Transcript of Episode #126 Featuring Mark Young! Treating the CAUSE, NOT THE SYMPTOM! A guide to prevention and root cause treatment! Putting GOD FIRST! Food as medicine and more!

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Go to qualialife.com/dylan for 50% off and use my code Dylan for an additional 15% off. That's qualia qualia.life/dylan and use my code Dylan. Thank you to Qualia for sponsoring this episode. Today is extremely special for me for multitudes of reasons. One, as you can see, we're not in the normal studio. We are at Changing Life and Destiny, and I am thoroughly honored to have the person that I'm interviewing today for multiple reasons. One, We met in person for the first time here. Now I've been going back and forth with him here and there. As soon as we met, it was like an instantaneous click. I don't know how to explain it. You just know when you know when you know, and we both know. And I received an award here last night and had the privilege of being introduced by my guest who gave a speech that I don't really know what to say other than it, it hit me in a certain way of the most touching, and my level of appreciation I can't really convey into words, but I'm going to try to show that in our interaction today. So my guest today is someone who has built a career around a principle that sounds simple, but it turns out to be everything.

If you want to build something that lasts, you have to actually care about the people you're building it for. And that is super synonymous with everything that I can tell you this man stands for. He's an entrepreneur, he's an author, he's a speaker, and he's a philanthropist. He's the CEO of Sona Health, and he's also the CEO and founder of Rise Agency. And I have to tell you, I meet a lot of people. I talk to, I don't know, without exaggeration, thousands of people a month. And I love the ability that I have to do that. But there's always a small select few that stick with you in just everything that you do. And this is one of those people. So my friends, welcome Mark Young.

Dude, I don't even know what to say in the intro. They're gonna be tears here.

I'm known for my intros.

No, that is all I'm gonna stop. My team writes my intros.

Yo, I always tell people, send me a bio, and I never tell them I'm only going to use a couple sentences. Because it's, it's, it's there simply so I can hit your credentials, but everything else comes from me.

When my team writes my bios, this is going to be so funny because every time I have a guest, like, I'm like, I'm gonna read the bio because I could never do you justice. It just did. But thank you, I appreciate that. And Dylan, like, the honor of being able to introduce you yesterday at that, at the event last night was all mine, genuinely all mine. And The point that I wanted to make in that was that you're, you're not here, you're not here, you're not here, you know, you're not talking about physiology like so many other people at podcast do. You're not talking about just psychology, you're not talking about just spirituality. Like, you're one of the rare breed of people who integrates all of those things together and understands the, the holism of the human organism and not any kind of container for, for categorization or whatnot about people. And I appreciate that about you.

Thank you. Here's what I feel, and I, and I'll start with this and you tell me what you think. So I feel like everybody's got a specialty, something they're just really good at, they're known for, that they know a lot about, but then they get out there and that's all they talk about. And that's all you ever see from somebody. And there's always more there. And I'm not saying they're an expert in everything, but there's more personality. There's something that they're missing. And my job and my goal is tenfold, really. It's one, it's to showcase the person, cuz it's not about me when you come on my show. I got the opportunity to go speak and you could talk to me about all you want. I'll feed you some things when you're interviewing with me, but what I wanna do is not just showcase your strengths, and I'm not necessarily saying we're gonna go look at your weaknesses, but your other abilities to show your versatility and who you are. And if I am going to do that, I have to be able to bring all facets of health and wellness because health and wellness is not just 1, 2, or 3 things.

It is every, it's all of it. Yeah. And, and I agree with you. I always use the phrase that if all I have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right? Yeah. And I see a lot of people, particularly in this biohacking natural health wellness space, they have a product, they've got something they've, and I respect them so much for it because for many of these people, this is their story come to life, like from their pain to their purpose. Yeah. That they've found something. They found a supplement that saved their lives. They found a device that saves their lives. They found this stuff and now everybody needs it. Not everybody needs it. Like, just because it— just because the movie won an award doesn't mean everybody enjoyed it.

That's right.

Right. Like, there's flavors for all sorts of stuff. And particularly, I was talking with our mutual friend Sean Braith today, and we were talking about we can't unpack physiology until we unpack trauma.

Yeah.

Like, how does— and no two people have the same amount of trauma. I don't, I don't care. Like, we've all lived different lives. We've all been impacted differently. And, you know, we've disclosed things about our own lives to each other. And it's like, they're not the same. Totally different. And yet when you get to the, to the end result, literally people say we look just alike. But it's like, there's so much that goes on back here. And, and I think it's important for anybody in this space to responsibly practice and recommend. And again, that's what I admire about you. Like, you're not hawking things, you're genuinely caring about individuals. Yeah. And not just masses.

I think it's important when you're conveying, like, what something is that you're selling, that you really convey what it is and why you may need it. Not that you have to have it, but this is why you may need it. So if you have problem X, problem Y, or you want to address something that you're missing, this will be good for you. But it doesn't mean that every single person, you know— right, you're trying to shove it down their throats. I feel there's some things out there that you and I discussed of like, you know, certain like creatine. I feel like almost anybody needs that, can take it, right? There's some things like that. But then there's things that I just, I have a hard time with.

Well, it's like, like you, you, you promote Tonglen. Yeah, I agree. There's nobody that I wouldn't say couldn't take that product. Yes. Stomach reject. There's nobody I believe that couldn't take that product and benefit from it. Right. Do I believe it's a solution for everybody? No, no, but it's a great additive. Yeah. It's not gonna hurt anybody, but I, I see people who out there who are just like, oh, the vitamins are good. I need to take all the vitamins. I'm like, yeah, except then I've looked at vitamin stacks where I'm like, oh, that's great. You're taking this beef liver organ, you're taking this and you're taking this, you're done. I'm like, do you know how much vitamin A that you've put into your diet because you've taken all of these supplements together? Let's go look at all of these vitamin A quantities and find out how long it's gonna take before you go into heart failure. Right. Okay. Not everything is good. Yes. And not everything is good if you don't know everything else that the person is even taking. And that's it. It's, it's responsibility. I mean, in pharmacies we cross-reference prescriptions and all of this, but it's like they're not even cross-referencing lifestyle.

They're not cross-referencing supplementation. Like none of this stuff is playing into the conversation. And, and again, it gets back to that holistic approach.

Well, even like something like Timeline that, you know, is like my favorite thing in the world. But if we're not addressing cellular health at its core first, tagline's not going to do anything for you. Nothing's going to do anything for you because we're not addressing the initial problem and trying to correct it.

You said something yesterday in a conversation that I've never heard anybody say, and truthfully, I mean this. You did a, you did an Instagram post recently talking about the responsibility of being an influencer, a person of influence, as you put it, as like you're influencing people's health. I've never heard an influencer say, and I need to be responsible because I'm influencing people's finances.

That's it, man.

And I was like, wow, like that's what a great acknowledgement that sure, you can recommend Timeline to somebody and it's not gonna hurt them. It'll probably do them good even if they're not paying attention to the other tenets of cellular health, but you're paying attention to it and saying, but is it responsible for their money? Yeah. If they're not going to get maximum benefit, don't spend. Yeah. And I don't know. And we're at a conference right now and there's 100 exhibitors outside the door and I'm wondering how many of them would say, no, don't buy my product. You know, your finances probably shouldn't have this. Like, no, they got financing options. Like, that's not a surprise. Like, everybody wants to do this. And again, it's because they poured their lives into doing what they're doing and they want to make sure that everybody has their same experience. No two people have the same experience. It doesn't matter what it is.

There's a— look, man, everybody, and we talked about this yesterday, no human can survive without money. We all work for money, but you can make a lot of money and save a lot of people a lot of money at the same time. You can have— competition is important because if there's no competition, then you become complacent and you don't become innovative and you just rest on your laurels and then that's when you take advantage of people because you know you're the only one doing it.

You know what? I intentionally, when my bio is always used, I always use the words I am entrepreneur first. Yeah. Educator, author, philanthropist.

I love it.

And then I add the travel nut because that's YouTube. But it's like there is no reason why I can't be entrepreneurial and philanthropic at the same time. Yes. Like I want to have as many resources as I can possibly compile on this life. Because that's how I have maximum impact on the world around me.

I say this in prayer and I, I, I'm gonna be flat out honest. I didn't realize it till more recently. I thought being rich was all those years I would have a, like, I always dreamed I'm gonna have a six-figure income one day, like when I was growing up and when I sold drugs and it, you never got it, you know? And how am I gonna do this with taxes and this? And then when I did it, I would realize I'm not rich. You know, when I realized I was rich, when I was rich in spirit first and then rich in doing good work, and then I became the richest man alive. I'm rich in like the love that I, because I prayed for an unhardened heart and I realized, man, you're too stoic, like become more compassionate. What do you, why, why do you have a blockade up? Why? And I became rich when the faith was so strong that everything that I did had a genuine purpose and it was for him, not for me. And then I found like, okay, this is the path.

Dude, I'm gonna, I'm gonna share this crazy story with you. We haven't talked about this yet, but so that there's, your story clearly has a lot of twists and turns. Oh yeah. It's such a mess. It's, yeah, I gotta lie. You may have me beat, but recently this came up. Um, I've had a long-term relationship. My dad has sat on board of an organization called World Mission, which is now called Unknown Nations. I've read that. Yeah, they do. They're the audio Bible people. Mm-hmm. And they, they actually put New Testament read, it translated into, I believe they've done 5,000 languages at this point, and it's solar power. So what they do is they distribute them around the world and there's no need for batteries or anything. It re— it recharges. And then tribes all over the world, like, and I've, I've done those trips to Africa distributing them in the backwoods of, you know, northern Kenya into literally people who live in, in like gypsy-like tent communities. And we're sitting in the tents and you're passing out audio Bibles, just spreading the word in these just completely weird places. And what's really cool though is because yeah, I've had some amazing experiences and that's been incredible just being able to share the world literally to the four corners of the earth, right?

And recently, Greg Kelly, who's the executive director at Unknown Nations, He would shout to my dad and then it was like, we need to get Mark on the call. So I joined the call and then while we're having this conversation, I'm like, you know what, I need Ximena to join this call. I need Phillip to join this call, who are a couple of members of my team. And Greg's talking about, you know, we have missionaries in some of the areas of the world that are just dangerous for somebody to be speaking the gospel. And one of the things that they have happen in their communities is that a person ends up, you know, coming to Jesus. They, they, they convert to Christianity, but there's no discipleship that takes place past that. And, and, you know, they go home to, to a family of a totally different faith or to friends or to community or the village or to whatever it is. And as soon as they start getting hammered with questions, they're like, you know, they fold. They don't know the answers because, you know, it's the, all they know is, well, I met Jesus, but now what?

And it's like, well, all of a sudden my family's pressuring me and they're asking questions I don't know the answers to. And I don't have a mentor because this was a traveling missionary who led me to this place. Like, and the education ends. So we're on the phone and my dad's like, what do you think we can do with this? And I'm like, okay. Like, that's when I'm like, let me get him on now. Let me get Phil. Let me get them on this call right now. I'm like, okay, so here's what I'm imagining. Because again, I take complex things and figure out solutions. I'm like, our team works deep, deep, deep in AI.

Yeah.

And I'm like, we could actually set up AI-driven things that we can vet theology, we can actually create this, and we can actually create the soul file of an AI to have the soul and personality of a 25-year-old Pakistani woman with the cultural references, with the language references, with everything else, and vet it through theology that if we were able to gain access to this and this and this, like, we could literally create avatars where a 25-year-old female in Pakistan is able to have a conversation about theology and defend faith by having an artificial intelligence mentor and almost be discipled in apologetics and theology in that respect. And it's like super cool, whatever, maybe it's been done before, I don't know. But we are having this conversation about how we can make this and have this prolific impact all over the world. And after that call was over, I sat with Ximena and Philip from my team and we had kind of follow-up and I'm like, guys, like, and they're both like, oh my gosh. And Ximena, she's in the room with us right now actually while we do this recording. And it was just like, oh my gosh, like we get to do this.

Yeah. Like these weird twists and turns and AI being scary and blah, blah, blah. Like, We deal with it in marketing, we deal with it in companies, we deal with it in healthcare. And I'm like, guys, we just got taken on this weird backward journey through developing customer service reps and dealing with Agentic AI education because, and I always go back to that story of Esther, right? Like maybe all of that preparation was for a moment such as this. Maybe everything you've been through. Was for a moment such as this. Maybe everything I do in business is for a moment such as this. Maybe all of the work we've been doing in AI to learn it the hard way for the past year or two, like maybe this is what it's about. Maybe it has nothing to do with customer service bots. Maybe it has nothing to do with, you know, all the different apps that we're in and has nothing to do with ChatGPT and whatnot. Like it all has something to do with like preparation.

Yeah.

And I think that preparation often looked like pain, always comes out as purpose.

Yeah, that's it.

I don't even know where we were going. No, it sounded like a great story compared to what you were just saying.

You know, I've had a, I, Ken did not use the word fear anymore, but I would say a tempered skepticism with like AI, what it's gonna do. And I'm trying to think about, okay, this is happening no matter what. So how is this what I kind of feel can be extremely negative? How can we revert this and turn it into something extremely positive? Because it's going to, it's going to come with a force. And I see him and there's, there's, there's a negative aspect behind. I don't care what anybody says. And there's an evil intent behind some of it. But how do we take that and reverse it? Because anything evil can be changed and reversed.

Nam zay twa ye.

That's exactly right.

Whatever is intended for evil, God will use for his own glory.

Yeah.

And that's the divine table turn.

And that could be one of the purposes that we have is to change, make that change. And I, I've been thinking about that and that right now, then this is just what he does. Um, and it brought a whole nother thinking process onto me. We'll have to talk about a little bit later. Um, it's true, but we have so many things to talk about later. You know where that's going, but thank you for that because that gave me some insight that I think that I was searching for. I tend to work on tempering being bothered and fearful anymore. I think that's one of the progressions that I've personally made. And I'm wondering your thoughts on, and for people, because I'm sure you would have some good thoughts on overcoming fears, stresses, and anxieties, because you and I both know I think, you know, as bad as cancer and as bad as any sort of disease that we run into, I think fear, stress, these are the actual largest killers because they are the causes of said diseases. Those, you know, and so I'm wondering for you, what's your approach to fear and stress on how to help people overcome it?

Without medication or BS that's not going to help it?

I'm going to go back to the individuality of that question, BS. Certain people's fears and stresses are, are different than others. Yeah. And you know, some people's fears I would say are completely negligible and why are you bothering me with this nonsense, even though it's very real to them. And other people's fears are fears that I couldn't possibly comprehend because they're so serious that it goes past me. I will say that biblically, since we're already down that rabbit hole, fear not are the words that are used most often. And in fact, they're used 365 times throughout scripture, which I find to be an incredible coincidence, but not for, not for our God, right? That the words fear not are used exact number of times as the number of days that are in our calendar. Um, so I think that—

I didn't know that.

Kind of a cool, kind of a cool piece of little nugget there.

That's it. So, a daily reminder.

It's a daily reminder. I get it. And, and my belief is that from a— I always say I'm the contrary in any conversation, because if you ask me about a physiological symptom, I'm going to ask you about your emotional health. If you ask me about emotional issue, I'm going to ask you about spiritual health. Like, I'm going to always approach it through the back door to have that conversation. Um, when people are experiencing fears, I was like, personally, One of the ways that I handle fear when it creeps into my life is I have a tendency to play out worst-case scenarios. Because fear triggers this, this sympathetic nervous system, right? Our autonomic nervous system is this upshift, downshift type thing, and both are very necessary. But fear triggers that sympathetic nervous system. And unfortunately, we tend to live in our society, like, what is the number? 80-something percent of the population is actually living under chronic stress. And that stress creates fear. It's fear of losing my job. It's fear of, you know, cancer. It's, it's fear of death. It's fear of my children growing up and being a mess. Like whatever it is. I have a cousin who can't literally rest at night because if she sees a headlight in the window, jumps up off the couch because she's convinced the person is coming into the house and it's like just nervous system off the chain.

And one of the things that I do is I literally, for me, I'm a very cognitive behavioral person. I tend to play out worst-case scenarios because worst-case scenarios actually get me out of fear and put me into purpose. That is, in my business, if everything goes wrong, I create two budgets every year. And this is going to sound ridiculous, but we've talked, I don't lose. I hate losing. There's no, actually, I don't even love winning. I hate losing.

Right.

Like, no, it's an I drive guy. Winning's cool. I expect that. Not losing is my purpose. Huge. But I literally created a budget for my own business of if everything went wrong, what does it look like? Because if I'm still using black ink when everything goes wrong, there's no fear this year. Like, I have nothing to fear. And it literally shifts me into a, this is the best case scenario. This is the worst case scenario, and I know statistically that we'll probably end up somewhere in the middle, right? So if this is the worst it can get and that scenario didn't kill me, I have no reason to be in an overdrive. I love it. And I think for so many people, and I think that plays out in, in a hundred different ways through people's lives. And for me, I'm talking business and financial, but yeah, but, but I mean, literally, if it's disease, if it's, if it's, if it's Divorce. And I mean, all of the things that can affect people's lives up.

Okay.

Let's play out the scenario. Where are you at the end of this? And, and if where you are at the end of this is still above ground, then there's hope, right? There's always hope.

Yeah. So, and I always said there's a multitude of things that I do that I think you'll like. One, and I told Queenie this when I first met her, she's like, well, why, Why are you looking for all these other things when you got this? And I said, because you have to have a backup for your backup and a backup for that backup. And that's why. Because when you think everything's so great and dandy, at the drop of a dime— and I know this from walking into my mortgage company office and seeing it boarded up in 2008, and I know this from waking up one day and people telling me, you can't go to the gym, you can't go outside for COVID. And I know that these things can happen, that you wake up and it's just, that's it. And then what? How do you handle it? What do you do? So I love that because you have to be prepared. And then my other question that I'd been working on for myself, which is working, is, okay, I'm getting so stressed out, like I'm, or I'm crying or I'm over-emotional. What did that contribute to solving the problem?

Or did it make it worse? Yeah. And I got that, the anger thing that I have That's my worst that I get. Like, it's not this like rage anger, it's this impatience, anger that I have to tell myself this isn't solving anything. But the stress part I've been working on to where it's like, what is this crying going to do?

What?

How does this help?

Orphan's Survey? No, but—

or if I look at the clock and I cried for 30 minutes or I got stressed for an hour, I just lost an hour. I could have been fixing this shit. Yeah. You know what I mean?

So my answer to that, and this is, I've said this for decades, I give myself a timeline. Because the one thing that I can't stand is when people get into that frame and people tell them to knock it off or people like, no, no, no, you need to acknowledge that this is a very real emotion right now. And sometimes crying is a great way to expel that energy, but it's got an expiration date.

Exactly.

Like if this is the worst day of my life, that's great. I'm going to spend tonight. Being miserable and I'm going to do everything in my power to be miserable tonight. And sometimes I just embrace the suck. And tomorrow morning I'm back in the saddle. Yeah. Because this, this has an expiration date. This is not going to go on forever, but I make a date with my own destiny in that respect, right? Like I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to put an expiration date. And I think that's where some people go too far down that rabbit hole. It's like, I'm going to get into the depression. And now I'm stuck. But is it— we need to put up some guardrails, and it's okay to wallow in it for a quick second because sometimes life does suck.

I just call it delaying the inevitable and don't do quite— you know what I mean? Like, I— when I was getting into a lot of trouble when I was younger, you know the story, things would happen and I would like not tell my parents or not tell them, and I was gonna have to come up. Yeah, I was gonna have— and it just, it kept weighing on me and it would get worse and I couldn't sleep and I think about what am I gonna do, how am I gonna do this, and then it's like weeks later. Yeah. And it's like, you know, and it's, it's when you delay the inevitable, you make it 5 million times worse. I'm the guy now that's just like, just let's get it over with, whatever it is. I go, yeah, just let's just hurry up and get it over with so I don't have to think about it. I'd much rather just do it, get it over with and not think about it again. You know what I mean? Because if it's inevitable, do it. I agree. I want to ask you something. You probably didn't expect me to ask, and I think you're the guy to ask, which is why I'm going to do it.

This is a stressful—

Why is it, in your view, that so many people distort the words that are said in the Bible? What is the reason that you feel— and I'm sure that this is a loaded question and there's multitudes of avenues, but I'm curious as somebody that is, uh, a theologian, why do you fear? Because I want to know from an expert of said Bible that we both live on, that I feel has the answer to every question in life, but people misconstrue everything in it.

Wow. Um, that's an enormous question. I know.

Um, you're the guy to answer it.

I, I can give you some, some opinions off the cuff here. One of them I would say is there's obviously a spiritual warfare of when truth is spoken and a lie is always going to be present, um, because there's that interpretation. The second thing I would say is that we all view everything through the context of our own existence, right?

That's it. Yeah.

I can't see the world outside of the way I saw it. And I think, and I'll, I'll get a little bit more historical and exegetical here and say the Bible was written in a time that in context it made sense. And we try to interpret those actions through a 21st century mindset. And, you know, I hear people say things, oh, women were treated terrible in the Bible. I'm like, no, not always. And now, and in some cases, yes. And in some cases, children were treated badly. Like, I said, who am I? Don't even hear the Pope, for instance, making a comment recently about God will not hear the prayers of men who wage war. And it's like, and I immediately stopped and I'm like, um, and I'm like, I don't know if that's true because I've got documents of God specifically telling people to go to war. And I'm not promoting war or not promoting war, and that's not a political conversation, but it's like our 21st century context is very different than the days of David, right? It's, it's very David. Like when the, when the days that kings were the person who was out in the middle of the war.

Like the kings, I think literally the story of David and Bathsheba, actually the, the story begins with in the season where kings were at war, David didn't go. Like that's how he was lured into temptation because in cultural context, he should have been at war. Yeah. That whole fall would've never happened had he been where he was supposed to be.

Mm-hmm.

So it's like, the king, the man after God's own heart, was supposed to be a warrior. Today we would find that absolute mabiz. So why do I think a lot of times that the Bible was taken out of context? I think because contextually things change. I mean, the world 100 years ago wasn't the same as the world is today.

Next.

Um, the, the other things that I would put in there is that we, we study the Bible. Most people study the Bible for its relevance to their own lives and not studying the Bible as an objective truth and adapting me to it rather than it to me.

Ah, I see.

So I, I, I also tell, I know, will always, you know, well, God has a purpose for everything. And I'm like, tell me about that. It's like, well, you know, it says, you know, all things work together, you know. And I'm like, all things work together for good. And I'm like, finish that. Nope, finish that, says. Well, it says all things work together for good. I'm like, mm-hmm, for those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose. So if you do not love the Lord and that you are not called according to his purpose, the first part in that verse doesn't apply to you. But we're not allowed to cherry-pick and pull the things we want and call them truth. Yeah. It's like zelem, not okay.

Yeah. Very selective.

Correct.

And so, yeah, I bet so many answers could be, but I just feel like that people read what they wanna read without reading what they should read. Absolutely.

I, most people that I know, that's not fair. People who I know who are, who are faith adjacent, um, they, they read for inspiration. They, they read for, and, and I follow you on Instagram and I see that you read the Jesus Calling book by Sarah Young.

Yeah.

Cuz you post pages outta it.

Yeah. I might every morning.

Absolutely.

And I brought it with me.

Well, there you go. And I'm like, no, Jesus Calling, great book. That's fantastic. I know you are a man of faith. And when you post a page out of Jesus Calling, I know you reading that book is for genuine edification. And you're reading that for that purpose. I know several other people who on the daily post pictures from their Jesus Calling reading. I'm like, I don't— and if it's not mine to judge, I don't mean to make it that way, but I'm like, I don't think based on, you know, know them by their fruits, that most of the people that I know that are doing that are genuinely seeking Christ in that reading. I think they're seeking inspiration. Um, but it's more of a pop psychology than an actual faith. Like people want to believe the Bible. They don't want to live it. Yeah. And I think that's rubber hits the road on some of that stuff. So again, why do I think that people read the Bible and get different things and interpret different things? One end of the spectrum because there is also an enemy of our soul who is going to do everything to distort truth.

Yeah. And, and he's very convincing. There's also people who are reading for inspiration rather than reading for comprehension. I don't hear it. And contextually, everything in between.

I took the journey of really getting into it for me personally as like training, like I told you, and it was training me to understand where my life needed to go and how I was supposed to live and what I was actually missing. And the way that I studied it and learned what it actually meant, what the words mean and how they apply to myself today and understanding, you know, the way that it was spoken then and how it translates to now and to understand and piece it together. And then, you know, you have to be willing. It's like the person that can't take constructive criticism. You have to be willing to accept what you're reading as it's going to benefit you in the end. And to touch on the prayers that I put up there, you know, I missed a day or two when I actually just forgot to post it. And to people that never click like or anything was like, what happened today? Like, why didn't you post that? And I was like, I can't miss these days because it's— I put that up there so not so people think I'm so holy, it's to help them.

I can't tell you how many people wrote me and said, where do I buy that book? She got it for me for my birthday, I think, and brought me a couple. I read one in the morning, one at night. And I thought, well, I'll share a couple of these. And then it turns into a daily thing so that people people that don't read anything, they might actually be waiting to see it.

Well, you— I'm sure you remember The Purpose Driven Life, the Rick Warren book that was such a runaway success so many years ago. And it's like, and I absolutely— the first sentence of that book, if you remember, it was like such a big thing. It was, it was literally 4 words: it's not about you. I mean, first 4 words of that entire book, Purpose Driven Life. What does it mean to have purpose in your life? First of all, It's not about you. Yeah.

It's, it's a hard, it's a hard pill to swallow.

Yeah.

If you don't, if you don't feel it inside of you, like, and, and you can, some people like to say it, but they don't mean it. Or they, and they, they think they do, they trick themselves into do, but then if you, rubber hits the road and you break it down on, and you, if you take a hard look in the mirror and ask yourself, is that true? A lot of people have to say no.

And if, if you approach Bible study the same way you approach health though. Yeah. Like you're a researcher, you're an athlete, so you're absolutely performance-driven.

Yeah.

In everything you do, which means if you decide— like, I laugh, I've got a buddy of mine who's recently started going back to church, and I'm thrilled to see it because for so long I'm like, dude, like, if you ever, you know, came over to the light side, like— and he's such a dear friend— and I'm like, if you ever made the step into faith, like, you'd be such a powerhouse. I'm like, because I know the way he thinks, I know the way he trains, I know his physical routine, I know the way he runs his business. Like, I know everything about the way that he functions in that capacity. It's like, if you're a person who is just, I am all into whatever I do, which is you, like, go. Like, just, I know, go.

You have to not just pray for certain things because it sounds good that you have. Like, when I had the actual desire for what I was praying for and I And aside from like the family prayers and the people prayers, like what I ask for myself, if you heard those, you, some people would probably not understand what I pray for. And I, and I pray for a powerful voice. And when I ask for strength, it's, it's not a physical strength. It's strength to endure everything that comes around me during the day to get to, to handle it and to have the strength to keep going, to do what I was put here to do. Those are the things. And I pray for like virtues of because people don't differentiate knowledge and wisdom. They don't understand that there's a lot of smart people that have no wisdom, that don't know how to, you know, the smartest people are the wise ones, not the ones that are book smart. That doesn't get you but so far. It's how do you use it? You know, I don't, I'm sure you've read the book that was a tough one for me at the time that I think I should reread.

And, and I was thinking about that today because I've, or maybe it was yesterday and there was a little piece of it. It's Imitation of Christ. And the author's rough, like, though, in the approach, like, it's rough. Like, you read it and you're like, damn, man, like, this dude's like— the first time I read it, I was in Florida on vacation and I was reading. I was like, I don't know if I buy this, like, seriously. But you have to be able to endure, and if you can't endure, then your purpose can't really be fulfilled because you have no perseverance. And I think that's lacking.

You said something a minute ago that a connection was made for me. Um, so thank you for that. But you, you made a differentiation between knowledge and wisdom. And I, we talked about AI a few minutes ago and I kind of want to draw this correlation.

Yeah, please.

When we're talking about a world of AI, I use the 10-80-10 rule and, and our, our teams all know this. That is like 10% is how I structure everything to know what needs to happen. Let AI do the 80% of the work.

Yeah.

The last 10% is, is it good work? Is it applicable to what we do? And when you started talking about the differentiation between knowledge and wisdom, I'm like, knowledge is the AE. Yeah. You know, I can automate knowledge nowadays because there is no shortage of knowledge available, but it's incumbent upon us to have the wisdom to apply that because all of the knowledge in the world without application is just data plot. That's basically it. How, how do we get the wisdom applied. And again, I'll say, you can know all of the right things about health and still be unhealthy, and you can know all the right things about theology and still be a spiritual mess. And you can know that— it— I can, I can know all of the things there is to know about another human being and still have a terrible relationship if I don't apply those things. And the application, to your point, is actually where the human difference takes place. And I think that's where we spent too much time here for too long, and I think the whole world is shifting where this is the value.

It's like an empty cell, right? It's, it's, it's— you've got the structure, you might have the cellular membrane protecting you with the knowledge, but if you don't have the wisdom, your mitochondria sucks. You, you know what I mean? Like, you know, you're missing the most important part of it.

Such a nerd analogy.

I love you. From the, the former non-science guy to the converted scientist.

Yeah, yeah, I laughed when you told me that yesterday.

Oh yeah, science was the subject I hated most. Oh, I I despised it. I absolutely— I was a math guy. It's amazing. Yeah, I was a numbers and math guy, which also most people think sucks. And then I was a communications guy. Natural.

I mean, that—

yeah, naturally for that. But yeah, I'm telling you, man, when that hit me and I realized it, I— that's all I care about. I mean, aside from the, the Bible readings and the study, my whole premise is now— I mean, it's obviously it's going to be nutrition and fitness, but it's— that's still science. If you think about it, food is science. I mean, 100% muscular and, and everything else that falls into anatomy and physiology is science.

100%. Yeah.

It's just why I was saying. All right. So I want to shift to something here on the back end of the conversation that we're both passionate about. I want to get into a little bit of, of the heart, heart health, cardiology, cardiovascular health. It seems to me that Aside from the amount of misconceptions based around heart health and what we can and can't do, what we can and cannot reverse, how we treat things, there's just this cascade of risen heart problems over the past, I don't know, 20, 30 years maybe, where it's just like out of control at this point. What are some of the biggest contributing factors to that rise that it just continues to keep going and going?

So I'm gonna say several different answers.

Yeah. This, no, this is a lot.

Yeah. Cardiovascular disease in general. And to connect the dots there with everything we've talked about, which is crazy, is like I spend a lot of time focused in cardiovascular health with some of my businesses and everything else. And I'm a functional medicine doctor by training, but cardiovascular disease is so mystical. And I'm gonna say that unfortunately things like high blood pressure are so misunderstood. And my, my personal opinion of this is we call hypertension a diagnosis. And I arguably always say that high blood pressure is a symptom. It is a downstream output to bad upstream inputs. And we're so busy treating this downstream issue that we're not dealing with the upstreams. Right. What, what are the things that we can control? I always say control the controllables, right? Like, yeah, what, what can I control up here so that this, doesn't happen. And it's like, well, you didn't turn the faucet off, but you just keep pouring towels on the floor and like, turn the faucet off. Like there, there is an easy fix here. And I think things like hypertension, cardiovascular disease, all of these types of things, they're input problems. Yeah. Yeah. And high blood pressure is symptomatic, but we've now called it a diagnosis.

Like it's literally an insurance code. This person is diagnosed hypertension. Physicians are required to, I mean, literally standard of care is you can be sued if a person comes in, has high blood pressure during your medical examination, and you don't prescribe an antihypertensive. And it's like, so literally we've created standard of care and practitioner culpability if they don't prescribe. Well, that's a business model. But why are we not dealing with the upstream side of this? So to talk through what are some of those upstream, well, one is we live in incredibly high stress lives. We talked to over 80% of the population. Talks about having chronic stress. Chronic stress, we can walk through the 17 different things that happen with that, but there's a huge issue related to chronic stress, which increases cortisol production, which decreases, you know, parasympathetic nervous response, which is our rest and digest mode, which means our bodies are not healing the way they should. I'll arguably say sleep is a huge problem for cardiovascular disease because we have, we have almost glorified smallest number of hours that we can process on. Like, I hear people be like, oh, 3 hours, I'm good to go.

And I'm like, I would never want to sleep 3 hours because it's not that I wear that like a badge of honor, but you and I are old enough to remember, you know, days of pulling all-nighters. You didn't pull an all-nighter and were ashamed of it. Like, if you pull an all-nighter, you told everybody about it. You brag that you had pulled an all-nighter. That's not, that's not exciting me. No. And your sleep is leading to these issues. Nutrition. Yeah. Like we can't starve our body of its necessary inputs and then complain about the outputs. Like this is a thing. I'll say that even nutrition itself in that small category is completely misunderstood when we talk about cardiovascular risk, because I'll give an example. What is the first thing that a doctor tells a patient from the nutritional standpoint if they've been diagnosed with hypertension? You got it. Low sodium diet. And, and I always go to, oh yes, that's what we want. We want to deplete people's bodies of electrolytes. That'll absolutely help them heal.

Yeah, I think about your heart rate a lot. Absolutely.

And again, good, good sodium. I'm not talking about trash table salt, but I mean, if we're actually talking about real salt, like, your body can't have too much salt. Yeah. And then, well, no, that's not true. There was a study back in the '60s that actually showed that people who had, you know, high blood pressure also had high salt content in their bodies.

Just to ask you, do you think the premise behind that is the water retention of high salt that makes the heart part. Or that's the premise.

The premise is, is that the study that was actually done back in, I believe it was in the '60s, that said that cardiovascular disease or high blood pressure was actually associated with salt retention was actually a correlation, not a causation. That yes, the people who had hypertension also had high sodium levels. What they're missing is that in absence of sugar, nobody has high sodium levels.

So, okay.

High sodium levels. And I always say like, If you're cooking a pot of spaghetti sauce, right, we're both Italian. What do you do if it's too salty? You throw in a little sugar. What do you do if it's too sweet? You throw in a little salt.

I see.

Those things balance naturally. Yeah. So sugar intake has been on an incredible spike throughout the last several decades. Processed food is on an incredible spike throughout the last several decades. Hell, we've taught people that the bottom of the pyramid is, is grains and carbohydrates. At, at which what? All of those carbohydrates are just gonna convert. They're gonna convert into, into glucose. They're not gonna be absorbed cuz most people are, and again, although my next item is going to be movement and exercise cuz we've become a sedentary world on top of that, but I've got absolutely no glycogen absorption if I'm not moving my muscles. Like your muscles are glucose, you know, machines that they're literally absorbing and expending all that. Like it, so now you end up with elevated glucose levels in the body, which is leading to just astronomical levels of diabetes. Like, like all of these things.

By the way, you gotta be very careful cuz you're making too much sense.

You're probably, you know, to target on me. Like, but the truth is, is like we talk about blood pressure as being this isolated diagnosis and effect. I'm like, no, this is such a multivariate syn— uh, symptom where all of these things apply. And what's happening is all of these things that we talk about are 100% causing endothelial dysfunction.

Yes.

And endothelial dysfunction in and of itself is what's causing this blood pressure problem because the endothelial lining of the cardiovascular system is actually what regulates blood pressure of the body. The body has an innate intelligence that 100% knows how to keep itself alive. Like there's nothing you've ever done to yourself that has killed you yet. I have evidence of that. And I guarantee you've been hurt more than enough times and you've healed and your body knows what it's doing. I don't think about, okay, now breathe, now breathe. Yeah. Now breathe. Does it? It does it. And blood pressure regulation is one of those things, but it's regulated at the endothelial level. And when we have nutritionally or behaviorally or lifestyle, environmentally through, through everything from EMF to environmental toxins and whatnot, chemtrails, you name it, like all of these things affect Everything. But that endothelial dysfunction actually leads to the body not remembering how to do what it is created to do. Okay. And the secret of that is restore endothelial function.

Yes.

Restore endothelial function. And 9 out of 10 people will not deal with this symptom.

How do we do that? How do we restore endothelial function?

Again, multiple ways. One, eliminate all these terrible things that we've already talked about. You know, things like sugar reduction, things like nutrition, things like exercise. One of the companies that I work with, as we mentioned, that is sitting here right in front of me, is a medical device that actually specifically targets endothelial dysfunction, which is called Zona Plus by Zona Health. And it actually specifically targets the endothelium through isometric exercise. Okay, Ben, you're an exercise guy. You get this. Like, there's a difference between aerobic exercise and anaerobic exercise. Aerobic exercise is what we're used to. I always say it's the sit-up. Yeah. The concentric movement followed by the eccentric movement, the up, the down, the up, the down. The isometric, which is Zona, it's more like a pike.

Yeah.

Okay. It, it's a holding a static resistance level for a period of time and causing the body that, that temporary muscle tension held at that exact same static resistance. Mm-hmm. Um, what Zona does is it actually kind of lets you do a plank. but it's letting you do it using grip strength rather than, you know, asking grandma to get on the floor and do a plank, right? Yeah. So as that happens and the endothelium ages over time, this actually helps reverse that aging. And why? And it's weird how it does it. I'll say there's two, two major things that contribute there. The first one is when your body moves into that sympathetic nervous system, it's helping you learn how to move between sympathetic and parasympathetic. And we've talked, we've talked a lot about the nervous system and how we live in this stressed-out world, most people get stuck. Yeah. And they've never trained their nervous system how to calm down, which means even when they go to sleep, they're, they're a basket case even in their sleep, right? It's sleep quality suffers even if they actually get their 8 hours. Yeah. What this is doing is that, that tension, no one puts their body under stress intentionally without the body wanting to fight back.

So when I'm doing a contraction on my arm, where I'm holding it at a static resistance, it's uncomfortable. Yeah. It actually shifts the sympathetic nervous system. And when the sympathetic nervous system is triggered in the brain, the body's first response at, at a millisecond level is nitric oxide release.

Ah, okay.

And nitric oxide, we all know, body's natural vasodilator, things start happening.

Right.

One of the things that people don't realize is as, as we age, particularly in women, and our cardiovascular health is such a bigger problem for women than it is men. Yeah. Which is completely backwards from everything we were brought up to believe. I know. Because we think of dad having a heart attack, not mom.

Right, right.

And especially because estrogen is one of the body's primary vasodilators. And as women are postmenopausal, it actually, that vasodilation becomes either worse. For most men, the truth is, is this nitric oxide production and the vasodilation and the early signs of heart issues normally starts in the form of ED.

Wow.

It's the most visible sign that you'd have a circulatory problem. Yeah. Yeah. And most noticeable. And yet what do we do when a person is suffering with erectile dysfunction? Give them a pill. Yeah. We're not fixing systemic problem. We're fixing a symptom. This is the body's— it's a, it's a, it's a light on the dashboard. It's a warning. Something's wrong. Check engine. Oh, okay. Well, let's just put some tape over that. Like, No, I can't see the warning light anymore. We must be better. And it's like, no guys, that's not the deal. So with Zona, you're not only getting that nitric oxide boost, but part of it is during that muscle tension in your arm, the sodium and potassium must stay at a balanced level in the body at all times. So sodium gets released to stop the muscle from spasming, but in that process, potassium also is released. And if you think about an aging endothelium, it's kind of like a sponge that's begun to lose its moisture. So that sponge kind of dries out. As potassium moves through the endothelium, it actually softens the endothelium again. So you're forcing this reaction. I say it's like the— I say it, you know, using this as like a combo shot to the corner pocket.

Yeah, I do this exercise. The exercise causes the sodium release. The sodium release then causes the potassium release. The potassium release then softens the endothelium. And when the endothelium wakes up, it restores that innate intelligence of the body to go, oh my gosh, I know what's going on here. Mm-hmm. Like, this is super cool. And I say like, it's the ultimate biohack, which is why I got involved with the company. 'Cause I'm like, this totally makes sense to me. Like, it's, it's a hard story to tell 'cause the average person has no idea what you're talking about. And we trained people to believe that we are a symptom reduction healthcare, uh, country. All we do is focus on symptoms. Yeah, I know. And, and if all we do is focus on the symptom, we never actually figured out the upstream problem.

I'm glad you talked about sodium potassium. I've been talking about those importance of those ratios for, well, the reason I started talking about those so long ago is people were wanting to know what caused water retention with HGH use and MK-677. And it took me to uncover that the main problem was, is because we eat so much sodium and not enough potassium and the ratios were fucked. Nothing wrong with sodium, but people eat so many processed foods and things that are holding so much extra. And like you said, the bad kind. And you know this, people don't realize, like everybody always comes up with the, oh, it's so hard to eat that much protein thing and they have to eat so much when in reality the thing that's lacking in the diet is potassium.

And yet the problem is you can't supplement your way to proper potassium because potassium's limitation, I believe, is 99 milligrams potassium.

That is it. 3%. They could die.

And because you will actually stop your heart if you oversupplement with potassium. Like, see, you have to deal with nutrition.

I eat a ton of potassium, but I have the potassium pill that's prescribed because I have this like severe low potassium issue consistently.

My mom had that.

Yeah, I, you know, I think a part of it is this oversweating and training and the easy of dehydration. And I was on Jardiance for a heart, like, hogging I, I say heart failure, but it's, it was just to improve ejection fraction and that was draining me. So I have the, oh, the 10 pill for potassium. I take twice a day and then I, it stopped all the heart palpitations cuz the potassium was just like draining, you know? So I get it under control. I, you don't wanna live off those forever, but you know, they, like you said, you can only put so much in, like, so there's some powders that have more in there, but if you don't, if you're just relying on a supplement and not eating it, that's a problem. Right. And realistically, and you tell me what you think. I, I always tell people at the minimum 3,500 milligrams, but ideally more like 4,700.

4,700 is the real number.

The real number. The 3,500 is the, we don't really want to hear the truth, but we think we can get by with this amount. But it's not that. It's not enough.

It's not. And, and the amount of potassium, like what is the extra bit? What the number is, it's been a while since I've looked at the statistic, but it's like only 17% of the population is even in range now. But I mean, it's a ridiculous number. And if you ask people what they're doing to, to take care of their— I mean, you know, banana.

It is not even close.

Every, every single time. Because you don't realize that, like, you don't banana your way out of lupus.

And that's not even close to the best food. And it's not even that good for you.

Correct.

I'm not— you know where I get a ton of potassium is avocados.

Avocado is exactly how I was going to say, because you're not only getting the potassium, But you're also getting the healthy fat.

I get, because I eat so much avocado, I'd normally get almost 1,000 milligrams or more just from the amount of avocado I eat every day.

You love that. Yeah. Problem is, is I like my avocado smashed up with tortilla chips. Max the Echeverry. Ah, wait, that's my kind of, I love avocados anyways, but you know, I had a good guac.

I didn't start even, even eating them till about, I don't know, a year, year and a half ago.

That's so funny. I hated avocados my entire life and probably like 10 years ago, I went to lunch with my sister and my dad one day. They ordered guacamole and like chilies or something terrible. And I'm like, and I just took a scoop. I was like, wow, this is really good. What have I been doing all this time? Nowadays, like, I will put avocado on anything, you know.

I didn't like it because I thought I didn't like it by the way it looked.

Totally. Yeah. And they actually ate it. I was like, sounds like the jam. Like, I really, I put avocados on burgers.

Everything I eat right now, I did not start eating until about a year and a half ago or so, and I can't live without any of it. And I want your opinion on this in, in kind of towards the end here, because I think this is important. And I talk about this freely, but I want your thinking and see if it coincides with my thinking. You know, I, I talked about things I found with my heart, the calcium score and having some blockage there, finding it. Heart, not great, but early enough. And then like low ejection fraction later. And, and I argue, yeah, I had an eating disorder, but I think the main problem was this low-fat diet, fear of fats for my whole life. And I think that all of those foods that we thought were healthy and me doing that for so many years from like 11 till 42 of starvation, overtraining, and not giving my body everything. And, and I, we're laughing, In all honesty, I lived on vegetables, oatmeal, egg whites, and fat-free yogurt for years and years and years of no meat, no fats, no this. And the minute that I changed that, not only did I get more lean and cut up from doubling calorie intake and going from 15 grams of fat a day to 130, right?

Yeah.

And then my, all of my heart numbers that are supposed to be terrible from all the fat drastically got better and like all of the things I was deficient in just opened up like everything. The only thing that went up was my LDL went up a little bit, of course, but my HDL went up by 30 points. Right.

As long as you got a balance. Yeah.

So I wonder for you, because then I had a low ejection fraction, I believe it was from the overtraining and the drug use and the Jardiance helped, but now I got it back for like 50, which is still not— I want it 55 to 70, but Do you think that that low-fat diet was the main contributing factor to, and do you think it's a contributing factor to potential plaque or atherosclerosis buildup from, you know, those foods and then starving from the nutrients that we need?

Yeah, I, I would argue, I'll say two things. One, the same thing we talked about earlier is I don't know your exact physiology to answer no, because other things may be at play too. So I never want to overgeneralize.

Yeah.

Something.

Here's my issue with it for sure.

The answer is Could be. Yeah. I don't disagree that that's a thing. But we also, I mean, you hear about stuff like the blood type diets and this type of stuff, right? Like everybody goes and becomes this brand advocate for, you know, I'm keto, I'm only, I'm carnivore and oh, I'm vegan. And then why is that? It's like everybody goes on this, this attack of, you know, my way of doing things is the best way of doing things. And like we started the whole conversation and then Everybody should do exactly what I do. And while I'm a big fan, big fan of high protein, low carb diets, and I think it's the right way that your body's used to fighting. I'm also a big fan of fasting for the purpose of autophagy and all these reasons. Cause I think that is good for everyone. The reality is, is that we need to be able to, I personally, I run my blood work every 6 months. I get my blood work done every 6 months and my—

I do 3. But 6 is good.

I mean, I do 6 months. I used to do a year.

Yeah. 6 for our age is really good.

Pretty normal. Like 6, every 6 months I'll redo all my blood markers and then it again, cuz I'm a performer. I gamify now, what can I get the next panel to look like? Oh yeah. Like here's what was off on this one. What do I want to do with this one? And, and I'll give you an example. I'll do it more often. Like I did one in January and there was some stuff on there I did not like. And I'm like, hmm, okay, what was that? I'm like, wait a minute here. I don't think I fasted the morning I did the blood work though. And then I'm like, like, what did I, or did Kirk? Am I trying to— and I'm like, I didn't remember. Yeah, because I always have them come to my office and do it. Yeah, yeah. So play mobile full bottomless. Yeah, in the morning they came to do it. I was like, I don't normally eat anything in the morning, but then I forgot, and it'll steal it. Totally didn't. It threw off a bunch of numbers that actually I was not happy with. So I reran the March, but I was like, well, I'm gonna go ahead and do everything I can to get these in line.

Before the blood panel comes due in March. And again, with only 2 months between.

Yeah.

Like if something is wrong that concerns me, I'm going to make behavioral and lifestyle changes for those 2 months and see if I can pull this back under control.

Yeah.

By March, literally everything was normal.

I love it.

The only thing that was off was my AST was, was elevated even higher than it was in January, which was interesting. But AST being higher in March didn't surprise me because my ALT was fine. ALT was perfectly in range. AST was high. So it's kind of like, I'm like, well, that doesn't sound like a liver issue. Actually, AST can be elevated just based on heavy training. Yep. So absolutely. This is muscular tension. Yeah. I damaged a tissue. Keep training. That's fine. But like everything else is back in control. So when I look at what diet is appropriate for somebody and so on, well, it depends where are you?

They're tools. They're not meant to be used forever.

They're tools. Who—

I say that over and over. These people that just go in and argue and fight and bitch and complain and say they start—

they start calling people names because they're preaching about something.

It's like, dude, listen, these nutrients are here for a purpose. There's true— there's, there's 3 things there for a reason because we do need them at certain points. I'm not saying just like you, I prefer a lower carb diet, but there's times where we need more. X, and you can't stay metabolically flexible if you just are radical.

It's like, no.

And sometimes I do it because I'm regimented and I'm like, shit, I can't— I got to be careful here. You know what I mean?

And the thing is, is like, I'm going to add one other layer in there too. Yeah. If you're getting all these labs done, are you dealing with all of the issues that actually affect absorption? Because you may be eating right and not even absorb as much as you're taking in. Like, what are you doing to try gut health? Yes, because you may just be passing all the nutrients right through. Yeah. Your body has no idea what to even do with what's taking place because that's not in the gut health. So there are people who eat great and continue to struggle and can't move. They're spending thousands of dollars in supplements over the course of a month. And, you know, I laughed at a guy who worked for me at one point. He saw my supplement stack, which is absurd. And it's true. And, and he wanted, he is like, I gotta get some tips. Like, what do you take? Tell me what you take so I can do that. I'm like, what? All right, I'll tell you what I do, but what I do is because of my latest lab results. Why is not because this is what I recommend for everybody.

So he's just like, well, just gimme that. So I'll just look all these things up anyways. And I'm like, sure, whatever. So he took the list and I've got all my supplement stack all organized and it's in 4 different categories. And one is, you know, one of my categories is for nutritional supplementation. Like if there are things that I just don't eat enough of, I need to know how to supplement that.

Yeah.

Yeah. One is longevity-focused and one is antioxidant-focused and then, you know, whatever. And one is performance stat. Like, there are some things I do that I just do for performance base. They have nothing to do with, within, like, I'll do spermidine. Why? Because I think it's just good for anybody. Same thing. And the same thing with resveratrol. You're like, all of you, but I keep this stat. He had determined, comes back to my office a couple of days later, he was like, I looked up all your supplements. He's like, You're like swallowing a car payment. Like, mm-hmm, like that. Yes.

Yeah.

And he's just going, I can't, I can't afford that. No one asked you to.

No, you don't have to.

Yeah, get back to the basics. That's it. Figure out your nutrition, figure out your lifestyle.

Food is medicine, dude.

Strange, right?

Yeah, it is. And supplements are there to supplement what you're missing. Some are subtle, you know. I I want to tell you this. Me and Queenie went on vacation. We go every year to Florida and I got home from the trip and, you know, I— trust me, I spend my time in the ocean when I'm there. Like, that's all I care to do. As I got older and I— my liver values were off the chart, I thought, man, I used some SARMs and like, I thought, okay, this is, you know, we'll just get down real quick, you know? And this was 6 months prior, but I, you know, and for 2.5 years, my ALT and my AST were— they started in 300s and my doctor acted like it wasn't that big a deal, which I knew, you know, better off that it wasn't. But I, I just kept hovering at like 119 and 90 for ALT, AST, and I just couldn't do it. You know, Siggi's a good friend of mine. We did two fiber scans and he's like, man, you have the liver of like— it was— he was like the best that he'd ever see on fiber scans.

I just did a Siggi scan after my liver was doing crazy stuff. I just did a scan with them and they're like, no, your liver's like amazing. Yeah. Showing off, right?

That's what he told me. Well, you know what? I, I don't wanna, I'm not pushing a product here by any stretch, but this, this was my key. It was glutathione.

Yep. And that's it.

Dr. Patel, who I think is one of the most brilliant and kind, Dr. Nayan Patel that does oral glutathione.

He is, he does topical glutathione.

That's what I started to use and I had this. And I was talking about this on thing on my video about when I do a video, I said, I'm not going to sit here and spew a bunch of BS about this product for science. I'm showing you right here on this paper that in 2 and a half months when I was stuck for 2 and a half years, this is down to 40 and 38. That is not by accident. I didn't change anything. Nothing.

Most people would do is find the fish.

That's it.

And it is like the body's natural enzyme. So that is like the the best anti-aging in the world and most people are deficient. I am. Yes, I know that.

And Ryan is a good friend and hence is amazing.

The topical aura. I rub it, rub it on.

I still do it on my stomach because that's what he told me on my podcast. But regardless, anywhere that you don't have hair, Ryan, and I'm telling you, man, I'll never not use it again. That's crazy. But well, because things like that and I, and my, even my mercury level went way down. Would do it.

Yes.

Now granted, my mercury level got high because when I changed my diet, I was eating freaking salmon like 6 days a week, which is not ideal. I don't care how good it is for you, but, and I'm sure that me winding that down helped.

I need to actually use more of his product. I was just talking with him at A4M down in West Palm Beach. He's awesome. Yeah, he's an actually, uh, supposed to be on his podcast actually in like a month or so. He's really— yeah.

Oh, he's one of my few partners that I work with. One of my very few. And I'm me and Dave are the only two non-doctors that he actually are partners with. Yes, he has, he's LDS, but yeah, no, he's fantastic.

And his product, because I had the exact same issue with mercury.

Uh-huh.

But I actually discovered, and this is crazy, when I was 14 or 15, I had two amalgams.

Wow.

And literally I was doing an oligoscan, an oligoscan. You're familiar with the oligoscan, right?

Yes.

Years ago, did an oligoscan and found out mercury toxicity, so on. And it never occurred to me that as involved as we are in this space, sometimes the obvious. And I ended up going to a, to a biological dentist and, you know, they put on their hazmat suits and everything else to get them out and got rid of the amalgams. And I'm like, okay, now I need to deal with mercury toxicity because nothing that I was doing was working. And I'm like, and I was using the fluidified. No, it was in my body. Like, I literally had it in the eyeballs, but yeah, I actually just ran into him in West Palm Beach.

You know, I met him when we went to AFRM in December of '24.

Yeah.

I went there specifically to watch a speech, and I normally don't go to a lot of speeches, and we got in there a little early and he was talking and I just was like enthralled. I don't do well with speeches. I just like, I get, I, I'm all over the place, right? So that's gotta be something special. And I couldn't, I couldn't stop listening.

Well, I'm gonna tell you my, the first time I met Nayan was the opposite. I was speaking and he ended up coming up to me. Oh, after the speech and introducing himself. I was like, and I'm like, I don't know this guy. And then he introduced him like, okay, this isn't like a brilliant, we were actually, I was talking at a, um, hyperbaric convention in in Pensacola, and funny enough, I was talking to their like VIP group, but my first book that I ever published is called Date Your Clients, and it is literally like a juxtaposition between the way that we deal in personal relationships and the way we deal in business relationships. Oh, the C thing. Yeah. And it's like, so I was actually talking to this group of practitioners about how do you increase your volume through your clinic and how do you end up with stickier business and so on and so forth. Sort of more of a business lecture. And, and it was so funny because Nayan comes up to me at the end and he's like, I just want to introduce myself. You just said what I've been saying for years and my team needs to know this.

And like, so we've been buddies. I was like, those years ago. He's so funny.

It's funny because I saw him speak and then I started my podcast and like 6 months later is when the stuff started rolling in and somebody wrote me wanting to get him on my show and that's how I met him. And then I just hit it off with him. Just like, he's classy.

He's good friends with my buddy. I need to introduce you. Sanjay Bhujaraj. You know Sanjay? No, I don't. He goes by The Curious Cardiologist.

Oh, you got to introduce.

Super cool guy. Yeah, Sanjay is amazing. And he's actually really good friends with Nayan as well.

I would love that.

Yeah.

Well, I guess as usual when we talk, we go long. I know.

I'm like, this has got to be longer than an hour.

It is. Tweety warned me a little bit ago on the time and I just kind of ignored her because I had so many things I still want to say. I appreciate that, the, the notice, but I just kind of, well, whatever.

Amazing. Oh, man.

Well, that's the beauty of not having me being in my paid studio where when they come up there, I got to stop or they're going to charge me for over just 7.

Well, no, you're here and this ends. That's what I say. Like, no overtime.

No. Well, dude, like I said, one, I mean, like the biggest thank you again for what you did for me yesterday. And, you know, I know you played a role in me coming here that I didn't even know about till yesterday. And I think the, the, the— not even— I don't want to call it a friendship because I feel like it's like a family that quick. And I just know, um, and I don't, I don't say that lightly, and I don't offer that, or it's not like it's some big deal that you're— that I consider you that, like, for you. I don't want to act like that, but to me it is. Um, and, uh, I told you, I meet thousands and thousands of people, but the ones that make biggest mark for me are the ones I want to be around forever. And you're one of those few and far between. So thank you for that. Thank you for what you do. Thank you for the message. Thank you for, you know, I always want to say when somebody is bold in what they do, but it's just for doing what you're supposed to, for doing God's will and doing what we're intended to do.

I appreciate that more than anything. All of this is amazing. It is. But to me, The biggest thing I appreciate of all of it, and you could give me anything, it's just the messaging, man. It's just the messaging from one to another. That's why we got to stick together, you know? So thank you for all of this.

Well, dude, I can't— it's been a blast getting to know you last while, and the feeling couldn't be more mutual.

Well, you are the man, my friend, and I appreciate all of this. And I have a feeling this is part one of a million that we're going to do.

So, well, thank you. And, uh, Jill, it's been a blast. You're amazing. And you're kind of part of the Frictioners now.

I love it. Well, count me in for good. Now you're stuck with us.

Zulf.

Who is she? She's part of the package. So, um, from Changing Lives and Destiny, from this amazing conference that I hope to be a part of forever now as well, with my good friend Mark Young. Stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Gemelli and Mark Young signing off.