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0:00
My name is Teemu Arina I'm having a conversation today with Roberta Whitney.
0:04
She's an international beauty and wellness consultant over 30 years of
0:08
experience on this field, focusing now more and more on woman health,
0:13
hormones, and longevity in general.
0:16
But if you're a man, you will also learn a lot about.
0:18
daily routines and habits, diet, lifestyle, all of that, that
0:23
plays into a longevity lifestyle, especially when you're aging.
0:27
I'm in my forties now. And Whitney is in her fifties.
0:33
We have different problems but most of the signs of aging, they start when
0:37
you are getting older, obviously, like when you're young, you get away with.
0:41
A lot of health issues and problems, but as you age, especially when you hit 30s,
0:46
40s, 50s, 60s, things start to overlap just to give like a brief overview
0:53
of some things, woman going through menopause hormonal issues, changes.
0:59
That's a big topic. We're going to dive into it. Also chronic diseases linked to inflammation is
1:05
something to pay attention to.
1:07
And based on statistics 67% of the world population has
1:12
one or more chronic disease. And that's a, quite a large number when you are more than 65 plus years old.
1:20
So usually you have two or more overlapping chronic conditions,
1:24
basically degenerative diseases that break the body down in different ways.
1:28
Like those are linked to the hallmarks of aging.
1:31
There used to be nine hallmarks of aging, but now there's 12 based on
1:34
the recent paper that was released at the beginning of the year where
1:39
they added something like gut issues. And Whitney, who has been working with Beauty, definitely Beauty is not
1:46
just looking good from the outside and covering things up with anti
1:49
aging creams, but working from the inside, fixing the gut inflammation
1:55
having enough time for recovery. It's also on the beauty side of things, because in the end, your skin is a
2:01
reflection of what's inside and is one of the largest organs in the human body.
2:06
So I'm very excited to have a conversation today with you.
2:11
This episode will be published. On both of our podcasts.
2:14
It's going to be a two way conversation, not just an interview.
2:17
So with that introduction maybe you can start by describing a
2:22
little bit about your background and I will do the same as well.
2:26
Okay. So hi everybody. My name is Roberta Whitney.
2:30
I'm a beauty consultant, as Teemu has mentioned.
2:33
My background really, I started as a model.
2:36
I've worked in beauty manufacturing, beauty tech I'm a beauty therapist,
2:41
so I really love all things beauty.
2:44
But I've been moving more into wellness because I realized that
2:48
having beautiful skin really comes from, as he said, your gut being
2:54
healthy you being able to absorb the nutrients that you're eating because...
2:59
A lot of times we don't even realize that we have so much mucus
3:02
and inflammation that all the good stuff that we're eating is not even
3:05
getting absorbed into the body. And so then that's the first place that you would see it, which would be the skin.
3:11
I feel like beauty is actually just a side effect of getting
3:15
your health and well being. in balance.
3:18
And so that's what I focus on. Wonderful.
3:21
Yeah. And I'm Teemu Arina. I'm one of the coauthors of the Biohacker's Handbook,
3:26
which is a reference guide.
3:29
Very iconic book in the biohacking field that summarizes some of the
3:34
research that done in the last 10 years for optimizing sleep,
3:37
exercise, nutrition, mind, and work. So nutrition is a big cornerstone of that book, but also different lifestyle
3:43
things that you can do to optimize your biology and biking is a movement that
3:50
has gained popularity in the last decade.
3:53
So I've been a decade in the game. We started writing the book in 2011.
3:57
I started organizing the Biohacker Summit, which is a conference, one of
4:00
the biggest ones in the world and in Europe, especially in mainland Europe.
4:05
That basically gathers people from all around the world.
4:10
To discuss these topics. So we have excellent keynotes and even more excellent attendees.
4:16
The next one we have is 1st of September, taking place in London,
4:21
where Whitney is also based. And so if you want to meet her, me come over there in London, it's going
4:27
to be under the Waterloo station.
4:30
We always have a little bit of character for our events and spaces.
4:33
And it's not just the conference about daily biohacks, which is the main
4:37
topic by different European experts.
4:39
Actually, the lineup is really awesome. There's people from all around Europe and also UK sharing some of
4:45
their top tips on optimizing your day in terms of your daily biohacks.
4:50
And we have also an amazing party in the end.
4:52
We always do like an non alcoholic. And the musician is not just the DJ generates all the music.
4:58
Why? We also have a Zen Buddhist monk there from Japan who is a beatboxer.
5:03
So that's also pretty cool. That's a good reason to gather in, in London.
5:08
But the main event we do this year is in Amsterdam, 14 and 15 of October.
5:13
The Amsterdam event focuses on expanding consciousness.
5:17
So on all the different modalities, how humans have done that.
5:21
Through meditation, through fasting, through yoga, through heat alteration,
5:25
like I'm from Finland, sauna and ice baths is it's definitely
5:29
expanding your awareness and experience of that you have a body.
5:33
And then there is, of course, like in terms of consciousness expansion.
5:38
interest in a lot of spiritual and metaphysical topics.
5:42
And also plant medicines, psychedelics different molecules, herbs
5:48
that people have used to induce different states of consciousness.
5:51
But in the end we go through our day in altered states all the time.
5:56
If you think about falling in love, or you're just waking up, or you're
5:59
going to sleep, or you just had a huge workout, and you have a rush of
6:03
hormones, or you are having a menopause, it's a very different experience.
6:07
And so our state of consciousness is changing rapidly.
6:11
So we just wanted to gather around this topic.
6:14
We have 1, 700 people coming to Amsterdam.
6:18
And if you're interested in checking out one of these events,
6:21
go to biohackersummit.com.
6:24
That's where you can find more information. And Roberta Whitney her website is robertawhitney.beauty.
6:32
And she also has an Instagram account as we do as well.
6:34
So check it out, but you started talking about things like gut
6:40
health and its connection to beauty and lifestyle in general.
6:44
I also think in terms of like harmony and geometry, what do I mean by that?
6:51
Is that as a biohacker, I'm looking at the human body as
6:56
almost like a biological computer. So we have, let's say blood values, biomarkers.
7:02
We have. intracellular messengers.
7:04
We have molecules in our bloodstream communicating different things.
7:08
The gut is communicating to the brain. The brain is communicating to the gut.
7:13
We have different responses in the body in terms of, let's
7:15
say, immune system response.
7:18
So if you take something like autoimmune diseases, where
7:21
Your body is attacking itself. That's often manifested on the skin.
7:24
Also, like you can have rashes or acne or there can be a lot of different
7:29
conditions that are actually rooted in gut permeability and leaky gut.
7:35
So a lot of biohackers, they start from optimizing the gut.
7:39
You can also look at your. Laboratory values and see you're maybe deficient off like many nutritional
7:47
deficiencies are linked to air or skin health or health of your nails.
7:53
So you can see it pretty much manifesting on the surface of your tissues.
7:58
If you are not. having all the nutrients.
8:00
So as a biohacker nutrient availability and adequate amounts of nutrients is key.
8:08
And then there's the whole genetic component as well.
8:11
So sometimes some things are linked to epigenetics.
8:17
Having certain genes doesn't mean Place your cards in a certain way,
8:21
and that's what's going to happen. You might have a certain gene or you don't have, but the process
8:28
that turns those genes on or off are often linked to diet and lifestyle.
8:34
So environmental factors, obviously food is a huge component.
8:39
So let's take, for example, celiac disease.
8:42
Many people are born with it, but you can also have an adult
8:46
late onset of celiac disease. And that can be an epigenetic change that comes from stimulating certain
8:53
genetic pathways that are linked to diet.
8:56
For example, the intake of grains. Personally, I've had issues with acne when I was young.
9:03
I thought that's like just a normal part. I had all kinds of gut issues and for a decade ago when I got into biohacking, I
9:12
did genetic testing, laboratory testing, I eliminated foods that are inflammatory.
9:17
It's not the same for everyone. And I did bring in foods that would lower inflammation.
9:24
And I basically had an anti inflammatory diet that I designed based on my biology.
9:29
And then I addressed nutritional deficiencies.
9:33
And since then, my skin has been so much better.
9:36
I don't really... Have acne.
9:38
I would never imagine that you would have suffered with acne.
9:41
You don't even have any acne scarring or anything.
9:44
Yeah, I had some, but I think they have also disappeared a little bit.
9:48
I attribute that to the amount of collagen that I'm having every day and
9:53
like bone broth like for a decade now.
9:56
I'm also having a lot of certain things like a lot more anti inflammatory
10:01
herbs and nutrients as well.
10:04
So I'm definitely making sure I get all the adequate amino acids.
10:09
One thing that I do and don't do for my skin health is I don't
10:14
use a lot of cosmetics products.
10:17
The things that I use are like herbal things that have scientific studies
10:22
behind them to improve skin health.
10:26
And very good for skin conditions. I generally speaking, I do avoid chemicals, but I'm not a fundamentalist
10:35
who thinks all chemicals are bad. So I think there is a fine line there.
10:40
Like people like to think in terms of what is a natural product and
10:43
what is an artificial or like some kind of laboratory chemical.
10:48
But in the end, there is a lot of good chemicals.
10:51
Also to use for skin health squalene or whatever, if you extract, make extracts of
10:56
certain things many things are beneficial even adding something like vitamin D
11:01
in the things might be a good idea. So there's a lot of things there to understand and unpack if you want
11:07
to live a healthy lifestyle, but avoiding some things that obviously
11:11
based on studies was problems.
11:14
means that if it's a really complex name for a molecule like that I don't
11:19
recognize I rather go for something else.
11:22
And one thing that I do repeatedly is I do red light therapy and sauna and ice baths.
11:29
So a lot of things that I do are Living in Finland or coming from Finland,
11:36
in our culture, we have really strong sauna and ice swimming culture.
11:42
It's kind of part of what we do. So this heat alteration is beneficial for the skin because
11:48
the skin is your largest organ. And what heat alteration does, it expands capillaries, it contracts
11:55
capillaries like micro veins. It improves nutrient delivery you can lower your risk of strokes and all kinds
12:02
of things by doing this kind of massage to your veins almost on a daily basis.
12:06
I just had an infrared sauna session today.
12:09
I also do traditional Finnish sauna. So most people in Western countries, they live in a kind of a pretty
12:16
narrow temperature spectrum. So something like from 21 to 26 degrees Celsius.
12:24
And most of the indoor areas are either you have a radiator or a heater or a, or
12:33
an air pump or something that keeps the temperature at a certain level, same for
12:38
cars, for shopping malls, everywhere.
12:42
So you don't really train that organ in that sense.
12:46
I believe in building resilience.
12:48
So resilience is challenging your system.
12:52
So when you do exercise, your heart rate goes up.
12:54
Sauna, by the way, is an exercise mimetic, has similar effects like exercise.
12:59
This is a training for your cardiovascular system, so when your
13:02
heart rate goes up, let's say you do cardio or heavy lifting the body tends
13:07
to compensate to the other direction. So you have a lower resting heart rate on average and lower resting
13:12
heart rate is linked to longevity.
13:15
So your heart is like more efficient in pumping the nutrients around and
13:21
it doesn't need high heart rate to maintain what's going on because
13:26
you do train the extremities. The same with cold cold therapy, like ice baths the way cold, for example, it
13:35
closes your pores and when you heat up your skin it opens up the pores, this
13:41
kind of massage on a cellular level, I believe is essential for health and
13:46
it's what our bodies are designed for, what our ancestors were designed for.
13:51
And, that works for me, like I've just noticed, like with acne, for example,
13:56
if I don't go to sauna for one week I need to clean my skin more often
14:04
a lot of people use pretty heavy, acids or products to clean their
14:08
skin, which is of course important to clear out some of the dead cells.
14:14
But I think you can have much more radiant and healthy skin also by just practicing
14:19
heat alteration almost on a daily basis. So your pores don't get clogged up.
14:24
So there is a lot to unpack here. So you're an expert on all of this.
14:27
So based on what I just described on heat alteration and so on, how
14:32
would you relate to it as an expert? Yeah.
14:35
So I have a, I'm definitely a fan of having the red light therapy.
14:40
I actually sell them on my website.
14:43
Because I think everybody should have one. It's so good for you.
14:46
In terms of, as stimulating your cells to rejuvenate and renew.
14:51
And I also have a sauna in the house because I think being able to do it
14:57
regularly, And have that, so when your skin gets red, it's called erythema,
15:02
so when the blood rushes to the surface and you have that redness,
15:06
that's helping your blood to flush out any toxins and stuff as well.
15:10
Helping your body to detoxify is key I feel like what helps my
15:15
skin is definitely having regular red light therapy and sauna.
15:20
To, as you say, clear out the impurities of the skin on a superficial level,
15:26
but it's also pushing it from inside.
15:28
And when you shower, you'll then get rid of all the unnecessary oils and dirt
15:34
that have been sitting on the surface. I think it's really important also to mention that there are so many
15:40
products at the moment that claim to be.
15:44
Natural or organic, and then they're not.
15:46
And then what they're doing is really stripping the skin.
15:49
So if you have acne, the first thing you might think is, Oh,
15:52
I need to clean my skin more. Because it's inflamed and you feel like that inflammation
15:58
needs to be scrubbed away. But actually when you're doing that, you're stimulating the skin more to
16:04
produce the oil because it's then dry.
16:06
And then you end up overstimulating the skin and making the acne worse.
16:11
So it's really important to use good products that
16:16
speak to your skin condition. So if you have acne, it's probably more important for
16:20
you to just hydrate the skin.
16:23
rather than flooding it with oils, because that's going to make it worse.
16:27
So finding the right product is also part of what I do in my
16:32
consultation with my clients to make sure that they're using the right
16:35
products for their skin conditions. One thing to add about red light therapy and make it maybe talking
16:41
about sauna for the listeners is that. Red light is, it's a near infrared light so it's usually a combination of near
16:50
infrared and red light, so it's, red light is like barely on the visible spectrum.
16:55
It's like the longer wavelengths of light that dominate when the sun goes down.
16:59
And infrared is invisible light but it's more like a radiating heat.
17:04
You experience the source of heat. So when you have this kind of red light panel, it usually has both LEDs, one of
17:10
them is producing this near infrared, which is a bit more heating experience.
17:15
And then you have the red light.
17:18
And the spectrums of light, they penetrate the skin at different depths.
17:22
So red light leaves a little bit more on the surface.
17:26
You think of flashing a flashlight on your hand.
17:28
You see a red light coming from the other side out.
17:31
It's not just that your blood is red or something like this.
17:35
It's the wavelengths of light that do penetrate through the tissue.
17:39
So the red light. And infrared tends to go through tissues and what it does, it stimulate
17:45
something called cytochrome C oxidase in the mitochondria and that produces
17:50
ATP, which is energy, but it also has an anti inflammatory effect.
17:56
So it, it tends to increase the anti inflammatory and reduce the cytokines.
18:01
And. The reduction of inflammation is why this is awesome for skin health.
18:07
If you have acne, for example, it can just reduce the like inflammation redness.
18:13
And the near infrared, that goes a little bit deeper.
18:17
So at close proximity, it even has effects on the muscles and joints.
18:23
So if you have any pains or anything like that, it helps to...
18:27
Reduce that pain and tension while if you take sauna, like an infrared
18:33
sauna, what is an infrared sauna? It's a far infrared.
18:36
So it's Even longer wavelength of light and that tends to penetrate very deeply,
18:42
but it's more of a, it has more of like a heating effect from the inside.
18:47
So you start to respirate more, so you start to sweat white rapidly and the sweat
18:53
itself of infrared sauna helps the body to release some of the toxins, so to say.
19:00
What it also does, it stimulates I think it's called lipolysis.
19:05
But basically it releases fat from fat storages into the bloodstream.
19:11
And fat tissue is one of the biggest.
19:15
Things, organs in our body that is storing let's say things
19:18
like heavy metals and toxins. So then you can through sweating and you can maybe have some, herbal
19:26
teas that are chelating that help you to extract some of that toxicity
19:31
from the body that has been stored. Also this sauna experience with the heat it increases respiration.
19:37
So you start to sweat. The body is trying to.
19:41
balance out the core temperature. And what I do in my sauna, I also increase humidity.
19:48
So I increase, I use like humidifier or something like this in a infrared sauna.
19:52
In a traditional Finnish dry sauna, where you throw water on the stones, the
19:57
source of heat is fire or electricity.
20:00
And It heats up the air through the stones and it's usually quite dry.
20:06
That's why it's called dry sauna, but I throw plenty of water on the stones.
20:10
You know, Infrared sauna, I'm adding a humidifier.
20:13
And as a result, it makes my skin work even harder to respirate.
20:18
So you start to sweat even more. So it clogs the pores, so to say, like a little bit more with the humidity.
20:24
And that increases your heart rate even further.
20:27
So it makes it a little bit tougher experience.
20:30
That's basically every day what I do. I hydrate my skin through a humidifier, also my lungs.
20:36
And I, I usually do 30 minute to one hour sessions.
20:40
Doing more than that doesn't really add much benefits.
20:45
And a traditional pH sauna is something that I usually use
20:48
in combination with ice baths. I don't use my infrared sauna in combination with ice baths.
20:53
And it's a bit more taxing on the nervous system. So I usually do it more like in an afternoon, early evening while
20:59
infrared sauna is something I feel like I can do in the morning before I
21:03
start working or something like this. But this is like a brief overview of.
21:07
both red light, infrared and heat alteration and why those
21:12
might be beneficial to you. And you mentioned skin products that are stripping away they're stimulating the
21:21
skin to produce, let's say, more oil.
21:24
So what is the role the oil on the skin?
21:26
Some people don't like that, so they want to get rid of the
21:29
like shininess on their face. But what is the role of the natural oils that the body is producing?
21:37
I think that it's important to have both oil and moisture.
21:42
So if you have too much oil, then that's when you can have
21:46
breakouts and things like that. But actually.
21:49
Oilier skins tend to age slowly, so if you have drier skin, you tend to look
21:54
older faster, so you have more fine lines and wrinkles, which the skin's
21:59
more dry and seemingly dehydrated.
22:01
So you need the oil and the moisture in the skin to really have a
22:06
healthy glow, like your skin is beautifully healthy and glowing.
22:11
You need a nice balance between the two.
22:13
I don't think there's a problem if you have too much moisture and I've never
22:17
known anyone and he's got too much moisture in the skin, but definitely
22:20
there's always people with too much oil, you either naturally produce too much
22:25
oil or the products that you're using are creating too much oil and stimulating
22:30
the skin to produce it too much. And then that could cause adverse reactions which is what you don't want.
22:37
What are the best oils to use on the skin?
22:39
I've noticed like many products might have something like hemp oil
22:43
or olive oil or some other source of oil often in the cleaning products.
22:47
Yeah, personally, I feel like there's so many different brands, and I
22:54
definitely don't want to get into sort of championing a certain brand on the show.
23:00
Things that are just. Non comedogenic, you don't want them to be blocking the pores, you don't
23:05
want them to be clogging your skin. Natural, healthy, I really like coconut oil.
23:11
It's my go to. As an oil, something hydrating and oily.
23:16
That's what I love. So I dampen my hands, put a bit of coconut oil and then massage that into
23:22
the face because it absorbs really quickly and it seems to do what I need it to
23:27
do, which is just to balance the skin hydrated and moisturize it all in one.
23:32
I don't really have a product that I could say, this is the one that you should use
23:37
because if you see in my bedroom, there are 50 million things on my counter and
23:43
depending on how my skin feels, I will go and use that particular product.
23:48
Because it's different all the time. If I'm traveling, if it's sunny or hot, London gets very cold,
23:54
but it also is very damp and wet.
23:57
My skin goes through lots of changes because of the heating in the house and
24:03
then you go outside and it's very hot Or very cold and your skin is constantly
24:08
adjusting So I think finding a nice balance of things that really work with
24:13
your skin type would be key one thing that I use is beeswax after ice baths and
24:21
when I put my skin under extreme stress
24:25
Straight onto your face? Yeah, beeswax, yeah.
24:28
That's one of the, one of the things that I do use.
24:31
It tends to maintain the skin moisture better.
24:35
You can get dry skin by...
24:38
Putting it through, stress of heat alteration, also like ice baths and
24:42
sauna and all that heavy sessions like that can sometimes leave it a little
24:46
bit dehydrated, so you lose a lot of water when you do stuff like that so of
24:50
course hydrating yourself well and using electrolytes is one of those key things
24:55
to restore the hydration internally.
24:58
Then I use beeswax also, personally, and or do you have a difference
25:03
for body oil and face oil? Because I like to use something like hemp oil on on the body, as a massage
25:10
oil or something, but then for the face.
25:13
I prefer not to use it because I've noticed that tends to clog up
25:16
things a little bit more easily. I've never used hemp oil.
25:19
The ones that I've always found tend to have a smell to them that I don't like.
25:25
That's just a personal choice. And I don't know.
25:28
I just, I love shea butter. For the body super hydrating, really nice and thick.
25:34
I have very dry skin, just very naturally I have dry skin.
25:38
So I like to have a bath oil in the water when I'm bathing.
25:42
So I feel like that really gets into the skin and hydrates my body
25:46
but I don't do that on my face. So that would be a shea butter for me on the body, something.
25:53
Really nice and , moisturizing and hydrating.
25:56
Yeah. Yeah. I have some list of things here.
25:58
Grape seed oil, almond oil and hemp oil.
26:02
Those ab absorb quite quickly, but of course can have like
26:04
odor, so maybe as a body oil. oil.
26:07
Oil Oil, argon oil. They ab absorb moderately and then avocado and coconut oil
26:12
are a bit more slowly absorbing. great seed and almond I use.
26:16
And also if I'm doing facials, It's really nice to do an almond oil sort
26:21
of massage into the skin because it's really light and it hydrates.
26:27
It makes your skin feel really nice and soft and supple and it's super
26:31
inexpensive considering all the things that you could spend so much money on
26:35
that don't give you the same results. Yeah, like one reason why I use also beeswax after sauna is because beeswax
26:41
and bee products have been used for centuries for all kinds of things,
26:45
both internally and externally. Of course, like something like honey has a lot of anti
26:50
inflammatory benefits also as well.
26:53
I actually do use honey in scrubs.
26:58
So if you make like a coffee scrub or like a.
27:00
Even a sugar scrub, like I like to use honey in it but beeswax on its own.
27:06
It's very good for burns and wounds.
27:08
So it has beneficial properties for those. I also like to use a plant called yarrow or any kind of scratches on the skin.
27:16
So it could be even need a lip balm or something like that.
27:19
Beeswax is also great for lip balms, personally I like that yeah, because
27:24
some of the other ones have so much stuff in it that your lips get addicted
27:28
to it and you have to keep reapplying because it just gets absorbed so quickly
27:32
and then they get dry and then you feel like you're putting more and more on.
27:36
Yeah. Some other things that are good for lip balm is meadowsweet
27:40
as an anti inflammatory. It's a plant that grows here in the North.
27:45
It's actually the first plant from which they discovered
27:48
salicylic acid . So salicylic acid, which is basically aspirin.
27:53
So it's a blood thinner as well and then horsetail.
27:59
That's one thing. While some other plants that I like for skin is selendin.
28:05
It soothes the skin and reduces redness in addition to being anti
28:08
inflammatory and antibacterial. I do like also peppermint just for the cooling effect, not much because
28:16
many essential oils can actually be quite irritating on the skin.
28:20
If you're doing a foot soak, I like to use peppermint for that.
28:25
Cause like you say, it's really. It tingles and it , feels like the blood's flowing and it's getting things
28:31
moving because your feet can become so tired, . Like I'm tired thinking
28:35
about my feet being tired and they get, just like red and sore and you've been
28:39
standing or walking all day and you feel like, Oh, I just want to soak them.
28:43
So I think a little bit of tea tree and peppermint just do the trick.
28:49
I think oregano might also work It's also a skin rejuvenator.
28:53
And I would think like these probably work also very well for fungal
28:56
infections or anything like this. So if you have like problems with that on the feet side of things.
29:01
But definitely yarrow. Meadows with those are like some of the superheroes of
29:07
nature that I like for skin.
29:09
I would like a minute to reverse a little bit if we can.
29:14
Teemu, you're A professional biohacker, best selling author, and
29:18
award winning professional speaker, you're one of the forefront thinkers
29:22
on the digital transformation of work, health, and society in the
29:26
intersection of man and machine, which I just think is incredible, but I
29:31
want to know who is Teemu before this?
29:35
How did you get into being this biohacker that you are today?
29:39
So I basically became an entrepreneur at a very young age.
29:44
And also I got interested in technology as my bio describes.
29:48
I learned programming when I was 13, when I was 16, I founded my first company.
29:53
I was teaching in high school when I was 17.
29:56
And I was preparing students for university course when I was 18.
29:59
I don't know, maybe some people that like described me as a child
30:02
prodigy so you're just very low achieving then . Yeah, indeed.
30:06
Like I became a bit too productive I guess at a young age and that led to
30:12
not just like , becoming a teacher and professional speaker, but.
30:16
Also building technologies for companies and organizations.
30:22
I even build an educational system. And basically I've always been interested in the introduction of.
30:28
Technology and humans, but I'm always being like very
30:31
connected to nature as well. I guess it's also because in Finland we have like just 5.
30:38
5 million people living on the land area, the size of UK.
30:42
So you can imagine how much forest and we also have like tens of thousands of lakes.
30:49
Islands, so nature is very present and we have something called every man's rights.
30:56
What it means is that you can collect herbs mushrooms, even from a private land.
31:02
So no one can stop you. You just can't go let's say 10 meters close to someone's apartment, but you can.
31:09
Go on a privately owned forest and you can pick up mushrooms and herbs.
31:13
You can't damage trees or disrupt the ecosystem in other ways, but
31:18
you can use these wonders of nature.
31:23
And this is what I've been doing from young age, like collecting things
31:27
like stinging nettles and dandelions and whatnot, learning to use them.
31:33
Herbalism on its own is not super common nowadays you know, industrialized
31:38
world we live in, but I like to keep one of my legs in dirt, in a sense,
31:44
like as much as I spend time in front of computers, my form of relaxation
31:49
is nature and nature connection. And I, nowadays I know a hundred different plants that I use from my
31:55
ecosystem personally for different things, mainly food, making
31:59
wild salads and stuff like that. And so when I was building my businesses and all that, and the world was demanding
32:08
a lot from me Every time I did something like there was more and more clients
32:12
coming in, I didn't know how to say no.
32:14
So that got me into health issues, like not sleeping enough, too
32:19
much stress, too much stimulation. I was eating, okay food, not like fast food or stuff like that.
32:26
I was cooking myself. I've always been cooking things, but I didn't know about nutrition
32:33
as much as I know nowadays. Or I had not done the testing to see what I'm deficient in.
32:39
And so when I got stress related illness, my way out was fixing
32:45
those things, like first studying it because I'm a systems thinker.
32:50
So I started looking at okay, how does the body work?
32:52
And naturally I geared towards using not pills.
32:57
But nutrition and food and also including wild herbs and
33:02
wild mushrooms to heal myself.
33:04
So medicinal mushrooms, for example, are a big thing nowadays.
33:08
Like people do something like Reishi or Chaga or Lion's Mane for
33:13
performance or immunity reasons. But these kind of things for example, chaga mushrooms, they
33:18
just grow in our forests here. So I can go there and pick them up myself.
33:22
I can make chaga tea myself.
33:25
But about learning about these ingredients, what they do is important.
33:29
The forests here are full of wheelberries, which is like...
33:33
A kick ass upgrade version of blueberry, like most Western food is agriculturally
33:40
produced, like mass produced. If you take blueberries that are considered, antioxidant
33:45
foods, and it's healthy for you.
33:48
The blueberries that are in supermarkets are not food for me.
33:51
They are very high in sugar, actually, compared to bilberries that are the
33:55
wild counterparts that need to produce more protective plant phytochemicals.
34:03
So called anthocyanins that give it the blue color.
34:06
There's like exponentially more in one berry or blueberry in the
34:09
forest than there is in a blueberry from a supermarket where it's
34:12
more on the skin side of things. Yeah, basically what I want to say is that as technological and methodological and
34:21
systems oriented, I am in understanding things as computers like in then.
34:27
I have this connection to the natural world that has always been part of me.
34:31
So I take all of that into the work that I do.
34:33
my conference is evidence of that. It's always connecting nature and technology and human things
34:40
and more metaphysical things.
34:42
but it's very much rooted in logic and science.
34:46
Can you explain to us the fundamental principles and techniques?
34:50
Behind biohacking for those people who don't know.
34:54
Yeah, so biohacking is a term, if we define that first, is it can like,
34:59
the first impression someone might have is like someone is hacking
35:02
into something, it sounds dangerous. It's like applying the hacker ethic.
35:08
On biology. What is hacker ethic?
35:11
It's not about computer hacking.
35:13
Hacking as a term originally didn't mean computer intrusion.
35:17
That word has existed long before computers.
35:21
Someone who is a hacker is interested in the way how things work.
35:24
So they are deeply enthusiastic about the topic.
35:28
So you can be an astronomy hacker.
35:30
You can be a growth hacker in a startup company.
35:33
You can be Geology hacker, whatever, but you can also be a biohacker.
35:37
So combining biology and the hacker ethic and there's this deep enthusiasm
35:43
of understanding how things work and just like a computer hacker
35:47
is looking at a computer system.
35:49
How does that work? How can I improve it? How can I stress test it?
35:54
A biohacker is doing the same for the human body.
35:57
Now, biohacking can be also seen as optimizing systems that are inside of
36:03
you, like your biomarkers, gut health, gut microbiome, whatnot, even skin biome.
36:10
And also external sources so your environment, your home, the food that
36:15
you eat, the air that you breathe. The lighting that you're exposed to.
36:20
And so it's understanding that you're not separate from your environment or nature,
36:24
but you're a part of this whole ecosystem. There's a ecosystem living inside of you that can be seen as you are
36:31
a superorganism in a way you are integrating a lot of different lives.
36:34
So all the microorganisms bacteria yeasts, funguses viruses,
36:40
whatever you are, inhabited by.
36:43
It's an ecosystem and also there's a ecosystem outside of you that
36:47
you're connected to and imbalance in, let's say, gut microbiome or in how
36:52
you're connected to your environment or your environmental balance,
36:56
often imbalance leads to imbalance. Okay. disease or some kind of disruption in the ecosystem that is not
37:03
healthy for the ecosystem. So restoring that balance is key.
37:07
So as much as biohacking for some is about taking, smart drugs and stimulants.
37:15
And maybe if you biohacking.
37:23
Or your brain function or whatnot, or your skin function to me, it's also a
37:29
lot about understanding what is good balance of things and restoring that.
37:34
So resilience to me is elemental for health and wellbeing, building
37:40
up resilience so that your cells are functioning better.
37:44
Their intracellular communications are functioning better.
37:47
The organs are functioning better, your nervous system is functioning better,
37:51
your gut is functioning better, it's able to digest all the food, absorb all
37:55
the nutrients so there is many different things that you can do when you're a
37:59
biohacker, so one way to see it is health optimization, so optimizing your health
38:05
but it's not really What about health?
38:07
It's lifestyle. So it's it can be seen as a, kind of a longevity lifestyle almost that
38:14
many biohackers are generally healthy. So if they go to a lab, they do like a typical laboratory test, which is
38:21
mainly seeking sickness or disease.
38:24
Like the result might be that, yeah, everything is within reference range.
38:28
There is nothing wrong. Maybe, one marker was a bit elevated or something was a little bit deficient,
38:32
but it's, there's like nothing to worry. That is enough in a traditional healthcare system.
38:37
But for a biohacker in a preventive healthcare system there is an
38:41
optimal, let's say a hormonal value, like testosterone for a man.
38:46
It's not only within reference range, but you want to look for something that is
38:50
optimal for All the other benefits you get from testosterone, which is the vigor,
38:55
the drive, the sexual function all that energy, and being within reference range,
39:02
meaning on the lower end, for example, is not necessarily optimal for someone your
39:06
age, so then you would optimize that.
39:08
Women might do the same for estrogen or other sex hormones.
39:12
So there is this deep understanding of the systemic nature of your body
39:19
and how that can be understood.
39:22
And it's all unique for everyone. There is, that's why there is no single diet that's going
39:26
to be perfect for everyone. Even though we try to find things like longevity diets, like
39:31
maybe it's the Mediterranean. Maybe it's something that they centurion areas.
39:37
where people tend to live long. So we try to emulate people who live long, like what are they eating?
39:43
What are they doing? But like a big key component to a lot of them studying the blue
39:48
sauce is that They don't live a stressful lifestyle like we do.
39:53
So they are not like running from one meeting to another living
39:56
in a noisy city environment.
39:59
So the diet might change a little bit.
40:01
Usually it's full of colors a lot of phytochemicals, but it's not about
40:06
reducing, let's say, meat intake. Many of them have fish, for example.
40:10
Maybe they are the islands of Greece or Okinawa, a lot of seafood.
40:15
Some of them like. Drink and sometimes even smoke regularly, like maybe red wine.
40:21
But there is a lot of social interaction, so they have interaction
40:25
with other people, they walk a lot.
40:27
Like they're not like driving a car everywhere or elevator.
40:31
And there's this slow life and often if we want to live long, the question
40:36
is like, how do you do that in a busy city environment where there's a lot of
40:41
stressors that our ancestors didn't have?
40:44
And how do you make your biology function better in such an environment?
40:49
That's where biohacking comes into play. So when I use a red light panel or a sauna, those are technological
40:55
interventions that I use to emulate what our ancestors went through.
41:00
I don't need a grounding mat in a forest.
41:02
I just sleep on the ground. It's sucking in all the negative ions.
41:06
Or I'm sucking in all the negative ions from the earth.
41:08
So I don't need air filter because I'm outside.
41:13
So all of the technologies that we use in biohacking or healthy
41:17
lifestyle is just to mitigate the disconnect we have from nature.
41:23
why do we avoid all the chemicals? You don't need to avoid any chemicals when you're out there.
41:28
So in the wilderness I definitely do sleep better Also when I sleep in nature for
41:34
some reason I get deeper sounder sleep.
41:38
The stats are always much better than in a city environment So there's something
41:43
about living the moral lifestyle that we need to be aware of that our bodies and
41:49
our biology, our DNA has not adapted to.
41:52
Maybe it will take a couple of generations and it's okay to live in a
41:55
polluted city and you just like chill.
41:58
But I don't have time to wait for that. That's why I'm doing biohacking.
42:02
So that's pretty much it. So for people who...
42:05
are new to biohacking and it's something that they've been considering and they
42:10
just, they don't know where to start. What would you say is like the first steps for someone to take
42:17
on their new wellness journey? Yeah for many people like that, I ask, what are you struggling with?
42:23
Is it exercise? Is it skin health?
42:26
Is it diet? Is it stress?
42:29
Is it sleep? And that's probably where you will get most of the benefit if you correct that.
42:35
What is your imbalance in a sense? Ask that question from you.
42:38
Like, where are you not balanced enough? And probably you can find biohacking techniques, interventions, biological
42:47
tests, variables that help you with that.
42:49
If you don't exercise enough, like maybe you want to start tracking steps.
42:52
If you don't sleep well, like maybe you want to get a sleep tracker.
42:55
If you stress too much, get like some kind of heart rate variability
42:58
monitor to measure your stress levels.
43:01
What the data provides to you is awareness of that.
43:05
It doesn't change anything. It just gives you awareness.
43:08
And when it gives you awareness, it gives you questions and it gives you hypotheses.
43:12
It gives you like all kinds of basically the act of paying attention to
43:16
something, you're already changing it. Like you're already thinking about it.
43:19
So if you see every evening that you're not getting enough restful
43:23
sleep because of the data, doesn't show that, like that anxiety helps
43:28
you to change that potentially. Then the question is like, what should I do?
43:32
And that's usually like diet and lifestyle and sometimes medical interventions,
43:36
sometimes technological interventions how you can like hack things like
43:41
get shortcuts and get results faster. Maybe do some treatments or maybe do an IV therapy, or maybe you go for a specialist.
43:50
There's so many ways how we can biohack ourselves then.
43:53
Yeah. But generally speaking, the most leverage that a lot of people would
43:58
get is from, I would say, two things.
44:02
One of them is optimizing their sleep, because statistically speaking,
44:06
most people don't sleep enough, or if they don't sleep soundly.
44:11
Or maybe they use sleeping medication where their sleep architecture doesn't
44:14
look very good because of the drugs. Fixing sleep is essential.
44:19
It helps a lot of things, like my skin health is better if I sleep enough, right?
44:23
Your organ health will be better, like your blood sugar regulation
44:26
will be better, your cardiovascular system will perform better.
44:29
There is no pill that you can take that will somehow reverse...
44:35
the problems of not sleeping enough. Even if someone is telling you, take this stimulant, it's not gonna help.
44:39
Even modafinil and all these things that are promoted as lacking drugs
44:44
for sleep deprivation that you can somehow perform as if you didn't, you're
44:48
gonna pay the bill, doing something like that repeatedly over time.
44:52
So in the end, fixing your sleep is the first step.
44:55
Now the second thing is gut health to me.
44:59
And why gut health?
45:02
Why not nutrition? Is that many people have gut issues.
45:06
They might have, the older you become more likely to have some gut permeability.
45:11
Nutrients so your body is breaking down, let's say some protein into peptides and
45:17
so those fragments, they end up in the bloodstream and if there is leaky gut,
45:23
like there's leaky junctions through which certain nutrients or food or molecules
45:28
get into the bloodstream that don't belong there, the body will react to it.
45:32
So you have a stimulation of the immune system in that case.
45:35
So fixing the gut lining is often beneficial and the other
45:39
thing is nutrient absorption.
45:42
So your small intestine, large intestine, the bacterial environment is
45:47
helping you to ferment and digest food.
45:51
And depending on what bacteria you have there, like it also improves your
45:55
ability to absorb things like B vitamins.
45:58
B vitamins are essential for stress management.
46:01
For example, B6, B12. If you drink a lot of alcohol, you're going to need more B!
46:08
As an example niacin is an important B3.
46:12
So there is many vitamins that the most important source is actually
46:17
the gut bacteria that is converting.
46:20
Whatever it is eating into B vitamins.
46:23
So if you have destroyed your gut with antibiotics and you
46:27
don't have enough beneficial bacteria, fixing that is essential.
46:32
And in the end, I believe there is a smarter way of doing these
46:36
things, not just taking vitamin D because you think it's good for you.
46:40
Because most people are deficient in it. Most likely it won't hurt, but if you measure how much you
46:47
have vitamin D, is it absorbed? Adjusting your intake, you might be surprised that even if you take something
46:54
per recommendation you're not getting enough or you're getting too much.
46:58
So depending on your biology, gut bacteria, genetics, a lot
47:03
of things like some things that most people are deficient of.
47:07
are stress related molecules.
47:09
I mentioned B vitamins, but there's things like magnesium.
47:13
There's things like zinc. Very important for both physical and mental resilience and
47:20
stress response and recovery.
47:23
So magnesium levels tend to be deficient in general population.
47:27
Also, actually selenium that has been linked to lower amounts in soil through
47:34
decades, through Commercial farming. We have reduced a lot of the nutrients in the earth and we're not
47:40
just getting enough certain things. So making sure that you get it off and those are absorbed.
47:45
And if you leave a stressful lifestyle, more likely you will
47:49
over consume some nutrients.
47:51
And when you don't have enough certain nutrients, you can think
47:55
of it as a rate limiting thing. So your biology needs nutrients to operate.
48:01
If it doesn't have it, where is it going to get it? Like for a woman, for example, iron deficiency is one of the biggest issues.
48:08
Women menstruate. Iron levels tend to be lower.
48:12
Now iron is also important for exercise, performance stress management as well.
48:18
If you're deficient of iron, you don't have energy.
48:21
You don't feel like doing anything. If you have high iron, which is very typical in men, it increases
48:27
inflammation oxidative stress.
48:30
So you don't want to have too much iron either.
48:33
Men don't menstruate, so we tend to more iron.
48:37
There can be genetic reasons also for it. That your body is accumulating more iron or it's deficient of iron.
48:43
So in pointing where you have rate limiting things, what is the reason?
48:48
And then fixing that there's interventions that you can do as a result, your
48:53
body will function like a well oiled machinery and that well oiled machinery
48:58
doesn't mean you need to add more.
49:01
You're just restoring the balance that you lacked in the first place.
49:05
So if someone had no choice and had to take antibiotics, how
49:10
could they then try to fix the gut after they've had to do this?
49:14
Because obviously the antibiotics will kill everything good,
49:17
but also everything bad. What can we do?
49:20
There's a lot of marketing around probiotics
49:23
if you want to get, Good probiotics you want to make sure that it has high enough
49:27
amounts like a lot of probiotics don't have high Enough amounts you can also
49:32
go and use something called synbiotics.
49:35
What is a synbiotic? It's a combination of a probiotic Supplement like lactobacillus and then a
49:42
prebiotic so something it uses for food So it doesn't get destroyed immediately
49:47
Or maybe there's a delivery mechanism that makes sure that it gets delivered
49:51
into the intestine like doesn't get fully destroyed in the gut acids and
49:55
then it needs to have food so it grows.
49:58
So prebiotics is another thing.
50:00
You can also get prebiotics separately.
50:03
So those are unfermented fibers best source in the end for prebiotics is food.
50:12
Basically fibers, vegetables it's a good source.
50:16
If you are on a carnivore diet or something, a lot of people
50:18
use those to fix inflammation.
50:21
Or blood sugar or metabolic issues.
50:25
You want to supplement on prebiotics so that your gut bacteria doesn't get off.
50:31
Bacterial diversity is another thing. You don't want to overdo something.
50:35
Even a probiotic can turn problematic if you get too much of one thing.
50:39
So having different strains of bacteria, having those in balance is key.
50:44
So that's why testing is kind of important.
50:47
We have developed an online course that goes into everything related to gut.
50:53
It's a biohackercenter.Com. goes really deep.
50:55
My co author, Dr. Olli Sovjarvi is specialist on gut health and fixing gut issues.
51:02
So that's one place where we have all the detailed information.
51:06
that's our company that organized Biohacker Summit and publishes
51:11
the Biohacker's Handbook. So you get actually access to all of these things from that website as well.
51:16
Now, what I want to ask you is in terms of longevity.
51:22
So you are now moving from just beauty and skin health.
51:27
To more on understanding longevity health, what are the essential things
51:33
that you are taking into account in your practice today when you work with
51:38
your clients, what are the problems that you see what are the issues and what
51:42
are the like beneficial interventions?
51:45
most of my clients are at the very early stages of their wellness journey.
51:51
Sometimes because of an illness.
51:54
I have a client who is now in remission from cancer.
51:57
She had a bone and blood cancer and just wants to be overall
52:04
healthy and is interested in. The products and stuff that I've been recommending.
52:09
So I work with a couple of different companies that have really good products.
52:14
And I've basically, what I've done is become the guinea
52:17
pig so that I try them first.
52:20
And then I recommend them to my clients. If I can see that I've had really good results.
52:25
Three, six and nine, really good omega 3 oil, I think is important a really
52:31
good probiotic because like we've been saying, if your gut is not balanced,
52:36
even if you were eating the healthiest diet, it's not going to get absorbed.
52:40
If you have lots of mucus because you eat a lot of dairy or, mucus and inflammation
52:47
is also the cause of a lot of disease.
52:50
So being able to get rid of that is really important.
52:55
So I personally have a little routine that I do in the morning, which is my Omega 3
53:03
oil, which I just mix in a little bit of juice because I'm not a fan of the taste.
53:09
And it seems like all the good things don't really taste that good.
53:12
Even the... Chaga and all these things that I've tried, they're good for
53:17
you, but they don't taste good. So now I understand if it's bitter, it's better.
53:21
Yeah, bitter is definitely better. And you can get used to it.
53:25
If you do chaga every day for a decade, like it's going to be second nature.
53:29
I put it in my coffee. Actually, it's super nice in coffee, like the bitterness of coffee,
53:34
the bitterness of chaga, perfect together, like instead of water.
53:37
You just brew your coffee with chaga and you get to go.
53:40
Try that one. Try that. Cause I want to be able to eat more of it.
53:44
So I'm on my learning journey. And as I'm learning, I'm sharing what I'm learning with my clients.
53:50
And the whole premise of doing the beauty show is to just open up to a new audience.
53:57
How they can start their own journey, right?
53:59
So I'm sharing everything that I'm learning from professionals and
54:03
experts like yourself with the people that are in my network, because.
54:08
Not everybody is on your level, like you've been studying it for a long
54:11
time all the jargon and the words that people use, sometimes if you're new
54:18
to it, could be a little overwhelming. When they come to me, it's the baby steps of how they can get started
54:25
and in a language that they can understand because I haven't done...
54:30
The 10 years of, studying of whatever, I'm literally also learning as I go along.
54:36
Something I'm curious about because you're a professional and
54:40
understand the nutrition part of it.
54:43
Do you think that it's better to be a vegan or vegetarian?
54:47
Because so many people are now stopping eating meat.
54:51
In terms of what the body needs and what's good for us, is it better to be vegan?
54:57
Good question. If I give a little overview on that.
55:01
First, people often think that healthy means eating more vegetables.
55:07
And it definitely is true. Adding more vegetables is probably going to be good for you.
55:11
Especially if it's not the sugary type, but it's more of the fibrous type.
55:16
So I mentioned already gut health is one thing.
55:19
The other thing is phytochemicals. So you get all these phytonutrients and these anti inflammatory nutrients.
55:25
So there's a lot of things in herbs and spices and vegetables and
55:30
fruits that are not on the label.
55:32
It's not about the vitamins. It's not about the minerals.
55:34
It's not about the fat, sugar, protein stuff, which is usually in food labels.
55:41
It's all the chemicals, phytochemicals, that naturally produce protective agents
55:45
in these plants that are beneficial, that you don't necessarily get from
55:50
meat in such form and quantity.
55:54
Now, plants also do produce...
55:57
protective chemicals. So we can call those anti nutrients.
56:01
So things like saponins or lectins or coitrogens.
56:07
There's a bunch of different protective agents that the plants
56:10
do produce to make sure that they are not being eaten in a sense.
56:15
Seeds for example have This thing in their outer layer of them that
56:20
are protecting the seed from not being eaten Not to be digested.
56:26
It's if you want to have like certain things well digested from plant kingdom
56:30
You have to process them somehow so often there is this idea that raw food
56:34
is somehow better But I know so many people went on a raw diet and then they
56:38
got all kinds of gut issues because they were getting so many Antinutrients and
56:42
they didn't know how to process the food properly There's a lot of things where
56:46
you don't want to process the food. So in terms of plants, so you want to use them in as original form as possible.
56:54
Like for example, if you have some kind of salad or lettuce The optimal way to use
56:59
that is actually to use some vinaigrette or some kind of oil that actually
57:04
absorbs the nutrients and delivers them.
57:06
So that's why having like a salad with vinaigrette is a good idea.
57:10
Apple cider vinegar that is often added in salad dressings is actually
57:14
helping with blood sugar regulation. So it's a good idea to have a salad in the beginning with some vinaigrette.
57:19
You don't want to have some crazy creamy thing necessarily.
57:23
Like it's... We don't need to go into the details of dairy and like all kinds
57:27
of additives, but to stick still to plants let's take tomatoes.
57:33
Tomatoes have lycopene, which is excellent.
57:37
It gives it its color and like many of the benefits, the flavor.
57:42
Most of it is bioavailable, so available to your body only when it heated up.
57:47
So you need to actually process it a little bit, like actually a heated tomato.
57:53
Is more nutritionally available than a raw tomato.
57:57
So that's an example of a plant where you actually do want to do some processing.
58:02
Spinach has a lot of oxalates and oxalates are one of the
58:09
contributing things to kidney stones. So having too much spinach in raw form where you don't extract the oxalates
58:16
out by blanching it or heating it up.
58:19
It's not going to be good for you. So with spinach, it's a great thing.
58:23
I sometimes use it raw, but you don't want to have like too much
58:27
of it every single day, unless kidney stones is what you want.
58:30
Then let's take seeds.
58:33
A lot of seeds, like I mentioned, have protective chemicals.
58:37
Sprouting them usually makes them release some of those things.
58:41
Actually sprouting increases some of the nutritional value of a lot of seeds.
58:46
Soaking them sometimes, like soaking nuts soaking quinoa, soaking certain beans
58:52
does help to release some of the anti nutrients, because then the plant is
58:55
okay, now it's time to germinate, so it's going to drop all the protective things.
59:00
into the liquid. So then you just throw the liquid away and you extracted
59:04
some of the anti nutrients out. Now, meat, especially organ meats, are the highest source of
59:11
nutrients, actually, on our plate.
59:14
Something like liver has excellent amounts of minerals iron zinc, selenium it has B
59:23
vitamins, it has vitamin D, by the way, it has all kinds of things and protein, of
59:29
course, but plant kingdom is challenging because it doesn't have all the essential
59:33
amino acids, easily available, you have to really know what you're doing.
59:36
It doesn't have all the minerals.
59:39
In essential amounts that human body needs, things like iron you have iron in a
59:44
lot of plants, it gives it the green color often dark leafy greens have of iron,
59:49
but heme iron from meat is superior in absorption compared to iron from plants.
59:57
There is so many things where it's much more efficient.
1:00:01
to get the nutrients by eating, let's say, an organ than eating
1:00:05
like kilograms of plants.
1:00:08
Now, the challenge with meat is of course in the industrial production of it.
1:00:13
People eat only, let's say, muscles.
1:00:16
If you want to eat a healthy animal based diet, you eat the whole animal.
1:00:20
Like all the organs like basically from head to tail from nose to tail because
1:00:26
then you're getting the things that the animal is Concentrating on certain
1:00:31
organs from the food that is eating. So most of the animals we eat are actually so they do consume mainly
1:00:39
plant based diet and they concentrate those nutrients into their tissues and
1:00:44
you can eat those tissues to get all the nutrients in a concentrated form.
1:00:49
So if for ethical reasons you decide not to eat meat, that's fine.
1:00:55
If you're ready to eat shellfish don't have central nervous system.
1:00:57
If you want to have cruelty free food, whatever, you don't want to cause pain.
1:01:02
Shellfish don't have a nervous system. They don't feel pain.
1:01:05
You do get the zinc the selenium, you get all the minerals that are very
1:01:10
hard to get, and you get all the B vitamins like B12 in a bioavailable
1:01:15
form, which is not very easy to get folate, not very easy to get a lot of
1:01:20
these things from a plant rich diet. So shellfish is superior source fish, if you want to get the omega 3 stuff
1:01:29
but omega 3 is also in shellfish. So based on my analysis like shellfish plus plant based
1:01:35
diet is a pretty good diet. Fish and shellfish and plants is a really good diet as well.
1:01:41
Meat, you have to add more phytochemicals in it and fiber to make it work.
1:01:47
Also to reduce the carcinogenic side of things, because often when you produce
1:01:52
meat, most people don't do like slow cooking and crock pots and all that.
1:01:56
The like frying of meat is of course, a source of carcinogenic compounds.
1:02:03
All the aromatic compounds you get from a nice steak those are carcinogens.
1:02:07
what is the best way to cook, for instance, a liver?
1:02:11
And you just mentioned slow cooking, slow cooking is, then you are not
1:02:15
like, it's like the chefs, like great chefs know that you wanna, you
1:02:19
don't want to destroy the ingredient. You have a high quality ingredient.
1:02:22
First, you start from that locally grown, nutrient dense feed ethical
1:02:29
like no antibiotics, all of that.
1:02:31
You want to start with good quality meat. In the cooking process, you don't want to destroy it by overheating it, overcooking
1:02:37
it to destroy and denaturate the fats and destroy the proteins and , cause
1:02:41
like carcinogenic compounds in it. Although it might be delicious, the aromatic compounds are delicious.
1:02:48
It is not good for you in large quantities.
1:02:51
Then in the cooking process, you want to use herbs like rosemary something
1:02:58
like thyme are good examples in the fat that you're cooking it in,
1:03:02
if you want to fry it, because the antioxidants in the herbs are protecting
1:03:09
the oxidization of the fatty acids also and using lower temperatures
1:03:15
helps and making stews is good.
1:03:19
So like cooking, like the whole animal in a crock pot is a much better way
1:03:26
to also extract some of the minerals from the bones, from the connective
1:03:33
tissues and all that cartilage is a great source of glycine.
1:03:37
Glycine is anti inflammatory amino acid And it balances out
1:03:41
methionine, which is very high in it.
1:03:44
There's also like in muscle meats and frying them and all that.
1:03:48
Like it, it affects something called TMAO enzyme.
1:03:52
So that can produce carcinogenic compounds.
1:03:54
In the digestion, so basically what I'm saying is that if you eat a diverse
1:03:59
diet, it's having like as many different forms of ingredients as possible, so
1:04:07
not eating the same chicken breast every day is a good idea, like you just
1:04:12
alterate the sources of protein, the sources, the types of food, you go organ
1:04:17
meats occasionally, you sometimes go plant based, and if you're gonna eat a
1:04:21
plant based diet, if you're gonna be a vegan, You better know what you're doing
1:04:25
because you might cause gut issues. You might cause nutrient deficiencies you might cause blood sugar issues
1:04:32
because a lot of plants are very high in Carbohydrates, so the thing nowadays
1:04:39
is like you maybe if you are a vegan , Everything is oats, you have an oat
1:04:44
milk latte for breakfast, you have some oatmeal, for lunch, you have some salad
1:04:50
with some kind of meat replacement that is actually also has oats, either can be
1:04:55
soy based, it can be corn based, like you can actually, Instead of increasing and
1:05:03
source of nutrients, you are eating the same thing over or again, you get too
1:05:07
much wheat, you get too much corn, you get too much soy, you get too much oat.
1:05:14
And so in the end, you didn't increase the diversity of your food.
1:05:17
You actually narrowed it down in terms of nutrient sources
1:05:19
and nutrient availability. And that's a problem.
1:05:23
And you get often way too many.
1:05:25
things that also affect the hormonal system, like too many
1:05:28
soy products do affect estrogen.
1:05:32
So what I'm saying is that I'm not like like some people are like,
1:05:36
yeah, you should go carnivore and keto stuff is the only way to go.
1:05:40
But yeah, it's good short term.
1:05:42
Based on my analysis, if you want to live long, you actually do want to include
1:05:47
phytochemicals as much as you can. I mentioned Chaga, Chaga has 10 times more antioxidants than anything else in
1:05:53
the Western diet, a lot of dark pigments, a lot of immune system regulators,
1:05:58
things that stimulate production of macrophages, you get things like beta
1:06:03
glucans, for example, which are good for gut health a lot of bitter things tend
1:06:07
to be, have like interesting effects on the system, but yeah, like there is
1:06:12
silver bullet Genetically speaking, some people do very well with high fat diet.
1:06:17
Some people don't some people do very well with saturated fats
1:06:23
like butter and coconut oil.
1:06:26
Some people don't. Some people need more olive oil.
1:06:29
They need more long chain fatty acids.
1:06:31
So there is individual differences.
1:06:34
There's some generalizations we can draw from these.
1:06:37
And we have a lot of those things in our book, The Biohacker's Handbook.
1:06:40
We also developed a ebook recently or optimizing your nutrition.
1:06:46
So that's a new Biohacker's Guide to Optimal Nutrition.
1:06:50
There is stuff like that, where we go through source of food and ingredients,
1:06:55
and what is the best source for something? What is the absorption?
1:06:57
What is the laboratory values want to look for? So we have developed a lot of content for people who want to do things this way.
1:07:04
There is a longevity athlete, self proclaimed his name is Brian Johnson.
1:07:08
He's a vegan. So he eats a vegan diet.
1:07:12
He seems to do well on his laboratory test on that, but
1:07:15
he's taking 120 pills every day.
1:07:18
So if you want to, if you don't want to take 120 pills you better know
1:07:24
what you're doing if you're a vegan. That's my basically my take on this.
1:07:27
What this conversation has just. Highlighted for me is as a South African, we really love doing barbecues and it
1:07:36
suddenly dawned on me that the barbecue meat is probably really carcinogenic
1:07:40
then because we're cooking it. On the fire, indeed it's very delicious.
1:07:45
The aromatic compounds in barbecues it's otherworldly.
1:07:49
And the gravies the caramelization of things there's nothing better
1:07:54
like that in terms of flavor, right? So the caramelization process of like heating up something on a pan or fire
1:08:01
with meat it's just like mind blowing what you're producing is heterocyclic amines
1:08:08
and those are aromatic compounds, really delicious produce things like acrylamide
1:08:14
so that's basically like a plastic thing.
1:08:17
It's not. healthy, but it's delicious.
1:08:20
So I'm not like someone who is like fully avoiding things like this.
1:08:24
One of my favorite restaurants close by they make excellent barbecue
1:08:29
and I do eat it occasionally. It's just, That the quantity and the repetition of basically the frequency
1:08:37
of use is what is problem here. Our bodies are pretty good at dealing with stressors.
1:08:43
It's like alcohol, like our livers can process small amounts of alcohol.
1:08:47
Every time you're having a fermented thing, cabbage, that's
1:08:51
good for probiotics et cetera.
1:08:54
Like sauerkraut, or maybe you're having a yogurt or something like this.
1:08:59
You are actually having... Small amounts of acetaldehyde some fermentation byproducts so your liver is
1:09:07
pretty good at processing small amounts.
1:09:10
The problem is higher amounts, like having a binge evening and drinking a lot.
1:09:15
like a small glass of wine is probably not going to kill you, especially if
1:09:19
you eat at the same time, but if you drink a bottle every second day, of
1:09:23
course it's going to have its effects. So that's the way how I think about a lot of things, like with bread, there
1:09:29
is this whole movement against gluten and when people have food sensitivities,
1:09:35
like the gluten, often it's not gluten, they're actually sensitive
1:09:37
to gliadin, another protein in it.
1:09:40
Even like gluten free things, can cause like gut issues in some because
1:09:44
of some other amino acids there.
1:09:47
So in the end it's, if someone has made like sourdough bread
1:09:51
themselves, I can have a piece.
1:09:54
If I go to a restaurant and they made the bread themselves, I'm
1:09:56
going to taste small amount. It's not that I buy bread and I eat it every single day at home like that.
1:10:03
It to me is I'm not like particularly gluten insensitive, but I have
1:10:07
some genetic variants that might risk adult onset of celiac disease.
1:10:12
So I don't want to trigger those pathways too often.
1:10:14
And the other thing is that with wheat I tend to like, just, my body
1:10:20
starts to hold on to more water and you just get more bloated and it's not
1:10:24
nice, but I'm not going to say no to.
1:10:28
Like occasionally to a piece or a slice of pizza, which is like high quality
1:10:32
and made like it's, it is what it is, it's you have to understand that when
1:10:38
people get to nutrition and health, they often become fundamentalist
1:10:42
in the beginning there is like bad foods and then there's good foods.
1:10:46
It's all black and white. It's all light and darkness, but even your spinach can be problematic.
1:10:53
Like even your tomatoes can be problematic.
1:10:56
Even your meat can be problematic. Your wheat and some of them can have, beneficial effects in certain
1:11:03
amounts in certain situations. So in the end, It's a fine balance and the problem we have is the excess intake
1:11:10
of certain things, like 60% of the world calorie intake comes from 20 plants.
1:11:16
So you have potato, rice, manioc wheat, soy et cetera.
1:11:22
So these monocrops are selectively bred to have less nutrients
1:11:27
and more calories, more energy. And On their own, they're not evil.
1:11:32
It's the quantities we are having each.
1:11:34
It's just if you have corn in all kinds of forms all the time,
1:11:37
of course that's not healthy. And then we do concentrates out of them, like high fructose corn syrup.
1:11:44
It's a completely different thing from eating a corn.
1:11:47
So we have this food processing and extraction and concentration of certain
1:11:52
things that is not so healthy, like the vegans, for example, they sometimes have
1:11:57
something called seitan and like the name almost tells you, it's like basically
1:12:01
like concentrated gluten, if you want to avoid gluten oh my goodness, like
1:12:04
that's, and gluten in food processing is often used as a preservative.
1:12:10
So a lot of things might have gluten in there like sausages,
1:12:14
not because You need gluten there it's often used as a preservative.
1:12:20
Like when you study nutrition and start to like unravel and understand these
1:12:25
things, it's really in our book, for example, it boils down to quality.
1:12:29
Diversity and yeah, quality, that's one thing, there's a difference between
1:12:35
a cucumber and another cucumber. It's just how it was grown, what soil was used, what variety it is.
1:12:41
Even if the onions like red onion or white onion go with red,
1:12:45
you get more nutrients in it. So it's you can select things.
1:12:49
So having a salad doesn't mean it's nutrient dense.
1:12:51
Like you can have a nutrient salad or a nutrient void salad.
1:12:55
It depends what's in it. And diversity is important because our body is , they like to cycle things
1:13:03
like you can have too much of a good thing also, like you can have too much.
1:13:07
Carrots, even. In the end you want to cycle things in and out so your body
1:13:13
doesn't become also tolerant to it. So food intolerances are a good example.
1:13:17
Not allergies, but intolerances. If you get too much of one thing, your body can start disliking it.
1:13:24
So eggs are good for me, but like you can also develop sensitivity to eggs
1:13:29
by just having eight every single day. Bodybuilders have a lot of problems like this when they eat the same
1:13:35
diet all over again, is that they just get too much of one thing
1:13:39
and the body starts to reject it.
1:13:42
Yeah. I think it's important to know your body and to know what you should be
1:13:46
eating because I've seen Vegans and vegetarians that are overweight can
1:13:52
you be overweight when you're eating vegetables and you're supposed to
1:13:55
be healthier than the meat eaters?
1:13:58
There's a couple of things about vegans. One of them is skin health.
1:14:02
So you often, they have like fragile skin and thin skin.
1:14:06
I've noticed and skin issues, there is many reasons, one of
1:14:09
them could be hormonal, one of them can be nutrient deficiencies.
1:14:13
They're not getting like cartilage and collagen and all that , their
1:14:16
body needs to produce more of it on their own, and it's capable for it,
1:14:20
but it's not like fully optimized.
1:14:22
And then the next thing is fragility of bones.
1:14:25
They're more easily to get like broken bones and all that and joint issues.
1:14:30
because they're not having enough of the things that the body needs
1:14:32
for building connective tissue. And then they have gut issues because of like too much raw
1:14:39
things and anti nutrients. And then sugar.
1:14:43
They just get too much carbohydrates.
1:14:46
I love vegan food. I eat it occasionally.
1:14:49
Go to places like Bali and so on. You can get really excellent plant based food.
1:14:53
But it makes me also very tired often.
1:14:55
So I prefer not to have it too often because it's very hard to have fat, more
1:15:03
primarily fat and fiber based plants.
1:15:05
Like a wild salad, fine. Like with olive oil, avocados.
1:15:09
Yeah, cool. Vealberries. If you are ready to include some animal products, I mentioned
1:15:13
shellfish that's a pretty good source. Some aged cheese can be better as a source of dairy because the way how
1:15:21
cheese is produced, like the older it is it's basically literally
1:15:26
lactose free, it breaks down the lactose, a lot of things it increases.
1:15:31
Nutrients actually in it you can maybe tolerate that better.
1:15:34
It also depends on the source of dairy there's A1 and A2 milk.
1:15:38
And then there's goat milk and also lamb milk.
1:15:42
It depends, like maybe some of these will be more tolerable for you.
1:15:47
But cheese also has its problem, like too much of it.
1:15:50
Also, it has histamine, so it increases histamine content.
1:15:56
So if you have already Inflammation and allergic reactions and all that like
1:16:02
having a Mediterranean diet with cheese salami and red wine and tomatoes That's
1:16:08
basically a combination of different sort and chocolate if you want to add something
1:16:14
else These are sources of histamine.
1:16:17
So histamine on its own like a histamine reaction is like allergic reaction Like,
1:16:22
if you already have an allergic reaction going on that's just gonna make it worse.
1:16:26
If you don't it's fine eating these things.
1:16:28
It's it's all understanding bio individuality and differences and
1:16:33
what works for someone doesn't necessarily work for someone else.
1:16:36
And... That's why I don't believe in any kind of diet fads or any kind of
1:16:41
diet gurus saying that this thing is good and this thing is bad.
1:16:44
The more you know, the more you realize that it's not the
1:16:47
black and white world out there. We are living in harmony with the ecosystems around us and we can
1:16:54
like, win that whole balance by just going too extreme on certain,
1:16:58
let's say, personal belief systems.
1:17:01
And I've seen. Females who got too crazy with keto diets and shut down their
1:17:06
hormone production completely. I've seen men who get got into massive gut issues by doing too much of that
1:17:13
carnivore stuff I've seen vegans being overweight and inflamed and tired and
1:17:18
neurologically Damaged that's also one thing you don't get the FB vitamins
1:17:24
and suddenly you feel fine for two three years Then you get depression
1:17:28
like there is so many things Take into account But in the end we all gonna die.
1:17:34
So We can try at least be more intelligent in how we die.
1:17:39
And that's what I do with biohacking is to be a little bit more informed in
1:17:44
some decisions, but not turning into a fundamentalist or the party blooper
1:17:51
who is always saying, I can't eat that.
1:17:54
It's it depends, right? I agree with you.
1:17:57
I think life is about balance. So I would like to know if you can share like a personal story on something
1:18:07
that you've done in your biohacking journey that has had a profound
1:18:12
impact on your health and well being.
1:18:15
One of the biggest things for me was to optimize my sleep and
1:18:20
recovery and stress management. And I would say like most of the important biohacks are.
1:18:25
More related to how I bounce back from things that I do than how I do things.
1:18:31
So it's more about, it's not about performance.
1:18:34
It's not about workouts. It's not about, the way I what I drink when I work.
1:18:39
It's more about how, what do I do when I have a break?
1:18:43
Like nature connection, heat alteration red light therapy, meditation,
1:18:49
breath work and sleep optimization.
1:18:51
Those are key, but sometimes I can't do all of these things, but
1:18:54
if I dial those in occasionally, it's it's beneficial for me.
1:18:58
I learned. And the other thing is, I would say it's not only a physical
1:19:02
balance, it's also a mental balance. If you are a high achiever type, you are a perfectionist, like you are often on
1:19:10
the way of your own, health and wellbeing by being like too, driven in a sense.
1:19:18
And so shutting down the monkey mind is one thing.
1:19:23
I would say meditation would help almost anyone, if you're able to
1:19:27
do it, if you can do it because you have ADHD and the monkey mind
1:19:32
doesn't shut up, there's different techniques, how you can do it better.
1:19:35
I find bread work works better for those kinds of people.
1:19:38
I find certain technologies work better for those people, like neurofeedback.
1:19:43
You can also use light as a feedback mechanism.
1:19:47
Then there is. Personal inquiry and psychology that I've spoken a lot, and there's a whole section
1:19:54
in our next book on psychological health and resilience and social resilience.
1:20:00
So it's about working on your traumas and your issues you keep on repeating
1:20:06
sometimes subconsciously that is causing all your problems in the end, like how
1:20:11
you sabotage your own life in a sense.
1:20:13
And high achievers often have some issues, they're running away from
1:20:18
not feeling enough, always needing to top their own achievements.
1:20:22
So I think there is a deeper connection with the body and the mind, which
1:20:28
goes beyond just brain health. It's a deeper construct, but when you do fix things going on in terms of
1:20:36
your body and health, it increase your.
1:20:39
Alertness, you become more efficient, you have more physical resources to do things.
1:20:45
What one thing that often happens to people is that their obsessive
1:20:50
compulsive things or neurotic patterns or whatever, they relax a little bit.
1:20:55
And so a sick person is often in a vicious cycle of damaging themselves
1:21:01
further, like through addictions different shooting mechanisms they
1:21:05
have neurotic patterns poor self image.
1:21:08
So in the end confidence is also one thing, of course, like if you
1:21:12
fix your gut, your skin is more radiant, like you feel better.
1:21:15
There is less chronic pain as a signal is it can't be like a nice person sometimes
1:21:21
to be around if you have chronic pain constantly., or you're depressed.
1:21:26
And depression is not I'm not saying it's bad. It's you shouldn't be depressed.
1:21:29
It's a natural mechanism of the brain sometimes to like
1:21:34
basically make you chill out.
1:21:37
It's like the body telling that I don't want to be this person anymore.
1:21:42
And it might be linked to your lifestyle. It might be linked to your relationships.
1:21:46
It might be linked to your work.
1:21:48
Something needs to change. It's a signal, do something.
1:21:52
And I find biohacking.
1:21:54
can help with that. And from that place, it's easier than to contribute to the
1:22:00
world in a more beneficial way.
1:22:02
So it's easier for you. It's easier for everyone else around you.
1:22:06
So if you want to leave a legacy, if you want to do good work, get things
1:22:09
done, be a nice person, it is so much more, it's the way you conduct yourself
1:22:15
internally and externally where, a lot of that comes from in the end.
1:22:20
So literally the diet that you eat is changing your
1:22:24
consciousness and your behavior. And, I've noticed like personality is changing when the gut microbiome
1:22:31
changes and it's understandable because the gut is also producing
1:22:36
a lot of the neurotransmitters that are utilized in the brain.
1:22:39
That's why the gut is called the second brain.
1:22:42
Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, like maybe this is a good summary of some of these things we started
1:22:47
from a lot of like skin related things we ended up with building more resilience and
1:22:52
purpose in life and be more impactful and meaningful yourself and others around you.
1:22:57
And you think of your body as a temple in a sense it's good to take care of it
1:23:02
in a way like, you have only one body, so you believe in incarnation or not,
1:23:07
it doesn't matter in this lifetime.
1:23:10
It's important to take care of what you have been given.
1:23:14
And often people like learn it the hard way, so they get health
1:23:19
issues and then they fix things.
1:23:22
It's a wake up call especially when you get older.
1:23:25
So in the end it's never too late and we all will have issues.
1:23:29
We all have issues and it's okay.
1:23:32
That's also important to remember. Like it's, it's just what it is.
1:23:36
A super healthy person can, just one thing goes wrong and like things can be lost.
1:23:41
So in the end, we have to be grateful also what we have.
1:23:44
And in any context, there's always room for improvement.
1:23:47
My philosophy is very stoic, like life is difficult and painful,
1:23:51
but you better, enjoy it.
1:23:54
It's what it is. That surprises me that would be your thought on life being difficult because
1:24:00
you come across as just very calm and gentle and just everything with ease.
1:24:05
In my mind, I don't see. You believing that life is difficult because life seems to be easy for you.
1:24:13
Yeah, I'm an optimist for sure, like that helps, optimists tend to live longer.
1:24:18
I'm more keen to believe in like positive things and have
1:24:22
optimism when it comes to future.
1:24:25
Like I'm not driven by fear that much, but all of us are to a certain extent,
1:24:30
like deep down, like there is some kind of survival mechanism going on.
1:24:34
But for me, it's in the end, when I spoke about resilience, you are
1:24:40
basically exposing yourself to stress in a controlled manner.
1:24:45
It can be heat alteration, it can be fasting, it can be, anything,
1:24:49
you name it, like exercise.
1:24:52
All of these things are, when you are in a conscious and controlled manner
1:24:56
you're introducing stress to the system and you're pushing the envelope.
1:25:01
Even when you do your work. You don't want to be apathic and lethargic and disconnected and bored from things,
1:25:09
you want to be engaged and you want to, get things done and you want to put your
1:25:13
heart and mind into something and your body sometimes in it, maybe you don't
1:25:18
sleep enough on some weeks or days or decades, but like in the end that's
1:25:23
what is important is that you do play with your boundaries and you push those
1:25:29
boundaries and make yourself harder to kill in that sense, you're more
1:25:33
prepared, that's what parking and do it can prepare you when things go wrong.
1:25:40
When you get a sickness or illness, it helps that you are
1:25:43
already in a good fit state.
1:25:45
It helps in recovery. It helps in everything.
1:25:48
And it's never too late. That's important to understand.
1:25:50
Also, sometimes you just have to start from a place of misery.
1:25:54
And it's fine. So like deep down I'm a philosophist.
1:25:58
So that's how I think about it. And yeah, there is no simple answers or solutions.
1:26:04
Like one thing about longevity and living forever is we're all going to die, the
1:26:10
pessimist outlook, why not enjoy it?
1:26:13
And the way I think about enjoyment is that these tools do enable
1:26:18
you also to enjoy more things that you want to do actually.
1:26:22
We're talking about breadth work and I recently met the The
1:26:27
person that created SomaBreath.
1:26:30
So is that a breathwork modality that you've been using?
1:26:35
Yeah, I know Jirash, it's his brand, but there's so many different
1:26:39
modalities of breathwork many bloggers use beam off method.
1:26:44
Some of them use like some yogic techniques, like Pranayama
1:26:48
like I use different breathing techniques that I've learned.
1:26:52
I do a lot of Sudarshan Kriya also that I learned from Art of Living Foundation.
1:26:57
So there's like a lot of different techniques. And in the end, that's just another way to exercise your most important,
1:27:04
one of your most important organs, which is your respiratory system.
1:27:08
So just like I explained heat alteration.
1:27:11
It's your lymphatic system and your cardiovascular system, nervous
1:27:15
system and thermoregulation.
1:27:18
Breathwork does help you to play with oxygen and carbon
1:27:22
dioxide and lung capacity.
1:27:24
And it turns out like most of us are completely under
1:27:28
utilizing our lung capacity. So like learning breathwork will help you with everything.
1:27:34
Your work, stress management, exercise.
1:27:37
And breath is, although it's most of our breathing is based
1:27:43
on the autonomic nervous system. So it's automatic it's still under conscious control to a certain extent.
1:27:50
So you can like through modulating your breath, you can lower your heart
1:27:54
rate or improve your stress resilience or lower your stress hormones.
1:27:58
All of that. And it's a essential component of what I do as well.
1:28:02
Do you think that it's a, makes a difference whether you're a shallow
1:28:05
breather or not a shallow breather in terms of how healthy you really are?
1:28:10
If you're a shallow breather, like. Most likely you have a lot of stress in your life anyway there is a reason why
1:28:15
the body is like a person who just came out of sauna or an A2 trip is not going
1:28:19
to be a shallow breeder, like naturally, it's just going to, you're going to take a
1:28:23
deep breath and you're going to enjoy it. It tends to be if you're super tense, like that you are reading more
1:28:29
shallow, and and you are not utilizing.
1:28:33
oxygen or secreting carbon dioxide efficiently enough, like
1:28:38
learning a couple of reading techniques will probably help you.
1:28:41
It's important that it has also anti inflammatory effects
1:28:45
and all kinds of things. So it's one of our most important organs.
1:28:48
And most people never had a manual for it.
1:28:51
They don't know what they're doing. So it's good to learn some of it.
1:28:55
And the Wim Hof Method for me, which is just another branded technique of
1:29:00
tummo breathing is very good for if you have depression or something
1:29:05
like this, something is overwhelming. Doing a couple of sessions like that, it really connects you to your body.
1:29:10
And it produces a ton of beneficial hormones that make you feel great.
1:29:15
The release of dopamine from that is like beyond anything you can get from
1:29:19
any kind of legal drug you can have it's more effective than nicotine.
1:29:24
For example in stimulating dopamine. So yeah, maybe that's what people need.
1:29:30
Instead of smoking. Yeah, a very funny question if you don't mind, because
1:29:36
I like funny questions. So if you are allowed to develop a superpower, what would it
1:29:42
be and how would you use it?
1:29:45
I'm actually developing right now an app that is almost like a superpower.
1:29:49
So it takes your biomarkers and data and based on that it identifies
1:29:54
the bottlenecks in your life. And it helps you then to implement the lifestyle changes or all these modalities
1:30:02
that will be beneficial for you. So I think. If I can teach what I know at scale to people, that's going to be beneficial.
1:30:10
So that's, that would be a superpower. It's just a technological implementation of it.
1:30:14
So that's what I'm building right now. But otherwise even though I sound like a super optimized person, we all have
1:30:22
struggles and challenges and all that.
1:30:24
And learning to delegate things, knowing what are your battles, what you
1:30:30
should get yourself into and whatnot. I think we all, a lot of us are struggling with things like that.
1:30:36
Like maybe spending too much time on their work and not enough time
1:30:40
on enjoying, that you're alive.
1:30:43
And that doesn't mean like having a drinking night outside, but
1:30:46
like just seeing the natural world sometimes might be it.
1:30:49
So I think it's important to have a like healthy balance in many ways.
1:30:54
And if I could like sometimes stop time and enjoy infinity, that would
1:31:01
be an awesome superpower for sure. Brilliant.
1:31:05
Well, I'm excited about this app. So when is it going to be released?
1:31:09
When are you going to? Yeah hopefully at Biohacker Summit in Amsterdam.
1:31:13
We might have something cool to reveal, so yeah, if anyone is interested in checking
1:31:17
out our events learn more about daily biohacks with me and Roberta Whitney
1:31:22
also come to London 1st of September.
1:31:25
Otherwise to Amsterdam, 14-15 October, and you can learn a ton more about biohacking.
1:31:32
And if you can't wait, you can also go to biohackercenter.
1:31:37
com and check out what kind of content books and things we have out there.
1:31:42
And if you want to learn about beauty and how to optimize that work with
1:31:48
Roberta Whitney, go to robertawhitney. beauty.
1:31:51
She's available there also on Instagram at @robertawhitneybeauty
1:31:57
and for us, it is @biohackersummit or personally for me, it's @teemuarina.
1:32:02
My name is my Instagram account as well.
1:32:05
And if they want the beauty show they can go to @thebeautyshow.tv and the link
1:32:11
will be there on that Instagram page. Awesome.
1:32:14
And our podcast is Biohacker's Podcast.
1:32:18
You can find us on Spotify, also YouTube and most other popular
1:32:23
platforms on iPhone and Android.
1:32:26
Thank you very much Roberta for this. This was enjoyable talking about wide variety of topics with you
1:32:31
and looking forward to meet you. Amazing.
1:32:33
So I'm looking forward to September. I will see you at the summit and let us biohack the way we should be
1:32:40
healthy and happy and beautiful always.
1:32:44
Indeed. Yeah. There is nothing better in life than to live long and die boots on.
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