[00:00:00] Hala Taha: Young and Profiters!  Are you ready to learn how to live longer and become a superhuman version of yourselves? Well, my guest today is going to tell us how. Gary Brekka is a biohacker, human biologist, and one of the world's foremost experts on how thinking differently about nutrition can protect us against aging and disease and make us the best version of ourselves.

[00:02:06] Hala Taha: For years, Gary worked for insurance companies, helping them predict how long it was going to be before their clients were going to die. Now he helps people learn how long they can really live for. Gary, thanks for joining us for this super important conversation and welcome to young and profiting podcast.

[00:02:23] Gary Brecka: So excited to be here. 

[00:02:25] Hala Taha: I am very excited for this conversation. I love talking about biohacking and you are so experienced. And when I was doing research for this podcast, I found out that you spent 20 years in the life insurance industry and you basically would predict When people would die to the nearest month and first of all, I didn't even know a job like this existed.

[00:02:47] Hala Taha: So it was so fascinating to me. How did you end up in the life insurance industry to 

[00:02:52] Gary Brecka: start with? You know, what's amazing is how much of this science is actually done on an annual basis. I mean, there's more than 30 billion dollars of these types of policies issued every single year and remember in the life insurance industry When a life insurance company is getting ready to put 5 million or 10 million or 25 million worth of risk on your life, there's only one variable that matters, right?

[00:03:17] Gary Brecka: I mean, and it's how many more months do you have left on earth? And so some of the most accurate science in the world is actually held by life insurance companies. I always used to say that if that database that I had access to could see the light of day, And unfortunately it never will. But if it could, it would permanently change the face of humanity.

[00:03:37] Gary Brecka: I mean, it would upend modern medicine in a way that would be catastrophic. And I made my way there. Because, you know, in my undergraduate, uh, degrees were in biology, my postgraduate degrees were, um, human biology. So I'm a human biologist by trade. I had another concentration in neuroscience. And when I graduated, I went into this industry, I thought temporarily to work as a mortality expert because I was just fascinated by the data.

[00:04:03] Gary Brecka: And if they got five years of medical records on you and five years of demographic data, you know, we could tell the insurance company how long you had to live to the month. And after doing this for More than two decades. I really began to realize that these were not just spreadsheets, right? This was not just data.

[00:04:23] Gary Brecka: There were human beings on the other side of these spreadsheets and You know why I was prohibited by law from contacting the patients so even if I saw life threatening drug interactions, I could not contact the patient to warn them and It became glaringly apparent to me that the reason why people were not living longer healthier happier lives Was not pathology was not disease was not some catastrophic illness that they had it was for things that we called Modifiable risk factors, right?

[00:04:54] Gary Brecka: I mean if I had been able to just pick up the phone and talk to that patient I could have added on average seven years to their health span not just their lifespan but how many healthy years they had left on earth and One day I had a massive epiphany and and over a case that I was working on that they prohibited me from contacting the patient And I just decided that I wasn't going to spend one more day of my life predicting death.

[00:05:18] Gary Brecka: I was going to spend the balance of my lifetime trying to help people live healthier, happier, longer lives. I always say if I was to boil that entire career down to a single sentence, it would be that the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease. nothing is more truthful than that statement.

[00:05:36] Gary Brecka: We did not find a single disease ideological pathway, not one, that did not have its roots. In what we call hypoxia, lack of blood oxygen, or was not exacerbated by a lack of blood oxygen. And this includes every form of cancer, autoimmune disease, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, early onset dementia, type 2 diabetes, weight gain, water retention, hormone imbalance, you know, all of these things because the body is in a hypoxic state.

[00:06:01] Gary Brecka: In fact, all human beings leave this planet the same way. We all die of the same thing. The definition of death is lack of oxygen to the brain, hypoxia. Only we tend to think of it as an event, right? A gunshot wound, a car, a boss, a stroke, a heart attack. But the truth is this is a predictable curve. You are either managing oxygen well or you are managing oxygen poorly.

[00:06:21] Gary Brecka: The more poorly you manage oxygen, the faster you are accelerating towards the grave. The better you manage oxygen, the less quickly you are accelerating towards the grave and all forms of pathology and disease. 

[00:06:33] Hala Taha: Well, this is going to be a juicy, juicy interview because I have so much to dig into. There's some interviews where like, I'm always excited to interview guests.

[00:06:43] Hala Taha: But there's some topics where I'm like, man, this is so interesting and nobody talks about it. And this is one of those interviews where I'm like, this is just so interesting. But before we dig into a lot of the things that you just said, because you just rattled off a lot of information that I have a lot of follow up questions for, but let's take it back to your childhood for a minute.

[00:07:02] Hala Taha: What was your first childhood memory of getting interested in human biology? 

[00:07:07] Gary Brecka: So I grew up on a 300 acre tobacco farm in Southern Maryland, upper Marlboro, Maryland, the Marlboro man. Never smoked tobacco, never chewed tobacco. My parents owned the land and they leased it to a farmer to grow agriculturally.

[00:07:21] Gary Brecka: And I was an only child, and you couldn't even see another house from my parents home. So I spent actually a lot of my time alone in the woods, you know, I would, you know, go into the woods during the day. I would ride my bike eight miles to my best friend's house. There was a lot of animals on the adjoining farm next to me.

[00:07:40] Gary Brecka: I got really fascinated by nature and animals, you know. And, um, I was always fascinated when cattle or horses or livestock got sick. As a little young child. And they would call this veterinarian out and the veterinarian would show up and do some magic stuff and then all of a sudden this animal would heal and I just thought that that was really, really cool.

[00:08:01] Gary Brecka: And when I got into school, I found out in the 8th grade, I was tested as clinically photographic for a while. They thought I was borderline savant or maybe, maybe on the autism spectrum because I had such a hyper concentrated medication. Photographic memory, which I later, you know, I've learned to use as a superpower.

[00:08:19] Gary Brecka: And so I naturally gravitated towards science because science is a lot of rote memorization. So chemistry, anatomy, science came very, very easy to me. You know, I've learned to manage being clinically photographic. Now I don't, I can't read for pleasure, for example. So I don't read menus in restaurants, um, try not to look at street signs, uh, things like that because I record all the information that I, that I see.

[00:08:44] Gary Brecka: But in terms of building a basis for a future in science, it was, you know, I was sort of especially well crafted for kind of a voluminous amount of storage of detailed information. And so my grade school years and my high school years were all full of science experiments. I was super, super science geek.

[00:09:05] Gary Brecka: And then when I went to college, I chose biology as a, as a major, chemistry as a minor. And then I took, uh, you know, went on for four more years of just, uh, human biology. You talk 

[00:09:15] Hala Taha: about everybody can unlock their superhuman. And it's clear with this photographic memory, you literally are superhuman. And I thought it was very interesting to find out that there's disadvantages to you having this photographic memory, like you were just saying, you don't read menus or read anything for pleasure, because essentially.

[00:09:35] Hala Taha: You can memorize anything, like anything that you see, you can just memorize. 

[00:09:40] Gary Brecka: Yeah, so like I don't take the seat back magazine out of the pocket in front of me on a flight, because three months later I'll tell you where the, you know, sales center is for a condo project in Sao Paulo. You know, so you can store senseless information as well.

[00:09:54] Gary Brecka: But I've learned to cultivate that, you know, I'm, I'm, I am obsessed. With the human body and its form and its function. And when I was in the insurance industry, I had access to this database of 370 million lives. And remember that insurance companies have data that no other enterprise has no other medical enterprise, not even the federal government, the CDC, the national Institute of health, because an insurance company knows the day, the date, the time, the location, and the cause of death for 370 million lives.

[00:10:25] Gary Brecka: We know exactly the disease ideological progression of things like statins, all forms of pharmaceuticals, narcotics, corticosteroids, common antidepressants, antibiotics. We know exactly what happens and what the impact is on mortality when people are, you know, subjected to these kind of chemicals or synthetics or pharmaceuticals.

[00:10:46] Gary Brecka: And if you really want to look at health trends, you know, follow the life insurance industry because they have data on what terminates people's lives and they have voluminous amounts of that data. Remember, they, they bet tens of millions of dollars on a single risk factor. And so. You know, that was naturally fascinating to me until I really had this sort of moral epiphany about wasting my life predicting death instead of spending my life impacting life.

[00:11:16] Gary Brecka: Do you ever 

[00:11:17] Hala Taha: think that this data would become available publicly or that there could be some sort of regulation to make That data available publicly so that we could save more lives. Do you think that would ever happen? 

[00:11:30] Gary Brecka: Unfortunately, no. I mean, the, you know, insurance lobby is the second most powerful lobby to Congress.

[00:11:35] Gary Brecka: Um, you know, first being big pharma and then right behind them, you have big oil. So it very unlikely that something that they're able to use to profiteer from in these financial services products, because remember there are a lot of financial services products that are based on when you're going to die.

[00:11:51] Gary Brecka: Annuities, reverse mortgages, life insurance. These are all products that are based on human mortality. And so that database is highly, highly, highly guarded by that industry. You know, we knew, for example, in the nineties that opioids had an addictive amyloid long before you heard about the pain medication crisis.

[00:12:12] Gary Brecka: And, um, we thought that they were just. pain amyloids, but we realized that there was mixed in there. There was an amyloid that not only could cause a cardiac event, but also created an addictive quality, which from a pharmaceutical standpoint is a home run, right? I mean, because if I can, I can create something that's addictive and toxic, then I can actually get patent protection and I can become a prescriptive pharmaceutical.

[00:12:35] Gary Brecka: As soon as something's toxic and addictive, it's prescribed and patented. And if it's prescribed and patented, then it's covered by. Health insurance, if it's covered by health insurance and it's patented, you have a monopoly. And so a lot of these compounds that we put into our bodies that are seeking to reduce inflammation or to elevate serotonin or reduce the use of serotonin or elevate thyroid function, are actually also designed to create dependency, reliance, and what we call tachyphylaxis, a desensitization response.

[00:13:09] Gary Brecka: And that's all built in so that they can create the longevity and the patent protection, the prescription protection of it. But the truth is, you know, I think the second big thing that I learned in, in studying mortality for 22 years is that the majority of the The reason why people are affected by aging, for example, and we chalk all these things up to a consequence of aging, weight gain, water retention, brain fog, poor sleep, poor focus and concentration, lack of waking energy, these things that we accept as a consequence of aging, they are not a consequence of aging at all.

[00:13:44] Gary Brecka: They are a consequence of missing raw material in the human body. You deprive the human body of certain raw materials, certain nutrients, minerals, vitamins, amino acids. You get the expression of that disease, and then we label this as a disease, and we treat it chronically as a disease, when the truth is, you know, there are a lot of myths about how disease travels in families.

[00:14:11] Gary Brecka: So, for example, we say that people have genetically inherited hypertension, they have genetically inherited hypothyroid, genetically inherited depression, anxiety, alcohol addiction, you know, all of these things that run in families. But what's fascinating about quote unquote genetically inherited disease is that we've mapped the entire human biome.

[00:14:30] Gary Brecka: We know every single gene in the human body and no physician can tell you what gene causes any of those diseases. The reason why they can't tell you what gene causes those diseases like hypertension, hypothyroid, hypercholesterolemia, hypertriglyceridemia, all of these genetically inherited diseases is because that gene does not exist.

[00:14:52] Gary Brecka: And if that gene does not exist. Then it means that those diseases do not exist. We did not pass disease from generation to generation. What we pass from generation to generation is the inability for the body to refine a raw material. This causes a deficiency. Which leads to that disease. So for example, if I was able to magically go into your body and deplete vitamin D3, okay, the single most important nutrient in the human body, if I could go in and magically deplete vitamin D3, you would eventually develop rheumatoid arthritis like symptoms.

[00:15:26] Gary Brecka: Now you don't have rheumatoid arthritis, but you would develop those parallel symptoms amongst other things, hormone imbalance, you know, brittle bones, but If you went to the wrong physician and you started talking about your medical history and said, Listen, doc, I get out of bed in the morning, my feet and ankles are sore when they touch the ground in the morning.

[00:15:43] Gary Brecka: I wake up sore and achy like I had a workout the night before. Lately, you know, my neck is really stiff and so is my low back and it's kind of hard to make a fist. The wrong physician is going to go, You know what? That's exactly what rheumatoid arthritis does. You have rheumatoid arthritis. I'm going to put you on a corticosteroid, an anti inflammatory.

[00:16:01] Gary Brecka: You know, to help you manage these symptoms, and then you start on corticosteroids, but what you don't tell the patient is that once you start a corticosteroid, you have six years and one day until you're having a joint replacement. And then as soon as you have a joint replacement, your mobility begins to reduce.

[00:16:17] Gary Brecka: So, for example, if you were a 55 year old female, 60 year old female, and you applied for life insurance policy, and I saw that you had been misdiagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, Even though I knew you only had a vitamin D3 deficiency, and I saw that you were put on corticosteroids, I would artificially advance your age six years in one day, I would schedule the joint replacement for you, and then after the joint replacement surgery, I would reduce what's called your ambulatory profile, how well you ambulate, how well you move.

[00:16:47] Gary Brecka: And as I reduce your mobility, I can bring in all of the diseases that exacerbate with reduced mobility. We know now, for example, that sitting is the new smoking. Sedentary lifestyle is the leading cause of all cause mortality. And so... Now that I advanced those diseases that you never would have had now, you end up succumbing to a disease you never would have had because you were diagnosed with a condition that you didn't have put on a medication that was not required, which caused a surgery that was unnecessary and led for you.

[00:17:19] Gary Brecka: You're passing seven years earlier than you should have passed, and I can give you hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of examples like this, and the truth is, there's such a paucity of. Understanding of basic human physiology and the majority of the medical community that we have stopped, you know, we just don't have faith in human beings and mankind and humanity and the ability of this to heal this and how powerful frequency and how powerful basic exercise and sunlight and grounding and hydration and simple things back to the basics.

[00:17:51] Gary Brecka: How much this could entirely change the trajectory of somebody's life. There are listeners right now listening to your podcast, and I bet more than 90 percent of your listeners, right now. are walking around at about 60 percent of their true state of normal. They have forgotten what normal feels like.

[00:18:09] Gary Brecka: They have accepted this baseline sense of normalcy. They might think they feel great. They have no idea how good normal can feel. And the difference between where they are now and where they could be is simply knowing what deficiencies are going on in your body and supplementing for those deficiencies rather than supplementing for the sake of supplementing.

[00:18:30] Gary Brecka: This is 

[00:18:31] Hala Taha: so crazy. Hearing this information to me is almost shocking. It's overwhelming because you think about everything's working against us. It's like your health insurance is working against you. The pharmaceutical companies are working against you. The life insurance companies are working against you.

[00:18:46] Hala Taha: The doctors, I think, have good intentions, but they don't know enough. 

[00:18:51] Hala Taha: They believe medicine is good because they have to because otherwise it makes 

[00:18:59] Gary Brecka: Don't get me wrong. If I hit a windshield at 25 miles an hour, I mean, I want a surgeon. I want painkillers. I'm going to the ER. But when you realize, you know, there was a 2016 Harvard University study, it was repeated again by Johns Hopkins in 2019.

[00:19:13] Gary Brecka: We know now that modern medicine, a medical error, is the third leading cause of death. So modern medicine kills more people than morbid obesity and diabetes combined. And when you start to think that only cardiovascular disease and cancer kill more people than modern medicine, it's astounding, but when you really process the fact that the industry designed to prevent death, Is the third leading cause of death.

[00:19:36] Gary Brecka: That is just mind blowing. If we translated that to any other industry, it would be laughable. Right? I mean, if you sold home security systems and you were the third leading cause of home invasion, you'd probably be out of business, right? Or if you were a roofer and you were the third leading cause of roof collapse, probably wouldn't sell a lot of roofs.

[00:19:55] Gary Brecka: But we accept this in modern medicine, but we are excellent at crisis management, but we are terrible at bio optimization. And there are 32, 000 named diseases, you know, in the, in the PDR and the physician's reference, 32, 000, nearly every single one of these can be traced back to nutrient deficiencies in the human body.

[00:20:16] Gary Brecka: You know, sometimes when I speak on stage, I will. make a bold statement and say, I will take any disease, any ailment that you or a loved one is suffering from ADD, ADHD, OCD, manic depression, drug and alcohol addiction, poor sleep, and I will tell you exactly what raw material is missing from that person's body so that you can replace it and have that condition eviscerate.

[00:20:49] Gary Brecka: It's so 

[00:20:50] Hala Taha: incredible, and so you always use this analogy, our bodies are beautiful machines, we need the right raw materials, you mentioned that D3 is a big one, what are some other raw materials that are commonly missing from people that cause disease? 

[00:21:03] Gary Brecka: So we have to think about the body, the human body, this way.

[00:21:06] Gary Brecka: Remember that there's not a single compound. This is the most important concept. If anybody takes anything away from this podcast, this is the takeaway. The most important concept to understanding really good human optimization is understanding that there's not a single compound known to mankind. Not one.

[00:21:22] Gary Brecka: There's no vitamin, there's no mineral, there's no amino acid, there's no protein, carbohydrate, no nutrient of any kind that enters the human body and is used in the format that we put it in. Without exception, everything that we put into our bodies gets converted by the body. Into the usable form. This process is called methylation.

[00:21:46] Gary Brecka: So it's like we pull crude oil out of the ground, right? But you cannot put crude oil into your gas tank because the car doesn't understand that fuel source. Once crude oil is refined into gasoline, now the car can run because it understands that fuel source. Human beings are no different. So we put all kinds of compounds into our body.

[00:22:05] Gary Brecka: Let's take the number one nutrient in the human diet, folic acid, for example. So folic acid, for the record, is an entirely man made chemical, right? It is a synthetic chemical. We make it in a laboratory. It does not occur anywhere naturally. On the surface of the earth, you cannot find folic acid anywhere in nature.

[00:22:23] Gary Brecka: But we've been thought to believe that folic acid is a necessary nutrient. It's the most prevalent nutrient in the human diet, by the way. It's in all white flour, all white rice, all white bread, all white pasta. It's in all grains of any kind. And we don't call these foods sprayed with folic acid, we call them fortified or enriched.

[00:22:44] Gary Brecka: Let's take just folic acid for a moment. Well, we know that when folic acid enters the body, it's useless, until the body converts it into something called methylfolate. Now the body can use it. Well, what if, like 44 percent of the population, you have a gene mutation called MTHFR? I don't want to cuss on your podcast, but it's affectionately called the motherfucker gene.

[00:23:07] Gary Brecka: It actually stands for methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase, but everybody calls it the motherfucker gene because it's MTHFR. And 44 percent of the population, including 44 percent of your listeners, have this gene mutation. Well, if you have this gene mutation, you cannot convert the most prevalent nutrient in the human diet into the form your body can use.

[00:23:27] Gary Brecka: So what does this mean? This means that the level of folic acid skyrockets, and the level of necessary methylfolate declines. Now you have a deficiency. What are some of the expressions of that deficiency? Well, depending on how severe this gene mutation is, nearly everyone that has this gene mutation Report some form of anxiety.

[00:23:48] Gary Brecka: So if you either suffer from anxiety or you know somebody that's suffering from anxiety, if you ask them these three questions, you can prove very quickly that it is not coming from a cluster of symptoms in their outside environment. It is coming from their physiology. And the first question is, you know, have you had this on and off throughout your lifetime?

[00:24:08] Gary Brecka: Most people will say yes. The second question is, can you point to the specific trigger that causes it? Most people that suffer from chronic anxiety will tell you, no, I cannot point to the specific trigger that causes it. I can be driving home from work on an otherwise innocuous day. I can be overwhelmed with anxiety.

[00:24:23] Gary Brecka: I can be at dinner with my friends and start having just these feelings of anxiety. As your second clue that it's coming from your physiology and not your outside environment. And the third question is, If you've tried anti anxiety medications, did they work? And they'll say, no, they made me feel like a zombie.

[00:24:40] Gary Brecka: So now, how could this deficiency in methylfolate cause this anxiety condition? Um, it is, by the way, it's the same with depression. It is the same with ADD and ADHD, which are not attention deficits at all. They're attention overload disorders. They're not attention deficit disorders. And so, When you break down the physiology of what is anxiety?

[00:25:02] Gary Brecka: Well, it's an excess rise of something called catecholamines. These are fight or flight neurotransmitters. And we think that we need to have the presence of a fear in order to feel fear. That's absolutely not true. Right? If you drove home tonight and you got out of your car and somebody was standing in front of you with a knife, that's an obvious, very real fear.

[00:25:24] Gary Brecka: You would have a fight or flight response. Your pupils would dilate, your heart rate would increase, your extremities would flood with blood. But I'm here in my log cabin, and as you can't tell, um, I'm in Pitkin, Colorado. I'm at 10, 500 feet. I could be laying in that bunk bed right there, and I could start thinking about getting eaten by a shark.

[00:25:43] Gary Brecka: Now, the chances of a shark making it 10, 500 feet up into the mountains and biting me in that bed are zero, but I could have the exact same response. So how is it that I can have fight or flight response to the presence of a fear and a fight or flight response without the presence of a fear? In fact, without even the chance that that fear would come true.

[00:26:05] Gary Brecka: This is because of a rise in something called catecholamines. Deficiency in methylfolate does not allow us to metabolize these fight or flight neurotransmitters, and so they rise and fall seemingly without trigger, and they can go all the way to the point where they trigger a panic attack. If you actually look up this gene mutation, MTHFR, and anxiety, You will read hordes of peer reviewed published clinical literature that link this simple folate, methylfolate deficiency to these conditions.

[00:26:37] Gary Brecka: And it is the same link to attention deficit disorder. We've Sort of labeled ADD as an attention deficit or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It's not a deficit of attention at all. It's an attention overload disorder. It's too many windows open at the same time. And why does that happen? Because in our, in the human brain, we don't just create thought.

[00:26:59] Gary Brecka: We also dismantle thought, and if you don't break thought down at the rate that you create thought, the mind gets very clouded. Now, you are paying attention to too many things. It's not that you can't pay attention, it's that you can't pay attention to so many things. I mean, a lot of peace can come to these people by using the right balance of B vitamins, the right balance of specific forms of B12, and using methylfolate.

[00:27:25] Gary Brecka: That's why I think everybody once in their lifetime should do a gene test and look for five actionable genes. It's only a test you do once, you'll never repeat it. Once you know exactly what your body can convert and what it can't, now you supplement for that deficiency and just watch the magic happen.

[00:27:45] Gary Brecka: This is pretty interesting. 

[00:27:46] Hala Taha: So you're saying in order to understand what raw materials you need or what you need to do some sort of genetic testing. And not because you want to figure out what diseases you've inherited. You actually want to figure out what genes... 

[00:28:01] Gary Brecka: What deficiencies you have. Yeah, so you can stop supplementing for the sake of supplementing.

[00:28:07] Gary Brecka: And you can start supplementing for deficiency. You know, the question we should ask when we're about to supplement is not, What's the quality of the supplement? Where was it manufactured? What's the reputation of the manufacturer or the person that's pushing this? The first question we should say is, does my body need it, right?

[00:28:23] Gary Brecka: Then go down the road of the quality of the supplement. Because there are a lot of phenomenal supplements on the market. Pure Encapsulations, Thorne, Symbiotica. I mean, these are amazing supplement companies. And the products that they manufacture, including my own at 10X Health, are products lots of people need, but not everyone needs the same thing.

[00:28:43] Gary Brecka: And so, once you unlock that deficiency in your body, you're on your way to a state of optimization that you never thought possible. I mean, clients of mine tell me all the time, they're like, oh my god, Gary, I feel amazing. And I just remind them, you actually don't feel amazing. Not to burst your bubble.

[00:29:02] Gary Brecka: That's what normal is supposed to feel like. You just forgot how normal is supposed to feel.

[00:29:07] Gary Brecka: It's so

[00:29:08] Hala Taha: fascinating. So I want to talk about oxygen, because I know that oxygen is a really important topic. Like you mentioned earlier, the definition of death is hypoxia, which is the lack of oxygen to the brain.

[00:29:21] Hala Taha: You also mentioned that if you could boil your entire career down into one sentence, it would be that the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease. So talk to us about why oxygen is so important. 

[00:29:34] Gary Brecka: Obviously, we all know about breathing, right? We can't go very long without breathing, but it's more important than that.

[00:29:39] Gary Brecka: You know, we know that. Aging, aside from being the aggressive pursuit of comfort, is a mitochondrial disease. So inside of every cell in your body, you have thousands of these little motors called mitochondria. Human beings are not powered by the air we breathe, the water we drink, or the supplements we take, or the food we eat.

[00:29:59] Gary Brecka: We're powered by one energy source. It's called ATP. And this adenosine triphosphate is made in a battery inside the cell called the mitochondria. And inside the mitochondria, there is a motor, right? And it's spinning around and it's creating this energy. Well, every time this motor makes one revolution, it has two choices.

[00:30:19] Gary Brecka: It can either create two units of energy, two ATP. Or it can create 36 units of energy. Same term. It's either 16 times more powerful or 16 times less powerful. It's a hard, really hard concept to grasp. I mean, it's like walking onto a car lot and the, you know, the salesman says, Hey, there's two choices here.

[00:30:41] Gary Brecka: It's the same car. It comes in a 1600 horsepower version or a 100 horsepower version. 100 horsepower is like a lawnmower and 1600 horsepower is like a professional NASCAR. And so this is what's going on inside the cell of our body. 10 percent of your body weight, by the way, is mitochondria. You have 110 trillion of these in your body.

[00:31:02] Gary Brecka: Anything that downregulates the mitochondria or harms the function of the mitochondria accelerates aging and makes fertile ground for all forms of pathology and disease. So now we're kind of inside the cell, inside the mitochondria, talking about this little motor called the Krebs cycle. If we're going to talk about aging and performance, we have to talk about mitochondrial function, right?

[00:31:24] Gary Brecka: We know that the dysregulation of mitochondria is linked to every form of disease and pathology in the human body, including Alzheimer's and dementia. You know, there's so many myths about these diseases. For example, we know that Alzheimer's now is not Alzheimer's disease at all. It's type 3 diabetes.

[00:31:41] Gary Brecka: The big lie, the big myth about Alzheimer's is that patients are losing their memory. That's actually not true. They're losing access to their memory and the access to this memory is disabled in large part because of down regulation in the mitochondria. So we know that this mitochondria can produce 16 times more energy or 16 times less energy.

[00:32:01] Gary Brecka: So what determines whether or not it's 1600 horsepower or 100 horsepower? The presence of oxygen. Oxygen enters that cycle. It creates 16 times more energy. If oxygen doesn't enter that cycle, it creates 16 times less energy. And so here is where the importance of oxygen comes into play. And when you start talking about, well, how can I better manage oxygen?

[00:32:28] Gary Brecka: Well, I'll give you some free ways to do it right now. And all of this is doing is getting back to the basics, right? So if you've ever heard of earthing or grounding, which is where you take bare feet and touch bare soil, and think about that. If you're listening to this podcast, think about the last time that you had bare feet touching bare soil.

[00:32:46] Gary Brecka: I mean like dirt, grass, sand. Okay, that was the last time that you actually discharged into the earth. Human beings, we build up a charge in our body. You know, we all know about the acid alkaline scale. Well, pH stands for potential hydrogen. It is a charge. If you want to change the pH of the body, you don't drink alkaline water.

[00:33:08] Gary Brecka: That was the biggest marketing myth ever sold to the public. You cannot make the body alkaline by drinking alkaline water. If you want to make the body alkaline, you change the charge. How do you change the charge? You run a low gauss current through the body. There's two ways to do this. There's a way that you can pay for it, and there's a way that it's free.

[00:33:27] Gary Brecka: If you want to pay for it, you buy a PEMF mat. Pulse Electromagnetic Field. Right, and you lay on that mat, 16 to 30 minutes a day, you just put it in your bed, and every morning that you wake up, you will wake up alkaline. It will alkalize all 32 trillion cells in your body. If you don't want to spend 5 grand on a PEMF mat, then take your shoes off, 6 minutes a day, and come in contact with the surface of the Earth.

[00:33:50] Gary Brecka: Magnetism in the earth will change the polarity in your body. It will change the polarity of the surface of every cell in the body. And what will happen is instead of cells sticking together because they have opposite charges, they will repel because they have the same charge. Why is that important?

[00:34:09] Gary Brecka: Because if I can increase the surface area of the cell, now the cell can exchange with its environment, eliminate waste, repair, detoxify, regenerate. And this also increases the surface area to absorb oxygen from the bloodstream. So magnetism is one way to improve the oxidative state of the body. The second is oxygen itself.

[00:34:31] Gary Brecka: This is why sedentary lifestyle is the leading cause of all cause mortality, because we are getting less oxygen and therefore less circulation. The majority of these pathologies and diseases, too, have a circulation component. So, I tell people that to learn to do an eight minute breathwork technique, Borrowed it from Wim Hof.

[00:34:51] Gary Brecka: I'm not the purveyor of this technique. You know, he's the father of modern breathwork. You go to my Instagram, I do tutorials on Instagram all the time about breath work, but you can wake up in the morning, you can do eight minutes of breath work, three rounds of 30 breaths with a breath hold in between.

[00:35:06] Gary Brecka: And this does two things. Number one, the number one vasodilator in the human body is not nitric oxide. Nitric oxide, by the way, is toxic. So if you're listening to this podcast and you're taking a nitric oxide supplement, because You're an exercise enthusiast or you're a bodybuilder or you want to meet more vascular, please stop.

[00:35:26] Gary Brecka: That is toxic to the mitochondria. It actually comp for oxygen in the mitochondria. Something called cytochrome C oxidase. It pulls oxygen out and forces itself to dock. The ma major vasodilator in the human body is carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide causes our veins to dilate. So by doing breath work and flooding the blood with oxygen, and then holding our breath for a prolonged period of time and dilating our blood vessels, We actually, when we breathe in again, we get more oxygen to the tissues.

[00:35:55] Gary Brecka: We can actually change the oxygen tension in our tissues. Now I use something called a Hypermax oxygen system, a multi step oxygen system. Again, it's about five grand, but it's an oxygen mask. You put it on, you breathe 93 to 95 percent O2 for 10 minutes. While you're mildly exercising, but you do not have to spend money on that system.

[00:36:14] Gary Brecka: You can learn to do breath work. And then the third thing is to expose your skin to natural sunlight. And the truth is most of us are not getting enough sun. It's not that we're getting too much sun. And the safest time to expose your skin to sunlight is the first 45 minutes of the day while during first light, because there's a very special type of light during that 45 minutes.

[00:36:34] Gary Brecka: It's there's no UVA, there's no UVB rays, so nothing that can damage your skin, nothing that can burn your skin. And, you know, I sit out on, on my porch with my shirt off, um, in a pair of shorts, even when it's cold outside. And um, I do three rounds of 30 breaths. I expose my skin to sunlight, sunlight, certain wavelengths of sunlight.

[00:36:55] Gary Brecka: When they pass through the skin, they will go into the mitochondria. They will go into the motor of the Krebs cycle. They will kick out nitric oxide. And force oxygen to dock just by exposing yourself to sunlight. Now I also have a red light therapy bed and red light therapy as you may or may not know is the rage in sports recovery and anti aging and healthy skin now But if if you don't want to go out and spend money on a red light therapy bed, you can expose your skin to sunlight So those are three things your listeners could do for free starting tomorrow grounding sunlight breath work to Absolutely change the trajectory of their life The reason why most people will not do it is because it's too easy.

[00:37:40] Gary Brecka: It's because they're like, it can't be that simple. But it is. And, you know, I really try to impress upon people how these tiny little habits could completely change the trajectory of their life. This has been 

[00:37:53] Hala Taha: such valuable information. And so I interviewed Wim Hof on this podcast. Oh, awesome. I'm Wim Hof 

[00:37:59] Gary Brecka: certified.

[00:38:00] Gary Brecka: Yeah. I'm going to the period films with him this 

[00:38:01] Hala Taha: year. Oh, really? He's awesome. Yeah. I loved him. He was an inspiration. 

[00:38:06] Gary Brecka: So let's talk about hormone balance because hormone balance is a topic that I think is starting to bubble up more in society and culture. I'm seeing a lot more like Instagram reels about hormone balance, especially for women. And Why is hormone balance something that we need to understand more and what are some key tips that you have to improve our hormone balance?

[00:38:28] Gary Brecka: So let's talk about basic human physiology for a moment and where hormones fit into physiology, right? So I would say the greatest single reason why people walk through the door of one of my clinics at Tenex Health is because the biggest complaint is I just don't have the same energy I used to have. I just lack energy.

[00:38:47] Gary Brecka: You know, my waking energy, I feel like my short term recall is not what it used to be and I just basically lack energy. So when you say you lack energy, if we convert that to physiology, basically what you're saying is I'm not low on energy, I'm low on oxygen because. Everything that you perceive about energy is nothing more than oxygen in your blood.

[00:39:07] Gary Brecka: So I want you to imagine a tree for a moment. Now let's start in the leaves, and I'm going to walk you all the way down into the roots below the soil. So up in the leaves, you're saying, I lack energy. So when you say you lack energy, to me, I know that you're low on oxygen. What transports oxygen around the blood?

[00:39:23] Gary Brecka: A red blood cell and the fluid inside the red blood cell called hemoglobin. So that means I, I want to raise the number of red blood cells and I want to raise the amount of hemoglobin they have. So, let's move down the tree. Where do I go to get more red blood cells and more hemoglobin? Well, I go to the factory that makes red blood cells and hemoglobin.

[00:39:42] Gary Brecka: And that's the bone marrow. So now I get to the factory and I want to increase its production. How do I increase its production? Well, the boss of the bone marrow is the hormone testosterone. In men and women, the primary role of testosterone is not male characteristics. It's not deep voice, aggression, facial hair, muscles.

[00:40:01] Gary Brecka: It's none of those things. In men and women, the primary role of testosterone is to put pressure on the bone marrow to increase red blood cells. It's called erythropoiesis. So If I'm deficient in testosterone, I'm very likely deficient in red blood cells and hemoglobin. So how do I raise testosterone? I don't just start taking testosterone.

[00:40:24] Gary Brecka: I go further down the tree and I find out what is testosterone made from. It's made from something called DHEA and you can get your DHEA tested. If you are clinically deficient in DHEA, you will be deficient in testosterone. If you are deficient in testosterone, your bone marrow will produce less red blood cells and hemoglobin.

[00:40:44] Gary Brecka: If you produce less red blood cells and hemoglobin, you will be low on oxygen. If you are low on oxygen, you'll be low on energy. So that now let's just go right through the soil into the root. What is DHEA made from? Vitamin D3. 

[00:40:58] Gary Brecka: So the first thing we want to do before we start talking about taking hormones. Is we want to make sure that our D3 is in the optimal range and our DHEA is in the optimal range. Because 70 percent of the clients that we see that are deficient in hormones do not need hormones. They need the raw material for the body to make hormones.

[00:41:23] Gary Brecka: So D3 and DHEA will raise testosterone, raise the pressure on the bone marrow, improve red blood cell and hemoglobin levels, and improve your oxidative state. 

[00:41:40] Hala Taha: So let's switch gears and talk about sugar for a minute. Is sugar our kryptonite? Root of all evil. Yeah, it's our kryptonite when becoming superhuman.

[00:41:50] Gary Brecka: So the truth about sugar is that, you know, first of all, we have to understand that the brain, as sophisticated as we'd like to think it is, It's actually not. Um, the brain is very primal and you know what the brain cares about? The brain cares about survival 

[00:42:03] Gary Brecka: Right? If the brain wants calcium, it will leach it from the bones. If it needs amino acids, it'll strip it from lean muscle. And if it wants sugar, it will activate a receptor on the back of the tongue called the RF1A2 receptor. This is a very special receptor because things have to be swallowed to trigger this receptor.

[00:42:22] Gary Brecka: And when it passes by this receptor, this receptor doesn't register sweet, it releases dopamine. And this is why most people are not, don't just like sugar, they are addicted to sugar. In fact, the entire synthetic sugar industry, aspartame, sucralose, all of these synthetic sugars or sugar substitutes, the majority of their chemical component is not designed to taste sweet.

[00:42:46] Gary Brecka: It is designed to ding the dopamine receptor. It is designed to cause your brain to release dopamine, which gives you a pleasure response, which is why people are addicted to sodas. Artificial sweeteners and sodas, which is why people are addicted to all kinds of sugar because they don't just like the taste of sugar.

[00:43:07] Gary Brecka: They are addicted to the dopamine. And in the mortality space, we used to say the absence of dopamine is the presence of addiction. The reason why most addiction has a tendency to shift, if you've ever been an addict or ever known a true addict. Drug addicts become alcoholics. Alcoholics become work alcoholics.

[00:43:25] Gary Brecka: Work alcoholics become workaholics. Why does addiction have a tendency to shift? Because we never address the dopamine deficiency. If I was able to magically go into your body right now and deplete dopamine, you would begin to engage in dopamine seeking behaviors. Right? Dopamine is the primary driver of behavior.

[00:43:45] Gary Brecka: Serotonin is the primary driver of mood. So, When we talk about sugars, we really have to talk about this dopamine cycle. Um, and that's why sugar addiction is right up there with drug and alcohol addiction. We have increased the intake of sugar 400 fold in this country since 1964. The worst thing to ever happen to humanity was the war on fat in the 90s, and where they started to replace everything with high sugars.

[00:44:11] Gary Brecka: We know now, for example, that Alzheimer's is type 3 diabetes. It's insulin resistance in the brain. So sugar is really the root of all evil. 

[00:44:21] Hala Taha: So, when it comes to sugar then, are you suggesting that we should, like, completely remove sugar? Is it something that we don't need as a raw material? 

[00:44:30] Gary Brecka: No, I'm just saying that we should eat, when we eat whole foods, and we eat less processed sugar, this is where we get into trouble, right?

[00:44:40] Gary Brecka: Processed foods. And high glycemic sugars, especially your white sugars. And these are really dangerous for you. And the majority of my sugar intake comes from three sources. Natural honeys, natural maple syrups, and fruits that end in berry. The problem with the majority of sugars is that they, not only do they ding the dopamine receptor and then fall off, which create, makes you crave the next sugar ding.

[00:45:07] Gary Brecka: But what sugar does is it raises our insulin level, and most people think that the primary role of insulin is to lower blood sugar, and that's actually not true. the primary role of insulin is to block any other form of energy use in the body. So if insulin is high, the body cannot burn fat.

[00:45:27] Gary Brecka: So what happens when insulin is high? We store fat at an accelerated rate. The first place that fat builds up is in the blood. So people that eat the most sugar have the highest blood fat. So the heaviest people eat the most sugar because high sugar causes high insulin. High insulin forces fat storage.

[00:45:50] Gary Brecka: Your body does not have the choice to use fat as an energy source. And so one of the healthiest things you can do for a lot of my patients that are, you know, sugar addicted or they have high triglycerides, high fat in the blood, I do what's called a keto reset. I put them on a prescription ketogenic diet for 10 weeks.

[00:46:08] Gary Brecka: It's a very easy diet to get used to. And at the end of that, you start to reintroduce sugars and you give their pancreas a break. You make them insulin sensitive again. You know, high levels of insulin is one of the signs of something called metabolic syndrome. And high insulin leads to another symptom of metabolic syndrome called high triglyceride.

[00:46:28] Gary Brecka: So, high insulin, high blood sugar, high blood fat, mild abdominal obesity. This is what we call metabolic syndrome. It's the leading cause of cardiovascular disease, which is the leading cause of death worldwide. And all of this can be traced back to sugar. And so, when people say, well, what diet should I be on?

[00:46:46] Gary Brecka: You should be on a whole food diet. It doesn't matter, keto, paleo, carnivore, raw food, vegan, vegetarian, you need to be eating clean, whole foods. Wild caught salmon, pasture raised chickens, free range eggs, organic grass fed meats. These are excellent sources of nutrition for you. And organic fruits and vegetables.

[00:47:08] Gary Brecka: More processed foods, especially processed sugars, we have. The higher the incidence of all disease pathways. 

[00:47:16] Hala Taha: So I know we were talking about Wim Hof previously, and one of his big core concepts is this need to make sure that we're uncomfortable, right? That we're always so used to like air conditioning and all these things that just make us comfortable, comfortable, and kind of complacent.

[00:47:32] Hala Taha: You also agree that aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort. The more we aggressively seek comfort, the faster that we age is something that you say. Talk to us about the need to be uncomfortable sometimes. 

[00:47:44] Gary Brecka: There is a process in the human body called hormesis. Hormesis is a stress strengthening response.

[00:47:52] Gary Brecka: So for example, we know that if you don't load a bone, it won't strengthen. If you don't actually tear a muscle, It won't grow. If you don't challenge the immune system, it will weaken. And so we've got to stop telling grandma not to go outside. It's too hot not to go outside. It's too cold just to lay down, just to relax, to eat at the very first pang of hunger.

[00:48:13] Gary Brecka: This is collapsing all of our defense mechanisms. Not to get political or alienate half your audience or anything, but one of the worst things to happen to us during the pandemic was social distancing, residential quarantining, and masking. Those were so antithetical human survival and our basic human physiology that we, we are seeing now the outcome of a global collapse of the immune system.

[00:48:41] Gary Brecka: So when you take human beings out of contact with other human beings, when you force them into their residences, when you mask them up, when you social distance them, when you don't expose them to daily pathogens and viruses and bacteria, what happens is the immune system starts to weaken.

[00:48:56] Gary Brecka: We're on our eighth variant of Omicron. So why is our immune system so weak? Why are we so susceptible? Because we actually stopped challenging the immune system. This is why things like cold water exposure are so good for you. I know Wim Hof is a major fan of that.

[00:49:12] Gary Brecka: Remember, we're not trying to become cold adapted. We're trying to cold shock the body. So what happens, for example, when we expose the body to cold water, where we get a peripheral vasoconstriction, we actually get An increase in, in the release of, uh, endorphins like dopamine that actually give us a pleasure response.

[00:49:29] Gary Brecka: We force all the oxygen into the core, to our liver, lungs, pancreas, our kidneys, up to our brain. We activate brown fat, which is our thermostat in the body. We improve our metabolic rate and you can do this by getting in cold water three minutes a day or taking a three minute cold shower. Now, why won't most people do that?

[00:49:47] Gary Brecka: Because it's uncomfortable. We don't like to go outside because it's too hot. We don't like to go outside because it's too cold. We like to just lay down and relax because that's comfortable. We stress the body. It has a hormetic response and it strengthens. And so, the reason why I say aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort is that most people just...

[00:50:07] Gary Brecka: They avoid exercise or high temperatures or low temperatures or cold exposure or all of these things because they just don't want to be uncomfortable. 

[00:50:14] Hala Taha: I would love to close out with a few of your favorite stories of how you've basically transformed people's lives. I know that you have a lot of celebrity clients like the UFC president, Dana White, but whatever examples you want to give of how you've actually transformed people's lives.

[00:50:33] Hala Taha: Do all the e work with human biology. 

[00:50:36] Gary Brecka: Well, you know, my favorite stories are where you take a myriad of seemingly unrelated symptoms, right? So think about all these symptoms people have is like spokes on a wheel. Waking, water retention, poor sleep, hormone imbalance, lack of focus, lack of concentration, low waking energy, poor libido.

[00:50:54] Gary Brecka: It seems like the whole world's going to hell in a handbasket. What I always try to do is I look for the hub. Where do all of these things meet? So, for example, Dana White just disclosed on my podcast very publicly my work with his mother in law. She's a 79 year old woman, beautiful woman, who was diagnosed with 3 berry.

[00:51:16] Gary Brecka: Significant conditions, um, early onset dementia, peripheral neuropathy, and congestive heart failure. When you ask yourself, where do all of these meet, right? So the clinical team and I sit around, remember I'm not licensed to practice medicine, so, you know, eventually there is a physician involved that is licensed to practice medicine.

[00:51:31] Gary Brecka: Where do all these things meet? They all meet at circulation. If I reduce circulation to periphery, I get the symptoms of peripheral neuropathy. If I reduce circulation to the brain, I get the symptoms of early onset memory loss or an early onset dementia. If I reduce circulation to the heart, I get the expression of congestive heart failure.

[00:51:50] Gary Brecka: And so these are not independent of one another. They all meet at this core of circulation. So we use things like oxygen baths, hydrogen water, filtration systems for her to drink hydrogen water. resveratrol to increase blood flow and simple raw materials and nutrients to improve the blood flow and circulation.

[00:52:11] Gary Brecka: 65 days later, um, after she was diagnosed with these conditions, she no longer qualified for those diagnoses. There's so many people that are listening to this program right now that have some kind of condition hypothyroid.

[00:52:26] Gary Brecka: Or they've been told they have hypertension and they've just accepted that diagnosis and now they're, they, they subscribe to a lifetime of medication. I would really encourage them to get that one time genetic test done. You do it once in your lifetime, you'll never guess again on what you need to supplement with and it could permanently change the trajectory of your life.

[00:52:45] Hala Taha: So most of the listeners that are tuning into the show, they're probably in their 30s. Where can we go to learn from you? What books do you have? What websites do you have? What services, products, like, how can we further work with you to learn from you on how to optimize our 

[00:53:02] Gary Brecka: bodies? I just started a podcast on human optimization called The Ultimate Human.

[00:53:08] Gary Brecka: Dana White was a guest on there. You'll see Stephen A. Smith, Steve Harvey, Steve Aoki, lots of Steve's. And you'll see a lots of average patients, but I also interview the leading PhDs and MDs and researchers in the world on bio optimization, longevity, optimal health. On my Instagram, I don't do anything but teach.

[00:53:28] Gary Brecka: So if you just go to at Gary Breka, just my first and last name. You'll see tons of videos on breathwork, morning routine, cold plunging, oxygen, light, magnetism. You'll see all of the different topics that I lecture on. I put all of my stage talks onto my Instagram. Um, and then finally you can go to 10X, the number 10, the letter X, healthtest.

[00:53:50] Gary Brecka: com and order that gene test. You can see the supplements that I've manufactured myself and I have tons of information on that site on bio optimization. And 

[00:54:01] Hala Taha: Are you in business with Grant Cardone? He also came on this podcast. 10x Health, he's, is he an investor or something? 

[00:54:08] Gary Brecka: Yes, we, it was Streamline Medical Group was my company eight years ago.

[00:54:12] Gary Brecka: Grant acquired it and now he and I and my wife and uh, Brandon Dawson are partners in 10x Health. 

[00:54:19] Hala Taha: Oh, awesome. He's been looking amazing. Oh yeah, he was 

[00:54:22] Gary Brecka: one of my early success stories, right? One of my earliest clients and, you know, Grant does not look, act or perform like a 65 year old man. No. Right. He'll run circles around most 25 year olds.

[00:54:33] Hala Taha: The last two questions I asked, all my guests are the same, and then we do something fun at the end of the year. So the first one is, what is one actionable thing our young improfiters can do to become more profitable 

[00:54:43] Gary Brecka: tomorrow? Find something that you would otherwise do for free and monetize it. 

[00:54:49] Hala Taha: And what is your secret to profiting in life?

[00:54:51] Hala Taha: And this can go beyond business, financial, but what is your secret to profiting in life? 

[00:54:56] Gary Brecka: My secret to profiting in life is really kind of aligning my purpose with my passion. I'm passionate about the human body and human physiology, and my purpose is to change the face of humanity. And because those two are so aligned, I really, I know this sounds so altruistic and cheesy, but it's true.

[00:55:13] Gary Brecka: I don't feel like I work a day in my life. This podcast did not feel like work. I really enjoyed this podcast. And when I get off the phone, I've got a dozen calls lined up with clients and patients and my clinical team. And none of that feels like I'm excited to get off of this podcast and get on those calls.

[00:55:29] Gary Brecka: I feel like most people have a passion. Some people have a purpose if they don't align their passion and their purpose of what, what really lights your fire and wakes you up in the morning, what would you otherwise do for free? And then when you have a purpose, like, uh, you know, which is by the way, linked to longevity, all of the blue zones in the world, isolated the fact that the elderly people still felt like they had a purpose.

[00:55:49] Gary Brecka: So when you have a purpose, meaning, you know, minus to change the face of humanity, this information that I have does not belong to me. It belongs to your listeners. It belongs to mankind. I'm just blessed enough to have it flow through me since I'm so. Almost psychotically passionate about the human body.

[00:56:06] Gary Brecka: And I read voraciously and I study voraciously and my purpose is to touch the face of humanity, those two aligned. And I'm telling you, it's like, I feel like I won the lottery every day. 

[00:56:16] Hala Taha: Yeah, I can feel the passion through you and I'm totally aligned. I totally agree with everything you're saying. And Gary, you've been a wealth of information.

[00:56:24] Hala Taha: I can't wait to have you back on the podcast. Thank you so much for your time. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? What are your main channels? 

[00:56:32] Gary Brecka: My Instagram at Gary Brekka 

[00:56:34] Hala Taha: Amazing. Thank you so much, Gary. You're 

[00:56:37] Gary Brecka: so welcome. Thank you for having me on. 

[00:56:43] Hala Taha: I really liked this conversation with Gary Breka.  It was so eye opening and I found it so moving what he said about not wanting to waste his life predicting death,  when instead he could spend it impacting life for the better of humanity.

[00:56:55] Hala Taha: I think that's something we can all strive to do, whether we're biohackers or not. Gary offered us so many actionable biohacks, , but I wanted to flag a few that he emphasized He told us that his entire career boils down to this one sentence.  The presence of oxygen is the absence of disease.

[00:57:12] Hala Taha: So how can we better manage the oxygen levels in our body?  The easiest way to do so, says Gary, is an activity called grounding,  which basically means take off your socks and shoes occasionally and just let your feet connect with the earth.

[00:57:25] Hala Taha: The second technique is breathing.  He recommends the 8 minute routine pioneered by Wim Hof, Hof, who we also had on the show in episode number 175.  Better breathing helps boost our oxygen levels and offsets the sedentary lifestyles that so many of us have today.  And the third way to help your oxygen levels is exposing your skin to natural sunlight. This is the safest to do in the first 45 minutes of the day.  Gary kills two oxygen birds with one stone by sitting on his porch in the morning sun  to do his breath work.  Finally, I was really struck by Gary's emphasis  on seeking discomfort.  Aging, as he puts it, is the aggressive pursuit of comfort,  something we're all guilty of.  But if we want to slow down aging, we need to make ourselves ageless.

[00:58:07] Hala Taha: uncomfortable.  So seek out good stress, whether it's a cold shower, fasting or intense exercise.  Just like you have to tear a muscle to build it,  you have to challenge your immune system and your body to strengthen them.  And that means embracing discomfort. '

[00:58:21] Hala Taha: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting podcast.

[00:58:25] Hala Taha: If you listen, learned and profited from this conversation with the fascinating Gary Breka,  then please share this episode with your friends and family.  It would really mean a lot to me if you help spread this podcast by word of mouth. if you did enjoy this show and you learned something new,  then why not drop us a five star review on Apple podcast. we have over 4,500 reviews.

[00:58:45] Hala Taha: because we have such incredible listeners like you.  You can also find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Hala Taha.  Before we wrap up, I want to give a big shout out to my incredible Yap production team.  Thank you for all you do behind the scenes.

[00:58:59] Hala Taha: This is your host, Hala Taha. A. K. A. The Podcast Princess, signing off.