 20,000 new, new gene test patients a month. Um, we see thousands of new blood test patients a month. Um, so we do, we do have voluminous pools of data, and some might say, "Well, it- that's never been put through a randomized clinical trial, but it's, and it's anecdotal." But it's actually not anecdotal. When you see pools of data as large as we see them, um, you know, y- you can say, listen, if you have, if you are clinically deficient in free testosterone, you are very likely to have low red blood cell count. The reason why people feel so good when they get on hormones or when they supplement and their hormones return to the normal range is because the effect of those hormones returning to the normal range reoxidizes the-
44:30 – 48:55
Pre and Postpartum Care
1. JSJay Shetty
  I was gonna ask you, what, what does it feel like? Have you worked in your clinics with women preparing to give birth and then post giving birth?
2. GBGary Brecka
  Yes, quite a bit. In fact, our clinic director is a board-certified, um, OBGYN. She's a gynecological surgeon. Um, she's got a double master's.
3. JSJay Shetty
  Because I feel like that journey, we still don't talk enough about how challenging it is on the human biology.
4. GBGary Brecka
  Oh, yeah. It's, it's, it's, um, very challenging. I mean, if you look at a woman's, you know, m- m- what happens during a woman's menstrual cycle, and you look at, uh, what happens when she becomes pregnant, it's perfectly normal during r- regular, regular cyclical periods of her cycle for her estrogen to be as high as, you know, in the 400s, perfectly normal for it to be in the teens. So it has a very large frequency, you know, um, rise and fall, depending on where she is in the cycle. Soon as she becomes pregnant, you know, estrogen goes into the 4,000s. Um, mainly because, you know, one of estrogen's primary role is to retain water, um, to pad the uterus and, and protect, protect the fetus. Has other, other roles, but it retains water. But postpartum, you don't wanna be estrogen dominant.
5. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
6. GBGary Brecka
  Um, and, you know, it's, it's not necessarily for, for women, especially the, the level of hormone, it is the ratio of hormones in their body. And, you know, Dr. Sartor, who's, who's our OBGYN, is phenomenal about pre and postpartum care. Um, she's an enormous believer that certain gene mutations like MTHFR, which increase the frequency-
7. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm
8. GBGary Brecka
  ... of, of miscarriage. She delivered 9,000 babies, so she's very qualified to speak [chuckles] on that. Um, that the gene mutation, that is one of the most common gene mutations in the world, the MTHFR.
9. JSJay Shetty
  What, what does it do?
10. GBGary Brecka
  It stands for methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase. It is the gene that, that codes for the conversion of folic acid and its derivatives, like folate, into the usable form called methylfolate.
11. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
12. GBGary Brecka
  And this is what I mean. And, and, and we have a process in the body called methylation, which is where we take one raw material, which is useless, folic acid, for example, entirely l- useless in human... Folic acid does not prevent neural tube defects. It doesn't prevent anything until it is converted into methylfolate.
13. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
14. GBGary Brecka
  So what if your body can't make this conversion? Well, it might not sound like a big deal until you realize that, number one, it's the most common gene mutation in the world, and number two, folic acid is the most prevalent nutrient in the human diet in the United States.
15. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
16. GBGary Brecka
  So if you have an issue converting the most prevalent nutrient in the human diet into the form that your body can use, you have a significant deficiency.
17. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
18. GBGary Brecka
  And the expression of this deficiency is increase in the number of miscarriages.
19. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
20. GBGary Brecka
  Um, um, infertility, a difficulty in getting, um, pregnant. I'm just talking about in the female cycle.
21. JSJay Shetty
  Yeah.
22. GBGary Brecka
  Um, postpartum depression, which can actually begin before the pregnancy ends. We call it postpartum depression, but very often it begins during the pregnancy. And women that have this MTHFR gene mutation, the first thing they're told when they get pregnant by their OBGYN is to take high doses of folic acid. Well, if you put 1400 or 1800% of the daily allowance of folic acid into somebody, a woman like that, who has that gene mutation and cannot process it, that is a disaster.
23. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
24. GBGary Brecka
  And she develops postpartum depression before the pregnancy ends, and, um, eventually, when the pregnancy ends, she stops taking the prenatal vitamin and the symptoms go away.
25. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
26. GBGary Brecka
  And so she blames it on the pregnancy, not on the vitamin.
27. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
28. GBGary Brecka
  And this is another, you know, pandemic that we see is that pregnant women, all of them could use methylfolate. Less than 60% of them can use folic acid. So why don't we just give women methylfolate? Why don't we actually just give them the form that would, um, that their, that their body can use? By the way, folic acid also is, is a man-made chemical. You can't find folic acid anywhere on the surface of the Earth. It does not occur naturally in nature. So s- someone convince me how, you know, a, a synthetic chemical that we make in a laboratory is somehow necessary for optimal health.
29. JSJay Shetty
  Mm. Yeah. It's, it's bizarre, isn't it?
30. GBGary Brecka
  It can't be.
48:55 – 50:36
Folic Acid Mutation
1. GBGary Brecka
  health.
2. JSJay Shetty
  How do you know if you have that mutation, and what do you do about it?
3. GBGary Brecka
  You do a, uh, a genetic cheek swab.
4. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
5. GBGary Brecka
  Um, so there's a cheek swab test. You, you, you swab your cheek. You usually put it in a test tube. You send it to the lab, and they'll send you back the results. Um, even 23andMe, I do, I do genetic tests at, at 10X Health. Um, you do not have to do the test through me, but, you know, we do 20,000 of these a month.
6. JSJay Shetty
  Wow.
7. GBGary Brecka
  Um, I'm sure 23andMe does something similar to that. But you also get a lot, depending on the type of genetic test you do, you, you, you'll get a lot of, um, the non-actionable data.
8. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
9. GBGary Brecka
  Right? I mean, like, I could... If I pulled your entire genetic code, I could see that you have dark olive skin, you have green eyes, you have brown hair, you have detached earlobes, but there's nothing you can do with that genetic information. Um, you want, you want to look at the genes responsible for converting raw material, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, into the usable form.
10. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
11. GBGary Brecka
  I, I, I, always use the analogy that we, we pull crude oil out of the ground, right? But you cannot put crude oil into your gas tank. The car doesn't understand that fuel source.
12. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
13. GBGary Brecka
  Crude oil has to be refined into gasoline.
14. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
15. GBGary Brecka
  Now the car can run.
16. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
17. GBGary Brecka
  Human beings are no different. We put vitamins, minerals, amino acids, nutrients, all proteins into the body, which are useless in that state until they are converted-
18. JSJay Shetty
  Mm
19. GBGary Brecka
  ... into the gasoline, into the form that the body can use.
20. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
21. GBGary Brecka
  And this is governed by several of our genes, and they're very easy to look at, and you only do that test once in your lifetime.
22. JSJay Shetty
  That's fantastic. Thank you for that.
23. GBGary Brecka
  Mm-hmm.
24. JSJay Shetty
  I think that's gonna help a lot of people listening or watching because I feel like-
25. GBGary Brecka
  Oh, no question
26. JSJay Shetty
  ... when we're thinking about when people are planning for kids or have had kids and they're struggling, and again, I think we all do this, and that's why I'm so glad we're talking about this because-
50:36 – 56:01
Deficiencies Are Passed Down, Not Diseases
1. GBGary Brecka
  Mm-hmm
2. JSJay Shetty
  ... I think the first thing we blame is our mind. That's the first thing we all do, is we judge ourselves and we go, "I'm not strong enough. I'm too weak. I'm mentally not there. I'm not figuring it out. There's something wrong with me."
3. GBGary Brecka
  Right.
4. JSJay Shetty
  But we're not looking at the fact that-
5. GBGary Brecka
  W-
6. JSJay Shetty
  ... let me actually take a look at what is wrong and which part of it and where has it gone wrong.
7. GBGary Brecka
  Yeah. You know, you know what I think we try to do? I mean, just naturally, instinctively-
8. JSJay Shetty
  Yeah
9. GBGary Brecka
  ... is when we don't feel good or something seems to be going wrong in our bodies, we're anxious, we're worried, we're depressed-
10. JSJay Shetty
  Yes
11. GBGary Brecka
  ... um, or there's something more physical, we're bloated, we're constipated, we're irritable, we've got cramps, um, we're fatigued, we begin to look at our outside environment, right? We look at what's called a cluster of symptoms, and a cluster of symptoms is very often nonsense. We diagnosed Abraham Lincoln with a di- you know, depression 150 years ago, like, with a cluster of symptoms. We do the same kind of diagnostic. We use similar diagnostic tools today. What if you consider that it's not something happening to you-
12. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm
13. GBGary Brecka
  ... it's something happening within you?
14. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
15. GBGary Brecka
  Right? Like that leaf that was rotting in the palm tree, nothing happened to it.
16. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
17. GBGary Brecka
  Something happened within the soil-
18. JSJay Shetty
  Yeah. Mm-hmm
19. GBGary Brecka
  ... that then caused something to happen within the tree, which translated to that leaf. And I, I always use that example because it starts people thinking that, "You know what? Maybe I'm not as sick or pathological or diseased or mentally ill as, as I think."
20. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
21. GBGary Brecka
  Um, you know, p- people very often that suffer from gut issues, I mean, we see this thousands and thousands of times, so they're, like, they get gas or bloating or diarrhea or constipation or irritability or cramping, and they are always trying to relate it to what they last ate.
22. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
23. GBGary Brecka
  Because that makes sense, right? "I ate something, and now I blew up like a tick. It must have been what I ate." But you, you may not be considering that if you're deficient in methylfolate, for example, very simple nutrient, that the peristaltic activity of the gut is off. So the pace of the gut is off. You know, you, you can think of the human intestinal tract as a 30-foot-long conveyor belt. You put contents on it at one end, and as it traverses to the other end, from the stomach to the rectum, there's a very specific sequence of events that needs to occur. There's acidic bacteria in the proximal end of the small intestine. There's, there's alkaline bacteria in the distal end, you know, the rectum. What if you just change the pace-
24. JSJay Shetty
  Mm
25. GBGary Brecka
  ... of that conveyor belt? What if you went into any factory in America that works on a conveyor belt system and doubled the speed of the conveyor belt? The whole line would break down.
26. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
27. GBGary Brecka
  What if you went into any factory in America and reversed the speed of the conveyor belt? The whole line would break down, but there's nothing wrong with a conveyor belt. And so, you know, it sends people down the wrong road because they're like, "Well, should I get my gut bacteria checked? Should I get my bu- gut biome looked at? Should I start taking probiotics? Should I, uh, maybe take, uh, you know, antibiotics and maybe, may I have SIBO? Should I, uh, change up my diet?" And, and nothing really seems to work-
28. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm
29. GBGary Brecka
  ... because they think it's something happening to them-
30. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm
56:01 – 1:03:02
What’s Wrong with Tap Water?
1. JSJay Shetty
  Tap water.
2. GBGary Brecka
  Ugh.
3. JSJay Shetty
  What is wrong with tap water?
4. GBGary Brecka
  Mm-hmm.
5. JSJay Shetty
  And what is wrong with plastic bottles?
6. GBGary Brecka
  We'll start with tap water. I mean, there are two or three things that I think that everybody should get out of their life, permanently out of their life. Tap water is definitely one of them. And the reason for this is that, um, it contains, you know, high amounts of fluoride, contains high amounts of chlorine. It also contains microplastics. Um, very often now it contains high levels of glyphosates and, and even pharmaceuticals, um, which are very hard to filter out of, out of the water. And, you know, we have to decide if we want to filter things before they get to the temple.
7. JSJay Shetty
  Or the temple is doing the filtering.
8. GBGary Brecka
  Let the temple be the filter. Um, and what's astounding to me is if you ask just about anyone, "What's the most important thing to you, your business or your health?" They'll always say their health. "What's more important to you, money or your health?" It's always their health. But when you just take one step further, and I do this with entrepreneurs all the time. I was actually at a, um, a, an, an event this week with, uh, Daymond John, and, and it was high level-
9. JSJay Shetty
  Was it Tuesday night?
10. GBGary Brecka
  But... Yeah.
11. JSJay Shetty
  I was gonna be there.
12. GBGary Brecka
  Oh, you were?
13. JSJay Shetty
  I was traveling, yeah. I couldn't be there.
14. GBGary Brecka
  Oh, okay.
15. JSJay Shetty
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
16. GBGary Brecka
  And this isn't a pick on Daymond. He's a very good friend of mine. I love Daymond. He's done a lot for me, and he's, um, and he's just an incredible entrepreneur, and, uh, he's been a very, very good friend to me. But we were, um, in a room with, um, you know, entrepreneurs, and if you went around that room and we asked several of them, "What's more important to you, your business or your health?" And they'd say, "My health." Um, but then you bring them up and you say, um, "Well, you know, how much money did your business make last month?" "$628,000." Um, "What was your net income?" "$142,400." "How many employees do you have?" Um, "17." "What's your hemoglobin A1c?" Blank. Right? "What is your... Where are your testosterone levels?" Blank. Right? So-
17. JSJay Shetty
  So true
18. GBGary Brecka
  ... we-- our intention is to put our health first, but our activity is, is, is very different, right? And, and I could have asked them 15 more questions about their income statement, their balance sheet, their P&L, the best marketing strategy, where they're getting the ROI, what their, you know, what their best return is on Facebook ads or any number of other things, and they would have hit every one of those metrics. Don't know if they have a clinical deficiency in vitamin D3 or not.
19. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
20. GBGary Brecka
  Don't even have the most basic of information. And so this goes back to, you know, we, we, we need to put a, an imaginary fence around ourselves and start fil- filtering things before they make it to the temple, just consciously being intentional about what we're letting into the temple.
21. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
22. GBGary Brecka
  It's very easy for me to look at food and say, um, "Are you going to serve me?"
23. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
24. GBGary Brecka
  "Or are you going to steal from me?"
25. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
26. GBGary Brecka
  Because if you're gonna steal from me, I'm not gonna let you into the temple.
27. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
28. GBGary Brecka
  You wouldn't knowingly let a thief into your house.
29. JSJay Shetty
  Mm-hmm.
30. GBGary Brecka
  Right? And so tap water is one of these things. Um, you know, there are, um, fluoride, uh, which we know is neurotoxic, and if you don't believe fluoride is neurotoxic, just find a, you know, just find a, a, you know, a fluoride toothpaste m- uh, label in your house, if you're using Crest or Colgate or any toothpaste with fluoride, and flip it over and look at the back, 'cause there's a required FDA warning on there, and it says, "If more than an amount used for brushing is swallowed, contact poison control immediately." It also says, "Keep out of reach of children, um, under six years of age." Um, and it also says, "Do not use more than a pea-sized amount." So if you swallow more than a pea-sized amount of fluoride toothpaste, you are supposed to contact poison control immediately. You will get four times that amount of fluoride in six eight-ounce glasses of water.
1:03:02 – 1:06:41
How Much Chlorine is in Your Water?
1. JSJay Shetty
  that is like, you know, you just think about just-
2. GBGary Brecka
  Yeah
3. JSJay Shetty
  ... these things that we're so conditioned to do on a daily basis.
4. GBGary Brecka
  Yeah.
5. JSJay Shetty
  And we're like, "Ah, this doesn't matter. I don't feel any different."
6. GBGary Brecka
  Yeah.
7. JSJay Shetty
  And then it just adds up and accumulates.
8. GBGary Brecka
  Why would I wanna put something into my mouth consciously that if I swallow it, I have to call a poison control center for?
9. JSJay Shetty
  Yeah, totally.
10. GBGary Brecka
  And then you think-
11. JSJay Shetty
  It's huge
12. GBGary Brecka
  ... well, how much is being absorbed through my gums? How much... You know, the thinnest skin in the bo- in your body is in the floor of your mouth, and it is fraught with blood vessels. One of the best delivery mechanisms besides the, you know, oral, the first pass metabolism, is sublingual.
13. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
14. GBGary Brecka
  Um, so, so now I'm drinking tap water all day, and then I'm sublingually. And then, you know, the second thing that's in there is chlorine. And I did a really interesting video on my Instagram the other day, and people d- It, it really made an impact-
15. JSJay Shetty
  Mm
16. GBGary Brecka
  ... a ripple effect. I went to the faucet and I filled up two glasses with tap water, clear, um, glasses with tap water, and just set them on my counter. And I had my, um, one of my heads of production just take four fingers and hold them down in one of the glasses, and he held them there for about a minute. Um, and he took his fingers out. And by the way, you can do this. Um, the kit to do this you can order on Amazon for six bucks. And then I took a chlorine testing kit and I put drops of chlorine in, uh, in one glass, and I put drops, or drops of the chlorine tester in, in the other glass. One of them tested very high for chlorine. One of them tested as having no chlorine. And so the question is, where did the chlorine go?
17. JSJay Shetty
  Mm.
18. GBGary Brecka
  Well, it was absorbed into his skin-
19. JSJay Shetty
  Mm
20. GBGary Brecka
  ... in just that 60-second period.
21. JSJay Shetty
  Wow.
22. GBGary Brecka
  And so that's how good the, the, that, that transdermal... It, it, it will absorb that chlorine. And you can do the... You can get a chlorine testing kit for about six bucks on Amazon. Just try it. Take your tap water. You'll never drink it again. Take two glasses of tap water, fill it up, put it on your counter, put your fingers down in one glass of tap water for 60 seconds, take them out, and test both for chlorine. You'll find whatever glass you put your fingers in tests for no chlorine. Now imagine that's fluoride, microplastics, and, and other things. And, and, you know, when we talk about plastic bottles and microplastics, you know, BPAs, the bisphenols, um, these, these BPAs were, um... Until the '60s, they were used as a synthetic estrogen. So it was used in female hormone therapy, in labor induction, um, um, and other forms of female hormone therapy. Now, how some scientist with way too much time on his hands [laughs] realized that if you actually mix a petroleum-based product with this synthetic estrogen, um, this bisphenol, this BPA, that you'll make the surface of the plastic more viscous, um, and therefore, you know, like oils and waters and fluids and things won't stick to it. Um, how they figured that out, I'm, I'm not sure. I'm not sure how that combination occurred. But make no mistakes, the BPAs are synthetic estrogens. Um, and there's some indications that there is enough BPA inside of the lining of an, of a non-BPA-free can of, like, um, tomato paste, for example, which acidic foods leach it out, heat leaches it out, to actually shift a woman's menstrual cycle. So from ovulation to luteal or follicular to ovulation. So imagine that you could actually just be eating a food with enough bisphenols in it that, not disclosed on the label, that you don't know are in there because it's leaching from the plastic, to actually shift your menstrual cycle. That is astounding to me. And so, um, yeah, plastic, plastic bottles is one that I would try to get out as much as you can too. [laughs]
23. JSJay Shetty
  Gary, I love... We have covered so much great ground today that we've never-
24. GBGary Brecka
  Yeah, we did
25. JSJay Shetty
  ... never covered on the show before. So I wanna say a big thank you to you because-
26. GBGary Brecka
  Super welcome, man
27. JSJay Shetty
  ... there are so many things that I know that everyone's gonna be listening. There's so many actionable things I know that people can practice straight after
1:06:41 – 1:09:10
Gary on Final Five
1. JSJay Shetty
  this episode. We end every episode of On Purpose with a Final Five, and these questions have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum.
2. GBGary Brecka
  Wow.
3. JSJay Shetty
  So, Gary Brecka, these are your final five.
4. GBGary Brecka
  Why didn't you tell me about this so I could have-
5. JSJay Shetty
  Why didn't you know? Yeah
6. GBGary Brecka
  ... like a really cool answer?
7. JSJay Shetty
  All right. So question one, what is the best advice you've ever had or received?
8. GBGary Brecka
  The best advice I've ever heard or received is you, if you want to shrink your problems, grow your purpose.
9. JSJay Shetty
  Mm. Beautiful. Very aligned. Uh, second question. Next time you come on the show, we're gonna talk about that.
10. GBGary Brecka
  Yeah.
11. JSJay Shetty
  'Cause you have to come back. This is amazing.
12. GBGary Brecka
  Yeah.
13. JSJay Shetty
  Uh, second question, what is the worst advice you've ever heard or received?
14. GBGary Brecka
  You're perfect the way you are.
15. JSJay Shetty
  Mm. Question number three, what is something that you used to value but you don't anymore?
16. GBGary Brecka
  Wealth.
17. JSJay Shetty
  Question number four, how would you define your current purpose in life?
18. GBGary Brecka
  I would define it as God-given.
19. JSJay Shetty
  And fifth and final, if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?
20. GBGary Brecka
  To pause before you speak.
21. JSJay Shetty
  Mm. That's great. Gary Brecka, everyone. If you don't already follow The Ultimate Human podcast, subscribe online, follow him on Instagram. Make sure you share your greatest takeaways with us both. Tag us both, whether you're using X or Instagram or TikTok, whatever it may be. I wanna see what you're playing around with, what you're testing, what you're experimenting, and what you're applying to your life. If you've listened to this episode, I want you to choose one thing that resonates with you, just one habit, just one practice, and I want you for the next seven days to commit to yourself, promise to yourself that you're just gonna do it. Just as it is for seven days, experiment with it, and then tell me and Gary what it was like. Gary, thank you so much-
22. GBGary Brecka
  Super welcome. I really enjoyed this
23. JSJay Shetty
  ... for coming on Purpose. You are fantastic at what you do, and I'm so grateful to spend time with you, man. Thank you.
24. GBGary Brecka
  Thank you, brother.
25. JSJay Shetty
  Thank you.
26. GBGary Brecka
  Appreciate you.
27. JSJay Shetty
  If this year you're trying to live longer, live happier, live healthier, go and check out my conversation with the world's biggest longevity doctor, Peter Attia, on how to slow down aging and why your emotional health is directly impacting your physical health.
28. SPSpeaker
  Acknowledge that there is surprisingly little known about the relationship between nutrition and health, and people are gonna be shocked to hear that, 'cause I think most people think the exact opposite