January 26, 2023

From podcast: https://bengreenfieldlife.com/podcast/gary-brecka/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:00:49] Podcast Sponsors

[00:06:21] Guest Introduction

[00:08:45] Gary's use of the Egoscue stretching technique

[00:11:14] Gary's morning walk routine and the importance of connecting with nature

[00:13:45] Why we typically don't allow ourselves to experience stressors

[00:15:26] Gary's previous work in the insurance sector, Science and the Predictability of Mortality, and how this led him to his interest in health and longevity

[00:19:25] The one sentence that defines Gary's entire career

[00:29:00] How genes and their sub-alleles are able used to predict deficiencies

[00:33:34] Is there a link between light exposure and hypoxia?

[00:35:35] Podcast Sponsors

[00:38:11] The most frustrating thing about Gary's previous career

[00:39:59] Vitamin D deficiency causes the same symptoms as rheumatoid arthritis

[00:43:47] Gary's Superhuman Protocol

[00:53:37] Gary's collaboration with Grant Cardone, 10X Health

[01:00:01] Methylene Blue, Diet and Hydration

[01:06:48] Is it true that you can dissolve oxygen in water?

[01:10:04] Gary's favorite PEMF, EWOT (Exercise With Oxygen Training) and Light Technologies

[01:21:28] The Ozone I.V. and Carnosine Therapy that Ben did during this his visit with Gary

[01:23:20] How do you cure Long COVID?

[01:25:43] How do I get alkaline?

[01:26:10] Top five tips for people on a budget

[01:27:58] How do you use diet and nutrition to improve mood, depression, and anxiety?

[01:30:01] What are your thoughts on seed oils?

[01:31:09] Closing the Podcast

[01:32:10] Upcoming Event

[01:34:22] End of Podcast

Ben:  My name is Ben Greenfield. And, on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast.

Gary:  Misdiagnosis is the third leading cause of death in America. I won't say modern medicine is the third leading cause, but modern medicine's misdiagnosis kills more people than morbid obesity and diabetes combined. What drove me crazy about my previous career was that I wasn't allowed to have any contact with the patient or any contact with the treating physician. So, even if I saw life-threatening drug interactions, I couldn't pick up the phone.

Ben:  Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

I don't think it's any secret, especially for those of you who have read my cookbook that I guzzle extra virgin olive oil. I use it in everything. Not only is it a myth that you're not supposed to cook with olive oil because extra virgin olive oil actually has a bunch of flavonols and polyphenols in it that allow it to be pretty heat stable, even for things like sauteing, baking, broiling, et cetera, but the health benefits of this stuff, I mean as far as lowering risk of heart disease, helping prevent type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancer, high blood pressure, Alzheimer's disease, obesity. I mean, it's basically zero carb, low carb, ketogenic, friendly to a paleo lifestyle, a cornerstone of the longevity-enhancing Mediterranean diet, and as any chef will tell you, that's where the flavor's at. And, a really good extra virgin olive oil has amazing flavor. 

The problem with the ones that you buy at the grocery store is they're not fresh. After six months, the polyphenols and antioxidants in olive oil start to degrade. And, if you actually look at the bottle label at the grocery store of the olive oil that you're probably buying right now, it's older than six months, it's in plastic, it's not in that dark glass container. And, if they're already older than six months at the time that you buy them, that means they've sat in storage, then in shipping, then in a warehouse, then on store shelves, even years growing stale and rancid before you even put them in your cart, and then a lot of them have extra bad oils added to them, particularly canola oil. 

So, I go straight to the source and get not only the world's most delicious artisanal olive oil but real fresh, the real stuff extra virgin olive oil. I get it from this company called the Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil club. I've been a member for I think almost 10 years now. I get three new bottles sent to me every quarter. They're hunted down by this guy who's been on my podcast twice, T.J. Robinson, “The Olive Oil Hunter,” who also does vinegars now by the way that are amazing. I have a podcast coming out about that. If it's not already out, you're going to hear it pretty soon. But, this stuff is the best olive oil I've ever used in my life, guilt-free, it's real, it's not cut with other stuff, it's not rancid, and it even comes with this cool little booklet where you could read about the farm where it was harvested who grew it, what it tastes like, tasting notes, recipes to use it in, better yet they're going to give us all a bottle for a buck. One bottle that's all for a dollar, so you can taste the difference for yourself.

Here is where you go for all this, getfresh38.com. That's the number 38, getfresh38.com. And, that's everything you need to get this extra virgin olive oil for yourself. It's one of the funnest clubs ever. So, check it out. Extra virgin olive oil, it's real artisanal stuff straight from olive oil hunter, T.J. Robinson, my friend, one of the best guys out there in the olive oil industry, getfresh38.com.

Let's talk about brain fuel. You probably are familiar with the macronutrients, carbohydrates, and fat and protein, but there's a fourth one, ketones. And, ketones are powerful. They've been scientifically proven to support mental clarity, athletic performance, and metabolic health. They're 28% more efficient at generating energy than sugar alone. Meaning, you could do more with less. And, this stuff called Ketone IQ made by the good geniuses at HVMN is the way to experience the magic of ketones without fasting or restricting carbohydrates. And, it allows you to unlock some pretty key physical and cognitive benefits on demand. You drink this stuff. You don't get hungry. I had it yesterday when I was out snowboarding and didn't want to think about energy bars and curly cheese fries and hot chocolate, just one ketone, boom, done. This stuff was created through a $6 million contract from the U.S. Department of Defense, deep partnership, some of the top researchers in Ketone science, truly cutting-edge drink. And, you get 20% off of it. You go to hvmn.me/BenG and use code BENG20 for 20% off. That's hvmn.me/BenG and use code BENG20 for 20% off of anything from HVMN.

So, one of the biggest issues when it comes to aging poorly is what's called senescent cell accumulation. Senescent cells are zombie cells. They stay in your body long after their functional lives. They waste your energy. They waste your cellular resources. And, as you get older accumulation of these senescent cells, contributes to slower workout recovery, joint stiffness, joint discomfort, sluggish mental and physical energy, we often associate with aging. It comes from senescent cells. But, you can naturally eliminate them. There are what are called senolytic ingredients that are proven, things like fisetin and piperlongumine and synactiv and other research-backed ingredients help to combat senescent cell accumulation.

There's one formula out there, it's like a shotgun formula with all the stuff in it that prevents senescent cell accumulation. It's called Senolytic. It's made by Qualia. So, Qualia packs nine vegan non-GMO, gluten-free senolytic ingredients into one formula to provide the most complex and complete senolytic support of any formula on the planet. They're given a 100-day money-back guarantee and 15% off if you do this. Go to neurohacker.com and use code SENOBEN, S-E-N-O-Ben. That's neurohacker.com and use code SENOBEN that's going to give you dramatically better aging as you Stave off the accumulation of these senolytic cells. So, check it out. Neurohacker.com, use code SENOBEN on their senolytic formula.

Alright, folks, Gary Brecka. Here's Gary's extremely boring bio. He's a co-founder and chief biologist of something called 10X Health. You may have heard of it. The guy's blowing up all over the place because his protocols, particularly his Superhuman Protocol that we talk about on today's show actually works. He has over 20 years of experience in biohacking and functional medicine. He's trained as a biologist, but he optimizes human performance through nutrition, evidence-based science, and innovative technologies, many of which we discuss in this show like oxygen, red light, certain nutrients and supplements, movement protocols, quantification, and a whole lot more. He works with some of the world's top CEOs and executives, some of the world's top athletes. And, his methods are unique, they're bound to the Earth, as well as science, and he does a great job. 

He's a man after my own heart. I recently had the chance to visit his home in Miami, spend a day with him. He's the real deal, so I hope you enjoy this show. And, all the shownotes for everything Gary and I talk about are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Brecka, B-R-E-C-K-A. And, at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Brecka, that's also where you can go to access the video as well as any of the resources that we discuss on today's show. So, enjoy.

Gary, I feel like we should probably warm up our voices for this show because [00:07:38] _____.

Gary:  I do too.

Ben:  How now brown cow.

Gary:  How now brown cow.

Ben:  Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. The human torch–what's the human torture one?

Gary:  The lazy goose leaped over the cow fence.

Ben:  Alright, folks, I'm here with Gary Brecka. We're finally doing it. Gosh, this morning so far has been fantastic.

Gary:  Oh, my god.

Ben:  I don't know if every morning for you has been, but let's give folks the rundown just in case they're curious.

Gary:  Super biohacking morning.

Ben:  So, for those of you who are not familiar with Gary or who didn't listen to my introduction to Gary for this podcast, he knows a lot about human biology. In particular, how to harness a lot of the elements of things like air and light and water and electricity to optimize the body. And so, we began today with some beautiful breathwork out in the sunshine.

Gary:  Amazing, that was great. Led by yourself.

Ben:  We snort a little Rapeh and then did a little kind of a pranayama S breathwork session. You did some Egoscue stretching.

Gary:  Yeah.

Ben:  And, we got time, we can go through your whole little morning routine because it's fantastic.

Gary:  Sure.

Ben:  Tell me about the Egoscue stretching why you start that off.

Gary:  It's just a postural realignment, pigeon toeing the feet in and then using some rear circles with your delts to put some stress on the delts and kind of realign the traps and changes the kyphotic and lordotic curve in the spine, get the cerebral spinal fluid going, and then you'd use a pursed hand pressed over top of your head staring right at your middle fingers to just stretch and get that cerebral spinal fluid going. I mean, the credit really goes to Egoscue not to me. And, I use it every morning as a way to warm up for breath work or cooling after.

Ben:  Yeah. We have a mutual friend, Brian–Brian, is that his name?

Gary:  It's Brian.

Ben:  Egoscue?

Gary:  I can't remember his last name.

Ben:  Sorry, Brian, if you're listening. But, anyways, I had discovered Egoscue when someone had mentioned it to me on a podcast and there's a little five-minute video on YouTube. It's five minutes to banish low back pain or something like that. And, some of those moves we did out on your porch this morning.

Gary:  Exactly. I learned them in–

Ben:  It's fantastic.

Gary:  I went to a Tony Robbins event and then afterwards I met Brian.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  And, Brian gave me just some simple realignment techniques to use on a daily basis. And, I've used them every day since.

Ben:  Well, Brian taught my sons, my twin sons how to do some of these exercises. And, we went to a Tony Robbins event in New Jersey and where we're sitting out there with over 50,000 people in the stadium. And, he asked if the Greenfield boys can come up. They were 9 years old. And, they got up there on stage with all the flash bulbs in the arena. And, I still have a little video of it. They're up there on stage leading the whole arena through the Egoscue exercises.

Gary:  Yeah, yeah.

Ben:  And, I still throw them. I don't know about you, but I do little movement snacks throughout the day.

Gary:  I do too. I believe in snacking on exercise. I think that's just one of the greatest tools just to stay mentally clear and alert and physically focused. I say physically focused too because if you're not in physically good shape or your body's tired, your mind's tired.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  So, snacking on exercise throughout the day is an amazing way to just keep a level of clean, clear, cognizant waking energy sustained throughout the day.

Ben:  Yeah. And, even though we'll get into some of the sexy biohacking technologies, you've got some amazing tools sprinkled around your house that I think people will absolutely be intrigued with. You and I haven't hung out so much, but what I appreciated about you was one of the very first things we did after the breathwork was we went outside, we connected with nature, not just the technologies.

Tell me about what your morning walk routine is like?

Gary:  So, right across from me, I'm right below the–

Ben:  Careful, everybody's going to know where you live now.

Gary:  Yeah. One Thousand Museum in Miami. But, right across is a huge open-air park. It's got a dog park in the middle and museums on either side and two-thirds of it surrounded by water. So, in the mornings because I go out there, take my shoes off, and I do these squares around the park. And, I call it four corners. And, in each corner, I just do a different basic exercise, some of which I learned from you this morning, but a narrow squat stretching move, push-up, a static squat hold, plank. And, each one of those corners, it makes the walk go fast, it breaks it up. You're not crushing your body. It's a great way to wake up. I'm a big believer in earthing and grounding because we actually discharge into the earth.

Ben:  Right, which you did, you slipped your shoes off.

Gary:  Took my shoes off.

Ben:  [00:12:07] _____ because I was wearing it. I was wearing the cheating sandals. The Earth Runners sandals with the carbon built in it.

Gary:  I'm in downtown Miami, so God knows.

Ben:  I told you, I'm strange. I know where all the syringes and the condoms are. I keep the feet shod.

Gary:  Yeah.

Ben:  But then, I was telling you they even make these straps now. They're called Erthe, E-R-T-H-E. You put them on any existing tennis shoe and they turn the shoe a cross train or whatever and they earth it, they ground it.

Gary:  I'm all about that.

Ben:  That's an option to go with. But, you take your shoes off and you walk around the park after that.

Gary:  I walk around the park and do some breathwork at first light in the morning. And, I love the sun comes right up over Miami beach right off the horizon of that water. So, I do breathwork in the morning, I do that Egoscue method. I usually have a cup of black coffee or maybe with a little fresh organic coconut powder. And then, I do this thing I call Four Corners, which is go to the park, take my shoes off and then walk the four corners of the park doing a different exercise at each location.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah.

Gary:  Very simple. I take my shirt off, I get natural sunlight. I've done it in the rain before too. I do it when it's cold. I don't let the weather dictate whether or not I do it because one of my core beliefs is that aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort. And, the more aggressively we pursue comfort, the faster we age. We just collapse all of our defense mechanism so we could go into a whole podcast on that alone. But, if it's raining, I do the same thing. If it's hot and I do the same thing. If it's cold, I do the same thing. I don't let the weather dictate whether or not I'm out there. I actually kind of prefer some of the real inclement weather because it parks by itself, a walk out there when it's wet. And, I'll walk out there when it's dry.

Ben:  What's that mean? I might get really a few times here as we go through your morning routine, but when you say derail or defense mechanisms, I assume you're talking about just not allowing ourselves to tap into hormetic stress or something like that, what's that mean for you–

Gary:  Hormetic stress being the big one, but we have a tendency to believe that stress is very bad for the body. So, we have to stop telling grandma not to go outside, it's too hot. Not to go outside, it's too cold. 

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  Just to lay down, just to relax, to eat at the first pang of hunger. Because as you know, if we don't load our bones, they don't strengthen. If we don't tear a muscle, it doesn't grow. If we don't challenge the immune system, it weakens. So, in almost every case, physical stress strengthens the body but it also strengthens the mind.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  I mean, sick, fat, tired people don't build empires, right?

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  And so, it really begins in the body before it travels to the mind. Same thing with neurotransmitters and gut health. That gut-brain connection is very much the same as a physical-brain connection.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  And so, I believe that healthy hormetic stresses, thermal stresses, weight-bearing stresses are very good for the body. I mean, you want to live a long time and I happen to have a core competency in the science of longevity and mortality. Lift heavy weight and stress the body on a regular basis.

Ben:  Yeah. When you talk about your history in the science of mortality and longevity–and, don't worry, we'll get back to some of the other cool things that we got up to this morning after the walk.

But, I would love to hear a little bit more about what got you interested in this because before I came to Miami, you and I talked on the phone, and I always thought you were just some biohacker who was interested in the body and eventually took all the things you learned and started to do with other people. But, you had a very interesting start, you were in insurance adjusting or something like that. 

Gary:  A very specific area of insurance, which was the science and the predictability of mortality. It's called probabilistic mortality modeling.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:   So, if we got five years of medical records on you and five years of demographic data, we could tell the insurance company how long you had to live to the month. You see because the database through the month, to the month–

Ben:  This wasn't like methylation clocks and Horvath aging and telomeres, this was just looking at epidemiological data.

Gary:  Epidemiological data, but with the one thing you have to remember that insurance companies have that no other clinical study has, no other medical enterprise has, no other published trial has, no medical enterprise of any type has is that they know the day, the date, the time, the location, and the cause of death for everyone that they've issued an annuity, a life insurance, or a reinsurance policy on. Even a reverse mortgage. You wouldn't believe the number of financial services, products that are actually based on how many more months you have left on Earth. 

And so, when you have the end point, you can trace it back to causality. You see in a clinical study, we know that, for example, obesity shortens your lifespan by X number of years, type 2 diabetes shortens your lifespan by X number of years. This is all data that's used on actuarial tables, how do we put somebody on an actuarial table. But, when you talk about specific mortality, they have tens of millions of deaths. And, they trace that endpoint back to its causality. If this database could see the light of day, it would permanently change the face of humanity. It would upend modern in medicine in a way that would absolutely be catastrophic.

Ben:  And, that information is private?

Gary:  The insurance companies are the polar opposite of Google and Facebook, they collect voluminous amounts of information but they don't share it with anybody. They use it to price financial service products against you. I mean, think about it, if they're going to take out a $25 million or $50 million life insurance policy on your life–

Ben:  We're talking like a term life insurance policy?

Gary:  We're usually talking about Universal Life policies that are going to last until the day that you die.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  So, they don't expire after 10 years or 20 years.

Ben:  And, they're trying to predict when that data is going to occur so that they don't get stuck with the bill.

Gary:  Exactly. But, if you think about it, they're taking $25 million or $50 million worth of risk on one variable. There's only a single variable that matters. And, that's how many more months do you have left on Earth? How many more months are they going to predict or that they're going to collect that premium?

Ben:  Okay. And, you're working for one of these companies?

Gary:  I was actually working for multiple companies. So, we did life expectancies and we did these probabilistic models to basically take a portfolio of life insurance that one life insurance company is going to acquire and let them know if the mortality predictions were accurate or not.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  Because think about if you put $25 million worth of risk on somebody's life and you don't collect enough premiums to offset that risk because your mortality prediction was wrong–

Ben:  Kind of a shitty business model.

Gary:  It's kind of a really shitty business model. And, if you want to know how accurate they are, just look at the last financial services crisis. We had 364 banks failed. Not a single life insurance company failed. Not one.

Ben:  Really?

Gary:  Not a single life insurance company failed. This is how accurate and well-reserved they are because they have perfected the science of mortality.

Ben:  So, what'd you find out?

Gary:  If I was to boil my entire career down to one sentence, I say this all the time, it would be that the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease.

Ben:  Presence of oxygen is the absence of disease.

Gary:  Yes.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  We did not find a single disease etiological pathway that did not either have its roots in the absence of blood oxygen or was not severely exacerbated by the absence of blood oxygen.

Ben:  Can you give me an example?

Gary:  Hypoxia. All cancer begins in a hypoxic environment. Type 2 diabetes begins in a hypoxic environment–

Ben:  Maybe like the Warburg Effect, cancer generating energy anaerobically producing lactic acid tissue acidosis and then–

Gary:  And then, springing upon you to create that angiogenic effect.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  To eventually provide oxygen to grow a tumor, but the genesis of that tumor begins in hypoxia.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  I mean, how does the cancer decide where it's going to metastasize to? It looks for a focal area of hypoxia and it sets up shop in that area.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  And, if you look at anemia or sedentary lifestyle, these are leading causes of all-cause mortality. Sitting is the new smoking. But, why a sedentary lifestyle and why is sitting become the new smoking? Because sedentary lifestyle is a foundation for hypoxia. The less we move, the less we breathe, the more poorly we manage oxygen. Not only the faster we're accelerating towards the grave, but the faster the parabolic curve of all-cause mortality. So, we could predict the onset of and the severity of disease based on your hypoxic condition.

If you have anemia, for example, and it's non-responsive is you have the MTHFR gene mutation, you don't respond to folic acid, you only respond to methylfolate, for example, and you have a cardiovascular condition. Atherosclerosis, arterial sclerosis, you can predict how much more quickly that will accelerate based on a normal table of atherosclerotic progression.

Ben:  Really? Okay. And, I know if I'm wondering this, other people might be also, but of course, we seek out in some cases as health enthusiasts, hypoxia. Like, you and I when we were doing the breathwork out on the porch, we got to certain sections where we were blowing all of our air out and holding that for as long as possible or some people will do, I don't know if you've ever been a CVAC chamber.

Gary:  Yeah, yup.

Ben:  Which is hypoxic or I even do, like you do, exercise with oxygen therapy, but I have a little switch on that that a therapy device I use that pulls me into hypoxia gets my pulse O2 down, my blood oxygenation down and then it goes back up once I get that surge of oxygen. But, you're not saying that all hypoxia is bad, right? Because it seems there's a kind of a hormetic effect to having periods of time with low oxygen.

Gary:  No, systemic hypoxias is bad.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary: Long-duration hypoxia is bad. Short-term exposure to hypoxic conditions or even altitude can actually improve oxygen transport. If you look at the way that a healthy body responds to a hypoxic condition, it increases erythropoiesis. So, that increase in erythropoiesis offsets altitude.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  But, if you weren't offsetting that altitude and you put yourself in a hypoxic environment, your body didn't offset that oxygen deficit, you would have severe long-term consequences for that.

Ben:  Now, besides a hypoxic stain. This might be a loaded question, I don't know. but, I'm sorry besides a sedentary state like you alluded to with the sitting is the new smoking. What type of other factors have you identified that seem to be pretty associated with people being in this hypoxic state?

Gary:  Anemic conditions, age-related sarcopenia that actually collapses the respiratory rate, the respiratory volume.

Ben:  Just muscle loss and the inability to carry oxygen, lack of muscle.

Gary:  Yes.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  I mean, muscle is our metabolic currency. I mean, there's a direct correlation between early onset disease and even early onset death and your muscle volume, the percentage of muscle that you have. I mean, muscle really is our metabolic currency. We're realizing now that muscle is more important in older ages than flexibility–

Ben:  Yeah, I've been starting to pay attention to that Dr. Gabrielle Lyon who does a lot. She calls it muscle-centric medicine. I think she's writing a book about it. I'll have to get her on the podcast–

Gary:  I'm a big fan, I follow her on Instagram too.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. So, sarcopenia or loss of muscle would be one thing associated with hypoxia.

Gary:  Anemia.

Ben:  Sedentary lifestyle, anemia. And, I assume by anemia, you don't just mean low iron?

Gary:  I don't just mean low iron.

Ben:  Because there's that guy Morley Robbins who talks about the iron-copper ratios and the issue and some people supplement with iron and it causing things like hemochromatosis without adequate copper on board. So, I assume it comes down to more than just supplement with iron.

Gary:  Yes, it comes down. I mean, that's a broad category. I mean, there's a lot of people that we would find that had an anemic condition, low red blood cell, low hemoglobin, and they were non-responsive to therapy. So, for example, take a patient that has a homozygous MTHFR gene mutation, their portfolate metabolizers. These people don't respond to conventional therapies, folic acid, B12, and iron, which is normally what they would give somebody who has an anemic condition. And so, these become chronic. 

And now, chronic anemia if you look at the type 3 diabetes, one of the early links to Alzheimer's, in fact in my 22-year career, I didn't see a single early onset Alzheimer's patient, not one, that did not have at least 10 years of elevated blood sugar prior to. And, this myth that people are losing their memory is not really true, they're losing access to their memory. So, it's not the memory that's actually fading, it's the access to the memory that's fading because neurosynaptic junctions get full of eventually amyloid plaques. But, that viscosity changes a long time before you actually have these issues with memory.

Ben:  Which is why a more stable source of fuel like ketones or coconut oil, et cetera, can be very beneficial for Alzheimer's or dementia because it's staving off the diabetic condition in the brain. You know what else I think–

Gary:  Insulin resistance in the brain.

Ben:  And, I don't know if you've thought about this much at all before, but I think part of it in addition to the presence of too much carbohydrate and glucose in neural tissue, it's also the lack of choline precursors that one gets from lots of healthy fats. There's a guy named Dayan Goodenowe who wrote a book called “Breaking Alzheimer's.” And, that book goes into plasmalogen deficiencies, plasmalogen being these tiny fat-based molecules that he has found are heavily associated with onset of this type 3 diabetes turns out that the main precursor for plasmalogen is the type of choline that we'd find in the eating a lot of grass-fed beef or walnuts and then other seeds and nuts and avocados and olive oil and all these things we know are healthy for the brain. So, it's kind of like that one-two combo of sugar excesses and plasmalogen deficiencies that seems to result in this type 3 diabetes onset.

Gary:  No question.

Ben:  And so, back to the oxygen piece, so we got a sedentary lifestyle, we got sarcopenia, we have some form of anemia, not necessarily everybody needs to go rush out and buy iron but something related to MTHFR or iron copper or that's why I put raw liver in my smoothie every morning, which I'm going to get you on the bandwagon for it–

Gary:  I'm not quite there yet, but–

Ben:  I made you a smoothie this morning.

Gary:  I feel pretty good right now.

Ben:  We'll get to the smoothie eventually because we got back from the walk and then we eventually got to that.

But, what other biggies, while we're talking about the reasons for hypoxia, do you think you could recognize it as the main ones for people to think about if there's any others?

Gary:  Poor methylation, poor use of mitochondrial nitric oxide and oxygen at the mitochondria level.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  And, if you look at older ages and respiratory volumes, one of the things that we would look at is how well they ambulated. So, if you take a patient that had–we had what was called morbidities and comorbidities.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  So, if you had a certain disease condition, if you had type 2 diabetes, you would get a debit. If you were morbidly obese, you would get a debit. If you were hypertensive, you would get a debit. But, if you put all of these debits into the same body, it's not one plus one plus one equals three, it's one plus one plus one equals ten. And so, we realize that the presence of oxygen was the absence of disease and that the deficiency in oxygen was the presence of a lot of diseases. Not only the onset of but the severity of disease. And, towards the tail end of my career, we started to delve deep into methylation pathways. And, I think that methylation is one of the most overlooked areas in all of modern medicine because it doesn't assume that what goes into your body and goes into mind and goes into everyone listening to this podcast is treated exactly the same.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  Right. That's the biggest fallacy in modern medicine.

Ben:  If I was going to come to you, how would you test me for methylation? Is this one of those salivary genetic tests?

Gary:  It's a salivary genetic test methyl detox profile. You can get way down the rabbit hole of methylation. So, what I prefer to do is look at the big five genes of actionable genes of methylation because it's no use looking at genes where you can't supplement for their deficiency.

Ben:  Would this be the alleles that you're looking at?

Gary:  The genes and their sub-alleles. So, for example, MTHFR has two big alleles: C677T, A1298C. Those are the big known ones.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  But, you look at people that have homozygous breaks, meaning both parents gave them the gene mutation.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  And, depending on where that allele is, they have a predictable deficiency and it's that deficiency that leads to some of the most common conditions that we accept as a consequence of aging. I mean, most people listening to this podcast are walking around right now somewhere between 55 and 60% of their true state of normal. And, what I mean when I say that is if they haven't looked at their own methylation pathways, if they're not supplementing for certain deficiencies, I'm not a huge believer in just supplementing for the sake of supplementing, I believe that we supplement for deficiency in the human body. And, when we do, magnificent things happen. The majority of disease that we believe is genetically inherited disease. It doesn't have a genetic link at all. The majority of disease that's passed from generation to generation: hypertension, hyperlipidemia, hypercholesterolemia, hypothyroidism, depression, anxiety, ADD, ADHD, these conditions that run in families do not have a gene directly associated with that deficiency.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  What they have is a methylation pathway deficiency.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  And so, what this means is they can't refine a certain raw material, they can't turn folic acid into methylfolate. Now, they have a deficiency in methylfolate–

Ben:  Which is why if you're having a multivitamin or a cereal fortified with folic acid, it could do any more harm than good.

Gary:  The worst thing, I mean, most people don't even realize that folic acid is an entirely man-made chemical. You can't find folic acid anywhere on the surface of the Earth. It doesn't occur anywhere naturally in nature. Neither does the most common form of B12, cyanocobalamin, hydrogen cyanide-based B12. Three forms of B12 occur naturally in nature: the adenosine, the hydroxy, and the methyl. 

But, the cyano, the cyanide-based form, which generally comes from human sewage, from the sludge, from human sewage, when you bind hydrogen cyanide to the cobalt metal and create a B12 molecule, the body not only doesn't recognize that but has to convert it into a natural form of B12 to even use it. So, a lot of times, our supplements because we use something called single-dose toxicity in the United States or one of the few civilized nations in the world that uses single-dose toxicity, which means that if I give you something in a capsule or a pill and there is some arsenic in there or there's some hydrogen cyanide in there, there's some other toxic chemical in there, as long as it doesn't have an effect on you in that dose, then it's safe to give it to you. But, we don't take into account cumulative dose toxicity. Nobody gets mercury poisoning from one sushi meal.

Ben:  Yeah, we don't test what happens over time is what you're saying.

Gary:  We don't test what happens over time.

Ben:  By the way, did you say that B12, one of the synthetic forms of it is constituted from human sludge like waste and sewage?

Gary:  Yeah.

Ben:  What do you mean?

Gary:  So, when we process human sewage, there's a foamy yellow substance that they discard and it's called sludge. And, that sludge is almost purely hydrogen cyanide. And so, we can take that sludge, not we, certainly not me, but you can take that sludge, you can dry it into a powder. You bind it to the cobalt metal, which all B12 is cobalt metal. You bind it to the cobalt metal and now you have cyanocobalt and cyanide base B12.

Ben:  Wow.

Gary:  And, a lot of people say, “You know, Gary, it doesn't matter, that dosage won't harm you,” but again, it's not the or the dosage determines the poison, that's not true. The cumulative dosage determines the poison. If you're okay putting small amounts of mercury in your body every day, it won't be the small amounts that you put in every day, it will be the accumulation of that heavy metal that causes toxicity.

Ben:  Okay, got it. So, obviously, we talk about methylation alone for a couple of hours–

Gary:  Yeah, we can weigh down the rabbit hole.

Ben:  I want to give people the big bird's eye overview of some of these issues related to hypoxia. So, we talked about sedentary lifestyle, we talk about sarcopenia, we talked about the methylation issues, and anemia-related issues.

One thing I've noticed that you're also very keen on is light exposure. Is there a link between light exposure and in a hypoxic state?

Gary:  Well, there's not a direct link between light exposure and a hypoxic state, but most people don't wake themselves up in the morning. They do stimulants to wake themselves up instead of waking naturally.

Ben:  Yeah. 

Gary:  So, you know about first light, I'm not teaching you anything that you don't know, but that first 45 minutes of the day is very special blue light, not like the blue light that comes from your phone. 

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  There's no UVA, there's no UVB, you can't look straight at the sun, but you can absorb those rays. You still create cholecalciferol. You still actually will generate vitamin D3 in the morning from morning light, but you don't have the harm for it–

Ben:  Really you can still generate cholecalciferol even when it's kind of like red-ish outside?

Gary:  Oh, you can still generate cholecalciferol in the cloudiest of days. You don't need much sunlight to generate vitamin D3.

Ben:  A lot of people say you got to go out between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. to really get vitamin D, but you can actually get it in the morning.

Gary:  To get the highest I use for time spent. But, that's patently false. I mean, you generate cholecalciferol even through diffuse light that's passing through windows on a much more conservative basis. And then, obviously, it also depends on pigment of the skin. I mean, one of the reasons why we heard that COVID disproportionately affected minorities had nothing to do with their minority status, that had to do with the pigment of their skin in clinical deficiencies and vitamin D3.

Ben:  Really?

Gary:  So, insurance companies have been on this for years. I mean, if I saw dark pigmented patient that was submitting for a life insurance policy that was clinically deficient in vitamin D3 had maintained this deficiency for a number of years, I would essentially extend that condition to being chronic. And so, one of the second things we discovered in the mortality space was not just that the presence of oxygen was the absence of disease, but the majority of conditions that people faced were what we called modifiable risk factors.

Ben:  I'm on the road right now. I was actually on a walk last night and I walked past one of these juicery places. And, of course, they sell these super expensive high-end cold-pressed juices, but man are they expensive? But, back in my bag, I've just got one little canister of super easy to travel with powder that does all the same stuff with me and I could literally have a juice every day for two weeks of travel and it would cost me about the same as one juice at one of these juiceries.

The other cool thing is I don't feel about the sugar, like the 18 apples and three bananas that they pack into those juices at the average juicery. Instead, the stuff that I use has less than 3 grams of sugar per serving. It's also glyphosate-free, full organic, free of fillers and uses the highest quality plant-based ingredients in powders like green, red, gold, you name it. Very, very great tasting as well. It's a superfood blend that you just mix with water or your favorite beverage while you're on the go so you can basically be eating salads all day without actually eating salads. You can get 20% off of this stuff. It's made by Organifi who also strive to keep prices as low as possible on the stuff to make it easy on your pocketbook.

Organifi.com/Ben. That's Organifi with an i.com/Ben. And, if you go to Organifi.com/Ben, they'll give you 20% off of your first order at Organifi. Save yourself some money and get yourself some veg in a very super concentrated format. Check them out. Organifi.com/Ben.

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Gary:  What drove me crazy about my previous career was that I wasn't allowed to have any contact with the patient or any contact with the treating physician. So, even if I saw life-threatening drug interactions, I couldn't pick up the phone call–

Ben:  Your hands are tied, you're just sitting there knowing all these issues and seeing the big picture that all these people who are dying early are hypoxic. At that point, were you trained in biology?

Gary:  I was a human biologist–

Ben:  Okay, so you knew all these stuff, but you were just handcuffed, all you could do is look at the data and you couldn't do anything about it.

Gary:  And, even I made more than one trip to human resources to say I need to call this patient because they've been misdiagnosed or they're about to take a contraindicated medication that's going to cause a thrombolytic event.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  And, [00:39:00] _____ prosecution if I had contacted that patient, they said, “We'll not only fire you, we'll prosecute you.”

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  And, I understand because I'm not licensed to practice medicine, so they didn't want some human biologist sitting in a room looking at medical data, but I promise you if I had called their doctor or called that patient and said, “Hey, stop taking the corticosteroid, start taking some vitamin D3.” And, I think you'll see that your joint pain goes away because there's a perfect example of what I'm talking about with deficiencies leading to conditions people don't have. Misdiagnosis the third leading cause of death in America. I won't say modern medicine is the third leading cause, but modern medicine's misdiagnosis kills more people than morbid obesity and diabetes combined. And, it's third only to cancer and cardiovascular disease. So, misdiagnosis kills more people with the exception of cardiovascular disease and cancer. And, what happens–

Ben:  I assume you're not talking about somebody operating on your left leg instead of your right leg because it's labeled improperly? What would be an example of a misdiagnosis that would be that significant–

Gary:  Take a patient that has a severe deficiency in vitamin D3, for example. If you clinically deplete that nutrient from the human body for a decade or longer, that person will present with rheumatoid arthritis-like symptoms. Their history will read exactly parallel to rheumatoid arthritis. So, more than hundreds of times I saw patients with long-term clinical deficiencies in D3 go into the primary care physician and they would say, “Look, doc, the soles of my feet, my ankles are sore when I get out of bed in the morning, my hips are stiff every day, my knees have been hurting for the last two and a half years, it's steadily increased. I mean, recently it's hard for me to make a fist.” And then, doc goes, “You know what, you've got rheumatoid arthritis. I'm going to hit you with some high-dose prednisone. I'm going to put you on what's called a corticosteroid and you're just going to take these orally for the rest of your life and you're going to be fine.” 

Well, we knew in the insurance space because we had mortality data that if you started corticosteroids, you had six years and one day until you're having a joint replacement. It was so accurate, Ben, that if you were a 60-year-old female misdiagnosed with rheumatoid that you didn't have because you had a deficiency in D3, I would advance your age six years in one day. I would schedule your joint replacement and then I would begin to reduce what was called your ambulatory profile, how well you ambulated. As I reduce mobility, I can actually bring in all the diseases that exacerbate with a reduction in mobility. So now, you can predict the onset of and the severity of disease. And now, this person is been diagnosed with the condition they don't have, put on the medication they didn't need, which caused them to have a joint replacement that wasn't required. That reduced their ambulation and it brought all-cause mortality closer from the future.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  So now, they were dying of conditions they never should have had because they had surgeries that they never needed from medication that was never required from a diagnosis that was based on their history.

Ben:  That's interesting. Back to muscle-centric medicine. This is a study that I saw a couple of months ago. I don't recall what journal it was in, but it was highlighting a lot of the reasons for sarcopenia. And, there are multiple in the lack of lifting weights and I think vitamin D may have been in there, et cetera, but the two biggies were low amounts of bioavailable protein. And then, the other one, and this one really left out to me, I was like, “Huh, I never really thought about it that way,” but it is interesting, it was gradual loss of muscle and fitness due to periods of immobility related to surgery, medical treatments or injuries. 

Meaning, let's say that you're a nice robust 30-year-old muscular gal or guy listening to this and maybe five years from now you got to get a little surgery for, I don't know, a kidney issue, maybe a colonoscopy, puts you up for three or five days after that, and then maybe you break your leg. So, all these things string together and you have these periods of time over, let's say, when you're 30 to 60 during any given year where you're just totally down and out for 20 days. And, those build up year after year after year and it kind of makes sense intuitively, but until I saw it in this study in front of me like, “Oh, periods of inactivity related to medical issues are in addition to low bioavailable protein, the number one cause for sarcopenia.”

Gary:  That's why all the great biohackers talk about consistency over time.

Ben:  Yeah, it's consistency, it's keeping yourself in the game, which it's huge versus doing the marathon workout on the weekends or whatever.

Now, I want to learn a little bit more because I'm intrigued about where you got to where you're at now with this whole 10X Health. And, you're probably aware of this, you're kind of blowing up. I've been seeing you all over the place. What you're doing is obviously working or you're paying the right people the right amounts of money. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. And so, the question I have for you though kind of back to the science of the hypoxia thing and back to the light and what you were explaining about with the light, the importance of first light, the importance of natural spectrum sunlight. If you would have walked into my room this morning, I'm increasingly becoming like this, I'm like a red light addict. So, I travel with a red light headlamp and that's the only way I use to get around the house during the day or during the morning. So, it's all red light plus my red light glasses. So, my body's just basically bathed in sunrise even if at a hotel or I got to walk down to the lobby to get a coffee or whatever, it's all red light for the first hour of the day before I hit the big lights because typically I'm up around five or so.

So, my reasoning is until the sun actually comes up, I want to keep fooling my body that we're in no sun or sunrise. And then, I showed you that wrap-around red light thing that I have. Kineon is the name of the company that makes it. I wrapped that around my neck. And, this is the first hour after I'm getting up, so all of the blood going through my neck and my carotid is getting blast with red light. And then, I have a little travel-based red light people have probably seen like Joovv makes one called the Go. I have one that Dr. John Lieurance gave me last week that's got a little red. And so, basically is like putting the sunrise on in your bedroom. And so, I'm all red light for that first hour of the day. Now, these are all technologies, we'll talk more about some of the cool technology up here, some full red light–

Gary:  Yeah, I'm a huge fan of technology.

Ben:  So, for this concept of first light, do you think that there's an advantage to that that I'm still getting benefit from that versus what we did this morning going out in full spectrum sunlight and sitting on your balcony? Do you use these red light devices when you first wake up?

Gary:  I do. I do the first line. I do the walk in the morning. And, I believe in doing weights when I'm fed. So, I usually do weight workouts later in the evening.

Ben:  Yeah, which we're going to go do after this. We'll be crushing weights.

Gary:  Yes. This podcast is over when I'd go crush it. But then, I get back and I do what's called the Superhuman Protocol, which is essentially taking all of the good things from the outside and bringing it in. I believe we get three major things from Mother Nature. We get magnetism. We get oxygen. We get light.

Ben:  Magnetism, oxygen, and light.

Gary:  Those are the three big things we get from Mother Nature. And, the further we get away from those three things, the faster the onset of all-cause mortality.

Ben:  It kind of begs the question real quick, sorry to interrupt.

Gary:  No, it's okay.

Ben:  But, when you say magnetism, oxygen, and light and you found in these insurance actuarials that high hypoxia was one of the big issues associated with mortality, do you think that magnetism and light should have been on that list as well or a magnetism and light kind of the precursors to oxygenation?

Gary:  They're precursors to oxygenation because if you think about how oxygen is transported in the body, and then the delivery system not only just to the cell wall but into the mitochondria, which actually occurs more through the water, mitochondrial water than it does through direct oxygen entering the mitochondria. But, if you look at the degradation of the oxidative state of the body, a lot of this has to do with the charge, polarity on the surface of the cell. And, not to get too technical, but if you look at a red blood cell for–okay. 

So, let's get technical for a second. So, if you look at a red blood cell and we're going to do some dark field microscopy here after this, if you look at a red blood cell and the surface of that cell has a charge and just like a magnet, if two cells have similar charges, they repel. If they have opposite charges, they attract. PH stands for potential hydrogen. This is a charge. That's why it's a complete fallacy that we can get alkaline from drinking alkaline water. We get alkaline by changing the charge of the body through low Gauss current, through grounding, through earthing. I mean, discharging into the Earth or discharging through a PEMF mat, low Gauss PEMF mat is the safest and the most natural and the fastest way to alkalize, repolarize the charge of the cellular structures in the body.

Ben:  I've never really thought of them. So, you're basically making the case that alkalization is synonymous with or linked to repolarization.

Gary:  No question, it's linked to potential hydrogen. That's pH, the scale of pH is based on the potential of hydrogen. So, what this means is let's say you have a group of red blood cells and they're all hanging out in the bloodstream together and they have similar charges, they will repel, they'll slide around like hard-boiled eggs.

Ben:  Protons on a positive charge.

Gary:  Protons on the positive charge. So, what happens is you have a lot more surface area now for that cell to take in nutrients, to expel nutrients, to have oxygen from the serum of the blood enter a cell. So, for cells to shuttle oxygen through the bloodstream, they need to have more surface area. To increase the surface area, you need to create cellular separation. To create separation, you need to have the right charge.

Ben:  And, a higher pH, meaning higher potential hydrogen, more of these protons pushing each other apart expanding the cell.

Gary:  Right. Or else, they start to clump up.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  And, everywhere they touch, you lose that surface area twice. You lose it on the cell or you lose it on either cell that's touching. Now, what happens when these cells start to travel around the bloodstream in clumps? I'm not talking about coagulated blood, I'm talking about coalesced red blood cells. 

So now, because they haven't done earthing or grounding or red light or PEMF and they've been traveling and they live in a condo like I do on the 27th floor and they fly three days a week and they'll get a lot of static electricity, they're wearing 2-inch-thick sole, rubber-soled shoes. So, there's no discharge going on. So now, if you look at this blood, you'll see that the red blood cells are all clumped up and stuck together like too many cars to take this–

Ben:  You see that through these microscopes you have sitting right over here. He's no joking, folks. His whole condo is literally the microscopes and crazy, it's like half lab, half biohacking condo. So. you could see this.

Gary:  I made my cameraman do it last week. I actually pricked his finger, put the blood on there and you could see because the microscope's looking down through the blood. You could see all the blood kind of stacked up and clumped together.

Now, you lay on a PEMF mat and take your blood five minutes after getting off a PEMF mat, just do a 20-minute low Gauss session and you'll see that all the red blood cells have separated. Now, I have more surface area for oxygen, and that's why I do EWOT exercise with oxygen therapy after getting on a PEMF mat. Alkaline first–

Ben:  That's why. I was wondering about the order because we slept on PEMF mats last night. You're one of the few guys who have hung out with who actually has a PEMF mat under their bed. Your brand is different than mine–

Gary:  And, in my guest bed. You got use of it last night too.

Ben:  And, your guest bed, which was amazing. And, by the way, I just realized for those of you listening I didn't yet tell you where the shownotes are. We'll have a video of all this stuff, but it's BenGreenfieldLife.com/Brecka. That's Gary's last name, B-R-E-C-K-A, BenGreenfieldLife.com/Brecka.

So, by utilizing the PEMF and, of course, by going outside barefoot like we did today with the earthing and the grounding, we're reducing the amount of clumping by allowing for popular depolarization of the cells. And, that then allows for better oxygen flow and a more alkaline state. And, would that theoretically be something that is accelerated by exposure to light photons or is that something that allows the light photons to kind of charge up the mitochondria better?

Gary:  Allows them, light photons to charge up the mitochondria. So, remember I said we get three things from Mother Nature: magnetism, oxygen, and light. We get magnetism from the earth, earthing, grounding. It's a very real thing.

Ben:  Yeah. Or, PEMF is I like to think of as earthing on steroids.

Gary:  Yes, it's earthing on steroids. And, if you live in a condo or you spend a lot of time on a plane, you have to have a PEMF.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  So, you get magnetism from the earth, which actually creates alkalinity. And then, you move to this EWOT, exercise with oxygen therapy. So, we use 95% O2 under mild oxygen. Just what you did this morning, three-minute cycle with a 30-second sprint. This will raise not only your partial pressure, essentially the volume of oxygen in the bloodstream, but your SpO2, this will also raise your pulse oxygen, the amount of oxygen in the red blood cell. And now, once you flood the blood with oxygen, then under mild exercise because we want to create an oxygen demand, then you lay in a red light therapy bed.

Ben:  So, it's PEMF, then the exercise with oxygen therapy or some type of oxygen protocol, then it's red light. That's the gold standard. That's the one we create.

Gary:  That's why we call it superhuman. That's the one–

Ben:  I'm going to repeat that one more time for people. That is basically if you take nothing else from this interview, this is Gary's Superhuman Protocol, PEMF, and if you don't have access to that, earthing or grounding, and then let's say you don't have exercise oxygen therapy, you could at least do breathwork.

Gary:  Breathwork, yes.

Ben:  Anything that's going to introduce more oxygen to the body. We'll talk about EWOT a little bit more here briefly. And then, you finish that up with red light or sunlight.

Gary:  Take your shirt off and get outside.

Ben:  And, if you're totally free, the money or you don't have all the fancy biohacking equipment and you're listening in, you could literally go outside barefoot or lay on your back outside and then you could do breathwork in that same scenario, do a breathwork walk, and be doing that in the sunlight or finish up with red light. And, that one, two, three protocol, so we could do that every day, they feel better.

Gary:  Oh, my god, they would feel so much better.

Ben:  And then, the biohack, stack that and concentrate and make it more effective.

Gary:  Exactly. I mean, you stack it with that equipment. One of the reasons why I started a wellness franchise seven years ago with my fiancée when I left the mortality space, it was called Streamline Medical Group. We ended up treating a patient named Grant Cardone.

Ben:  Grant Cardone.

Gary:  Grant Cardone.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  And, Grant Cardone had such an astounding response to the therapeutic protocol we put him on that he and his partner, Brandon decided to acquire us September of last year. And, we became 10X Health. And so, now we're 10X Health and the idea is to take expensive modalities like–that equipment is 150 grand. I mean, I don't expect anyone to put 150,000 with equipment in their house.

Ben:  You'd be surprised, you haven't met some people listening in this podcast.

Gary:  Okay.

Ben:  But, anyway.

Gary:  So, go to @garybrecka.com, my Instagram, and I'll be happy to sell you the equipment. But, the idea is if I really wanted to touch the face of humanity, really make an impact on mankind, it's got to be available to everybody at a reasonable price

So, we're putting a thousand of these clinics around the country, 20 in every state. And essentially, Grant Cardone has helped to bankroll that and Brandon Dawson's helped to build the foundation for it for us to scale so that there'll be 20 of these locations in every state, people can come in and use it for a monthly fee instead of paying to have the equipment in their house.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  So, that's the whole, it was the whole idea behind 10X Health. And, that combined with blood testing combined with genetic testing which I'm a huge fan of. There's lots of great genetic tests out there. We do one through cell science systems. It looks at the five actionable genes and the sub-alleles. You can get 85% of the people, 90% to their destination of optimal health–

Ben:  Yeah. That's why I was telling you on our walk. I like to cut through the genetic confusion. I use one called StrateGene by Dr. Ben Lynch. It identifies the nine so-called dirty genes like the nitric oxide pathways, methylation pathways, a histamine processing pathways, et cetera. Because I mean, a lot of people don't need to know where that propensity for brown eyes or blue eyes–

Gary:  Exactly, or detached to your lobes. I mean–

Ben:  They just want that actionable data.

Gary:  Exactly.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. So, you're doing quantification as well on a pretty robust level. If someone were to come to you and work with you or someone would go to one of these new 10X Health Systems, they're going through a whole battery of tests.

Gary:  They're going to go through mainly two tests up front. They're going to get 64 biomarkers looked at in the blood.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  You're going to get five genetic markers looked at in their genes and the alleles. In those 64 biomarkers, we're basically looking for hormone balance glycemic control, blood sugar control, and nutrient deficiencies.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  And then, in the genetic test, which is what I love so much because you do it once in your lifetime, it's your genes, they'll never change. So, you don't have to guess at what you're deficient in, you can know what your body is incapable of methylating. Some people do better on certain forms of B12, B complexes, SAM-es, and methylated folates, 5-methylfolates. And, it's astounding what happens to human beings when you just put the raw material back into their body so that it can do what it was designed to do. 

I mean, MTHFR has been proven, linked to all kinds of conditions that we just accept as a consequence of aging, ADD, ADHD, OCD, manic depression, bipolar, mood and emotional disorders. These neurotransmitters imbalances come very often from methylation. We take simple amino acids like tryptophan and phenylalanine and we methylate these into neurotransmitters. And, if methylation is broken, we have these deficiencies mainly in our gut. But, if you don't have serotonin in your gut, you can't have serotonin in your brain.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  And so, there's lots of books written on the gut-brain connection. But, the gut-brain connection is a connection of methylation. And, it's very simple to fix this. I mean, a lot of people are walking around, like I said, 55 or 60% of their true state of normal because they're guessing at what they need to supplement with. They have a COMT mutation, for example, methyltransferase. These people have one of two types of sleep patterns, Ben. They'll either lay down exhausted to go to bed and they can't fall asleep because their mind keeps them awake or they fall asleep and their mind wakes them up because it's important to understand and I know that this, but we don't just create thought in our mind, we also dismantle thought. And, it's just as important to be able to dismantle thought, degrade thought as it is to create it. If not, the mind gets clouded. We call this ADHD. There's attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is not an intention deficit at all, it's an attention overload disorder. It's not that people that have ADD have an inability to pay attention, they have an inability to pay attention to so many things.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  And so, what if we could actually degrade thought at the same pace that we create thought? You'd stop hearing people say things like, “I work well under pressure.” Because when you say I work well under pressure, what you really mean is I lack the ability to set priorities internally. So, I use external pressure to set my priorities.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  And, we would be able to lay down to go to sleep and our mind would quiet instead of waking up because people have a COMT gene mutation, this catechol-o-methyltransferase gene mutations.

Ben:  Yeah, COMT.

Gary:  They don't degrade catecholamines.

Ben:  Right.

Gary:  And so, they have this excitatory state in the mind but the body's exhausted.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  And so, they have a hard time quieting their mind. And so, if they put the right amino acid balance into the body, they find that the mind quiets. So, I'm a huge fan of your amino acids.

Ben:  I was going to say it's kind of funny because a lot of what I do from a supplementation standpoint, it's probably a big three that come to my mind you're talking about right now is the essential amino acids. I had a big cup of those Kion Aminos beforehand–

Gary:  I have one around here somewhere right now.

Ben:  It's so great for the neurotransmitters for a lot of the methylation issues like the shotgun approach and then raw liver in my smoothie every morning, so the iron-copper ratio–

Gary:  Still working on that one.

Ben:  I'll give you the recipe. You're eating ice cream. It's amazing. 

Gary:  Yeah.

Ben:  Once you get the right stuff in it.

And then, the last one, and this is one that I think one reason you and I feel so good today that kind of amplifies a lot of the things we've been talking about when it comes to the light and the oxygen because it donates electrons to the mitochondrial transport chain, it pairs very well if you have enough NAD in your system is methylene blue. So, you and I took some oral methylene blue this morning and then charged up with a red light. And, that stuff's fantastic. I think it pairs very well with what you're doing with this Superhuman Protocol.

Gary:  Oh, no question. I mean, in the Superhuman Protocol, the magnetism, oxygen, and light, when you get in red light, certain wavelengths of red light, I mean, basically all wavelengths of light do the same thing, they just do it at different depths. So, some are very good for collagen, elastin, fibrin in the skin, others are good for circulation, microvascular circulation, other wavelengths are good for inflammation. Probably the most therapeutic in my opinion is the 810 nanometers because that's generally considered the deepest depth of penetration. But, what that wavelength does that's astounding is it passes through the mitochondrial wall, it kicks out a gas called mitochondrial nitric oxide and forces oxygen to dock. And, you know what happens in the mitochondria when you allow oxygen to enter that cycle, you have a 16-fold increase in cellular energy.

Ben:  Geez.

Gary:  So, imagine if we had a 16-fold increase in cellular energy in 32 trillion cells, imagine the level of waste elimination, repair, detoxification, regeneration. And, these are simple things using red light to force oxygen into the mitochondria, to upstage the mitochondria, so it can eliminate waste, repair, detoxify, and regenerate.

Ben:  So, when it comes to the testing that you do, you got these five genes that you'll test for. You've got the 64 blood markers. And then, obviously–

Gary:  That's the foundation.

Ben:  This can change from person to person, but do you have a specific diet/supplementation program that you find yourself referring to over and over again as far as the general broad-based diet? Seems to work well for a lot of these people who have hypoxia-related conditions.

Gary:  I do. I mean, a lot of it has to do with lowering high glycemic carbohydrates or shattering information there. Because if you look at, we have to remember that the digestive tract is a 30-foot-long conveyor belt. And, what you point on it at one end before it exits the opposite end, as it exits the stomach and then makes its way to the rectum and exits the rectum, and that 30-foot-long span, the level of high glycemic carbohydrate is directly related to the amount of oxygen that is diverted to your gut. Remember the amount of–

Ben:  Level of high glycemic carbohydrate intake is directly correlated to the amount of oxygen that your gut needs. Meaning the more sweet carbs you eat, the more oxygen gets divert to your gut?

Gary:  No doubt. That's exactly right.

Ben:  Okay, interesting.

Gary:  So, high glycemic meals require significantly more oxygen to digest.

Ben:  Really?

Gary:  And, they will require more blood flow as well. So, if you actually stood in front of a thermograph and you ate a very high glycemic meal versus, let's say, a purely ketogenic meal, you would see that your head, which is normally glowing red and orange and there's an orange red area around your heart, nice warm blood showing a concentration of blood around the heart in the brain, you would see these areas begin to cool. You'd actually see them start to turn yellow and green.

Ben:  Wow.

Gary:  Because the amount of blood in the system is fixed. So, we can't be here and be here at the same time. It can't be in the gut and be in the brain at the same time. So, if you divert it with high glycemic carbohydrates, you will steal it from the brain. It has to borrow from somewhere.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  Right. And so, the simple truth is that you have to decide if that food's serving you or stealing from you. And so, I mean, try to eat a big bowl of pasta and some half a loaf of bread and see how you feel after that meal.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  The energy drain is because you have reduced the oxidative state, you become marginally hypoxic–

Ben:  I don't know, I usually just feel Italian after meal.

Gary:  You just starts speaking with an accent.

Ben:  Right, yeah.

Gary:  But, I don't know, maybe it would be all to survive. Most people are exhausted.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  So, this is why in general I try to just avoid high glycemic foods because you have to decide, do you want energy or do you want taste? And, very often, people, they don't look at food as service, they don't look at a food item and say, is this going to serve me or is this going to steal from me?

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  And, we let these thieves into our house and they do exactly what they're designed to do, just steal from you.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  And so, this type of eating also exacerbates hypoxic conditions, so people that have low blood oxygen to begin with will eat a high glycemic meal, and then they'll crash.

Ben:  So, you tend to be more low carb a little bit like keto in your approach from a dietary standpoint.

Gary:  Low carb, high healthy fat, no seed oils. I mean, very basic in my opinion, i.e., I eat a tremendous amount of coconut oil, olive oil, nuts, avocados.

Ben:  Yeah. I saw that even a beef tallow on your counter here.

Gary:  Yeah, beef tallow.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  And, I don't eat a lot of high-glycemic fruits and high-glycemic foods.

Ben:  Now, what about water? Is there a certain kind of water that would allow you to be more oxygenated or certain things you should pay attention to from a hydration standpoint?

Gary:  Yes. So, I have a water filtration system, it's a hydrogenated water.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  Right. Because remember, if you have excess hydrogen, you actually can change polarity. You can change charge.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  So, hydrogen water can alkalize you.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  Alkaline water does not alkalize you.

Ben:  Because there's not higher amounts of hydrogen in just alkaline water, it's just passing over metal plate and using electrolysis to alkalize it but there's not increased hydrogen content.

Gary:  That's right. And, you think about it in chemistry and something cannot donate its properties and also maintain them.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  So, if it were true that alkaline water would transfer its properties than it would by design become acidic, if it gave up the properties that made it alkaline.

Ben:  Yeah, it's a good point.

Gary:  So , you can't have a glass of salt water and a glass of regular water and take the salt out of one and put it to the other and still have it in its origin. So, this is why the alkaline water theory falls apart.

Ben:  Unless you're super into homeopathy or something like that. Water maintains the inflammation. I think that's a discussion for another guy–

Gary:  I hope we're not going too sciency for these guys and put them to sleep.

Ben:  No, this is great.

Gary:  But, the truth is that hydrogen water, I'm a huge fan of hydrogen water because it can donate properties and it improves emulsification and gut biome, all kinds of things.

Ben:  Is it true that you could dissolve oxygen in water? Because I've heard about that, I'm like, yay. And then–

Gary:  I'll tell you my experience with it which was pretty profound because the human biologist in me says no. I mean, if you top off a Perrier, you get, you know–and then if you shake it up and keep doing it pretty soon, it's going to flatten out. So, in theory, suspending a gas in a liquid long-term is not possible. But, there is a type of water called KAQUN water or cocoon water, Dr. Lyon's research is–

Ben:  Cocoon water. What's the other thing called, KAQUN?

Gary:  K-A-Q-U-N. But, it's pronounced cocoon but it's K-A-Q-U-N.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  And, there's actually one of these facilities and they have a bath full of this water and in Vegas. And, I went out to this facility, highly skeptical, although I had read Dr. Lyon's research and was excited to go out and bathe in an oxygen tub that was perfused with oxygen through a patented method of suspending oxygen and water, linking oxygen molecules together, O2 linked, O2 linked, O2 linked to O2. And theoretically, the partial pressure of water on your skin is 600 millimeters of mercury, the partial pressure in the vein is about 140. So, this gradient allows for oxygen.

Ben:  Driving it through the grade from high to low.

Gary:  Yes, driving it from high to low–

Ben:  By being submerged in the water.

Gary:  Being submerged in the water.

Ben:  Interesting.

Gary:  So, when I got there, I said, “Okay, if this oxygen is moving from that water through my skin into my bloodstream, I should be able to measure it in a few ways. I should be able to measure my pulse oxygen. It should skyrocket. I should be able to measure my partial pressure, my SPO2, how much oxygen's in my bloodstream. I should see a reduction in my blood pressure both systolic and diastolic. Should marginally come down. And, my resting pulse should also fall.” And, I was skeptical that all of those things would happen. And, without an exception, every single one of those metrics moved dramatically.

Ben:  That's crazy. And, not drinking it.

Gary:  Not drinking.

Ben:  So, you could technically create some kind of a water filtration system that puts this stuff in bath tubs.

Gary:  That's what she's done.

Ben:  Hot tubs or even cold pools or something like that.

Gary:  Yes. And so, you bathe in this.

Ben:  That's pretty interesting.

Gary:  Obviously for wounds, but I mean there's some tremendous outcomes they've had with cancer patients, certainly with surface conditions, eczema, psoriasis, and wounds.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  But, the fact that I was able to measure an increase in my partial pressure while I got an increase in pulse oxygen, so the oxygen had to be coming from somewhere because when I was breathing, it wasn't moving, and then a reduction in my blood pressure and a significant drop in my pulse rate. My pulse rate went from resting in the low 60s, 60, 60, 61, into the low 40s.

Ben:  Is this stuff available already, this ability to be able to bathe in this stuff?

Gary:  Yes, you can bathe in it. And, you can go to Las Vegas and bathe–

Ben:  I'll find links for you guys for anybody, you guys want to try it out–

Gary:  It's a cool spot.

Ben:  Okay. So, I was telling you when we were walking because we haven't spent a lot of time together, we've talked on the phone a few times. I finally flew in last night. We've hung out a little bit. I see that you practice what you preach. I mean, you just blowing smoke. I appreciate that a lot of guys don't. They write the blogs and do the podcast, but they don't actually do it. You having such deep experience and having all these things that we've already tried today, I don't know about you, I feel fantastic.

Gary:  I feel great, dude. I really do. I was saying that earlier, man. I mean, I feel freaking amazing–

Ben:  Yeah. I mean, we did the breathwork and the methylene blue on the outside walk. But then, we started to use some of your biohacking technologies. And so, I want to ask you a few kind of rapid fire questions based on this Superhuman Protocol if that's cool.

Gary:  Yeah.

Ben:  So, step one is we want to get polarization occurring properly and declumping the cells through some form of grounding, earthing, or PEMF.

Gary:  Yes.

Ben:  Talk about going outside barefoot, I talked about maybe putting some straps on the bottom of your shoes, using those Earth Runners. Obviously, it's not rocket science to get outside and be in touch with the planet.

Gary:  Right.

Ben:  Now, when it comes to the technologies that you think work really well for PEMF, what are some of your favorites for biohacking technologies?

Gary:  So, my favorite is the PureWave. I've looked at a lot of different PEMF technologies. I'm not saying that other PEMF technologies are not great.

Ben:  That's a mat.

Gary:  It's a mat.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  So, I like that one because I measured the low Gauss current. And, we actually did some dark field testing of our own and we actually found significant improvements in blood viscosity and also in the clumping of blood cells and that's visible. And then, the EWOT system exercise with oxygen therapy, I use a HyperMax, which is essentially an oxygen concentrator with a timer on it. You turn the timer on, it fills–

Ben:  But, actually before we get to EWOT, I want to talk about that. So, I've got this necklace on somewhere that you gave me, what about portable PEMF? Because a lot of people are going to travel with the mat, I travel a lot. I want PEMF when I travel.

Gary:  This one I like–

Ben:  And, there's lightweight grounding masks, but this thing's called a bubble I'm wearing right now.

Gary:  This is the bubble–

Ben:  Be like the tropics.

Gary:  Yeah, it's the smallest PEMF in the world.

Ben:  Because in the past I've used the FlexPulse by Dr. William Pawluk. This seems kind of cool, you just hang them around the neck.

Gary:  Hanging around your neck, 7 hertz and it's secreting pulse electromagnetic field all the time.

Ben:  Okay. So, you don't have to wait to your home, you can wear PEMF and you can have that as a mat. You could obviously travel. Grounding and earthing mats, I don't know if you travel with those before but they're pretty light.

Gary:  Yeah, they're very light–

Ben:  And, I was going to tell you, yeah, one thing to think about is the alternating current frequencies that go through a lot of homes and condos like this. I'm a fan of using dirty electricity filters if you're going to use PEMF or grounding or earthing mats. I just think it's smart just to reduce the amount of power surges. But, nonetheless, you said the PureWave, this bubble thing, and grounding or earthing, grounding earthing shoes, getting outside barefoot, and then you start talking about the EWOT. Tell me about the protocol we did today and what all that you use for exercise, exercise with oxygen therapy.

Gary:  Yes, exercise with oxygen therapy. And, we do this with a lot of our professional athletes that we're trying to get to the next level. I'm working with a lot of athletes that are playing in the league right now that are dominating their game. Some of them are very public about their relationship with me, some are not. But, we are measuring their performance using magnetism, oxygen and light, which is NSF certified. It's not considered performance enhancement, it's considered reparative, regenerative. And, we're seeing incredible results with tissue repair, regeneration, protein synthesis, increase in protein synthesis, and muscle repair, and performance. But, EWOT is a 10, 11-minute timeframe where you're–

Ben:  Went by super-fast, you're not drained afterwards like after a big workout, you're energized.

Gary:  Too much oxygen over too long a period of time will actually drive red blood cell to count down. And, that's the opposite of what you want. But, for a short period of time, it took you ten and a half minutes to do it today.

Ben:  Right, it was three minutes. It was 30 seconds after each breathing pure oxygen.

Gary:  Yeah, breathing not pure oxygen, 95%–

Ben:  Alright, high oxygen. And, it's just like you have an AirDyne bike, you have the mask next to it, I'll put pictures for folks at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Brecka. I told you my protocol is kind of sexy too. I got the Vasper, which is the blood flow restriction.

Gary:  Right.

Ben:  And, the grounding and the earthing because you're grounded to the plates on the Vasper, and then the full body exercise. And, I keep the LiveO2 next to that because I got a switch. And so, during my recoveries, the long periods, your hypoxia, and then during the [1:14:44] _____, you go hyperoxia and flood the tissue–

Gary:  I love that.

Ben:  And, that's 21 minutes, I felt as though your 12-minute protocol beat me up a little less. Maybe I'm going too long with the Vasper protocol, but nonetheless, the takeaway message here for people is it's high-intensity interval training with periods of time during that high-intensity training where you have some kind of a mass to deliver higher amounts of oxygen to the body.

Gary:  That's right. And, ten and a half minutes is all you need. You breathe 900 liters of 95% O2. Now, someone–

Ben:  I've always wondered, what if you were to use–let's say you didn't have the money or you don't have access to the oxygen delivery system mass that you wear, what if you just during the easy periods were to wear something like a training mask or resist oxygen intake or even breathe through a straw, do you think you could still get some effects by then during the hard effort just opening your mouth and taking the training mask off and breathing as much oxygen you can–

Gary:  I absolutely do. If you look at the cyclical breathing methods of Wim Hof, you look at exercise with oxygen therapy, a lot of these have these same foundational concept, which is, one, created demand, and then two, answer that demand. And, what I mean by that is we know that we can't just eat a bunch of calcium and have strong bones. You have to load a bone.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  And then, have calcium there to help build it.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  Right. We know that you can't just eat a bunch of protein and build big muscles. You have to tear a muscle, then you have to have the protein available to repair it. The same thing is true with oxygen, you just can't sit and hyperventilate and flood the body with oxygen. What you have to do is create an oxygen demand, so the idea behind E1 is exercise is putting an oxygen demand on the body.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  And then, it's same as a breath hold in a Wim Hof method, for example, exhale breath hold, why are we exhaling and holding our breath. Well, you're resetting carbohydrate or carbon dioxide receptors, you're actually driving the level of that gas up. Now, when you breathe in, the tissues just, they take it up.

Ben:  So, it might not be perfect, but you could basically the way you want to think about it is this. During an exercise session, try to deprive yourself of oxygen then throw in a few high-intensity intervals where you just open up the portals and flooding yourself with oxygen. And, at least even if you don't have the fancy equipment, kind of going outside barefoot gives you a taste of the PEMF. Doing that will give you a taste of the EWOT.

Gary:  Can hold your breath and do push-ups to exhaustion.

Ben:  That's a great idea.

Gary: Breathwork, then hold your breath and do push-ups to exhaustion to failure.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  And then, breathwork again.

Ben:  Okay, got it.

Now, the last part of this Superhuman Protocol, and I want to be sure we touch on this is the light. Now, people have seen me stand in front of these Joovv light panels, I told you about the thing I wear around my neck. You have some interesting light things. You got this sauna that massages and does light and you have this whole bed. Tell me about your light stuff.

Gary:  So, the light stuff is I tested a lot of light beds, I did meter testing, we did nitric oxide, mitochondria and nitric oxide testing to actually see if that light was actually kicking the gas out of the mitochondria which you can pick up in the blood because if the gas is leaving, that oxygen is docking. And so, we use the 10X, our company. We actually acquired a stake in a distributor named Da Vinci Medical.

Ben:  Da Vinci Medical.

Gary:  Da Vinci.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  Like the Da Vinci Code, Da Vinci Medical. And, we sourced a TheraLight 360 light bed, one of the most powerful light bet on the market right now. It's about 125 milliwatts of radiance, more powerful than anything else you can get on the market. It's got 45,000 light diodes. It has a top and a bottom. They actually change the light intensity to make up for the arc in the bed. And, you lay in this thing for 20 minutes, and just like you experienced today, I mean there's nothing like it. And–

Ben:  I can feel the nitric oxide coming on my fingertips. It was pretty crazy.

Gary:  Yeah.

Ben:  I think it's powerful.

Gary:  And, when it's blowing nitric oxide out like that, that means oxygen is taking its place.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  And, when you just do EWOT and then you lay in that red light bed, it's like plugging yourself into a light socket–

Ben:  And, I had methylene blue before too–

Gary:  I know. That's why I can barely sit still right now.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then, what about the one that has the–is like a sauna, I climbed inside it, it almost looked like one of those hyperthermic units they're using cancer treatment centers, but it's like a pod, you climb inside, you crawl inside.

Gary:  Oh, that thing is being in your mother's womb. I love that thing. It's called the HyperT sauna and essentially–

Ben:  HyperT?

Gary:  HyperT.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  It's also by Da Vinci, 10X, we have a version of this. And, it's a pod that you get in and you open it and you close it. There's three things I like about it. Number one, it's infrared and your infrared sauna. It has a massage unit, so it's actually vibrating and it has heat. So, it's not just the infrared, near-infrared, but it also actually has heat vents that will heat you up while your head stays cool. 

I see a lot on Instagram and circulating around in social media these guys that get in 37-degree water for prolonged periods of time they go under, they breathe through a straw, they breathe through a snorkel. And, sometimes they'll stay underwater for 10, 12 minutes, 16 minutes at 37 degrees. I'm not a big fan of pulling the brain off like that or heating the brain up too hot. I mean, when you're in a hot sauna, 180, 200 degrees, and you're in there for really prolonged periods of time, that's not necessarily the best thing for your brain. 

Ben:  Right. Well, obviously, the hypoxia induced by long-term cold for the brain could reduce oxygen delivery to the brain if overdone. 

Gary:  Yeah.

Ben:  And then, if we know that hyperthermia as used in oncologies cytotoxic to cells, theoretically the fragility of the cells in neural tissue could respond in an unfavorable manner to like trying not to eat in that environment.

Gary:  No doubt.

Ben:  So, the head is sticking out. That stays cool, but the body's in there just getting blasted with light.

Gary:  Yeah. Your body is getting blasted, your head stays cool, so now you get your sweat on and then I go right from that into the cold plunge.

Ben:  Yeah, which we did today.

Gary:  Which we did today, yeah. We actually gotten there together.

Ben:  Yeah. Good job, man. And, we'll have videos of this all up for you guys. I know you probably have tons of questions for Gary. I know we're starting to run up against time here, but I'm going to put all the shownotes and the video and everything at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Brecka.

And, Gary, just to keep people a little bit intrigued here because I'm intrigued, so from here, we're going on to do your–you have a special ozone treatment or something like that that you do.

Gary:  Yes.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  We're going to do ozone IV therapy after this.

Ben:  Do ozone IV.

Gary:  I've got one of our nurses coming over.

Ben:  Great for energy.

Gary:  Great for energy. We're going to do about 65 gamma two passes.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  And then, we're also going to do some l-carnitine, l-carnosine.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  L-carnosine, VIV, and the combination of those two is just amazing. So, that's our next [01:22:04] _____–

Ben:  What's the carnosine for?

Gary:  Carnosine is actually used for a lot of different delayed onset muscle soreness, DOMS. I mean, actually significantly reduces DOMS. It's also an amino acid that's excellent when you're doing other modalities like Myers Cocktails and other vitamins. I mean, it's readily available amino acid, it improves athletic performance. I actually just like to run carnosine on its own before I do ozone.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  You feel absolutely amazing and ozone therapy is. There's nothing novel about ozone therapy, but that third oxygen molecule is really a missile for inflammation and free radical oxidation that's why you feel so good after ozone. I mean, some of the clinical studies where they used it in covid treatments and for viral pathogens are really astounding.

Ben:  Wow.

Gary:  I mean, efficacy above 90%.

Ben:  Wow.

Gary:  So, we're going to do some ozone, some carnosine.

Ben:  And then, you lift weights.

Gary:  And then, we're going to lift weights. Ben, you want to just go through a couple of questions?

Ben:  Yeah. Let's do a few rapid fire, a few quick ones–

Gary:  Yeah, let's do it. How to cure a long COVID.

Ben:  Alright.

Gary:  So, I'll take a stab at it, you take a stab at it. We found that–

Ben:  Fine. Let's give ourselves three questions, so we got a minute each for each one.

Gary:  Alright.

Ben:  Alright, here we go.

Gary:  Alright, how to cure long COVID. Go.

Ben:  Alright, how to cure long COVID. Geez, I'm not a doctor, I don't even wear that “Trust me I'm a doctor” t-shirt, but some of the main modalities that I've seen that a lot of docs are using that seem to work well for COVID, I've seen a lot of guys using the combination of infrared light and methylene blue, which you mentioned earlier, peptides, particularly those that target the immune system like thymosin alpha-1, thymosin beta, they seem to be really, really good for long haul. 

And then, this would be more from an ayurvedic or a traditional medicine standpoint, anything that would be considered a blood tonic type of compound. One example of that would be yarrow extract. There's a great guy named Dr. John Douillard out of Boulder, Colorado, is doing a lot in ayurvedic space for COVID. But, I personally, since he's my doctor, I don't work with a lot of long-haul COVID, do you?

Gary:  I'm not a doctor either.

Ben:  Yeah. That's true, you're not a doctor.

Gary:  Clinical team. No, I'm a human biologist. Let's make that clear. This is not medical advice. But, very often what's overlooked in long COVID is we call it long COVID because you have COVID-like symptoms for a prolonged period of time. And, very often, we've seen that these are actually secondary viral infections. There's an explosion of Epstein-Barr and cytomegalovirus and other viruses on the back of COVID. Remember that only 60% of your DNA is human DNA, 40% of all of your DNA is viral. And, our body silences viruses every day. And, when the immune system gets run down, lock COVID. Some of these viruses raise their ugly head. The very, very common one that we see which will last 8 to 10 to 12 weeks is Epstein-Barr virus on the back of getting COVID. You didn't really catch Epstein-Barr, you've always had it. It's kind of a dormant mono virus. And so, your immune system gets run down, you get the secondary viral infection, and you think it's a continuation of COVID, you keep testing negative for COVID, but you actually have another virus called Epstein-Barr. And, there's a grade eight-week protocol for Epstein-Barr virus, so I would actually get checked for EBV.

Ben:  Yeah, ozone can be really good for that type of stuff.

Gary:  So, how do I get alkaline? Can you explain the benefit, please? And–

Ben:  I just talked about that.

Gary:  Yeah, we just talked about that magnetism, oxygen, and light. PEMF is one of the best ways, in my opinion, to get alkaline. If you would prefer not to spend the five grand on a PEMF mat, get your shoes off and contact the surface of the Earth. Should [01:26:09] _____–

Ben:  Top five health tips to do every day for people on a budget. That's a pretty good one.

Gary:  Yeah.

Ben:  Alright, top five health tips for people to do every day on a budget. I would say number one, eat organ meats. They're not as expensive as you think. As a matter of fact, a lot of people sell them cheap because they want to get rid of them. Get cold every day. Cold showers are not expensive last time I checked. Get hot every day. You don't have to have a sauna, you can literally layer and go outside or go in the gym, but open up the portals of sweat. Number four would be ten thousand steps a day, however you want to do it. Take your calls while you're outside. Take the stairs, walk, whatever. Put 10,000 steps a day. And then, the last one I think would be–and then, this is more relationship-based, but we know relationships are so related to longevity. Make one people or one person every day feel really good. Go out of your way to make somebody feel really, really seen and heard at least once a day.

Gary:  Wow, those are good ideas. I would add breathwork and first light to that. They don't add a penny to your budget. And, breathwork is free, first light is free, walking on the surface of the Earth is free. In fact, walking is probably the most underrated form of exercise on the planet, just walking. I mean, you want to lose weight just walk for 35 or 45 minutes in a fasted state in the mornings, low heart rate cardio. Breathwork, there's lots of great breathwork available out there on the internet. Wim Hof is my favorite that he has an eight-minute breath work routine, three rounds, 30 breaths, breath hold in between with an exacerbated deep breath in. That alone will change your life. And, if you can do it at first light, I promise you it will become your drug of choice.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  I love when you share what's in your kitchen. How do you use nutrition to improve mood, depression, and anxiety? I'll just hit that real quick in a minute.

Ben:  Okay.

Gary:  First of all, we define depression in this country as an inadequate supply of serotonin. That's one of the definitions of depression, which is why I'm not a big believer in SSRIs because they ration what little serotonin you have. So, by definition, they're not raising it. So, by definition, they're not ending depression. Fixing methylation is the best way to provide adequate levels of neurotransmitters to then provide adequate boost to mood and emotional state. If you were to ask me what is a mood? What is an emotional state? It's nothing more than a collection of neurotransmitters bound to oxygen. There are some moods that where oxygen is in part of the molecular structure of that mood, let me say that again, there are some moods and emotional states where oxygen is a part of the molecular structure of that mood. The reason why no human being has ever woken up laughing is because you don't have the oxidative state to experience laughter. The reason why you can wake up from a deep delta wave sleep angry is because the emotion of anger does not require oxygen. If you want to do a little experiment tonight, pinch your spouse while they're dead asleep. They're going to wake up angry.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  Low emotional tears do not require oxygen, that's why they're readily available emotions. Elevated emotional tears do require oxygen. In fact, the difference between anger and passion, the emotion of anger and the emotion of passion is one neurotransmitter in the presence of oxygen.

Ben:  Wow, cool. Alright, I'll throw in there for depression, I'm going to give you five more because I've never seen anybody do these things and be in a bad mood afterwards, at least not significantly.

Gary:  You got to say cold water.

Ben:  Music, dancing, singing, sunlight, and cold.

Gary:  Yes.

Ben:  That's it. Music, singing, dancing, sunlight, and cold. Try that out and tell me you don't feel a little happier.

Gary:  Yeah. I've heard if you want to cure somebody's depression–

Ben:  Fix that serotonin deficiency.

Gary:  Push them in cold water.

Ben:  Yeah.

Gary:  And then, what are your thoughts on seed oils? That's the last question. They're terrible for you. If you actually saw how canola oil is processed, it's mind-numbing. You take a gummy substance, you de-gum it with something called hexane, which is a known neurotoxin, it's industrial cleanser, they heat these oils to over 450 degrees which makes them rancid. And then, to cure the smell they deodorize them to make them clear. They actually bleach them. They use sodium hydroxides, hexanes. And, the majority of seed oils are actually genetically modified because they have to make the seed resistant to glyphosphates. These are just awful. Get them out of your cabinet.

Ben:  I agree. The only seed oils I've seen that might not be so bad for you are cold expeller-pressed. That would be like Andreas Wecker. He has a company called Andreas Seed Oils. He's got one pumpkin hemp, black seed oil. Some of those, I think, are okay. They're getting shipped in Miron glass jars, oxidation. But, for the most part, if you ruthlessly mitigate seed and vegetable oils, you're going to feel better.

Gary:  Yes, no question. That's just science.

Ben:  Sweet. This guy practices what he preaches, folks. That's why I like Gary and I'm just now getting to know him, but he's the real deal. And, if you aren't following what he does, I'll link to his 10X Health Systems, his website, his Instagram, as well as the video that accompanies this show because we had a video crew following us around. A couple of fantastic guys who filmed some of these modalities that we're doing. So, I'll put that in the shownotes as well. So, his name is Gary Brecka with 10X Health Systems. Keep your eye on this guy because he's doing some really cool things. And, I really, really love his whole approach, the Superhuman Protocol. Try at least that if you take nothing away from this podcast. Try PEMF or earthing and grounding. Follow that up with oxygen, follow it up with light, and tell them you don't feel fantastic.

All the shownotes are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/B-R-E-C-K-A, BenGreenfieldLife.com/Brecka. Gary, thanks for coming on the show, man. It's fantastic.

Gary:  It's amazing. Thank you for having me.

Ben:  A hotel surrounded by nature, vineyards, and gardens, this forest classified as a historical garden in a very special country at a hotel located in the oldest demarcated wine region in the world. Imagine this place has a state-of-the-art spot, 2,200 square meters, 10 treatment rooms, an indoor pool with underwater sound and chromotherapy. Imagine a kitchen team that brings to the table not just delicious food at this place but values environmental sustainability and wellness and local sensitivity and global sensibility. Imagine being able to be bathed in luxury and being able to be local, to buy a local and to eat local, not caged off of some fancy tourist but it's a part of the community and part of the torar of the region. 

Well, that's exactly what you experience in Portugal at their Six Senses luxury retreat. And, I'm going to be there for a special event that you can read up on at BenGreenfieldLife.com/SixSenses. It's called the Boundless Retreat. And, at BenGreenfieldLife.com/SixSenses, you can see everything we're doing. Every day starts with a healthy farmhouse breakfast, morning movement session with me, you get access to three different 60-minute spa treatments that you can choose from throughout the day, indoor pool and vitality suites, meditation, sound healing, an alchemy bar with Kokodama and yogurts and pickles and sprouts workshops, retreat meals all made from locally sourced organic produce, Q&As and sing-along sessions with me. This is going to be an amazing remarkable once in a lifetime experience. You get four nights full board accommodation in a deluxe room there at the facility. And, this thing, as you can imagine, is going to fill up fast. It's in Portugal at the Six Senses retreat in Portugal.

Again, all the details are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/SixSenses. And, the dates are February 27th through March 3rd, 2023, February 27th through March 3rd, 2023. I hope to see you there.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh entertaining, well-informed, and often outside-the-box approach to discovering the health, and happiness, and hope that we all crave. So, I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And, if you liked it or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel wherever that might be and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. It means a lot.

 

 

Ben mentions he has photos for this episode that he'll put in the show notes.

Our link and code for the Superhuman Protocol: (TBD as os 12/16)

Gary Brecka is Co-Founder and Chief Biologist of 10X Health. He has over 20 years of experience in biohacking and functional medicine, and his passion lies in customizing peak performance protocols for individuals to achieve optimal health. As an expert on Serum Blood and Genetic Biomarkers, Gary optimizes human performance through nutrition, evidence based science, and innovative technology such as oxygen, red light, nutrients/supplements, movement protocols and much, much more.

Gary works with a hand-picked clinical team of Board-Certified physicians (M.D.’s), PhD researchers, business leaders, functional medicine experts, motivators and scientists, with one relentless mission: to uncover the safest and fastest way to optimize your mind, body and spirit through modern science. Gary’s early career included work as a mortality-modeling expert in the insurance industry, using medical records and demographic data to predict mortality (how soon someone would die) to the month.  After selling that company, he wanted to utilize the information he had gathered to help people improve their quality of life.

Leaving this career deepened Gary’s interest in blood chemistry and the longevity biomarkers found in human blood work. He then launched his obsessive and relentless pursuit of ways to improve and extend life by optimizing these bio-markers. Simply put, Gary began a world-wide search for the ultimate ways to optimize human life.  As a former competitive triathlete and consultant, Gary has worked with everyone from CEO’s, to professional athletes from the UFC, NFL, Boxing and entertainment industries, and his mission is to bring you science-based, research backed tools to live your best life.  Gary has a BS in Biology from Frostburg State University and a  BS in Human Biology from National College of Chiropractic.

I recently had the opportunity to visit Gary at his home in Miami and take a deep dive into his protocols and modalities. Prepare for a wild ride into the mind of Gary Brecka on this show!

During our discussion, you'll discover:

Resources mentioned in this episode: 

– Gary Brecka:

• 10X Health
• Streamline Medical Group

– Podcasts And Articles:

• Eat Wheat: A Scientific and Clinically-Proven Approach to Safely Bringing Wheat and Dairy Back Into Your Diet
• How An Olympic Champion Overcame Near Death, Healed His Gut & Shoulder & Changed The Nutritional World Forever With “Seed Oils”: An Interview With Andreas Wecker.
• Sunlight Makes You Skinny & Blue Light Makes You Fat: 11 Ways To Biohack Light To Optimize Your Body & Brain.
• How To Tap Into The Secret Psychedelic Tactics Of The Ancients Using A Free & Fast Anti-Aging, Stress-Busting, Energy-Boosting Hack.

– Other Resources:

• Breaking Alzheimer's by Dr. Dayan Goodenowe
• Rapeh (use code BEN20 to save 20%)
• Earth Runners
• Erthe Grounding Straps
• Kineon (use code BGLIFE to save 10%)
• Joovv Go (use code BEN to save $50)
• PEMF Mat
• LiveO2 EWOT
• StrateGene (use code BEN10 to save 10% on your first order)
• Kion Aminos
• Methylene Blue Bullet (use code BEN to save 5%)
• Lumetol Blue Bars (use code BEN to save 5%)
• Methylene Blue Troche (use code BEN to save 10%)
• Hydrogen Water (use code GREENFIELD to save 10%)
• Yarrow extract
• Kaqun Water
• PureWave Mat
• SuperHuman Protocol Devices
• Da Vinci Medical Light Therapy Bed
• Hyper T Sauna
• HyperMax Oxygen
• PEMF bubble
• FlexPulse
• AirDyne
• Vasper
• LiveO2
• Da Vinci Medical Theralight
• US Wellness Meats
• Andreas Seed Oils

Episode sponsors:

HVMN: Visit hvmn.me/BenG and use code BENG20 for 20% off any purchase of Ketone-IQ️. This is an exclusive offer for podcast listeners. You can now find HVMN in California Earthbar locations (located within Equinox).

Fresh Pressed: Studies show that olive oil keeps you full longer, making it a lot easier to eat less. Try a bottle of Fresh Pressed Olive Oil for just $1 and taste the difference yourself. Just go to GetFresh38.com to get started.

Neurohacker Qualia Senolytic: Take this cutting edge formula just 2 days a month to help your body eliminate senescent cells, which is KEY to optimal aging and feeling younger. Give your body what it needs to fight senescent cell accumulation* with Qualia Senolytic at neurohacker.com, and code SENOBEN  scores you an extra 15% off.

Organifi: Get the restful sleep you need with the most soothing ingredients! Gold is a delicious superfood tea that contains powerful superfoods and mushrooms to help you sleep and recover so you can wake up feeling refreshed and energized. Go to Organifi.com/Ben for 20% off your order.

Boundless Parenting Book: Everything you need to know about family, parenting, and raising healthy, resilient, free-thinking and impactful children. Go to boundlessparentingbook.com and pre-order your copy now.

Six Senses Event: Join me in this beautiful 19th-century wine estate in Portugal and enjoy treatments that go beyond the ordinary in Six Senses Spa. Ten treatment rooms and an indoor pool with chromotherapy and an underwater sound system offer a unique and layered wellness experience. Try delicious food made with local sensitivity and global sensibility. Head over to bengreenfieldlife.com/sixsenses and claim your spot today.