Transcript of Episode #174: 7 Signs You’re Being Manipulated (watch out for these signs!) - Dylan Gemelli

When somebody looks at you and says, oh, I don't care about money, turn around and run because that's all they care about. Every single human has to make money. Now, do you worship money? Is everything that you do based around money? Then there's the problem.

What is the number one issue that every single person has? No, it's not certain kind of disease. No, it's not fears. No, it's not depression. No, it's not anger.

People that care will tell you exactly what you need to hear, and it might not make you feel good. It's not supposed to. It's supposed to help. Somebody that tells you they are the end-all be-all, I am science. No, you're not.

The people The people that have humility, the people that care, the people that listen, the people that learn, those are the people you can trust. The number one problem that I see every single day over and over, whether it's being told to me, whether I see it in comments, it's one word. Here's an interesting question. How much do you actually know about the way your everyday habits are supporting how you age? We hear so much about longevity right now.

Sleep, protein, strength training, nutrition, all of these things matter. But there's another layer that doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should. What's happening inside your cells. Your mitochondria produce the cellular energy that your body relies upon every day. And mitochondrial dysfunction, that's considered a central hallmark of aging.

And that's why I've been so interested in the work Timeline does with Mitopure. Mitopure is their pure and patented form of urolithin A. It supports mitochondrial function and cellular renewal by activating mitophagy, your body's natural process for clearing out damaged mitochondria. But rather than just tell you about it, Timeline wants you to think about your own longevity habits. So they've created a longevity quiz that takes just a few minutes, and it looks at some of the everyday habits that can support healthy aging.

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Welcome back to the Dylan Gemelli Podcast, everyone. So I want to talk to you guys about something today that has really been bothering me that I want to address and want to help people to sift through and overcome, I guess, to a certain extent. So, you know, you guys always hear me talk about how blessed I am. And as a podcast host, I get to talk and interact to so many different kinds of people. I learn from some of the very most well-respected, brilliant doctors, practitioners, and then I get to talk to people that maybe aren't certified on paper, but have so much life experience, so much to offer, so much wisdom.

And then, of course, so many of you that watch, people that ask questions, clients that I have, people that I interact with at conferences when I speak. I probably talk to thousands of people a month if I really sat down and thought about it. It sounds like a lot, but it's not when you do what I do. And I get to learn. I get to learn about people.

I get to learn about concepts. I get to learn about things people struggle with, the problems that are out there amongst everybody. And look, I think that if we all look around, there are certain things that we all see when you're in the health and wellness field. You see a lot of people struggling with diet. For example, how do I work out?

What kind of blood panels should I get? Markers should I be looking for? What kind of diet should I be on? These are similar and very good questions that I see and that I encounter. Here's where the trouble lies.

What is the number one issue that every single person has? No, it's not certain kind of disease. No, it's not fears. No, it's not depression. No, it's not anger.

Being sad and alone. These are all problems. These are all big problems. But the number one problem that I see every single day over and over and over, whether it's being told to me, whether I see it in comments, it's one word. And it bothers me because it's confusion.

It's confusion. And look, I get it. I get it because I see it, because I'm around it. And the more that I think about it, when I let that word resonate, when I'm walking, when I'm in prayer, when I'm in deep thinking, It makes total sense. There is more information now being put out that's at our fingertips, that is swarmed upon us, whether it's in ads, whether it's in people that have differentiating opinions, content, you name it.

Somebody's got an opinion and a thought and you are going to get blasted with those, especially as we're being tracked with what we're looking at and ads are targeting you. You're going to see more and more and more different types of influencers popping up, more ads, more deliberate— and I mean absolutely deliberate— ways and means of doing tricky marketing, putting things in your foods to try to get you addicted. Whatever it is, people are being manipulated, they're being misguided. And some people, not by doing this on purpose, they're just putting out misleading information because they're parroting something else that they read. They're saying things that they really are unsure about.

They're trying to sell products that they don't even use. You name it, it is going on out there. So how do we know who to trust? How do we know who to listen to? How do we know what's right and what is wrong?

I am not going to sit here and tell you that I have every single answer because I don't. I'm not going to sit here and say trust Dylan and don't trust anybody else because that is completely asinine and that is Nobody should be saying that. They shouldn't. I'm going to tell you the things that you need to look out for and when you need to turn and run the other way. And I'm going to tell you the things that, that you look for that can tell you, okay, maybe I should listen to this person.

The first thing I'll tell you about myself that I was never good at before, that I had to learn, was that I'm not perfect. I don't have every single answer. And I need to admit my mistakes when I'm wrong. You know, I don't ever want to get into political discussion. I don't think that there's a good outcome that can come from that because of so many differentiating opinions.

But I'm going to tell you this, because I look at politicians basically all the same, but that's a whole different story. They will dance around. They'll never answer things. With a yes or no. They'll start jumping and jiving, bobbing and weaving, never really answer the question that's being asked.

Does that sound like somebody that you want to trust? Does it sound strange when you ask a question and it goes a completely different direction in every other way aside from the question that was actually asked? A way to try to get your mind on a totally different topic, to make you feel like what you asked was wrong. So when people do that to you, and I'm not saying politicians are the only one, they're just the kings and queens of doing it. But when you run into people that do that, that you see can't actually answer the question, you know why that is?

Because they don't know how, because they don't have an answer. I used to do that as well. I used to not be able to admit when I was wrong. And politicians are the best at that. They'll never admit they're wrong.

It's always somebody else's fault. It's always a cause and effect of something somebody else did. It's never anything that they did. No, you can't be a good teacher by living that way. No, you can't be good at conveying information without having the ability to take accountability and admit when you were wrong or say, I learned something new.

I saw something change. That's life. That's science. That's everything that we do in life. Things change.

We look for improvements. We look for better ways. New technologies come out. So if you can't, as a teacher, influencer, whatever you want to put on the name or the title, politician, whatever, if you don't have the ability to admit when you were wrong, then you are not somebody that can be trusted because no human is perfect aside from Jesus. No one's been here that's perfect.

And so when you act that way, you see people acting that way like they're never wrong, that everything they say is gospel. And they think that whatever they say is the only way. Well, I can tell you right now, that's somebody that you want to avoid listening to and learning from. Humility is something that you need to be looking for. Somebody that, hey, I only know what I know, and if I don't know it, I'm going to find you an answer.

Somebody that works with others, somebody that takes information in daily, realizing that you have to stay Consistent. The best athletes, you ask yourself this, do the best athletes stop practicing? No, no. In fact, they never stop. They have to sharpen their skills every single day.

They don't rest on their laurels. They don't get complacent. They understand that to be at a top-tier elite level, you have to master your craft. You have to stay at it. You have to sharpen your skills.

Well, that's the same with people like me and people that do what I do, people that are teachers, people that are scholars, people that convey information. You have to continuously study. You have to look for new studies that are coming out. You have to be able to switch your stance if you were wrong, if you see something changing, or if, for instance, some people that run ketogenic diets— I'm just going to throw it out there. So, that the keto mafia and mob can come after me.

Well, what you will see is that it works extremely well for certain periods of time, and some people longer than others. Some people can sustain it longer, but ultimately, it's a tool, and it needs to be used as such. It's not something that can be ran forever, and I could say the same thing about all the other types of diets, too. I know that's going to piss every single person off that runs a different type of diet. I know, I know, I know, and that's okay.

Because I'm not here to please anyone. I'm here to teach everyone. See, that's a big difference. As a teacher, as somebody that's trying to help people, you can't be worried about somebody's going to get upset, somebody's not going to like me, I'm going to hurt somebody's feelings because I don't do it their way. That's not how this works.

That's not how you teach people. You teach people by telling them what they need To hear, not just because you want to hear it. That doesn't work. That does not work. And it never will.

It never has. When you tell somebody only what they want to hear, do you know what that tells you? That tells you that the person telling you that does not care about you. They do not. They're telling you what you want to hear for multitudes of reasons.

One, it could be to just shut you up. Two, it is really to get you to like them or to To follow them or whatever the case may be. But it's not because they care, because people that care will tell you exactly what you need to hear. And it might not make you feel good. It's not supposed to.

It's supposed to help. And help isn't always about giving somebody rainbows and unicorns and warm fuzzies all day, every day. It's about helping. It's about making changes that you need to make. I always tell my wife, Tell me, tell me if I'm talking too much.

Tell me if I look bad. Tell me if I've got something wrong that needs to be fixed. Tell me. I will only be upset if you don't. Another one that I always tell people, when you're doing any sort of business negotiation or anything of the sort, when somebody looks at you and says, oh, I don't care about money, turn around and run because that's all they care about.

It's all they care about. Every single human has to make money. Now, Do you worship money? Is everything that you do based around money? Then there's the problem.

Then we need to look at somebody. Okay? But when somebody tries to act as though that money is not of any concern of any kind, unless they're so well off and have endless and abundant amounts where it doesn't matter, then I do not listen to them nor trust them because I know that they're saying that to get your mind off of it because that's really all they care about. Every single one of you likely works unless, like I said, you've inherited so much money or you have so much you don't know what to do with. But it's how are you working?

What are you doing with that? Are you misleading people? Are you trying to sell people 75,000 different supplements and tell them that they're your favorite? They're all your favorite. That's where we get into the confusion part when it comes to, to influencers.

See, I don't like to be called an influencer because I'm not. I'm a teacher. I'm a teacher.

And a lot of the influencers are not really teachers. Some are, some are, but some aren't. Some are, and I don't want to act like every young person is not good or not wise or not a good teacher or not brilliant, because I do know several that are. But a lot of the times you'll see it on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, wherever. All they're trying to do is sell and they really don't know what they're talking about.

They have no understanding of side effects, long-term ramifications. Shit, half of them don't even use any of it. And it's not just young people. There are some people that are good friends of mine that I highly respect that many of you follow that have millions and millions and millions of followers. But they do things I don't agree with.

And I'm not going to agree with everybody. And then everybody's not going to agree with me. And some of these people are going to know that I'm talking about them. It's going to piss them off. And I don't I care, but I don't, because I think that most people that do this know in their heart of hearts that it's wrong.

You can't market 75 and 80 different things because you have an affiliate code for everything and you're just trying to make money on anything and everything. Even when I've worked with 2 and 3 companies at the same time that I firmly believe in, I feel bad about putting out too much content, but I— you, you have to for them. But I try to only work with things that I use frequently and that I am just Backing a million percent. But here's the thing that you need to understand with a lot of people that work as affiliates: when you work as an affiliate, you're only getting paid on the percent of product that you sell. And so if that is the case, and you're always working on sales like a car salesman or cell phone person or whatever, you have to sell to make any money.

You're not getting any salary or Hourly wage or anything of the sort. So of course they're going to be pushing those as hard as they can. But when people are doing it with 10 and 20 and 30 different places and they're saying they use all of these things— shit, there are some people that use 80 and 100 supplements. Is that wise? Probably not.

Probably not. But it's hard to trust them when they're marketing every single thing under the sun. We all— listen, this is another thing that frustrates me, is that everybody has to work. Everybody has to work, and people that record and do things, they have costs. It costs them to do everything too.

I just don't like the way some people go about it because it causes confusion. They make everybody think that they have to use everything under the sun, and if they don't, that they're gonna die. Because so many people put out content now that if you even get out of bed, it can kill you because of the air you're breathing or something else. It's It's gotten to that point. So, some of these influencers, they'll tell you that you have to use every single thing under the sun, and that's just not true.

It's just not true. Now, are there a lot of good products out there with a lot of good companies, a lot of people that I like and support? Absolutely. Absolutely. Doesn't mean it's for everybody.

Doesn't mean it's for everybody. Even if it could benefit you, it doesn't mean you actually need it. There are certain things that I could go down a list and say these are imperative. You know, certain kinds of vitamins, magnesium, D3, K2, these things. Yeah, I would say everybody needs those.

And you know that some are made a lot better than others. Then there's products that I could say this would be a high benefit, something like creatine, right? That's something that I could make a justifiable argument that most everybody needs it. I really could. And it would make sense.

Then there's more niche things that I could say, yeah, these are really beneficial, but do you absolutely need them? Not necessarily, no, unless you have some sort of issue where you're lacking or you need it, but they're really good for you. And then there's some shit where it's just like, come on, bro. And I'll say it like that. Come on, bro.

Like, I don't need to be spending $500 a month on this. I don't need it. Is there a benefit for it? Sure. But some of these people, they ram it down your throat and make you think you need it.

And then people just get confused. They don't know what to do. And then that takes me to the confusion of the content that I just brought up. Stop. If you happen to listen to this and you're one of the people doing it, and if you're somebody watching it, don't let this stuff bother you too much.

People have to stop making all the fearmongering content and making people think they can't leave their house. There are certain things that are true. The plastics things, you know, things like that. Yeah, that's bad. All of the things that we're exposed to, the toxins.

Hell yes, it's bad. Yes, yes, yes. A lot of the things that they're putting in our foods, yes. But man, oh man, oh man, some of these people go so damn far. Like I said, it makes you think you can't even get out of bed without something bad happening.

There are ways and means to go about your life that you can expose yourself less to certain things. Absolutely. And you should. But to think that you can't eat anything anymore, you can't eat anything that has all of these things in it or it's going to kill you. It's like, come on, man.

I'm a dietitian and a nutritionist. I've studied food since I was 11. I will be the first one to argue about so many different things that you should avoid or not have in your diet, but it doesn't mean you can avoid it 100% of the time and act like a holy roller, like you never make a mistake or cheat or have something that you shouldn't, which is what a lot of people out there do. They act inhuman. They act as though they've never done anything wrong and they live this perfect life.

And it's just, listen, everybody watching, it's a facade. It's not true. It's not true. I've been there. I've done it.

I've tried to do that. I actually— I look back on it now. I believed so much of my own bullshit for so many years. I started to do it and live it, and then I wouldn't ever eat anything wrong. And I was miserable.

And I literally— people will start to believe their own bullshit and actually start doing it and start saying it over and over to the point where they believe it. And that happens when you preach something over and over and over again. You certainly start to believe it. Believe it. Just like I will tell people, you can manifest negativity over and over and create it.

Well, you can say things over and over and over and actually start believing it. It happens all the time. Confusion, confusion, confusion, confusion on diets. Because if you start getting into these areas of diet discussion, it's not just diets, it's everything. If you have somebody getting angry at you when you ask them a question, turn around and run.

Don't listen to them. If somebody can't answer simple questions and they have to get pissed off and angry about answering why, when every single person should ask why about everything, you should always question everything. If you ask me a question and I get angry in response, what does that tell you? I don't want to be questioned. I see people that a lot of people again highly respect and they, they angrily answer.

They sarcastically answer. I used to do that too. And you know why I used to do it? Because I didn't want to get questioned. Because I knew in my heart that I was gonna get put in a position where I was probably wrong.

Now I just— yeah, yeah, okay. And then I'll go sometimes, oh shit, that's a good point. And sometimes I'll say, oh, that dude, you know, they're a little out there, but I know how I shouldn't act or respond. But you're always learning.

I mean, I will never grasp that any longer aside from anger because you're getting put on your heels and you know you're wrong. So, if you're asking somebody something like that, they start dancing around, they get angry, they tell you nonsensical answers and it's only related to the product they're selling every single time. You know, even when I work for companies, I tell them, you know, I am honest about everything that I get into and talk about. And if this doesn't fit for somebody, I'm not going to recommend it to them. And if I find something with it, you bet your ass I'm going to tell you.

See, this, this whole thing, this one-size-fits-all, like I was going to get into with diets, it's nonexistent. It's one-size-fits-none. When these people start getting angry and pissed off because you, you say something about eating a carb, it's like that. And I'm just going to create one because I actually, you know what? No, no, no.

We'll keep it equal. I'm going to go down the list. You'll get the carnivore people that if you talk bad about carnivore, they literally want to execute you. Like, literally, they will verbally execute you. And they get so pissed off for you explaining the negativity of going carnivore too long.

And it's obvious as to why. Same thing with keto, same thing with vegans and vegetarians. Everybody gets so offended. It's like you diss their mom or their wife or their kid. It's like, listen, there are so many different people that have so many different kinds of needs, necessities, allergic reactions, family histories, things that are going on in their life that this is not conducive for.

And to start telling people your way is the only way. And if they have another way or they think something else or something else worked for them, that they're crazy, they're full of shit, and they're the worst person that ever lived. What is wrong with you? Like, what, what, what the hell? I remember saying, I woke up one day and I said, what the hell happened to everybody?

I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone. I don't know. Some of you may not be old enough for that. Or if you think back to like Looney Tunes, I always relate this to Looney Tunes when Bugs Bunny would, He'd get hypnotized. Something would come on the TV and his eyes would glaze over and he turned into like this evil cartoon, whatever, and start doing crazy things that were off the wall until he got snapped out of it.

And I feel like that's happened to people where, because of the ability to type and hide behind a computer screen, everybody got tough and everybody wants to say things and do things. And it's just— it, again, it causes confusion. It causes division, more division. More confusion. And that's why you see more unhealthy and unhappy people.

And the unhealthiness, it relates far more to just what you're eating and disease. It's people that don't even know how to talk or communicate. That's very unhealthy. It's very unhealthy. I see it more and more and more, and it scares me.

And I try to tell people about the realities of what's happening. Technologies are great. Having shortcuts and making things easier are great, but what happens if those aren't around and that's all you've ever known?

What happens when those things falter, don't work, they fail?

Then what? More confusion? More hysteria? What? So what's the best thing that anybody could do?

The best thing you could do is, one, listen to your conscious. Remember, that's God talking to you. That's Holy Spirit. When your conscious tells you that something is wrong or sounds strange. Listen.

Ask questions. Ask more questions. Don't just trust an AI or Google. I promise you they're not God. I promise you they don't have all the answers.

I promise you if you test those enough, you can find a lot of flaws.

You know where the good old answers generally come from?

Trial and error, hands-on experience, listening to your body, looking at your results, seeing what works for you. Because we were all created equal in a sense, but we were all created beautifully different as well. And learning your body, learning yourself is going to give you all the answers. Some things are going to work, some things are not going to work. That's life.

Expecting everything to be handed to you and to work and to go your way at all times is not reality. It's not. It sucks. I wish it were different, but maybe not, because then how would we learn anything? How would we know success without failure?

How would we know health without illness? How would we know happiness without sadness? How would we know love without hate? We wouldn't. We wouldn't.

I'm not saying I like any of those negative things. I don't. You shouldn't either.

But look at things as tools and aids, building blocks, fuel. We're all going to make mistakes. Your brightest teachers are going to tell you something wrong. They're all human. They all have some sort of personal belief set that doesn't always work or fall in line.

Somebody that tells you they are the end-all be-all. I am science. No, you're not. No, you're not. You ain't shit when you say that.

The people that have humility, the people that care, the people that listen, the people that learn, those are the people you can trust, that you can count on. The people that actually have a heart. Everybody's got to make a living. Everybody does. Everybody's got to survive.

But is it at the expense of others or is it where everybody wins?

I don't know. I don't have that answer for everybody. All I can tell you is the way that I operate now and where I'm going from here. I don't know everything, never will, never claim to, but I can promise everybody listening one thing. If I don't have an answer, I'll help you find one.

And I will continue every single day to do my damnedest to learn as much as I humanly can, but not just to be smart, but to be wise, because wisdom and how you use what you learn, that's the ticket and that's the key. So that being said, stay tuned for plenty more to come. Signing off.