Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1620: The 7 Keys to Health & Longevity

Episode Date: August 16, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin speak with Dr. Kien Vuu regarding what it takes to thrive in today’s world. NOT feeling like you’re enough and NOT choosing the victim mentally. His unlikely path to healing through health and longevity. (1:54) The greatest gift of his life through a patient. (7:45) Your DNA loads the gun, but your choices pull the trigger. (11:05) Is the dogma valid surrounding western medicine? (15:08) The 7 Keys to Health & Longevity. (17:24) #1 – Sleep. (21:26) #2 – Nutrition. (29:50) #3 – Movement and Exercise. (36:33) #4 – Emotional and Stress mastery. (37:37) #5 – Thoughts. (40:50) #6 – Relationships. (49:04) #7 – Purpose. (54:01) What is different about the delivery process of LivON Labs products? (58:50) What are the importance and benefits of GLUTATHIONE, ACETYL L-CARNITINE, and MAGNESIUM L-THREONATE? (1:05:02) How did he get introduced to LivON Labs? (1:09:20) Featured Guest/People Mentioned Kien Vuu, MD aka Doctor V (@kienvuumd)  Instagram Website Thrive State: Your Blueprint for Optimal Health, Longevity, and Peak Performance Kien Vuu MD - YouTube Paul Chek (@paul.chek)  Instagram Related Links/Products Mentioned August Promotion: MAPS Strong and MAPS Powerlift 50% off!  **Promo code “AUGUSTSPECIAL” at checkout** Visit LivON Labs for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Dr. Kien Vuu: BioEnergetic Model of Health | AGEIST Visit Felix Gray for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Visit Chili for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Mind Pump #1345: 6 Ways To Optimize Sleep For Faster Muscle Gain And Fat Loss Use of dietary linoleic acid for secondary prevention of coronary heart disease and death: evaluation of recovered data from the Sydney Diet Heart Study and updated meta-analysis Man's Search for Meaning The health benefits of strong relationships THE SCIENCE OF LIVON LABS Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode, we interviewed Dr. Ken Vu, and we talked about the seven factors for longevity and how to thrive. He's actually a great doctor, wrote a great book.

In fact, you can check out his book at thrivestatebook.com. You can find him at kenvoo.com. That's k-i-e-n-v-u-u.com. You can find him on Instagram at kenvoo.md. If you're interested in living better and living longer, we know you're gonna enjoy this episode. Now, this episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Live On Labs.

They make some of the best supplements you'll find anywhere. These are nutrients that are effectively delivered to your body with some pretty effective ways, quite unique ways. In fact, I've never taken a B-complex and actually felt it. Live on Labs products is the first time actually felt something when I took it, or at least a vitamin like that.

It's pretty effective stuff. Go check them out, head over to liveonlabs.com. That's L-I-V-O-N, labs.com. That's livenonlabs.com forward slash mind pump. And you can actually get a sample pack of all six supplements for free. So that's a huge, huge giveaway from them. It's really cool. Also, we're running a 50% off sale on two of our most popular

workout programs. Maps strong and maps power lift are both 50% off. You can find them at mapsfitinistproducts.com. Just use the code August Special with no space for the discount. All right, so Dr. Voo, thanks for coming on the show. Can you give our audience a little bit of a background as to what you do before we get into our topic? Sounds great.

So, I was originally trained as a conventional MD as an interventional radiologist. So a lot of people don't know about it. So radiology, you go into the hospital or a clinic, X-ray, CT scans, MRIs, ultrasounds, or all these different advanced technologies that you could use to pierce inside the body. So as a diagnostic radiologist, I was able to see pretty much all different type of diseases and what it looked like inside the body. As an interventional radiologist, I actually used that technology to do minimally invasive surgeries. I was able to use a real-time X-ray machine to see inside the body,

what type of surgeries would I do? I would basically, if blood vessels were clogged up, I could put a small little tube inside a blood vessel and open them up. There were blood vessels that lead into tumors. I can put a tube in there and deliver either radiation or chemotherapy in. With a CT scan, I could see where a mass is and direct a needle into that mass and either take a sample of it, burn it or freeze it.

So as a radiologist, I was able to see lots of disease as an interventional radiologist. I was able to treat a lot of disease, but I didn't go into longevity and performance medicine because of all this fancy technologies. I went into it because five years ago, I was trained at probably the best institutions in the country, the NIH, UCLA, UC San Diego,

Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and I'm not saying that to impress you. I'm saying that to impress upon you that five years ago, I was this doc on top of my game, and I was overweight, I was diabetic, I was hypertensive, and I was taking prescription medications, not knowing that I didn't learn how to be healthy

going through the path of conventional traditional medicine. And it was really that journey of understanding what health really is is that I was able to reverse my conditions in a short period of time. And now this is what I practice with my concierge class. Well, back up for a second for a minute. So walk me through how a kid who's aspiring to be a doctor one day says,

I'm gonna be an intervention radiologist. Yeah, interventional radiologist. Okay, so how does that happen? I mean, what drives you into that field? Okay, well, great question. Well, for me, well, I have to go back even further now to my history. I was actually not born in this country.

I was born a couple years after the Vietnam War, and my parents were from the South, and they had seized all the businesses there. And as my parents were actually Chinese immigrants to Vietnam, they took away their businesses, they took away all all their money and my parents were like, Hey, you know what? We're about to have a child. I can't raise them here in this country. And so they took me um, and we escaped on this refugee boat. I was on a refugee boat with two thousand other refugees. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Being the only infant to survive. I spent eight months on that boat, and other three months in a Philippine refugee camp,

and then we were sponsored to America by a Catholic church. So yeah, America, and you would think a kid growing up, you know, being the only kid to have survived this boat voyage would be very grateful. But that was in the case. You know, I grew up in Chinatown LA, it was an immigrant neighborhood,

but I got bus to a more affluent area for school. When I went to school, I was constantly being teased for the holes in my hand me down closed to the stinky food my mom, you know, sent me to school with. I used to be called Chinky all the time. And so there was that energy of, I'm not enough. I was constantly, I wanted to actually be like a comedian or rock star. You know, my heroes were like Tony Robbins, Robin Williams, Mick Jagger.

When I looked at the TV and I said, you know what, there's nobody that looks like me there. You know? There's no Asian motivational speaker or comedian. And so, and then I just saw these images. And you know, this brought me back to a lot of my own history when I saw a lot of the Asian hate happening around the coronavirus. And I just remember not feeling like I was enough. my own history when I saw a lot of the Asian hate happening around the coronavirus. And I just remember not feeling like I was enough.

You know, I actually wanted to be that entertainer to use my voice for something, but my mom. So you say, well, how does a kid want to go into interventional radiology? My mom said, you know what, kid, son, you have three choices. You could be a doctor, an MD, or a physician. So that's why I went to medical school. I was just gonna ask you because that's a very interesting experience, but it could have gone another way. You could have gone the angry, you know,

victim, I guess, mentality, screw this. It's not worth it. I'm just gonna, whatever, but instead you went and it sounds like you went and busted your ass. So that was your parents influence that. Yeah, that was my parents influence. Why did I end up going into radiology? Well, radiology was the most sexy thing we had in medicine.

I mean, you got to play with the most advanced technologies. That's true. Being able to do a surgery through a pinhole in your body was pretty damn cool. So that's why I ended up choosing that. And you mentioned this one thing like, I didn't choose the victim mentality. There's a quote from the Dalai Lama. And this is how I got chronic disease. You mentioned this one thing, I didn't choose the victim mentality.

There is a quote from the Dalai Lama, and this is how I got chronic disease. There's a quote from the Dalai Lama, he says, what he found most interesting about humanity, and as the story goes, a reporter asked him, okay, what do you find most interesting about humanity? He said, man, because he would sacrifice his health in order to make money, and then sacrifice his money to recuperate his health. That's so crazy. Right. I didn't have that victim mentality,

but I had this feeling of not enough and that I was constantly needing to chase something outside of myself, right? Chasing, getting into the next residency, chasing, climbing up in the hospital, and it was always busting, busting, busting, seeking for something outside of me. And when you get stressed out, when your body stressed out

doing that, you're gonna take on bad habits, like not sleeping very well, not eating very well. And the constellation of bad habits stacked upon bad habits, that what drives a low bioenergetics state, which we could talk about in a second, and that's what leads to chronic disease. And now you were, I mean, you're obviously not an older young, so you said this was how long ago, five years ago?

Seven years ago? Yeah, so five years ago. So five years ago, you're doing all these things, diabetic prescription medications, not healthy, as a young man, and you mentioned stress and overwork, obviously contributed to that. Was there like a specific turning point? Was there a moment where you're like,

okay, this is not working? I feel like every hero's journey has this little dip. And what I thought was probably the worst year of my life turned out to be the greatest gift of my life. And so I was this, you know, interventional radiologist, really thought I was at the top of my game. I was traveling around the world speaking of the advances in interventional radiology,

but you know, I had all the symptoms. Also, at the same year, I needed shoulder surgery, and I wasn't sure if I could practice anymore. I lost a close uncle to cancer, and then I lost, you know, a woman I thought I was going to marry. I was so, you know, wrapped up in succeeding, succeeding, succeeding, succeeding that I neglected my relationships. And so all these things kind of happened, you know, in the same year, and I was overweight, diabetic, and all those things. And I remember this one instant.

I was feeling pretty sorry for myself and I was rounding the hospital and I pick up the chart for the patient I was gonna see next. And I look at the chart, this is a 43-year-old male with terminal pancreatic cancer. And when you have cancer, when you have cancer cells plugging up what is your lymphatics in your belly,

he had 10 liters of fluid in his belly. Asciting, right? Asciting, there you go. Malignant asciting is what he had. And so I had to tap 10 liters from his belly. And I remember thinking, oh my God, okay, I gotta put myself together, I know I'm feeling like shit, but I gotta put myself together

because poor guys about to die, I opened the door. And I just remember, okay, I gotta put myself together. I know I'm feeling like shit, but I gotta put myself together because poor guys about to die, I open the door. And I just remember, man, I get chills every time I think about it. But he looks at me with the biggest eyes and the biggest smile, hey, I got you doing, man. Thank you so much for being here, man. I'm gonna feel so much better when you tap this. And I just remember feeling so much like love and everything that was going on in my head, I forgot about. And I had to ask him, his name was Ishmael, I asked

him, Ishmael, how are you so positive now? And is this doc, it's easy. Well, it's not so easy because I didn't spend my entire life like this. But cancer gave me a gift, cancer gave me the gift of knowing that no matter what life circumstances are, I always have a choice in how I show up in the world. And now I choose to show up with love, and now I choose to show up with joy. And that was the instance there. That was the defibrillator shock. I said, I was living my life in a certain way, and I've got chronic disease, I got a

figure this out, I got to make new choices. And that's when I left full-time interventional radiology. Wow, that's tough because you've studied so hard, you spent so much time in this particular field. And I want to be very clear, Western medicine's got tremendous value at treating, especially it comes at treating acute health issues, right? If you, something's going to kill you right now, you want to go to Western medicine to make sure that you don't die.

Absolutely. But one thing that they tend to not do so well at currently, although I think it's going to start trending in this direction, they're never really good at wellness or prevention or treating chronic illness. That's a tough realization when you spend so much time and energy in that space. Was that hard? Did you resist that or you open-minded to that? Well, I knew I needed to change and at the time I didn't know You know any other medicines or healing modalities outside but I started off just working on my physical habits

Like I used to not sleep very well I used to wake up with a cup of coffee six pumps of international the light very well I used to wake up with a cup of coffee, six pumps of international, the light, double that, and then monster energy drinks throughout the day. And I wonder why I couldn't sleep at night, and I wake up exhausted. Well, and the truth is, that's not normal for a lot of doctors.

That's a lot of common. A lot of doctors don't eat very well, absolutely, very well. And how can you look at a doctor, give you medical advice when they're not really the epitome of health? And I didn't know that it's at first, but once I started to do that, I started to notice a shift in my body.

I was like, oh my god, I'm starting to actually feel better. Then I went deeper. Then there is functional medicine now. There are alternative medicines out there. I did plant medicines that actually go through some of the deep mental work. And we actually talk, I actually do some psychedelic work myself, but it wasn't until I started to really understand those concepts, started to understand epigenetics

and that's the new exciting thing because R DNA is not what we get from mom and dad. That's partially true. Some people think, okay, I'm gonna get a disease because mom and dad had a disease. Well, it's partly true. You get a DNA from mom and dad, but it's actually the DNA is all the plays that you could have in your cellular playbook, right? But you're not playing all those plays at the right time. In fact, you have to play the bright plays at the right moment in order for you

to get great health. You play the wrong plays just like in a game, you're gonna lose the game. Well, what's the saying goal that your DNA is what loads the gun, and then you're having choices. You have choices of what pulls the trigger, right? And that's exactly it. And then we start to understand that our cells and our DNA are constantly listening to the energetic surrounded moment by moment, then we'll start to be like, okay,

and here's the thing, in my book, I talk about the seven things, the seven bioenergetic things that actually tells ourselves in a moment-to-moment basis, are you in a very safe and thriving environment or are you in a stress or danger environment? And the thing is, the cool thing is, those seven things, you and I can control. We are really in control of that energetic environment that speaks to our DNA, and therefore we are in control of achieving optimal health, longevity and peak performance, or having chronic symptoms and chronic disease. Yeah, no, I love this field.

It's interesting because there are actually, although genetics are connected to lots of different chronic issues, there's very few health issues that are completely determined by genetics. There really is. There's definitely genetic issues, but there's very few that are guaranteed. Most of them are exactly what you're talking about. Do you feel like this puts you in a unique position because you have such an extensive, traditional medical and science background to then move into kind of the wellness and functional kind of health space. I didn't think so initially. I was thinking, man, you know, I was trained at all these top institutions yet I got chronic disease, what the f. But now,

I could say no, I actually went through and I've got all the traditional training. I understood diseases from a medical world, but there's an Indian parable about six blind men and the elephant, right? One of them sees the elephant and he feels the trunk and thinks, oh, okay, it's a snake. One of them feels the tusk and thinks, this is a spear. And the idea is you don't see the entire thing. And when I was studying Western medicine,

I only looked at health from one component, but now I could see different parts, and I don't think I see everything, but I'm starting to see more and more of that elephant. And that allows me now to be able to say, hey, you know what, I went through the medical route. I am an assistant clinical professor at UCLA, but there were things that we don't know,

and there's limitations to conventional medicine. Now do you think there's some dogma that surrounds the Western medicine that keep us from excelling that now that you've kind of dabbled in the kind of Eastern or more holistic view of looking at things and looking back do you see the dogma that's in that?

Yeah, certainly. I think, you know, you know, I might get reamed for for saying this, but I mean, I feel like a lot of my medical education was paid for by the drug companies, unfortunately. You know, you know, and it's a way of treating a symptom with a drug, not understanding that the root causes of a lot of disease are things that we self inflict, not knowing it, when we're not conscious.

Yeah, I look, we work in the fitness space and I can't tell you, I mean, they're constantly looking for a cure to obesity when obviously lifestyle. But, you know, and it's, yes, I agree with you driven by pharmaceutical companies, but that's also driven by consumers because I've got, look, I had doctors,

I used to train a lot of doctors back in the day when I had a personal training studio and a few of them were like you, very, very health focused and they tell me, Sal, I tell you man, I'll sit down with my patient and I'll tell them, we need to change your diet, you need to exercise regularly and people don't want to do it. But if I listen, you take this pill, they'll do it. Even then, actually studies will show people often don't even take their medications. So it's a very tough, broad culture though.

It is. It feels like that's something that we've created for ourselves. I think we have to break that cycle. I don't think that's in humans. I think that that's just how we've treated everything forever, right? Absolutely. I just feel like our modern day society links up success with all these things that are outside of ourselves.

Yeah. You know, links up, you know, how you should be, from not being who you truly are authentically. I mean, my path of healing was really to understand why I'm here, to love myself, and my path of healing was really accepting myself, knowing who I am as a person, what I have to contribute, and we don't say that to the people growing up.

It's like, okay, you need, like my mom, you need to go into this field. Let's take away the things that make you happy and program these other things into you. And we forget who we really are. And it's that part of the remembering, part of those seven things, number seven is actually purpose and purpose is remembering who we are

and what we're meant to serve to other people. Okay, so let's get into those seven points. And you referred to this as like the, what did you call this bio-energetics state? Yeah, the bio-energetics state. Okay, so let's define that first. Like what do you mean by bio-energetics state? Okay, so, you know, back when I was in college,

I actually went to USC to study, you know, to study cells in a petri dish. And there are, you know, I study these lung cells and there's two type of lung cells. One is the type one cell that basically lines the lung, participates in gas exchange. Then there was a type two cell, which was like a stem cell that could turn into type one cells,

but and it also helps secrete something called surfactin, which keeps the lung moist. Well, we studied how these cells behaved in a petri dish and we started to learn, okay, well, when does this one cell differentiate into another cell, how does this cell behave? Well, when we started to change the nutrients in the medium, they started to behave different. We started to change the temperature. It's our, to shift its behavior in terms of how rapidly divided, we changed the light and it started to change. So it turns out what determines the behavior or the state of a cell is not actually the DNA,

but it's actually all the energetic environment that's around it that determines how the cell behaves. And that DNA is constantly listening, again, moment to moment with all that energetic environment. Right, and what controls that environment? Everything, because your DNA is constantly listening. But to learn everything and think there's an infinite amount of things that affects yourselves isn't going to help you or me. But there are actually seven main things in the

book. Sleep, nutrition, movement, emotional and stress mastery, relationships and purpose, our thoughts and mindset. Those seven things is the 80, 20 rule or the 90, 10 rule as to whether or not you can be in the thrive state which gives you access to optimal health longevity and peak performance. Or if your cells think you're in stress because you haven't mastered those seven things,

they think that you're in actually a stress or danger state, that's when inflammation increases, immunity decreases, that's when you have chronic symptoms, that's when you get chronic disease. This totally supports the studies on longevity, where they'll notice that people in this particular part of the world live on average 10 or 15 or even 20 years longer than people in this part of the world. It must be their genetics. Then what they'll do is they'll follow their offspring

that move to a different part of the world. Within one generation, their lifespan matches the place that they live, as soon as they start to follow that particular lifestyle. So wasn't the genetics, it was all the other stuff. So how did we distill down to the seven? Was it something that you were watching with the cells when you guys were studying them

or how did you distill down to the seven? Well, so when I was studying the cells, it was really one of the earlier, at least for me in my career, knowing that the environment is actually controls the cellular behavior. Then I started, as I healed myself, I started to do more work into epigenetics,

studying telomeres, working with epigenetysis, and you'll notice now a lot of people like, well, what's the cure for depression? Oh, sleep exercise nutrition. What's what's the cure for? You know diabetes well sleep You started to study all these things and you started to see patterns like the root cause of a lot of these things So here we are so our individual cells Cells make up tissues make up organs make up organ systems and make who we are, right? So we want optimal health and longevity and peak performance. Well, we need optimal cells for that. When our cells start to

break down, if our cells are suboptimal, that these are suboptimal tissues, suboptimal organs, suboptimal systems. If we have a suboptimal cardiovascular system, atherosclerosis, heart attack stroke, suboptimal endocrine system, diabetes, suboptimal immune system, you get cancer, autoimmune disease. So that's what determines, you know, whether or not we're on the positive side of the coin of optimal health longevity and peak performance and not, is mastering that bio-energetics state. All right. Let's start with the first one you mentioned was sleep.

So let's talk about that one for a second. Why, first off, I think it's widely understood, or I guess common knowledge that in modern societies or modern times, we tend to suffer from poor sleep. Why? Why is sleep such an issue? And was it better in the past? It was certainly better in the past. I believe it's our modern lifestyle and how we're living

our life that people are programmed to not do things that we were naturally meant to do as human beings, right? Beginning with sleep. Why are people not sleeping so much? Well, there's a lot of chronic stress that's out there. We've got a lot of blue light now that suppresses melatonin. a lot of chronic stress that's out there. We've got a lot of blue light now that suppresses melatonin, so people aren't sleeping very well because of that. And so why sleep so important? Well sleep is one of those things that is important for our circadian rhythm, right? So when we sleep, our body rejuvenates, we get rid of a lot of toxins that are in our central nervous system. And we get replenished. And it also resets our circadian rhythm, which is the master clock that a hormones use. Right?

So when your hormones are off, try losing weight. That's not going to happen, right? Our hormones drive everything. So if people aren't sleeping very well, your body is going to think you're going to be in a stress state, you have a chronic elevation in cortisol, everything falls apart. Yeah. You know what's interesting about sleep is that you think it's, well, on its surface,

it's evolutionarily disadvantageous to sleep, right? You're eight hours, you're not doing anything, you're super vulnerable to attack, something can kill you. Why do we sleep? Obviously, it's that important. Otherwise, evolution would have figured it out and we would have stopped sleeping by now

So it's super super important. You mentioned chronic stress Now I think when I go back I'm gonna play devil's advocate, right? It was must have been super stressful 5,000 or 10,000 years ago. I got to watch out for predators and foods hard to find And maybe a tribe attacked us. What's the difference between the stress then and the stress now? What do you mean by chronic? Well, that's a great question.

So back in the day, we got stressed when there was a saber-tooth tiger behind us or when the neighboring village was about to come attack. That was stress. When they weren't around, we went back just like the animals. When there's a line around, they get into their parathetic state, they run away and then they'll go back to grazing.

Stress this day, who's the Sabre Tooth Tiger today? A bad text from a friend or like a Twitter post that's like, and they have all the touchy off. Or somebody cutting you off on the freeway. All those things are acting like that Sabre Tooth Tiger to you. And the thing is a stress response is a good response because it will increase your heart rate and increase a blood flow to your muscles so that you could run away from an actual threat. It causes your blood to thicken

because if a saber-toothed tiger were to bite you, you can claw it off right away. But because all that blood gets diverted to your muscles, your visceral organs that are that's important for life, it doesn't get that blood full, right? You've got inflammation to increase because if you get a flesh wound, you want your body to come and attack that flesh wound. So inflammation increases and who needs an immune system when you're about to be lunch? So your immune system drops at that point. So your immune system drops at that point. So your immune system goes up.

You're basically setting up all that environment or all that energy that's used for growth and healing gets diverted into this stress response. And because we are chronically responding to that stress, our body is not meant to handle that stress day in, day out all day. That's the problem. And then of course, how can you sleep when you've got this kind of chronic?

So do you have any takeaways or steps for improving your sleep quality or the time? First of all, I've heard I've read that seven to nine hours ideal for most people, is that true? And then how do you improve the quality of your sleep right now in the context of modern life? Yeah, so great question. Seven to nine hours is generally enough. and you'll know if you ask yourself, you know,

like during the day, do you feel well rested or you're not well rested? So you'll gauge, and here's the other thing is when you start to, you know, do some of the other things in the other seven bio-energetical elements, you'll notice that maybe you need a little bit less sleep. But generally it's around seven to nine hours. Now I look throughout the day because a good night's sleep really begins in the morning. So when I get up in the morning, I usually go right outside.

The first thing I do is to get 20 to 30 minutes of natural sunlight in my eyes, in my skin. It tells my circadian rhythm, it's time to reset, it's time to wake up. You get a small boost of cortisol when you do so. Throughout the day, here's the other thing I didn't use to do, is, you know, and we can go through this a little bit later as to what I do during the day,

but I always like every, like a couple of hours, I would check in to bring my body back into a parasympathetic state. It's not when, but, you know, how is the day going to, going to bump up your stress levels? And it's understanding that you need to manage your stress levels kind of throughout the day. So I do breathing techniques, I do a little meditation. I know I'm not going to drink coffee or actually quit on drinking alcohol all together.

I won't drink any of that past 2pm because the caffeine could link around in your body. At night, I do have a pair of blue-bocking glasses. I'll put on around 6-7pm. At night, I'll have a routine. And it's really, for me, I like to have little ceremonies with myself. And this happens with meditation. This happens with my nighttime routine. I'm journaling things that make me happy.

I'm journaling the things that I have to think about the next day so that it's out of my brain onto a piece of paper. And then, then I spend a little bit of time, you know, cuddling up with my partner and and off we go. Justin's a big cutler. Yeah, Adam loves that about him. Would it? Cuddling me.

Now, the, what about the tip? I've heard the temperature of the room is important to keep it cool, keep it real dark, these are all important factors. Absolutely. You're proving your sleep. Yeah, so some people are really sensitive to the light, but keeping the room as dark as possible is great. I also sleep on a chile pad that actually brings them to the table.

We work with them. Yeah, great company. Yeah, so. And Felix, great. If we do enough, we could hit it like five sponsors here on this episode. Yeah, we're on a roll. Yeah, no, it makes a big difference.

You know, a question that I have just around sleep is revolves around snoring or sleep issues. No, short of getting a sleep study, because I think that's ideal, right? You go do a sleep study, but you got to sleep in a lab they watch you do a whole thing. Are there signs to look out for to see if maybe you're not getting enough oxygen while you're sleeping or maybe you're having issues with you know that.

You might have apnea or something. Well certainly well a few things one are you tired during the day right so that's a good question asked too if you have a partner that is sleeping with you that's actually you know observing you are you storing a lot are is sleeping with you that's actually, you know, observing you, are you snoring a lot? Are there times where they're like, oh, you know what, it seems like you can't catch a breath, you would snore and then you would stop breathing

for a little bit. So that's, that's, that's, that's, That's my wife was just complaining. Right. The other thing you could do is relatively cheap, you could actually get a finger oxygen saturation level, right? You can get those for less than 10 bucks and you can wear that and have somebody else

observe what your oxygen levels are at night. But those things, daytime sleepiness, plus snoring or somebody observing that you're not sleeping very well, that should maybe hint that maybe you should go out in a position. Does that matter as much or is this just a personal preference? It depends on each person.

So it depends, depending on your anatomy, because you'll, the problems that people get with the sleep apnea is if you happen to have a lot of tissue in your soft palate and if you happen to have a pretty thick tongue and maybe a thick neck like I did, certain positions will, you know, obstruct that airway a little bit more. So you kind of have to experiment. You know what I found interesting about that, this is not, it's more common in people that are obese and overweight, but I actually have a client just got a sleep test,

and Christine, you guys know, she's in phenomenal shape, and actually she has severe sleep acne. She had no idea. Have building, believe it or not, building a muscular neck, I've heard, can contribute to that. So it's kind no idea. Have building believe in not building a muscular neck. I've heard can contribute to that So it's kind of interesting. That's very interesting. Okay, so after sleep, which I agree is extremely important What would be the next one that you okay? So the next thing is nutrition nutrition all right? Let's talk about that Lots of controversy around nutrition. We deal with this all the time

What are the staples and nutrition from a health longevity standpoint? We first addressed to like how much knowledge most doctors have in nutritious Coming from a close to nothing. Yeah, we got nothing in medical second semester, right? No, you wasn't even a semester I don't even remember getting a lecture. I mean I Yeah, I just find that crazy or ironic or is it our fault? Society just to assume that doctors have all this nutritional, as a trainer, that was one of the hardest things being a 23 year old fitness trainer. And then I've got doctors that were giving terrible

nutrition advice to my clients. And then of course, I lose that battle all day long because I don't have the PhD. Yeah, so letting, looking in front of the camera now, look, the traditional MD doesn't get a lot of training. And, you know, fortunate to have podcasts like this, you know, that people start to understand, you know, how important nutrition is to,

you know, to your health. And yeah, we didn't get that. And so I didn't, I had to do all that training after I got disease and start to understand, okay, what I need to put in my mouth and how important the role is nutrition in terms of, like, food. So she was medicine. Share that journey that what was that like for an MD,

educated person, and now you're gonna start heading down the nutrition path. Did you have some pitfalls? Did you see some, did you try some specific diets or like, how did that all come together for you? Yeah, so it initially just started not doing the sad diet which is the standard American diet, or like how did that all come together for you? Yeah, so it initially just started not doing the sad diet, which is the standard American diet, right? So I actually went vegan for a little bit, and that actually improved my symptoms, but

only to a certain point. You know, I started to find out, you know, to discover that I started to get a little bit tired and things like that, and my body was craving the protein. So I went vegan for a little bit, then I started to take in meats again, but then I started to get a little bit tired and things like that. And my body was craving the protein. So I went vegan for a little bit, then I started to take in meats again, but then I started to take in the quality meats, right? So a lot of it was just ditching the standard American diet, which is just ditching sugar, ditching processed foods,

and sticking to pretty much a whole food, minimally processed situation that I use to reverse micronic conditions. Yeah, I'm glad you said that about going vegan and you initially felt some improvement. This is the pitfall that a lot of people run into, is they'll try a diet and they'll start to see some improvement and they'll think it's about the diet. When in reality, it's about probably the reduction in calories.

So you probably went vegan in eight less and eating less, typically if you're eating in a car, you would eliminate some crap that you do there. That's the main thing. I didn't use people are just eating crap. That's what I live in. I live in a crap. That's my experience.

My experience, I would tell a client that you would fall in love with any said diet. It could be the vegan diet, kind of our diet, paleo, whatever. Oh my God, so magical. It's like, well, let's look at what you were doing before. Eating donuts. Yeah. And what you do now, and it's more likely that you were doing something that

was probably a gross offender and your body didn't like. Right. And now you're not more so than it is this magical diet. Are there are there general things around nutrition when it comes to creating this this positive bioenergetics state? Yeah, I think that the key things are, like I said, getting rid of the sugar, getting rid of processed foods, including good healthy fats, coconut oil, avocado, olive oil is good. The meats that you choose, I think, are going to be important because there are meats, industrial-raised meats that are going to be more inflammatory than meats that are like grass fed or sustainably, you know, raised fish, pasture-race chicken and pork. You mentioned coconut oil.

It's super high in saturated fat. Yeah. And now we've talked about saturated fat and some of the myths surrounding it. So why recommend an oil that's so high in saturated fat when we're told so often to completely avoid, at least we were told so often to completely avoid that. Yeah, well, we were told to avoid that because back in the day, people really thought that LDL was the main issue in terms of cardiovascular events. That story started to change a little bit.

So saturated fat will raise your LDL levels, and I noticed that as well. But one I found I was more satiated when I ate more saturated fat It will bump up your LDL levels a little bit But people need to you know dive in a little bit deeper if your LDL goes up There are factors that are more important than just the LDL alone How fluffy your LDL particles are make a big difference? So if you have nice fluffy LDL particles, that's not atherogenic Your particle number is going to be super important as well So if you have nice fluffy LDL particles, that's not atherogenic.

Your particle number is gonna be super important as well. So if you've got lots of very tiny particles, they are more atherogenic than when you have, like, you know, a lower LDL number. So all these things play an important role. So I mean, people were demonizing saturated fat before because they didn't wanna demonize sugar at the time. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know the sugar industry actually that came out that they actually spent money on that. Yep. There was a famous study too where they took a group of business actually quite controlled where they took a bunch of people

Cut out their saturated fat intake. We placed it with processed vegetable oils and they did lower it everybody's cholesterol. Then later on when they followed along, they actually saw their mortality increase. So they had lower cholesterol numbers, but they had higher mortality in this particular study. Yeah, I think they were using corn oil. Yes, they were. Yeah, well, very interesting.

So I think the story with LDL is a little bit incomplete, and we're starting to understand it's not just the LDL alone. Yeah, that's cool. And I will say, as you mentioned this earlier about pharmaceutical companies driving a lot of what we learn, we have a drug that very reliably lowers cholesterol. And I think that's part of the reason why

we've placed so much focus on cholesterol because we have an easy solution. Oh, high cholesterol, take this pill. And there are some benefits in certain situations, the studies are quite clear on that. But I think it's got, it's so much more complex than that, right? It is absolutely more complex than that. Just to let people know, a couple of years back,

I was thinking, oh, we should put this, everybody should be on this. You know, we'll put stands in the water. Yeah, it will lower your cholesterol levels. It's also kind of like anti-inflammatory, but people don't tell you that years of taking it, it will affect your muscles. It can cause esophageitis and will cause muscles to kind of leak, cause your muscle to be

inflamed. So it's not, if you've got early stage in your cholesterol, just a little bit elevated, go the lifestyle route. If you've got a heart attack and you've got tons of plaque, okay fun, maybe start there and also use the lifestyle stuff. All right, so it was a sleep, nutrition, what's next? You know, movement, what you guys do, movement. We probably don't need to go into too much detail

because you're people part of that. I'd love to hear from you more specifics about movement. Now I'm looking at you, you obviously work out and you probably, you look like you do some resistance training. Are there better forms of movement versus others? In other words, if someone only has a couple days a week to devote to exercise, are there some that you've found

to be more beneficial than others? Great question. So I think as we age, including some kind of resistance, exercise, whether it be weightlifting, whether it be using your body weight is so important because sarcopenia or the lack of muscle mass as we age is a big indicator of not doing so well when you get older.

Having more lean muscle body mass actually is tied to longevity. So that's super important, particularly as you get older. Even when you feel like you're a little bit weaker. I like to include sprinting a week, doing an all-out sprint, and occasionally throwing some high intensity in a full training.

Oh, very cool. So that's the movement part, what's next? The next part is emotional and stress mastery. Okay, so this one's interesting, right? Because I think most people suck at it. Yeah, well, also because I think people think that stress mastery means no stress at all. But stress is important too, right?

Like, exercise is a stress on the body. You have to have that stress, right? Getting some like- That stress is your skin out a little bit in your body out, but there's obviously positives to it. What do you mean by stress mastery? Yeah, so it's understanding that there aren't emotional states that lead to inflammation.

So there's basically a couple of emotions in our body, right? And if your body thinks you're in stress, what happens? It turns on these stress or danger response. There's actually a gene sequence that's in your DNA that whenever it senses that your cells are in danger, it'll turn that on. And what happens? Everything we talked about with the saber,

two tiger, right? The inflammation goes up, immunity goes down. Long term, that sets you up for chronic symptoms and chronic disease. So emotions like anger, like fear, like worry, like anxiety, like resentment, all those emotions, those little vibration emotions actually causes that stress response to turn on. On the flip side, the emotions of love, of gratitude, of connection, of laughter is anti-aging. And they actually have biochemical responses

that lead to increased length of telomeres and the exact opposite, they're anti-aging. So you need to understand that, that if I am in anxiety and worry constantly, I mean, they're accused of your body. You can use them as signals in your body, but if that's the predominant emotion of what your body might be going and what you're feeling, day in and day out, you're actually driving

this stress response. You know, Dr. Vue, I'm going to make a statement. I'd love your comment on or your feedback on. So, I think about this a lot. Why is it so easy and natural for us to experience those negative or unhealthy emotions? And why is it so challenging to find sometimes those positive emotions? And the best that I can come up with

is that those negative emotions tend to be more reactionary. So it's automatic, anger is automatic, fear is automatic. Whereas the other ones require a little bit more consciousness sometimes. I mean, it can be automatic too, but sometimes I have to there. Is that, is that, would you say that's accurate? I would say that's pretty accurate. And the thing is, we, you know, if we think of all the thoughts that we think of on a day-to-day or a second-and-second basis, 70, 80 percent of those thoughts are

going to be negative. Why is that? Well, evolutionary being able to worry about certain things or fearing certain things kept us safe. And so that's why those thoughts are there. They're used to keep us safe, but you know, you don't have to believe your thoughts. And actually most of your thoughts aren't true. And you can start to, you know, you can't control those thoughts from coming in.

What you can control is how you decide to focus the thoughts, what type of meaning you put into the thoughts, which is the next category up, which is our thoughts and mindset, because you could have a negative inflammatory thought that when you focus on, increases the stress response, increasing inflammation, lowering your immunity

and putting you in chronic disease. And why do we spend so much time in those negative things? People aren't trained or know that, okay, I don't have to believe my thoughts, and I can constantly choose to start to feel these different things, but you've got to practice that. I think it has to do with self-awareness and being present, right? So negative stuff wakes everybody up.

That shit happens in your day and you are now hyper-present in that moment because it rattles you. Good shit happens to you all the time and you don't even think about it. You're already thinking about the next thing that you're pursuing or you wanna do and you're not present in the moment.

And I feel like mastering self-awareness is where a lot of this lies, in my opinion. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I was gonna say too, like as you were mentioning your process for getting prepared for sleep, too, you had mentioned like journaling and sort of reflecting on maybe some positive things that were going on with your day. And, you know, do you feel that that's something that has an advantage in terms of being able

to train yourself to start thinking those thoughts more often? Absolutely. There is a Holocaust survivor that I use, basically, has quote all the time, and I also have a technique that I teach to my clients all the time. And Victor Frankl wrote, Man's Search for Meaning, he's a Holocaust survivor, have witness deaths,

family and friends. And he had this to say, he said, between stimulus and response, there's a space. And in that space is our power to choose our response. And in our response, lies our growth and freedom. So understanding that we could always be in control, not react, but be able to see how we're reacting. Because our thoughts and beliefs, a lot of it is just, you know, society, parents are

upbringing, programming a lot of that stuff, even before we are aware from the ages of zero to seven. But we can be aware that those thoughts that are in there, that those old programs aren't necessarily ours, and we could actually decide to choose the thing differently. So there's a technique, when somebody comes in and they're feeling a cookie and they've got an urge for a cookie or they've got a negative emotion that they're feeling like Victor Frankl says create space between stimulus and response. So I take ten deep breaths in and out, in through my nose, out through my mouth. What that does is they'll activate your vagus nerve and it'll put you in a parasympathetic state. So whatever that is, that craving or that negative emotion, it'll actually drive that down.

In that space where you choose, you act, which stands for awareness, choice, and then take action. Have the awareness, oh my God, okay, there's that craving again or like, oh, there's that negative thought again that's driving this negative feeling. Oh, I don't have to believe that thought. So having that awareness first, see, choice. That's when you constantly choose, use your intention. No, you know what, right now I'm angry at my partner,

but I wanna show up with love, right? Yeah, okay. I wanna be a compassionate or generous lover. Okay, cool. Last thing, take action. From that new space, okay, I wanna feel this way. All right, cool. Let me then act differently. If you do that over and over and over again, I want to feel this way. All right, cool. Let me then

act differently. If you do that over and over and over again, you're going to train your body, I don't have to react of what my lower brain system says. I can choose something different. Now, that's the power there. Speaking into your medical profession, have you noticed, like, so the placebo effect? Have you noticed people coming in with a belief system and a positive outlook in terms of their success rate? Have you noticed any kind of substantial difference between somebody's attitude, like going through? And their outcome.

And their outcome. Absolutely. So I would pay for a placebo that works anytime, right? Because how we think and how we feel about something Like I said a thought any emotion has biochemical, you know signature to it. It actually affects What's going on in your body? So if you start to think and feel differently about something you're gonna have Possibly affect, you know what your body's feeling and those higher vibrational emotions like I said gratitude joy You know optimism all that has biochemical things that affect your bio-energetics state in your body higher vibrational emotions, like I said, gratitude, joy, optimism. All that has biochemical things

that affect your bio-energetics state in your body, which will change how your body responds to things. Yeah, but it's funny that I referred to my clients that I trained before that were doctors, and we would have this conversation. I don't know if they would even say this publicly, but they said, you know, with decent accuracy, I can predict oftentimes who's gonna make it

and who isn't based off of some of the stuff you're talking about. Did you find that to be true? So I'm noticing that now. So I work with, you know, I work with CEO celebrities down in LA and I can, you could feel from their energy and where they're at. Wow, right?

Interesting. You know, this conversation reminds me of, we had a conversation with a friend of ours, Paul check. And we talk on the podcast quite often about the, the wisdom in some religions, right? There's the spiritual regardless of your religious person, you believe in all other stuff. Some of the wisdom that is there. And I remember the first time that we were hanging out with Paul, who's not a religious person. And he looked like he was praying before he ate. And I remember Sal kind of calling it out. We were like, wait a second, I thought this dude's not religious, what's he doing praying? And it really is the practice of

creating that space before he made the before he decided to eat the food. That's all he would do. Which explains a lot of the value of a prayer, which is exists in all spiritual practices. Absolutely. You know, with a pray before you eat, it's like, while you're practicing gratitude, you're creating space, which avoids, probably prevents you from overeating your dreams. You're also thinking about,

you're thinking about, you're thinking about, is this food gonna serve my body? Is it an ideal choice? And you're, you know, a lot of times, we eat reactive. How do I know? I'm hungry. It's the first thing you grab, you just start showing off.

How many fewer pop tarts would you eat if you paused before you ate the pop tarts to pray or whatever before? Creating little tiny ceremonies really allow you to really take control of the moment and put some intention. I used to just eat on the go. I only had like 10 minutes, we went out to run between patients,

grabbed something on the go and just shoved the whole mouth without thinking. Being able to do that, that, that, I'm that, that, yeah, I'm not religious, but I do like sort of pray and I have this little time. When you put yourself in that parasympathetic state, you reduce the cortisol, you also cause your gut

to be healthy to absorb all the nutrients coming in. If you're eating in a stress state, a stress state causes your gut lining to have these little leaky junctions and it could be an inflammatory state when you're actually eating. So some people argue like, is eating a McDonald's in a calm state better than eating a baby healthier meal in a stress state? We don't know.

It also reminds me of one of the hacks that I figured out as a trainer when you're trying to help somebody through nutrition and get to have better behaviors. One of the most basic pieces of advice I'd give them. Before we'd start getting into macros and getting real technical with their diet, I would just make a simple rule of when you eat no phone, no TV, just the fact of you having to be present in that moment and not distracted by other things. People make better choices. It's amazing how much less food they eat or better choices they make every time. Something you keep saying that I think we need to hammer home is because, you know, we're talking about this mindfulness and you talked about the acronym, Act, and you said you have to practice.

I think we need to talk more about that because I think people don't realize that this is a skill and just like any skill it needs to be developed. Like if you've never ridden a bike before, it's gonna be really hard the first time you get in one and it's gonna totally suck. So, you had to do this off and it's not gonna work the first 15 times you do it. Right, no, and I'm constantly practicing.

Every day I'm evolving, every day I'm like, oh, there's that shitty thought, telling me I'm not enough again. There know, there's that stress going on again. And I have to constantly practice. And sometimes I'll let myself indulge. I'm like, you know what? I know a lot better, but I'm going to be pissed off for five minutes, right? And then I'll, then I'll get into a practice of bringing myself back together, but it's, it's constant practice. That's awesome. All right, so that was the mindset one. And then we get into relationships. Okay, so I read an interesting study, actually brought up on the show and it. That's awesome. That was the mindset one, and then we get into relationships.

I read an interesting study, actually brought up on the show, and it blew everybody's minds. I loved it because it really talked to the fitness addicted orthorexic type people. We see so much in the fitness industry, something that we all observed working in the fitness industry is that we saw some of the worst relationships with food and body image issues in the fitness space, worse than I saw in the everyday population. So the study was, I believe it was at a Stanford and they showed that having poor relationships in your life was as bad for your health as I think smoking a pack of cigarettes

or something like that a day or 10 cigarettes a day or something along those lines, which is crazy, right? It's like, we know how bad cigarettes are. Having poor relationships, you could have the perfect diet, perfect everything, those poor relationships, it could have the perfect diet, perfect everything. Those poor relationships, it's like you're smoking a bunch of cigarettes. So when you talk about relationships, what do you mean?

What are good relationships with a bad relationships? How do you foster the right ones? Yeah, so relationships basically amplify any type of energy that you might have. But we are social beings and there was actually a study done that's still ongoing. They actually started a study back in 1946 and they studied basically Harvard trained people versus people in the inner city.

And they looked at their lifestyle. And they concluded that it wasn't like cholesterol levels and things like that that determined the overall health and factor. What they had noticed that the people that were able to cultivate good positive relationships are the ones that got the most health benefit, less disease and things like that. So good health relationships or relationships you work on that actually puts you in those positive emotional states that you know, relationships the people you can count on. But there's also relationships that can get,

can put you in those negative emotional states. There are toxic relationships that will put you in anger, resentment, fear, worry. And it's also being responsible. How am I contributing to this? Do I need to forgive? And it's working those things out because it's those emotions that you spend a lot of time with. How am I contributing to this? Do I need to forgive? And it's working those things out because it's those emotions that you spend a lot of

time with. And again, emotions lead to biochemical changes that affect how your cells are. So being in relationships can really cultivate those higher emotional states that we have. So fostering those things are important. This is a tough one too, because we tend to attract people that protect us from our insecurities. So it's really tough for somebody who's in it to try and evaluate their relationships on our people good for me.

What a great point. You don't want to deal with your drinking issues. So you make friends with people who also have the same drinking issues. When you were going through all of this and you got to relationships for yourself, did you have to cut some relationships out of your life? I did. There were, you know, relationship, you know, I like, you know, back in the day,

there were friends in college that, you know, we were just party buddies and we used to always go out and party, party, party and, you know, we went through a lot together, but that's all the relationship was based out of. And as I was starting to notice Some changes in me and I started to say well, you know, maybe alcohol isn't isn't something that's serving me on a long-term basis I found myself not you know enjoying the things that they enjoyed and Naturally, I it's sort of to let that. And they just didn't understand the process of growth

and of me becoming and evolving into a better version of myself. Talk about this for a second, because this is hard. This is really hard. It was hard for me when I was younger where I would have to kind of like cut relationships out of my life, but you feel a sense of loyalty to them. A man, you know, we go back so far

and you know, we did all these things together. Eventually, the point that I got to was I could still value and respect all that, but I can also value and respect myself and know that this isn't really serving me anymore. But that was really hard. Was that hard for you? Was that easy? I thought it was sort of easy. I mean, I think I had a conversation, like I'm just not into this anymore.

And then it just sort of naturally, like, you know, you become so busy. Like now I got a family too. Right? No, I think that's actually the answer in the strategy. We talk about this with nutrition. Like one of the great strategies that we do with nutrition was somebody,

instead of taking somebody who has a pork diet and starting to cut foods out, we tell them to add foods to their diet. That foods that they need are they're missing and we know that they're lacking in, right? So as far as nutrients and stuff, I think the same thing goes for toxic people in your life. You don't need to make this formal breakup of like,

hey, you know, you're not growth minded. And I know we've been buddies for 10 years. We're breaking up now. You just fill that time with people that are filling your cup. You start seeking out people that are going to level you up, that are growth minded, and then it naturally happens. You're just busy versus this formal. We got to break up now because you're not growth minded.

Yeah, the best thing I heard was that good people celebrate your victories and more in your losses along with you, not the other way around. I thought that was a pretty good one. All right, so the last one is purpose. This one's interesting. What is purpose and how does one find purpose for themselves? Oh, great question. So What I what I studied this, you know

Why even care about purpose? Well, I mean when you actually study What it does to the body there is a concept called you dimonic happiness. So you dimonic happiness This means you know being happy When you feel connected to something bigger or you're when you dimonic happiness just means, you know, being happy when you feel connected to something bigger or when you're giving back to community, right? And it turns out this, there's a, you know, there's that gene of the stress response

called the conserved transcriptional response to adversity. So these genes kind of fire together and wire together as the stress response. Turns out this gene patch quiets down when you've got purpose. When you've got purpose as an American, you live seven years longer than somebody without a sense of purpose. When you have purpose, you have lowered your risk

of getting a cardiovascular event, which is the number one killer. These are heart attacks and strokes. When you've got purpose, if you happen to end up in a hospital and you spend fewer days in the hospital, so all these health benefits. And if you have purpose, you maintain your telemirs. Telemirs are these things basically the end of your DNA

that prevent your DNA from aging, or your cells from aging. So all these positive benefits on purpose, so the next question is like, how do you find your purpose? And I used to be like, man, I gotta find my purpose. Like being this analysis paralysis,

what do I need to do? How do I show up? And when I started to study with some of my spiritual teachers, the process of finding your purpose is not really an act of finding, but an act of remembering. And it's remembering, when I look at my nieces and nephews, when I look at my daughter now, there's the state of natural joy that we have as kids. And that's just a very natural thing. And within us programmed in our DNA

are the things that bring us joy. That maybe we forget along the way because somebody said, that's not gonna make you any money. That's not the correct career path for you. So you lose that authenticity and you lose access to those emotional states. But those emotional states are programmed in you already.

So it's finding and remembering those things, because those things are your passion. And if you could share you, when you could share your passion with the world, with your neighbor, with your family, with that community aspect, that's purpose. Purpose is also the struggles that's been gifted to you in your life, so that when you have gone over that struggle,

you now have a gift that you could share with somebody else. For me, it was me having chronic disease as a medical doctor that I could now talk about overcoming and what it took to overcome that. Your purpose is you. Your purpose is the authentic version of you and just sharing you with the world. And when you do that, that's your medicine. And purpose is, by the way, purpose comes with challenge. I remember this, this art, this study that came out and the articles totally butchered it, but the, the titles of the articles were all like, people without children are far less stressed and happier. This is what the title, this title is what they say. But you dig into the study and it shows that it's true, I got kids, okay.

Not having kids, definitely less stressful. It, definitely less expensive, that's totally true. It's definitely more leisure time for leisure activities. But what they didn't tell you in the study was that people with children have a much higher sense of purpose. Very different than just being relaxed and outstressed, right? Purpose is a bit of challenge. It's like some of the most driven people you'll ever find are people that earn no money and volunteer their time.

And it's usually because it's driven by, you know, their sense of purpose. So is there a difference between joy and happy? Is there a difference between... Yeah, what is joy? Because you use the word joy. What is joy? Like, why use that word? Uh, yeah.

Joy is a, you know, emotional state that kind of like, you know, leaves a little bit of a man of serotonin, dopamine, an oxytocin in your body that makes you feel a certain way. Yeah, when you say joy, it feels different to me than just being happy. It feels very, very, it feels much more fulfilling. That's why I say that. Oh, I see. I have a question, or you mentioned spiritual and you know, something that is, I think accepted by a lot of spiritual leaders, is that as humans, we have this natural desire to worship something. Do you subscribe to that? Do you believe that we have, we are all driven to worship something. And even if you're a non-religious person and you don't believe in God, there is something in your life that you are worshiping.

Yeah, I don't know so much about that. I would probably at least say that there are certain things that drive a lot of people or certain things that like, you know, that people is, you know, is their reward and they'll baste their life towards that thing. Yeah. Some people is going to be funny.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, money, power, excellent. Okay. So those are very good steps for you actionable. Now, you work with a company, you actually represent a company that we just started working with. I want to ask you this, some of the questions around some of their products because you're a doctor and also because you're background. So the companies live on. Okay. So I want to ask you about their lipozonal, you knowal technology or the delivery method. What's different about that than other products?

I mean, you obviously know a lot about nutrients and how they work in the body. Why use a product that's got that versus just using a normal tablet or capsule, for example? Excellent question. So, first let's ask, how do nutrients get absorbed into our bodies, right? So we ingest food, we'll start to massacrate food, they'll come into our stomach. Stomach acid will start breaking some of that down, and then gets into your small intestine, where your pancreas, anuliver, secretes, bile salts, the dissolved, the fat. They'll have some, you know, trips in and other, you know, peptidases that break down protein.

And then once they're in their smallest form, they'll start to get absorbed. Now, some nutrients get absorbed by diffusion. That's a very, very small amount. Most nutrients get absorbed by a, a code transporter or a cofactor, you know, sometimes linked with sodium. So it's an active type of transport.

You'll, you'll, you basically have the, your gut loom in, you've got basically the cells that line your gut and they have to be transported over to the other side, end up in your bloodstream, and guess what, when it gets to your target organ, such as your brain or your heart or whatever it is, it has to go from your bloodstream, now into that cell as well, also through an active transport mechanism, right? So some nutrients get transferred over by diffusion. What does that mean? What does diffusion mean?

Diffusion just means going from one space that has heavily concentrated naturally to, or just freely flowing to that next step. OK. Whereas an active transport means you actually need some kind of carrier to carry that molecule through. So a lot of nutrients get absorbed that way. You need an active carrier.

So when you're taking anything by mouth, a lot of nutrients will pass through the digestive system because if you don't have enough active transporters, the rest of it actually just gets into your stool and out the other way. So waste the money. Yeah, waste the money. So we will say expensive urine.

Exactly. All right, so one of the products I wanted to ask you about, because I don't know a whole bunch about it, is glutathione. I know it's, they call it the master antioxidant. Really, really good for the liver. It perked my interest recently because I read its connection to, I guess, people who have been infected with COVID

and people with high glutathione levels tend to do a lot better. This is true for other viruses and diseases and well. So it's obviously important in the immune system. So what is glutathione and supplementing it? What can that do for you or is that even important? Okay, great question. I want to go back a little bit to the delivery system Then I'll talk about the glutathione why I love live-on-proc it to the delivery system that I'll talk about, the glutathion. Why I love live on product, products is, but you get a lot more absorption with this delivery vehicle because now what they've done is they've encapsulated the nutrient with phospholipids, which are exactly the same thing that's made up of our cell membranes.

When you package it as that, when you have a cell membrane and cell membrane together, it's just sort of like, you know, they almost kind of fuse and it will just carry their nutrients onto the other side. So you bypass all that, you know, need for a coat transporter to actually bring in the nutrient. So you're absorbing a lot more of it. In fact, one of the scientists, Thomas Levy, I believe, studied 6 grams of liposome or vitamin C, he was studying the vitamin C.

Six grams of liposome of vitamin C is the equivalent of 50 grams done IV. Oh, wow. Into your bloodstream, because if you put in your bloodstream, all that nutrients still needs transporters to get into your cells, right? But if you're packaged into this lip membrane, once it gets to the cell, it just fuses together,

and then the nutrients get to the cell, it just fuses together and then the transfer. No, why aren't all supplement companies using this transport system then? Well, great question. Not all the companies have this technology. I mean, there's only certain companies I believe live on, probably one of the first that's out there that has mastered this technology

of delivery. Is there patents around that or what? Yeah, okay, there is. Okay, so this was a pharmaceutical, if I'm not, yeah. Okay, there it is. Okay. This was a pharmaceutical, if I'm not mistaken, this was used in pharmaceutical drugs. Absolutely. People use liposomes to deliver chemotherapy and certain type of drugs just to increase the delivery of the agent that they're trying to deliver to the cells.

Okay. Now, these are, you said liposomal phospholipids. Yeah. So, is that why it's like a, kind of like a gel? A gel, yeah. When you take it, because in the packet, is that why it's like a gel? Like a gel, when you take it, because in the packet, is that what that is? Is that what's great? Yeah, so the mixture of that is almost kind of like,

yeah, that gel form is exactly, what the phospholipids come out is that form. Okay, interesting. Now this would be different than just taking a supplement with a fat. So if I take a fat with a supplement, would it do the same thing? Well, so like when we were talking about fat, you know, soluble vitamins like vitamin

A, D, E, K, if you eat fat or have some oil, it'll help absorb it a little bit better, but this is a little bit different. And so for water soluble, a lot of the water soluble vitamins need to go in with that, that transporter, otherwise it won't go in. But if you package it around this liposome, this liposome actually gets swallowed up by the gut cell, spits it out to the bloodstream, gets swallowed up by your cell,

and then gets delivered into the cell. Yeah, now I've supplemented with some products from different companies in the past that are some, like, I see a little carnation, I've used that for a long time. Never felt it until I used Their product actually in fact they sent us stuff for last year and the whole reason why we've been working with them now

I've been using it for a year and I and I don't feel it other in other forms So it's it's the delivery method has now they have there's they have three or four different ones that I've seen you bring in here with us and we use. Which ones are for who and how do I know if it's something that I mean, I'm aware of things like vitamin D and magnesium. I mean, most people are deficient in those things. I mean, which of these are for who and should everybody be taking it?

Like that's, how do you figure that out? Yeah, so let's go back to glutathione. Who's that gonna benefit and who should take something like that? So glutathione is's go back to glutathione. Who's that going to benefit and who should take something like that? So glutathione is the mass or antioxidant in your body. So I mean, every time your body goes through any type of stress, whether it's stress from a toxin, a stress from a, you know, a stressful day, your body's going to, you know, produce these antioxidants, which will damage your DNA. So you need antioxidants around to help, you know, to combat the effects of that. So I feel it's a good form of our body, having a detoxification system.

So I think most people should be on it, because most people will probably have some toxins in their life go through some form of stress. It does smell like fart though. Yeah, that's what it's talking about. It's super based there. Exactly, exactly. And they obviously put a lot of the money and research in how effective it is more so than it's tasting like bubble gum, right?

Right, exactly. But that thing works like gangbusters. And I've got a seven year old daughter who or a bonus daughter who claims they fart a lot. And sometimes that was just a glutathione, maybe. That's hilarious. All right, so I'm not sure. You got my mouth on.

All right, now what about the acetyl-el carnitine? I like using that, either around my workout, I did read that carnitine up regulates angrogen receptors, so that's what I want when I'm trying to build muscle. Any other benefits to supplementing with something like that? Yeah, so it basically helps turn fat into fuel. So it revs up your metabolism. It's great for the brain. It is able to turn fatty acids, it works on the mitochondria

to produce energy and your muscles as well. Also be able to extract fat energy and turn that into usable form to create ATP with your mitochondria. Okay, that's a very popular supplement in most pre workouts now. You see around for a long time. Right. And so do you see anything when you look at the, because I don't even know the dosage off the top of my head what a standard pre workout carries as far as how much is in there versus the

lipobram, which is how do you know the difference, either one of you? As far as specifically. No, I typically I'll go 500 to two grams. So 500 milligrams to two grams is typically what I'll supplement. And the theory is that you're probably not absorbing most of that that's in the pre-workout. Is that true or not true?

Most likely true. OK. Yeah, it just gets destroyed by the digestive system. Now, there's also, this is something I've just really now recently been reading about, magnesium 3inate. Yeah. So, what are the benefits of this?

And what's different about it than? Yeah, so there's different forms of magnesium. Magnesium like performs like over 300 physiological functions in your body. And this is something that a lot of people are deficient in. And it's important for, you know, for your muscles, for brain health, for your mood, and all of that type of stuff. L3inate is actually the only form of magnesium that will cross the blood-barym barrier.

So a lot of people use magnesium-freeinate to improve cognitive function, to improve memory. Some people also use it as a newtropic and it's great to kind of just like relax you as well. You know, you've got a little bit of anxiety. That's great for that as well. So L3 and A, it's the only one that crosses through the blood brain barrier

and the fact that you add a liposomal encapsulation there, better absorption, into your gut, into your bloodstream, and then also the blood brain barrier. You know what's funny about all this is that, because this is very interesting, right? So the supplement industry, they spend so much time and money on packaging,

on flavor, palatability. Now, when you look at the pharmaceutical industry, the pharmaceutical industry has way more hurdles that they have to jump over in order to have something pass and also have something that works because with the really competing against their other pharmaceutical drugs and is it going to work better? They spend, these pharmaceutical companies spend way more money on being able to deliver the medicine to the target area. Supplement companies spend almost no money on that. They spend almost all of it on packaging. And live on, if I'm not mistaken,

started really focusing on the medical side of the industry and then moved over to supplements. Is, am I correct with this? i'm not quite sure the the the history there but i i believe yeah they they started actually developing this and wanting to get you know in with doctors and then like bring it out to the general public yeah it's it's it's very very popular now in general public how did you originally find the brand or how the brand finds you wouldn't you how did you guys meet oh great question so i was

moderating the um youating the American anti-aging in medicine conference and they were actually there. And then I actually have a good friend who actually knew the company and they put us together. I've loved their products since and we've been, we've had a really, really good relationship. I mean, as a physician, you love to see brands that work and exist because they want to improve the lives

of other people. And when you find that and you're in alignment, you're happy to be a spokesperson for the brand. Yeah, supplement industry in general is a pretty interesting one. There's a lot of bad stuff that's out there. So it's pretty refreshing to find something that's backed or that works, you know, specifically in a very good way.

Well, I'll tell you what, it's been a great conversation. It was awesome having you on the podcast. Hey, it was great being here. I love your story and I really, I really, really appreciate it when we find somebody that is able to navigate both worlds. And I hate the fact that they're separate, right? But the Western medicine, there's incredible, I mean, no field of medicine dives as deep into specific subjects or areas of the body

like Western medicine, but what they lack is made up for in the other side, which is now where you're diving into that wellness side. So I love meeting people like you that have been in both, have accolades in both, because I feel like you have a wider breadth of knowledge and advice for people. So I appreciate what you're doing. Thanks.

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