Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Brain Fitness, Micro-Habits, and Your Health (Thoryn Stephens) | Ep 472

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Brain Fitness, Micro-Habits, and Your Health (Thoryn Stephens) | Ep 472 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: You've heard of lifespan, you've heard of health span.
• 0:03
  Philip Pape: There's a third one most people aren't aware of called mind span.
• 0:06
  Philip Pape: It's the longevity and performance of your brain.
• 0:10
  Philip Pape: And it might explain why you keep falling off your nutrition and training plan every few weeks, even when you know exactly what to do.
• 0:16
  Philip Pape: Usually when that happens, your first thought might be, I need to track more closely, get more accountability, plan ahead better, follow a stricter schedule.
• 0:25
  Philip Pape: Any very smart, capable person who is building a career or business, maybe raising a family, that advice seems like it should work.
• 0:33
  Philip Pape: And yet this often works for only a few weeks before you're back at square one.
• 0:37
  Philip Pape: My guest today has a background in molecular biology and knows a lot about the human brain.
• 0:42
  Philip Pape: He's going to tell us what mindspand actually is, how microhabits and cognitive capacity connect to your training and nutrition, and the surprising and counterintuitive fix for inconsistency.
• 0:55
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, where in every episode we put a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, find the hidden reason it doesn't work, and give you the deceptively simple fix that does.
• 1:09
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, Philip Pape.
• 1:11
  Philip Pape: And if you've ever fallen off your training or nutrition plan and tried to fix it by adding more, adding more structure, more tracking, more accountability, more planning, today's episode is going to challenge that thinking because we're going to talk about something called mind span.
• 1:26
  Philip Pape: The idea that your brain's performance and longevity is an important variable in and of itself, because in fact your brain and your cognitive capacity might be the real bottleneck in your ability to be consistent.
• 1:38
  Philip Pape: My guest today is Thorin Stevens.
• 1:40
  Philip Pape: Thorin started in molecular biology, spent over a decade in data science and analytics.
• 1:45
  Philip Pape: He now runs Brain One, a platform focused on brain fitness and behavioral protocols.
• 1:51
  Philip Pape: He's all about neural performance and how to optimize human health to increase things like focus, energy, resilience.
• 1:57
  Philip Pape: Today we're discussing mind span and why it matters for your physical health and fitness, how things like microhabits and cognitive capacity connect to your ability to accomplish your goals and strategies to make your routine even more sticky and sustainable.
• 2:13
  Philip Pape: Thorin, welcome to Wits and Waits.
• 2:15
  Thoryn Stephens: Thank you so much.
• 2:16
  Thoryn Stephens: Glad to be here.
• 2:17
  Philip Pape: So we often describe consistency as a behavior problem, right?
• 2:20
  Philip Pape: And I think what I've learned from your work is that you might say it's more of a brain-related or cognitive problem in terms of your ability to even execute those behaviors.
• 2:29
  Philip Pape: Is that a fair way to characterize it?
• 2:31
  Thoryn Stephens: I think humans are immensely complicated.
• 2:34
  Thoryn Stephens: And getting a human to do one small thing routinely is very challenging in itself.
• 2:39
  Thoryn Stephens: So I believe there's rigor you can put behind how people learn new habits fundamentally.
• 2:45
  Thoryn Stephens: So I think there's definitely opportunity there.
• 2:47
  Philip Pape: So let's let's go a little deeper on that then, because you're all about the brain and brain fitness, right?
• 2:52
  Philip Pape: So when you talk about the rigor of setting up those behaviors, are we talking about a system, a structure?
• 2:57
  Philip Pape: Is it more about I mean, what is it?
• 3:00
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 3:00
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah.
• 3:00
  Thoryn Stephens: So just super briefly on my background, I'm a molecular biologist, went into data science, and then I started doing marathons and Ironman's and were using essentially health protocols to organize how I was training.
• 3:15
  Thoryn Stephens: And that really applies to other areas of my life as well, you know, relative to like my day-to-day health protocol.
• 3:20
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, when you get up in the morning, what do you do?
• 3:22
  Thoryn Stephens: And so when we talk about brain optimization, what we've seen through our own testing and research and also just looking at, you know, thousands of longevity papers and so forth, I mean, you have to really start with the basics.
• 3:34
  Thoryn Stephens: So ours are nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress, connection, some sort of metabolic, you know, just optimization as well.
• 3:42
  Thoryn Stephens: Those are kind of like the six pillars that we generally see.
• 3:45
  Thoryn Stephens: So if you're not sleeping, then you're not going to be neurologically active.
• 3:48
  Thoryn Stephens: It doesn't matter what nootropics you're taking or, you know, what magic pills.
• 3:52
  Thoryn Stephens: You really have to start with the foundation.
• 3:54
  Thoryn Stephens: And then from there, layering in a, you know, additional microhabits is what we call them, just small structured, you know, incremental things that you do that then have, you know, bigger sustained game over time.
• 4:03
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 4:03
  Philip Pape: So I got three things out of that I want to dig in.
• 4:06
  Philip Pape: One is the longevity connection.
• 4:08
  Philip Pape: The two is the sixth or the fifth and sixth piece of those pillars, which you imagine connection and metabolic optimization.
• 4:15
  Philip Pape: And then three is this layering on.
• 4:17
  Philip Pape: So starting with longevity, why is longevity important in and of itself?
• 4:20
  Philip Pape: Because I know there are short and long-term goals.
• 4:23
  Philip Pape: And sometimes, you know, I know when I went through my nutrition coaching, right, you learn that there's these trade-offs between physique and athleticism and longevity.
• 4:32
  Philip Pape: And so why is that important?
• 4:34
  Thoryn Stephens: I think it depends on the human, right?
• 4:35
  Thoryn Stephens: I look at things such as this as a spectrum.
• 4:38
  Thoryn Stephens: And like over here, you have Brian Johnson, who is doing everything he can to optimize his biology to live longer.
• 4:44
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, most humans are kind of over here.
• 4:46
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, they know they want to live for a long time, but you know, maybe aren't making changes.
• 4:50
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, I don't know, maybe we're maybe over here a bit, following some sort of a structured plan.
• 4:54
  Thoryn Stephens: I think it depends on on the human and ultimately their own motivations.
• 4:57
  Thoryn Stephens: Not everyone wants to live forever.
• 4:59
  Thoryn Stephens: And, you know, as you look at these protocols for this, you know, supposedly to add, you know, additional years on that health span, those remaining years of your life, does that impact your quality of life, you know, and the things that you love to do?
• 5:10
  Thoryn Stephens: So it's in my mind, it's always a balance in these these things.
• 5:14
  Philip Pape: And is the balance between health and lifespan or is this extra mind span variable layered in there now?
• 5:18
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, I think it's kind of all of the above, you know, like again, doing the things that you love, anything that you love that's done in excess generally is you know negative relative to your mind span, health span, all the above.
• 5:30
  Thoryn Stephens: So I think you know, the balance of it is really important.
• 5:34
  Philip Pape: That's a good way to put it, right?
• 5:35
  Philip Pape: Anything in excess, because that's often what we talk about is doing too much handing that back.
• 5:39
  Philip Pape: Putting extra weight, yeah, exactly.
• 5:41
  Thoryn Stephens: Everything of course.
• 5:43
  Thoryn Stephens: So, but yeah, those are some of the principles that we really try to, you know, round around, basically.
• 5:48
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 5:49
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 5:49
  Philip Pape: Well, I I like principles.
• 5:50
  Philip Pape: So when you meant you said you start with the pillars and then you lay around microhabits, and we talk ad nauseum on this podcast about nutrition and training and sleep and stress.
• 5:59
  Philip Pape: You did mention though, connection, which I assume you mean like human connection, community, things like that.
• 6:04
  Philip Pape: Is that what you're talking about?
• 6:05
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, I mean, I would expand it a bit.
• 6:06
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, so I'm a molecular biologist turned data scientist.
• 6:09
  Thoryn Stephens: So, you know, my life has revolved around data, but you know, I'm not obsessive about these things.
• 6:14
  Thoryn Stephens: And I went and met with the Center for Brain Health out of UT Dallas a couple years ago.
• 6:19
  Thoryn Stephens: I was just starting Brain One and you know, had this vision.
• 6:22
  Thoryn Stephens: And I met with uh one of the founders, Dr.
• 6:24
  Thoryn Stephens: Sandra Chapman, and I was like, you know, Dr.
• 6:27
  Thoryn Stephens: Sandra, we have all this amazing data sets, and I'm looking at my bar markers and my, you know, my my wearable data, and then we're amalgamating it and I'm seeing all these patterns.
• 6:35
  Thoryn Stephens: And she's like, Yeah, Thorin, that's really cool.
• 6:37
  Thoryn Stephens: You know what's really cooler?
• 6:38
  Thoryn Stephens: Connection.
• 6:39
  Thoryn Stephens: And humans that have connection, whether it's to themselves, it's to the higher power, it's to their family, you know, it's to their community, live longer.
• 6:47
  Thoryn Stephens: Like, period.
• 6:48
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, the data absolutely suggests, you know, how much longer?
• 6:50
  Thoryn Stephens: I don't know, 10 to 15%, depending on the study, you know, but a number of years.
• 6:54
  Thoryn Stephens: And so people ask, like, what is the secret of life?
• 6:57
  Thoryn Stephens: I think it's fundamentally simple.
• 6:59
  Thoryn Stephens: It's waking up and doing what you love.
• 7:01
  Thoryn Stephens: And if you are doing something you don't love, you'll wake up and then you'll be disgruntled and so many impacts there.
• 7:07
  Thoryn Stephens: So as we think about those things, you know, waking up with, you know, a an inspiration or just a desire to do something, you know, whether whatever that is, again, spending time with your family.
• 7:17
  Thoryn Stephens: And community is an integral part of that, you know, quite literally.
• 7:20
  Thoryn Stephens: And then there's other small things.
• 7:21
  Thoryn Stephens: It can be a book club, it could be chess club, it could be, you know, playing soccer with the friends, whatever it is.
• 7:28
  Thoryn Stephens: But there's absolutely a connection both to longevity, but also just neurological optimization relative to community and connection.
• 7:35
  Philip Pape: I think it's underrated.
• 7:36
  Philip Pape: Uh I definitely, you know, because we don't we don't measure it, right?
• 7:39
  Philip Pape: So like you kind of assume there's this black box or this myopic kind of view of wearables and measurement and everything.
• 7:45
  Philip Pape: And it's like, who I mean, I do know people in different spaces who have that as a thing that they track, right?
• 7:50
  Philip Pape: Which some would say, Oh, that's crazy.
• 7:52
  Philip Pape: Why would you track these squishy things like relationships or how often you talk to your wife?
• 7:56
  Philip Pape: But you know, I mean, it's sometimes you have to have targets and goals, right?
• 8:00
  Thoryn Stephens: Uh I think that's very, very interesting.
• 8:02
  Thoryn Stephens: How are they tracking those relationships?
• 8:03
  Thoryn Stephens: Just curious.
• 8:04
  Philip Pape: I mean, there's different approaches.
• 8:06
  Philip Pape: There's, you know, uh a rate yourself on one to ten in a context of like 10 things you care about, those kinds of things, right?
• 8:12
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:12
  Thoryn Stephens: Awesome.
• 8:13
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, that's really interesting.
• 8:14
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, there's also the social side of all of this, which I think can be a bit nefarious, how you think about your social circles, connect things.
• 8:21
  Thoryn Stephens: But yeah, so I would say the measurement behind this is what's been the most interesting to me throughout my career when I was in biotech initially, and then I went into user behavior research and you know, so forth.
• 8:30
  Thoryn Stephens: That's really been the thread line, is the measurement of these different attributes.
• 8:34
  Philip Pape: So I'm curious what the on the connection side, because I have a small background in applied psychology, Martin Seligman Seligman, right?
• 8:40
  Philip Pape: And then the follow-on work where they talked about flourishing and happiness and how connection was like the number one related variable to happiness.
• 8:47
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah.
• 8:48
  Philip Pape: When we think about connection, you mentioned a bunch of different examples, but like when someone is trying to improve themselves, today we have, and you said nefarious, and I don't know if you're talking about like social media and and some of that when you said nefarious, but how does self-motivation theory, I think SMT, right?
• 9:04
  Philip Pape: Which has relatedness as one of its factors, how does that factor into this?
• 9:09
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, that's not my area of research, just to be honest, but I can tell you what I've seen anecdotally.
• 9:14
  Thoryn Stephens: Again, you know, people who wake up and have that connection and that spark are more emphatic and generally feel and live longer, ultimately.
• 9:22
  Thoryn Stephens: So what is that based on?
• 9:24
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, I think that's a great academic uh question.
• 9:27
  Thoryn Stephens: I would also say, you know, going to the prior point, yeah.
• 9:30
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, we generally think about you know the world in microhabits, small incremental changes, protocols, and then programs that you can build, you know, to reach that desired objective, you know, such as connection.
• 9:40
  Thoryn Stephens: So that's why I appreciate your thoughts around, you know, how to measure that.
• 9:44
  Thoryn Stephens: I do believe on the other side of the coin, when you talk about things like social media, I think that's personally entirely negative.
• 9:50
  Thoryn Stephens: As a data scientist, when I was looking at this user level data, this is back in like, you know, 2012 through 14, 15, back when like Facebook had an open API, Twitter had an open API.
• 10:02
  Thoryn Stephens: And, you know, we could see in the data, you know, which was guised as connection, you know, you're connecting to children from your childhood and you know, people from your past and so forth, but not really the case, you know, and how that data can be used very nefariously to optimize your behavior through an algorithm, you know, which is what we're seeing now.
• 10:20
  Thoryn Stephens: And so all the recent, you know, press around meta being find with you know young adults, you know, this was all known a decade ago.
• 10:28
  Thoryn Stephens: This was not new.
• 10:29
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, again, the data was already there.
• 10:31
  Thoryn Stephens: It's unfortunate, it's taken this long, an entire generation of humans, you know, to have been so susceptible to this because it's really preying on some of the negative sides of that connection and game theory, and you know, you get like the number of likes and all those pieces.
• 10:45
  Philip Pape: And the dopamine, yeah, yeah.
• 10:48
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah.
• 10:48
  Philip Pape: Yeah, a friend of mine, you know, was telling me about where he's sending his kid to school.
• 10:52
  Philip Pape: So we homeschool our kids, they used to, but now they're in public school.
• 10:55
  Philip Pape: But it's, you know, he he went out of his way to find a school that didn't use technology because you're seeing that pushback as well among public schools.
• 11:01
  Philip Pape: And one of the anecdotes was that the Chromebooks led to more cyberbullying just because of the easy access to emailing each other and stuff like you're just like, man, the world has changed, and yeah, that stuff is not almost never positive.
• 11:15
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah.
• 11:15
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, but again, it's a balance.
• 11:17
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, we can't expect our children, you know, or community to like live out in the forest be a Luddite.
• 11:23
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah.
• 11:23
  Thoryn Stephens: Quite literally.
• 11:24
  Thoryn Stephens: So, you know, my feeling I get it asked is constantly, you know, it's like my my feelings on AI, and I feel like you actually need to truly understand it and you need to learn these tools.
• 11:33
  Thoryn Stephens: You need to see what's happening with Claude because it's moving so fast.
• 11:37
  Thoryn Stephens: And otherwise, you know, then you're going to be making your decisions, maybe not based on the most empirical data.
• 11:42
  Thoryn Stephens: So I think it's great to know these things and you know, expose, but again, you know, always in moderation.
• 11:48
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 11:48
  Philip Pape: So before I lose the audience with some of the some of these tangents, which I I enjoy academically, but going back to the microhabits, let's get into that because we've had a lot of guests on here that talked about habit theory.
• 12:00
  Philip Pape: We've gotten in atomic habits and and you know, the how long it takes to build a habit and having either, you know, very hard and fast rules to take you out of temptation from coming off a habit and lots of different approaches.
• 12:12
  Philip Pape: Just what lane are you in that's supported academically by the research you've seen?
• 12:16
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, we follow a general CBT, so cognitive behavioral therapy type of framework, right?
• 12:21
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, where it's Q reward fundamentally, which is in line with like James Clear and the atomic habits of framing.
• 12:27
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, what I've found in this research is again, it's really about motivation.
• 12:31
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, we have a platform called Brain One.
• 12:34
  Thoryn Stephens: We work with clinicians, we work with individuals, and one of the metrics we track is adherence.
• 12:40
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, you ask a human to do a thing to improve sleep, weight, you know, metabolic health, whatever it might be.
• 12:46
  Thoryn Stephens: Do they do the things that you ask them to do?
• 12:48
  Thoryn Stephens: And I'm sure you've seen this in your training.
• 12:50
  Thoryn Stephens: It's incredible, like so the technology here I find very easy.
• 12:53
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, we can build easy, accessible technology to help support this.
• 12:56
  Thoryn Stephens: The challenge is the human behavior.
• 12:58
  Thoryn Stephens: Like that is the crux of all of this.
• 13:00
  Thoryn Stephens: And getting one human to do one thing regularly as a new, you know, again, microhabit, you know, part of their day is just incredibly challenging.
• 13:08
  Thoryn Stephens: So what I've seen again, it's that cue reward, those are rewards and ultimately those motivations.
• 13:12
  Philip Pape: So let's get into that.
• 13:13
  Philip Pape: Somebody I heard maybe a year or two ago, Dr.
• 13:16
  Philip Pape: Karen Norden.
• 13:17
  Philip Pape: I don't know if you're familiar with her.
• 13:18
  Philip Pape: She's a bit in behavior change, and she was the first one to say, and maybe this is just a contrarian way to present it, you know, when it comes to nutrition or training, let's talk about training and exercise.
• 13:29
  Philip Pape: You know, the act, that whole systemic act of having your exercise routine itself is not a habit because it's at two too large a level, it's too macro.
• 13:37
  Philip Pape: And the habits are the automated things that go down all the way to what you said, the Q reward system.
• 13:43
  Philip Pape: So how do we find that level?
• 13:45
  Philip Pape: If you agree with that, you know, tell how do we find that level that truly is a habit that becomes automatic versus this systemic combination of habits?
• 13:54
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 13:55
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 13:55
  Thoryn Stephens: I'll definitely check out her research.
• 13:57
  Thoryn Stephens: What we've seen empirically, again, I think humans are more successful if they have a structure behind it, period.
• 14:04
  Thoryn Stephens: So my personal example, I was athletic as a youth.
• 14:08
  Thoryn Stephens: I went to a high school for snowboarding and US ski team, Olympians, and so forth.
• 14:13
  Thoryn Stephens: But then when I went to college, I studied biotechnology.
• 14:15
  Thoryn Stephens: And then after college, you know, I was kind of just debating on what to do next.
• 14:19
  Thoryn Stephens: And long story short, I started running.
• 14:20
  Thoryn Stephens: And it started off with Susan G.
• 14:22
  Thoryn Stephens: Comb and 10K, and then a half marathon, marathon, and then I went to triathlons and Ironmans and so forth.
• 14:27
  Thoryn Stephens: And it was through that experience I began to use what we call a health protocol.
• 14:31
  Thoryn Stephens: And so we'll break down the protocol, which again are just the things that you do, you train, take case of triathlon, swim, bike, run, weights, but then your nutrition.
• 14:40
  Thoryn Stephens: And nutrition is such an integral part of these types of races because you're in real time optimizing your health, you know, using things like heart rate.
• 14:49
  Thoryn Stephens: That's really where I started back when we had these giant chunky garments that were like, you know, the size of your.
• 14:53
  Thoryn Stephens: So generally that's how we think about the world.
• 15:33
  Thoryn Stephens: Again, microhabits, you know, things that you do, nutrition, the building blocks, a measurement, which could be wearables, it could be other different types of measure, you know.
• 15:41
  Thoryn Stephens: And so I think it's really critical to understand in each of these areas, you know, what is your baseline, and then how are you going to improve, and then how are you going to measure that?
• 15:49
  Thoryn Stephens: And, you know, to that regard, like I've been, you know, I came out of biotech and I've been using protocols to synthesize DNA.
• 15:57
  Thoryn Stephens: I've been using protocols to, you know, do these like long distance, you know, triathlons and so forth.
• 16:02
  Thoryn Stephens: Fundamentally, your protocol is just your daily routine.
• 16:04
  Thoryn Stephens: It's the things that you do, you know, when you get up in the morning.
• 16:07
  Thoryn Stephens: And so what we found is putting that into a system can be helpful and it drives adherence.
• 16:12
  Thoryn Stephens: Some people come every day and track, some people don't, and that's okay.
• 16:15
  Thoryn Stephens: Just getting it on paper is the first step, you know, really beginning to understand where you can improve, and then you're layering the data on top of that, and then you can work towards a plan.
• 16:24
  Thoryn Stephens: But, you know, some people will never look at an app, you know, period.
• 16:28
  Thoryn Stephens: So you really have to meet them where they're at.
• 16:29
  Philip Pape: Yeah, and and I'm people know I'm a huge data nerd.
• 16:32
  Philip Pape: I do love tracking, and I do find that on day zero, if you can track the challenge I found for folks is what to track, how to measure it, which you've kind of implied so that you have something to baseline and actually improve.
• 16:44
  Philip Pape: And where my mind goes with that is the body is complex and there are direct things we can measure and there are proxies for things, and then there's things we may not even know quite how to measure.
• 16:54
  Philip Pape: So, for example, nobody's gonna do doubly labeled water tests to measure their caloric expenditure, but we know that you eat food and you gain or lose weight, and therefore your body as a black box burns calories.
• 17:07
  Philip Pape: And then we say, okay, well, now the composition of what you eat is important.
• 17:09
  Philip Pape: So we're gonna measure protein and on and on, right?
• 17:12
  Philip Pape: So, like, just how do you think about that to not overwhelm somebody who like should they even get to that step before they're doing some of these pillars at a rough level?
• 17:23
  Philip Pape: Or do you need this at the beginning at a very light level to do the pillars, if you know what I'm saying?
• 17:28
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, I think it's probably the latter is you know what I've seen in our own research anyway.
• 17:33
  Thoryn Stephens: I think it's really good to, again, starting with the goal of what they're trying to achieve, but what are the non-negotiables?
• 17:39
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, like what are the things that pretty much all of us should be doing every day?
• 17:43
  Thoryn Stephens: An example could be circadian regulation, you know.
• 17:46
  Thoryn Stephens: So we all generally have challenges with sleep.
• 17:49
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, we hear sleep, anxiety, and gut are the three nonstop, right?
• 17:53
  Thoryn Stephens: And so they're all related, of course, but you know, when you talk about sleep, it's not necessarily all your preparation at night, it could be your preparation in the morning.
• 18:00
  Thoryn Stephens: And so, how much direct sunlight do you get?
• 18:02
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, what does that do to cortisol?
• 18:04
  Thoryn Stephens: And then ultimately, you know, really just the your hormone, you know, throughout the morning and then the rest of your day, it's so critical.
• 18:10
  Thoryn Stephens: So that would be like a non-negotiable.
• 18:11
  Thoryn Stephens: And that's hard for some people.
• 18:12
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, I'm you know, myself included, I live in the mountains in Colorado.
• 18:16
  Thoryn Stephens: We don't even actually get direct sunlight until about nine, obviously up at six, but you do the best you can, you know, and that would be an example is getting as much direct sunlight as you know early in the morning as possible.
• 18:26
  Thoryn Stephens: Another could be a hydration, another could be, you know, prayer gratitude, you know, depending on the human.
• 18:31
  Thoryn Stephens: So we have a set of non-negotiables we try to try to follow, but they also are completely in line with the core pillars of you know, nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress, community, metabolic health, and those pieces.
• 18:42
  Thoryn Stephens: So all related.
• 18:44
  Philip Pape: Yeah, they're all related.
• 18:45
  Philip Pape: So you said it starts with a goal, and even that could lead to not an argument, but a discussion I've had with people about, you know, do we even set a goal before we set a timeline?
• 18:54
  Philip Pape: Maybe we have a timeline, then a goal, whatever.
• 18:56
  Philip Pape: I don't want to go down that rabbit hole.
• 18:57
  Philip Pape: Actually, you start with a goal.
• 18:58
  Philip Pape: So let's say your goal is just you want to feel and look better, right?
• 19:02
  Philip Pape: Like you're the average person who is generally dissatisfied with the habits they've developed over many years.
• 19:07
  Philip Pape: They're probably in their 30s or 40s at this point because that's when things start to catch up physically and energy-wise, and of course the hormonal decline and all that fun stuff.
• 19:16
  Philip Pape: People listening to this podcast and they're like, hey, Thorne, I just want to look a little better, feel a little better, lose that belly fat, and just kind of maybe live a little longer and be healthy.
• 19:26
  Philip Pape: Like a lot of people just state that as their general goal.
• 19:28
  Philip Pape: Do you work on them to hone that further first?
• 19:32
  Thoryn Stephens: You certainly do.
• 19:33
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, we have a system that helps support them.
• 19:34
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah.
• 19:35
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, that's, you know, we try to be as specific as possible, I guess I would say.
• 19:39
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, are you really like relative to neurological optimization?
• 19:42
  Thoryn Stephens: Is it, you know, your decisioning?
• 19:44
  Thoryn Stephens: Is it your executive function?
• 19:46
  Thoryn Stephens: Is it just memory?
• 19:47
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, what's specifically there?
• 19:49
  Thoryn Stephens: Or, you know, relative to other indications, sleep as an example.
• 19:53
  Thoryn Stephens: And then what's the baseline?
• 19:54
  Thoryn Stephens: How do we measure it?
• 19:55
  Thoryn Stephens: How do we build a plan around it?
• 19:57
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 19:57
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah.
• 19:58
  Philip Pape: So then where does the mindspan concept come into this?
• 20:01
  Philip Pape: I didn't have a lot of time to research this, but I understand it's related to cognitive capacity and brain health overall.
• 20:07
  Philip Pape: Like where does that fit in?
• 20:09
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, it's not so personally, I would say an example of my pursuit of mind span will be three through, like microhabits like consciousness.
• 20:18
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, how are you thinking about consciousness, consciousness expansion?
• 20:22
  Thoryn Stephens: I've spent a lot of time with plant medicines and psychedelics over the years.
• 20:25
  Thoryn Stephens: So that is one of the tools that I personally use, which I don't necessarily advocate.
• 20:30
  Thoryn Stephens: But, you know, if someone's curious, happy to have a conversation.
• 20:33
  Philip Pape: Okay, and that's it.
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: I was hoping for a little more, right?
• 20:36
  Philip Pape: Like with the whole mind span thing, just because it seemed to be a key piece here with as like a holdup or root cause behind why some people might have trouble executing on these microhabits.
• 20:47
  Thoryn Stephens: Okay.
• 20:47
  Thoryn Stephens: Not something in our research, to be honest.
• 20:49
  Thoryn Stephens: That's not something very focused on.
• 20:51
  Thoryn Stephens: But yeah.
• 20:52
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 20:52
  Philip Pape: So yeah, yeah.
• 20:53
  Philip Pape: No, no, for sure.
• 20:54
  Philip Pape: So then we get into the intersection of okay, so you're trying to develop these microhabits.
• 20:57
  Philip Pape: You identified what you want to measure and improve.
• 21:00
  Philip Pape: Now, how do you do it?
• 21:01
  Philip Pape: Like, how do you make it stick?
• 21:02
  Philip Pape: You mentioned Q reward, like what are the practical ways to do that?
• 21:05
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah.
• 21:06
  Thoryn Stephens: So we have again a structured framework that we follow and that we've developed.
• 21:09
  Thoryn Stephens: Really, at the end of the day, it's a tracker.
• 21:11
  Thoryn Stephens: And it is, again, understanding the high-level goal that you're working towards, and then what are these small microhabits, these incremental changes that you're doing to actually get you to that goal without overwhelming the human?
• 21:22
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, that's the number one thing that we hear.
• 21:24
  Thoryn Stephens: And that's why so many of these plans, I think, fail, is because people get overwhelmed and there's too many things to do.
• 21:29
  Thoryn Stephens: And just getting one human to do one thing regularly is a massive accomplishment, let alone, you know, a select category.
• 21:36
  Thoryn Stephens: But it also depends on, you know, the types of people out there.
• 21:39
  Thoryn Stephens: Like if you've ever done any competitive, you know, athleticism marathons as an example, then you've probably followed some sort of a training plan.
• 21:47
  Thoryn Stephens: But that type of discipline, and that's another really integral, I don't even call it a microhabit.
• 21:51
  Thoryn Stephens: It's almost like a non negotiable, but you know, following these types of plans that are outlined that have some level of reward.
• 21:58
  Thoryn Stephens: And then I'm also a big believer in In the data without having the person be overwhelmed, or you know, you can also have like analysis paralysis where people get so obsessed with the data that's actually negative.
• 22:10
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, when you wake up in the morning, you look at your phone, you're like, oh my gosh, my readiness score from aura is like it's only a 45, I'm gonna have a horrible day.
• 22:17
  Thoryn Stephens: But you actually could have had a great day if you just took a minute to really, you know, connect yourself and see how you feel.
• 22:23
  Philip Pape: So yeah, those are some of the small things that I'm laughing because I have an aura ring and some days I'm like, I can predict what it's going to say.
• 22:30
  Philip Pape: And I'm like, I don't know how it's helping me.
• 22:31
  Philip Pape: I just you know, I drank I drank last night, I haven't drunk in two months.
• 22:34
  Philip Pape: I know it's gonna be well, but it helps.
• 22:36
  Thoryn Stephens: So you know, I hear that a lot too, and it's interesting, right?
• 22:39
  Thoryn Stephens: Because some people then stop using the wearables because they're like, oh, I already know what it's gonna say, which is true.
• 22:44
  Thoryn Stephens: But even just having that baseline data, I think is absolutely critical because it's something you can measure against.
• 22:49
  Thoryn Stephens: And the old quote, you cannot manage, cannot manage what you can't measure.
• 22:53
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, I agree with that, you know, and so having at least some understanding, but you know, it also should be intuitive.
• 22:59
  Thoryn Stephens: It's like, how do you feel?
• 23:00
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, you know when you wake up in the morning, the data helps support it.
• 23:04
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, I look at certain metrics regularly, like resting heart rate and HRV.
• 23:07
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, those are kind of my go-to relative to my recovery, my parasympathetic nervous system, and just, you know, all the things going on in my life.
• 23:15
  Thoryn Stephens: I definitely see a direct connection, you know, both on the behavioral side as well as, you know, if I just have a glass of wine, how does that impact, you know, literally?
• 23:24
  Philip Pape: For sure.
• 23:24
  Philip Pape: Yeah, we talk about those all the time.
• 23:25
  Philip Pape: Those are really even just resting heart rate because it's so easy to measure and changes so quickly within days based on your activity.
• 23:32
  Philip Pape: So and there's another one I've been talking to people about.
• 23:35
  Philip Pape: It's just a simple heart rate recovery, like in real time, like an acute heart rate recovery, right?
• 23:40
  Philip Pape: Like if you're if you're exercising, for example, how fast does your heart rate recover?
• 23:44
  Philip Pape: And I don't know if what does your anything you do measure that?
• 23:47
  Philip Pape: No, I'm actually not familiar with that matter.
• 23:49
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:49
  Philip Pape: Yeah, where you could you could shorten that time over time and as as a measure of cardiovascular fitness.
• 23:54
  Philip Pape: But anyway, yeah, that makes sense.
• 23:56
  Philip Pape: So you mentioned rewards, and and that's another thing that comes to mind is are we talking intrinsic, it's extrinsic, or it kind of depends?
• 24:02
  Philip Pape: I think it depends.
• 24:04
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah.
• 24:04
  Thoryn Stephens: Depends on the human, depends on ultimately what they're trying to you know achieve.
• 24:08
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah.
• 24:08
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 24:09
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 24:09
  Philip Pape: Cause the habit thing with the data, you mentioned an so we talk about an aura ring, and I think, okay, what I like about something like an aura ring or step track or whatever is it's automatic.
• 24:19
  Philip Pape: It like zero friction, it's capturing the data for you.
• 24:22
  Philip Pape: How much is friction as a variable to be considered when you're setting up these systems?
• 24:27
  Thoryn Stephens: Oh, I think it's everything ultimately.
• 24:29
  Thoryn Stephens: And again, it really that's where you have to hone in on the persona, age is a big factor.
• 24:34
  Thoryn Stephens: We work with certain clinicians that have an older population.
• 24:37
  Thoryn Stephens: You can build the best app tracker in the world.
• 24:39
  Thoryn Stephens: It doesn't matter, they're not going to use it.
• 24:41
  Thoryn Stephens: So we've looked at other mechanisms, even like just having notebooks and you know, paper trackers people can follow.
• 24:47
  Thoryn Stephens: I think that's interesting.
• 24:48
  Thoryn Stephens: SMS, you know, how do you but truly meet the person where they're at?
• 24:52
  Thoryn Stephens: So that's a really kind of integral part in all of the.
• 24:55
  Philip Pape: Yeah, man.
• 24:55
  Philip Pape: I could I I could relate.
• 24:57
  Philip Pape: I I love spreadsheets, and a lot of people don't.
• 25:00
  Philip Pape: Here, use this spreadsheet.
• 25:02
  Philip Pape: Even like the best.
• 25:04
  Thoryn Stephens: But you know, for a normal human, it actually might not be, you know, ultimately.
• 25:08
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, we we've been testing adherence with just a single text message.
• 25:11
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, you get one in the morning, like, hey, these are your three microhabits for the day.
• 25:15
  Thoryn Stephens: If you want more, you can click on it, it takes you to the platform or not, you know, and at least you know, at least you have a framework, you know, and I think there's just there's so much value in that getting it on paper.
• 25:23
  Thoryn Stephens: And again, even if you don't do it every day, and you shouldn't be too hard on yourself, but you know, do the best you can and ultimately have the measurement to try to reach whatever you're trying to achieve.
• 25:32
  Philip Pape: So you just said something interesting there every day.
• 25:35
  Philip Pape: And that that's another argument I've had with folks because let's say you want to lift weights, right?
• 25:39
  Philip Pape: And we know you could train as little as one or two days a week, all the way up to six, or if you're crazy, seven days a week, lifting weights.
• 25:47
  Philip Pape: And and there's like a school of thought that says, well, even if you're gonna lift three days a week, the other four days you have something in that block or something to kind of check off as part of your fitness routine, like a walk or something.
• 25:58
  Philip Pape: What are your thoughts on that theory of like seven days a week theory versus these less frequent things?
• 26:05
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, I would say I I now that said I'm a highly aggressive human relative to my exercise.
• 26:10
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, I live here in Colorado, try to ski snowboard almost every day, you know, during the winter, in the summertimes, it's trail runnings, it's cycling, it's mountain biking.
• 26:18
  Thoryn Stephens: So I am out all the time.
• 26:20
  Thoryn Stephens: My core routine, I do hot Pilates.
• 26:23
  Thoryn Stephens: So I get the sweat plus weights and then, you know, some cardio and so forth.
• 26:27
  Thoryn Stephens: And that's at least three to four days a week.
• 26:30
  Thoryn Stephens: So personally, I mean, I would say I always listen to my body first and foremost.
• 26:34
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, I try to do Pilates every single day, but if I wake up and my HRV is dipped because I hit it too hard the day before, I'll listen to my body and just not go to that class, you know, fundamentally.
• 26:46
  Thoryn Stephens: But I think in all things, I mean, again, going back to you know the brain and neuroplasticity, you know, you want to have periods of recovery.
• 26:52
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, that's absolutely as critical as actually doing the exercise yourself yourself.
• 26:56
  Thoryn Stephens: And as you know, that's literally when you know the muscles actually rebuild is during that recovery period.
• 27:00
  Philip Pape: So absolutely Yeah, true.
• 27:02
  Philip Pape: I agree.
• 27:02
  Philip Pape: Sometimes we talk about recovery as like the overriding variable for all of this, and then it you back into.
• 27:07
  Philip Pape: But kind of what I was really asking very poorly was with brain science and stickiness and discipline, is having the daily habit, whether even if it changes.
• 27:18
  Philip Pape: So like I have a daily movement habit, and it might be training this day, it might be hot yoga this day, it might be walking slowly this day.
• 27:26
  Philip Pape: Does that lead to more success or stickiness with your habit than not?
• 27:30
  Thoryn Stephens: I think we've seen both in our data.
• 27:31
  Thoryn Stephens: Again, I think it depends on the human.
• 27:33
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, some people do really well with like strong structure, six days on, one day off, you know, whatever it might be.
• 27:40
  Thoryn Stephens: But I I feel that it really does vary.
• 27:42
  Thoryn Stephens: And again, I go back to the motivation of the human, what they're trying to achieve.
• 27:45
  Thoryn Stephens: But yeah, I mean, that's the that's the hardest part in all of this, Philip, is that behavioral piece like period.
• 27:51
  Thoryn Stephens: Again, the rest of this, the plans, the technology, you know, we're in biometrics, biomarkers, we just added face scans.
• 27:57
  Thoryn Stephens: So we get 40 biomark or 30 biomarkers off of a face scan as an example.
• 28:01
  Thoryn Stephens: Interesting, you know, what we can now do with that data to look at the time series.
• 28:06
  Thoryn Stephens: But if the human's not doing the thing that they want to do or whatever their objectives, their goals are, then you know, ultimately we're failing.
• 28:12
  Philip Pape: So yeah, just always curious about this stuff because there's, you know, if if you cherry pick any particular study, then you you go down a rabbit hole where things conflict.
• 28:19
  Philip Pape: Like I remember learning about a study maybe two years ago that looked compared five days to seven days of weigh-ins.
• 28:26
  Philip Pape: So it wasn't even looking at like frequent weigh-ins versus infrequent, it was looking at five versus seven, and it found better, you know, sustaining of weight loss results when it was seven versus five.
• 28:37
  Thoryn Stephens: That's interesting.
• 28:37
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 28:38
  Philip Pape: You see those little things, and I'm like, well, that's an interesting, right?
• 28:40
  Philip Pape: The variable changed just a little bit.
• 28:43
  Thoryn Stephens: Exactly.
• 28:43
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 28:43
  Philip Pape: So, and I know there's some folks that that subscribe to that, but but maybe it is individualistic, just like study data is based on a population and you can be an outlier or whatever.
• 28:51
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah.
• 28:52
  Philip Pape: What was the other thing you mentioned about?
• 28:53
  Philip Pape: I'm totally off track of all the original stuff I was going to talk about because it's very interesting.
• 28:58
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, if you think we dive into a little bit more is again around the concept of these microhabits and behavior change, and that I always come back to so my background's in molecular biology, but gene expression, in that I think this is a really important point people don't necessarily understand, like dementia prevention, right?
• 29:14
  Thoryn Stephens: Everyone listening to this is terrified, maybe for themselves, maybe for their parents, their grandparents.
• 29:20
  Thoryn Stephens: And so there are, there's a paper, uh, it's a Lancet 2024.
• 29:24
  Thoryn Stephens: I might include it or share it with you, but it outlines essentially 14 different behavioral modifications.
• 29:31
  Thoryn Stephens: These are things that you can do, we can do, our grandparents can do to help prevent dementia.
• 29:36
  Thoryn Stephens: And again, there's no silver bullet here.
• 29:38
  Thoryn Stephens: It's not like this is going to help prevent dementia for every single human.
• 29:41
  Thoryn Stephens: I think the statistic was roughly about half of global cases.
• 29:44
  Thoryn Stephens: There's about 55 million globally.
• 29:46
  Thoryn Stephens: So it's a significant amount.
• 29:48
  Thoryn Stephens: And the the thinking behind this is again, you can have a genetic predisposition for something like Alzheimer's.
• 29:55
  Thoryn Stephens: Now, if that's the case, you know, you're not going to, through lifestyle, prevent the onset of the disease.
• 30:00
  Thoryn Stephens: But what you could do is start to stave off some of the impacts relative to the progression, basically.
• 30:07
  Thoryn Stephens: And we've seen this in the data, and I think that's pretty tried and true.
• 30:10
  Thoryn Stephens: But the the overarching point, then something like dementia, where you know, you do have an opportunity to help, you know, really again support, you know, the onset of the disease through some of these microhabits.
• 30:21
  Thoryn Stephens: And like a couple examples.
• 30:22
  Thoryn Stephens: So one, connection, actually, is on the list.
• 30:25
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, that's a very prominent one.
• 30:27
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, it could be things like hearing loss in your old age, it can be education, but all of these things essentially that we have the opportunity to improve.
• 30:36
  Thoryn Stephens: And so from a gene expression perspective, you have your genetic blueprint, you have what's called your proteione.
• 30:42
  Thoryn Stephens: So you have your DNA, and then in between you have RNA, which I think more and more people know about now.
• 30:48
  Thoryn Stephens: And then you have things like methylation or genomics, epigenetics.
• 30:51
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, essentially that's the regulation of your DNA, RNA, and ultimately to proteins.
• 30:56
  Thoryn Stephens: And we are an expression of our proteins or proteome.
• 30:58
  Thoryn Stephens: And so it's just interesting to think that we have the opportunity to optimize, you know, essentially a good chunk of our DNA.
• 31:05
  Thoryn Stephens: What's the number?
• 31:06
  Thoryn Stephens: It depends on the tissue, depends on a number of factors, but maybe 30 to 50 percent-ish, you know, of your DNA, you actually can impact based on your lifestyle and based on microhabits, all the things that we've been talking about.
• 31:19
  Thoryn Stephens: And so, you know, I'd like to think that's a bit empowering.
• 31:22
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, people feel like, you know, this is my DNA.
• 31:25
  Thoryn Stephens: I'm stuck, you know, and this is my life.
• 31:27
  Thoryn Stephens: I can't make changes when, you know, there is a level of optimism and that we can positively change these things.
• 31:32
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I totally agree.
• 31:34
  Philip Pape: I mean, epigenetics is fascinating.
• 31:35
  Philip Pape: I I feel like we didn't know.
• 31:37
  Philip Pape: I mean, I was born in 1980.
• 31:38
  Philip Pape: I I know it it wasn't something we talked about growing up.
• 31:41
  Philip Pape: It wasn't until the last like couple decades that the general public became aware of it, but it gives you more power, like you said.
• 31:47
  Philip Pape: The Lancet thing, is that the one that they added like three more items to last year?
• 31:51
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 31:52
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 31:52
  Philip Pape: That's a good one.
• 31:53
  Philip Pape: I should do an episode on that because you're right.
• 31:55
  Philip Pape: There are a lot of factors in there.
• 31:56
  Philip Pape: It reminds me almost of there's like 13 cancers that are related to lifestyle as well.
• 32:02
  Thoryn Stephens: 100%.
• 32:02
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah.
• 32:02
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, I'd be happy to give you a protocol you can give away to the audience, you know, for these things.
• 32:06
  Philip Pape: Uh, yeah, for sure.
• 32:07
  Philip Pape: We'll throw that in.
• 32:09
  Thoryn Stephens: What these microhabits are, and then the impacts on, in that case, dementia, or you know, in other case it could be cancers.
• 32:15
  Philip Pape: The evidence that would be awesome, actually.
• 32:17
  Philip Pape: Yeah, and I might even rip up an episode kind of going over that for folks.
• 32:21
  Philip Pape: That would be cool.
• 32:21
  Philip Pape: Oh, we could totally do that.
• 32:22
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, I'd love to love to partner or support in any way possible.
• 32:25
  Philip Pape: Because again, yeah, go ahead.
• 32:27
  Philip Pape: No, that's fine.
• 32:28
  Philip Pape: You go.
• 32:29
  Thoryn Stephens: No, I it's just, you know, we're an artifact of our behaviors, the people we surround ourselves with, the conversations that we have, you know, and so much that you know, our environment, literally, where do we live?
• 32:39
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, I've lived in big cities, I'm much more happy out in the country.
• 32:43
  Thoryn Stephens: Everyone's different, you know.
• 32:44
  Thoryn Stephens: But whatever that is, and you know, really listening to that, getting a tune, I think is really important.
• 32:49
  Philip Pape: I think you'd you'd like it out here too.
• 32:50
  Philip Pape: We're in Connecticut, like five acres, got the woods in the back.
• 32:53
  Philip Pape: It's really nice.
• 32:54
  Philip Pape: Quiet.
• 32:55
  Thoryn Stephens: Yes, I appreciate the quiet.
• 32:57
  Philip Pape: I remember the first night we moved out here and there was there were no street lights or sound.
• 33:01
  Philip Pape: It was just it was amazing, but it was also a little bit eerie, you know.
• 33:04
  Philip Pape: You could get used to that.
• 33:05
  Philip Pape: And I like reading dystopian fiction too, which has that too, but not in a good way.
• 33:09
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 33:09
  Philip Pape: We're in it's like the mass border, so Connecticut Mass border.
• 33:12
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 33:13
  Philip Pape: And you're in Connecticut, or you're in Colorado.
• 33:15
  Thoryn Stephens: Colorado, yeah.
• 33:16
  Thoryn Stephens: Cool.
• 33:16
  Thoryn Stephens: Out in the mountains.
• 33:17
  Thoryn Stephens: Got another couple weeks of snow, and then it's officially spring.
• 33:20
  Philip Pape: Are you at risk of wildfires where you are or no?
• 33:22
  Philip Pape: Oh, yeah.
• 33:23
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, pretty much.
• 33:24
  Philip Pape: I hear that a lot from friends out there.
• 33:26
  Thoryn Stephens: So California, not good.
• 33:27
  Philip Pape: And yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 33:28
  Philip Pape: And very volatile politics too, but we won't get into that.
• 33:31
  Philip Pape: We're not so all right.
• 33:33
  Philip Pape: So, you know, we mentioned the Alzheimer's thing, and I think you and I were talking about like brain training.
• 33:38
  Philip Pape: That might have been even before we recorded.
• 33:40
  Philip Pape: And like how much value do you place in some of those?
• 33:43
  Philip Pape: Because I've heard mixed results.
• 33:44
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, I think some of them are great.
• 33:46
  Thoryn Stephens: I think some of them are scandalous, you know, which has also been proven out in the data.
• 33:49
  Thoryn Stephens: I don't know if I'll name any companies offhand, but you can probably do the research.
• 33:53
  Thoryn Stephens: I think brain HQ does a great job.
• 33:54
  Thoryn Stephens: I sat down with a founder not too long ago.
• 33:56
  Thoryn Stephens: Again, we would think of brain training as a microhabit as part of your overall protocol.
• 34:01
  Thoryn Stephens: So it's great.
• 34:02
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, I think everyone really should be doing these types of exercises, especially in your older ages.
• 34:07
  Thoryn Stephens: And they had some great recent paper, I believe it was the neurotransmitter was acetylcholine.
• 34:12
  Thoryn Stephens: They were seeing like a, you know, positive results and a very specific neurotransmitter based on these brain training games.
• 34:18
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, that's awesome, especially as people are getting older.
• 34:21
  Thoryn Stephens: So I think those, yeah, I think brain training is great as part of an overarching lifestyle and you know behavioral uh protocol.
• 34:28
  Philip Pape: Yeah, and I think that the result you're talking about was a very specific subset of the training.
• 34:31
  Philip Pape: So it's like you really have to know what you're looking at and looking for to potentially get the benefit, I would imagine.
• 34:37
  Thoryn Stephens: I think they hopefully they've made it, they've productized it and made it easy.
• 34:40
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, so you don't even need to think about it.
• 34:42
  Thoryn Stephens: You go, you do, but yeah.
• 34:43
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, again, even the concept of brain training, and to your point, epigenetics.
• 34:47
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, these things, brain training's been around for quite a while.
• 34:49
  Thoryn Stephens: Epigenetics has only been around, or at least really studied the last couple decades.
• 34:53
  Thoryn Stephens: So a lot of this stuff is, I would say, generally new.
• 34:56
  Thoryn Stephens: And you know, humans don't think about neuroplasticity or the fact that their brain is an organ just like your bicep.
• 35:02
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, just like your bicep, you need to regularly exercise it, you need to allow it to rest and recover, all of those pieces.
• 35:09
  Philip Pape: So I'm laughing because there was just today.
• 35:11
  Philip Pape: Speaking of social media, Dr.
• 35:12
  Philip Pape: Mike Isertil posted what seemed like a very serious question.
• 35:16
  Philip Pape: He's like, I have a very serious question for you guys.
• 35:17
  Philip Pape: Do you want bigger biceps or bigger triceps?
• 35:20
  Philip Pape: So I'm like, Do you want a bigger brain or bigger?
• 35:22
  Philip Pape: I'm just thinking about that.
• 35:24
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, you should add that in there.
• 35:26
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, exactly.
• 35:27
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, I mean, I guess it's all of the above, but yeah, people generally don't think about their brain as something that they exercise.
• 35:34
  Thoryn Stephens: And I think that's something we're hopefully trying to start to shift.
• 35:38
  Philip Pape: Good, good.
• 35:38
  Philip Pape: Yeah, hopefully we some of the our our podcasts helped do that too, just by making you think differently.
• 35:43
  Philip Pape: So, okay, one question I did have that came back to me was so if somebody's somebody has a specific goal, like, okay, I want to start lifting weights.
• 35:49
  Philip Pape: I know it's good for me.
• 35:50
  Philip Pape: I know I want to lift at least three or four days a week, but I don't do it right now and I never have.
• 35:54
  Philip Pape: Like, where would you start from that point to break down to the microhabits?
• 35:58
  Thoryn Stephens: So they want to work out, I guess, what is their, you know, what are they trying to achieve?
• 36:01
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, specifically.
• 36:02
  Philip Pape: Let's say they're trying to just get stronger.
• 36:05
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah.
• 36:05
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, what we could literally do is we could essentially take their information, run it through our AI, and come up with a protocol and see how it compares, you know, cool.
• 36:14
  Thoryn Stephens: Something we, you know, we've been working on the last year, year and a half.
• 36:18
  Thoryn Stephens: And it's actually pretty shocking how accurate it gets.
• 36:21
  Thoryn Stephens: We had one woman recently who she, you know, created a protocol, re-ran it through it, and she's like, Oh my gosh, honey, look, it's the it's like 10 of the 12 microhabits I just listed on my like last night.
• 36:30
  Thoryn Stephens: And he's like, Oh my gosh, honey, you're correct.
• 36:32
  Thoryn Stephens: So side note, that's one of the mechanisms we can get there.
• 36:35
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, I think again, starting small is critical, you know, like they want to work every day, understanding their motivation.
• 36:42
  Thoryn Stephens: What is it about that human, you know, that you can help motivate them relative to the thing, the reward, you know, that they're working towards.
• 36:49
  Thoryn Stephens: Humans love instant gratification, of course, which is why in some of the tech that we're developing, we you know, this new facial scan that we've added, you can actually see changes in your HRV in, you know, like pre and post-breath work as an example.
• 37:04
  Thoryn Stephens: So that's cool.
• 37:04
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, you actually do breath work and you can see how your parasympathetic nervous system is is impacted.
• 37:10
  Thoryn Stephens: But those types of like small wins, you know, I think are are really important.
• 37:14
  Thoryn Stephens: How you look in the mirror.
• 37:15
  Thoryn Stephens: And again, I don't focus as much on the weight training side, but it's all related.
• 37:19
  Philip Pape: So yeah, you know, the thing about the getting the immediate feedback is really helpful.
• 37:24
  Philip Pape: I know that could go awry if it's not the right thing, right?
• 37:28
  Philip Pape: If you're not measuring the right thing, but we hear a lot about gamification and streaks and stuff.
• 37:32
  Philip Pape: And I I just recently dived into that for an episode.
• 37:35
  Philip Pape: And it was interesting how much of how things are gamified isn't effective, right?
• 37:40
  Philip Pape: For changing your behavior.
• 37:41
  Philip Pape: But something like that where there's actual progress seems to be effective.
• 37:46
  Philip Pape: So again, the listener should, you know, should look into this stuff and become curious.
• 37:50
  Philip Pape: I like the idea of starting with a goal and working back not only to what the protocol could be, but what is your motivation and then tying that together.
• 37:58
  Philip Pape: Full disclosure, I have an app, I have a it's called Fitness Lab.
• 38:01
  Philip Pape: And one of the things you do in week one is a future, a future vision exercise.
• 38:06
  Philip Pape: Awesome.
• 38:07
  Philip Pape: Because that's so powerful, right?
• 38:08
  Philip Pape: Because we've seen that so powerful.
• 38:09
  Philip Pape: So I love that you're saying that.
• 38:10
  Philip Pape: When you said that 12 microhabits in the example, would your would the app or protocol then decide what the best three are, or two or one to start with?
• 38:20
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, we can.
• 38:21
  Thoryn Stephens: Again, it depends if the human's working with a clinician, they're working with a practitioner, you know, a coach, whatever it is, and then just meeting them really where they're at.
• 38:30
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, most part of that again is like their experience level.
• 38:33
  Thoryn Stephens: So novices, we would never give 12, you know, maybe three to start, maybe even one, just depending on the human, or upwards of you know, a dozen, depending.
• 38:42
  Thoryn Stephens: And that could include things, you know, like peptides, you know, potentially, or people use this as a peptide tracker.
• 38:47
  Thoryn Stephens: We have another use case with like even stem cells.
• 38:50
  Thoryn Stephens: So we're really focused on the measurement, whatever it is.
• 38:52
  Thoryn Stephens: We don't really care the intervention, any of those that I just mentioned.
• 38:56
  Thoryn Stephens: But but ultimately having that baseline and then understanding the you know time series improvement.
• 39:01
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 39:01
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah.
• 39:02
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 39:02
  Philip Pape: No, that makes sense.
• 39:03
  Philip Pape: And peptides and stem cells, two very controversial areas that have like very polarizing people out there because there's some great stuff, but it gets so muddled by so much junk and slop in in the wellness space.
• 39:15
  Philip Pape: But I love that you mention it because there are some bright spots in there.
• 39:19
  Philip Pape: What was I gonna ask about that?
• 39:21
  Philip Pape: Oh yeah, yeah, go ahead.
• 39:23
  Thoryn Stephens: No, no, go ahead.
• 39:24
  Philip Pape: Totally interrelated.
• 39:25
  Philip Pape: But as you were talking about the microhabits and doing like one or two or whatever, is it do we know for sure it takes a certain amount of time to make a habit sticky?
• 39:34
  Philip Pape: Because it I used to think 21, and I I feel like James Clear mentions that, but then recent research I've seen is 45 because there seems to be two tripping points to the human brain's need to get back to like what it used to do.
• 39:46
  Philip Pape: And like the first one's almost a false success point, and then you could revert easily until you get past the second point.
• 39:53
  Philip Pape: Uh, is that BS what I'm saying, or is there something to that?
• 39:56
  Thoryn Stephens: I think there's something to that.
• 39:57
  Thoryn Stephens: I think we've seen that in some of the data for sure.
• 39:59
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah.
• 40:00
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 40:00
  Philip Pape: So is it like six weeks?
• 40:02
  Philip Pape: I mean, is there a number?
• 40:03
  Thoryn Stephens: I don't know if I have a number.
• 40:04
  Thoryn Stephens: Uh we can definitely look at that.
• 40:06
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, I would say four to six weeks is kind of anecdotally what I've heard, but and it also depends on the microhabit.
• 40:12
  Thoryn Stephens: And then it really depends on the human, you know, like what are you actually asking them truly to do?
• 40:15
  Thoryn Stephens: So I think there's a number of variables there.
• 40:17
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 40:18
  Philip Pape: And then you just a couple of personal questions, like besides mind altering stuff, what's another microhabit that you do like every day?
• 40:25
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, I'm again pretty rigorous.
• 40:26
  Thoryn Stephens: So a really big proponent of the sweat.
• 40:29
  Thoryn Stephens: And so whether that's a sauna, you know, we have one here, or I do the hot Pilates where I guess I get both well sweat, I get some cardio and I get weights.
• 40:38
  Thoryn Stephens: So I do heavy weights, like 50 pounders.
• 40:40
  Thoryn Stephens: So that's one of my like non-negotiables.
• 40:42
  Thoryn Stephens: Try to go three or four days a week.
• 40:44
  Thoryn Stephens: And then other microhabits.
• 40:46
  Philip Pape: Do you measure sweat?
• 40:46
  Philip Pape: Do you measure like how much you sweat, or what do you measure?
• 40:49
  Thoryn Stephens: Well, I measure I actually have water bottles that do have measurement on them.
• 40:53
  Thoryn Stephens: So like per class, I average about two liters of water, you know, at least.
• 40:57
  Thoryn Stephens: So, but again, I'm not that obsessive about it.
• 40:59
  Thoryn Stephens: Like I just always go with how I feel, you know, fundamentally.
• 41:03
  Thoryn Stephens: Another microhabit that we don't talk about a lot, but also is is related to cognition is the concept of unitasking versus multitasking.
• 41:11
  Thoryn Stephens: And again, this kind of goes in that non-negotiable category because it's not something you're like doing every day, but it's one of those things you can kind of put into your protocol that you can just try to adhere to.
• 41:21
  Thoryn Stephens: And so, you know, we're very much caught, you know, like you're you're constantly, you know, in the hustle and you have your, you know, your phone and your laptop and the TV and the kids running around.
• 41:31
  Thoryn Stephens: But when you're trying to focus on very specific, you know, tasks at hand, if you're trying to do four things at once, you're because of cognitive drag, you're actually going to be less neurologically optimized and probably get them done, you know, not only well, less efficiently, we could say.
• 41:45
  Thoryn Stephens: Um, so that idea of again, unitasking versus multitasking, I think is another really interesting one.
• 41:50
  Thoryn Stephens: Is that related to like the Pomodoro technique where you focus on one thing at a time or I don't know the pomodoro technique specifically, but it's probably it's that idea that again, when you're focusing on something and then you shift to another, even if it's small, just like looking at your phone and then going back, you have cognitive drag.
• 42:06
  Thoryn Stephens: And it takes milliseconds, you know, to then reorient yourself on the conversation, whatever it might be.
• 42:12
  Philip Pape: So that is so true, man.
• 42:14
  Thoryn Stephens: That is so true.
• 42:14
  Thoryn Stephens: Well, and you know, where it's like it's kind of the antithesis of what we're taught, you know, in the grind.
• 42:18
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, gotta hustle and like not really.
• 42:21
  Thoryn Stephens: If you just are more efficient with your time, then you actually will be, you know, higher efficiency longer term.
• 42:27
  Philip Pape: Yeah, it makes sense.
• 42:27
  Philip Pape: Okay, so even though you don't obsess about this stuff, you definitely are I know into wearables.
• 42:31
  Philip Pape: And you mentioned the aura ring.
• 42:32
  Philip Pape: Is there another wearable you use that maybe is unique that we we can learn about?
• 42:36
  Philip Pape: Not unique.
• 42:37
  Thoryn Stephens: So I use my favorite actually is aura for sleep and then Garmin for activity, just relative to resolution.
• 42:43
  Thoryn Stephens: I like Aura because it's you know very small.
• 42:45
  Thoryn Stephens: I've been training with Whoop.
• 42:46
  Thoryn Stephens: I don't love it personally, but we and we have integrations with over 300, so we're kind of agnostic.
• 42:51
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, at some point it doesn't really matter what you use as long as consistently and you're looking at the trends.
• 42:57
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, your HRV in Aura is absolutely going to be different than in your Apple Watch, which is okay.
• 43:01
  Thoryn Stephens: But again, as long as you're looking at the trends, it doesn't really matter.
• 43:04
  Thoryn Stephens: But yeah, those are kind of my my go-tos, you know, on the day-to-days, Aura and Garmin.
• 43:08
  Thoryn Stephens: And then, like I said, we've been doing some interesting testing with facial scanning and then also voice, so voice biometrics, and then looking at your voice.
• 43:15
  Thoryn Stephens: And we've seen high and medium correlations to HRV through your voice, basically.
• 43:19
  Thoryn Stephens: So if you're stressed, you're gonna hear in the voice because it might be a little bit higher pitched and you know, da-da-da.
• 43:24
  Thoryn Stephens: It's all this stuff we kind of inherently know, but now we're actually able to start to see it in the data.
• 43:29
  Thoryn Stephens: And the reason why these metrics are or these you know, outcome measures are important again, whether it's a face scan or a voice, is because if a human doesn't have a wearable, then they could just use the system and then get a biometric from it immediately.
• 43:41
  Thoryn Stephens: So that's really cool too.
• 43:43
  Thoryn Stephens: So those are some of the newer modalities that we've been been testing.
• 43:46
  Philip Pape: I love that stuff, man.
• 43:47
  Philip Pape: And combined with machine learning and AI and everything, it's just insane.
• 43:50
  Philip Pape: Like we had the founder of Spranton, and and they do like, you know, just a quick visual of your body composition, your anode gyneod ratio, all that stuff, literally just.
• 43:59
  Philip Pape: From a photo, right?
• 44:00
  Philip Pape: And none of these suits anymore and special measurements you had to do in the past.
• 44:04
  Philip Pape: It's crazy.
• 44:06
  Thoryn Stephens: Well, I mean, in the inferences as well.
• 44:08
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, that you can now learn from this data.
• 44:10
  Thoryn Stephens: Like on the face scan, it's measuring the microcapillary fluctuations of your face.
• 44:15
  Thoryn Stephens: And you know, it's just it's pretty crazy.
• 44:17
  Thoryn Stephens: And in what we've seen is it's very, you know, very highly correlative to both like HRV and even blood pressure.
• 44:22
  Thoryn Stephens: So that technology is only going to get better and better.
• 44:25
  Thoryn Stephens: I think where a lot of these companies though fail, and this is something that we're really razor focused on, is what do you do with that data?
• 44:31
  Thoryn Stephens: It's like, okay, your HRV is, you know, whoop, I think is like one of the worst.
• 44:35
  Thoryn Stephens: It's like, oh, your HRV is down 35%.
• 44:37
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, take it easy out there.
• 44:39
  Thoryn Stephens: And you're like, okay, but like really, is there nothing more I can be doing to help support my parasympathetic?
• 44:45
  Thoryn Stephens: Like maybe, you know, a cold plunge, you know, another microhabit that I do, or breath work, you know, another great microhabit that you can do anywhere for free.
• 44:53
  Thoryn Stephens: So yeah.
• 44:54
  Philip Pape: That is a very fair critique.
• 44:56
  Philip Pape: That that's probably where my brain was going when I thought, what am I gonna do?
• 44:59
  Philip Pape: Because it the advice really isn't that high quality there.
• 45:02
  Philip Pape: But it's like, okay, take the data and put it into this other system over here to figure out what to do.
• 45:07
  Philip Pape: Now that's friction, you know.
• 45:08
  Philip Pape: So I know.
• 45:09
  Thoryn Stephens: And that's this is when we're trying to solve the same problems.
• 45:11
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah.
• 45:12
  Thoryn Stephens: It's and and so to your point, again, it's making it as frictionless as possible.
• 45:17
  Thoryn Stephens: And that's where I think it's also in part meeting people with where they're at.
• 45:20
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, how do you collect the data?
• 45:21
  Thoryn Stephens: That's why we like, you know, some of these scans where if someone doesn't have a wearable, and then ultimately what do you do with it?
• 45:27
  Thoryn Stephens: And how do you drive action from it?
• 45:28
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, that's the most important.
• 45:29
  Philip Pape: How do you drive action?
• 45:30
  Philip Pape: The friction part's interesting with apps because so like my favorite food tracker is macrofactor, and people have heard me mention a billion times because I'm an affiliate and like I use it, my clients use it.
• 45:39
  Philip Pape: But they actually, one of the things they tout as a differentiator is their speed on certain actions, and they've done the testing, and it's like getting everything down to as few taps as possible and as fast as possible.
• 45:50
  Philip Pape: And then when you look at like your time screen time for the day, it's like two minutes, you know, for logging your food, whereas in some other app it might be 10.
• 45:57
  Philip Pape: And that alone could be the difference.
• 46:00
  Thoryn Stephens: Everything 100%.
• 46:01
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, no, we we very much agree with that type of optimization methodology.
• 46:05
  Thoryn Stephens: It's nice.
• 46:06
  Thoryn Stephens: What we talk about is actually time to protocol.
• 46:08
  Thoryn Stephens: Like how long does it take for a clinician, practitioner, or just a human to create a protocol, literally?
• 46:14
  Thoryn Stephens: And what does that look like?
• 46:15
  Thoryn Stephens: It could be a list of microhabits, it could be, you know, Taylor Swift's protocol they found online that they want to upload.
• 46:21
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, whatever it is, and then literally, how do they then have a tracker that they can follow?
• 46:25
  Thoryn Stephens: So make less, especially in this day and age with you know the declining attention deficits, you know.
• 46:31
  Philip Pape: Oh, I know it because people are they can't wait, and it's like, I'm just gonna go to AI and get the answer.
• 46:35
  Philip Pape: It's not always the best answer, depending on how you ask it.
• 46:38
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, which is terrifying in itself.
• 46:40
  Thoryn Stephens: That's a whole other episode.
• 46:41
  Thoryn Stephens: Exactly.
• 46:42
  Philip Pape: All right, man.
• 46:42
  Philip Pape: Well, we we've covered a lot of really cool things.
• 46:44
  Philip Pape: You know, I didn't know where this would go, but I definitely think there's a lot of practical lessons, I guess to tie it up in a bow before we tell people where to find you and all that is like given all the data you've analyzed for both issues that people have, you know, the challenges that people have, like sleep you mentioned versus the microhabits, is there a couple that just float to the top all the time with people you see when it comes to like challenges that they're trying to fix and then microhabits they tend to have to use.
• 47:12
  Thoryn Stephens: Oh, yeah.
• 47:13
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, again, like sleep, you know, gut, which related to nutrition, depending, and then stress.
• 47:20
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, those are like the three ultimately.
• 47:22
  Thoryn Stephens: I think every one of us, you know, to some degree could improve upon.
• 47:25
  Thoryn Stephens: So, and then from there, you know, getting into yeah, the specifics, you know, so things like again, stress, you know, exercise for me.
• 47:34
  Thoryn Stephens: I mean, that's one of my biggest, that's why I do the hot Pilates so frequently.
• 47:37
  Thoryn Stephens: And then the, you know, cathartic release physiologically that you're getting from the sweat specifically, but from the exercise.
• 47:44
  Thoryn Stephens: So when I come out of that Pilates class, I'm a different human, you know, side note.
• 47:47
  Thoryn Stephens: So again, it and I know these things sound fundamental.
• 47:50
  Thoryn Stephens: It's like, oh yeah, exercise, great.
• 47:52
  Thoryn Stephens: Another exercise recommendation.
• 47:53
  Thoryn Stephens: But how and where, and again, the plan that you follow, I think is also part of the difference.
• 47:58
  Thoryn Stephens: And then further, if you can start to measure it, that really shows the progress.
• 48:02
  Thoryn Stephens: So yeah, I think that's great.
• 48:04
  Philip Pape: No, I you're right.
• 48:05
  Philip Pape: There's like the principle of it and the benefit you get from it, but the how, where, and plan is the tailored to you.
• 48:10
  Philip Pape: Here's your life, here's your schedule, here's you know, your body.
• 48:13
  Philip Pape: I just had two an extra day off from training because of travel, and it wasn't worth like trying to fit in the hotel and all that.
• 48:20
  Philip Pape: So when I worked out today, it was cathartic.
• 48:23
  Philip Pape: Like you said, I just the body, my body was like, Thank you, you know, like thanks for doing this again because you get in that habit.
• 48:29
  Philip Pape: And I think, you know, I was gonna ask you, like, does time of day matter that that?
• 48:32
  Philip Pape: But we're gonna get into detail those are details.
• 48:34
  Philip Pape: Like, I think it could maybe, but it depends on who you are and your schedule and all that.
• 48:38
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, I mean 100%.
• 48:39
  Thoryn Stephens: Like, I mean, I get up at five and that's when I do my best thinking.
• 48:42
  Thoryn Stephens: You know, my wife is working until one in the morning, she's more of an artist and creative.
• 48:46
  Thoryn Stephens: So I think it it definitely depends.
• 48:48
  Thoryn Stephens: But, you know, to the prior point, you know, again with exercise, I feel personally I'm more neurologically optimized after the exercise, you know.
• 48:56
  Thoryn Stephens: So all these things are related, you know.
• 48:58
  Thoryn Stephens: And then of course you have like sleep as like the you know, longevity hack.
• 49:03
  Thoryn Stephens: Everyone's looking for like, oh, what can I take to you know live longer and be healthier and look younger?
• 49:08
  Thoryn Stephens: It's like sleep.
• 49:09
  Thoryn Stephens: That's it, like one thing, you know, let alone obviously the other pillars that we discussed.
• 49:13
  Thoryn Stephens: But starting with starting with the big picks.
• 49:16
  Philip Pape: There was an analogy I heard someone you might have heard it.
• 49:18
  Philip Pape: He was talking about like, what did he say?
• 49:21
  Philip Pape: Something like if you went to a college and everybody was doing drugs, you'd be like, these people are insane.
• 49:25
  Philip Pape: Like, but if you went and everybody was not getting sleep, you'd say, Oh, that's normal, but they have the same effect.
• 49:30
  Philip Pape: Or you know what you know what I mean?
• 49:32
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I think something like that.
• 49:33
  Philip Pape: Or something, maybe it wasn't drugs, maybe it was alcohol.
• 49:35
  Philip Pape: I don't know, but it had the same effect, right?
• 49:36
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 49:37
  Philip Pape: But we don't put it in the same category.
• 49:38
  Philip Pape: Okay, man.
• 49:39
  Philip Pape: So I know we're gonna share something that lets people identify some microhabits or a protocol you mentioned earlier.
• 49:46
  Thoryn Stephens: Sure, I'd love to.
• 49:47
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, I mean, I have a dementia prevention uh protocol I can share with you that you can disseminate to the audience.
• 49:51
  Thoryn Stephens: That's great.
• 49:52
  Philip Pape: And besides that, where do you want people to look you up?
• 49:54
  Thoryn Stephens: Yeah, so they can check out brain.1.
• 49:56
  Thoryn Stephens: That is our neurological platform.
• 49:59
  Thoryn Stephens: And then we also have peptides.one with an S.
• 50:02
  Thoryn Stephens: And that's what we built around peptide measurement for all of our friends and family that are struggling with measuring if their peptides actually work.
• 50:10
  Philip Pape: Got it.
• 50:10
  Philip Pape: So brain.1, peptides.one, we'll get everybody the protocol.
• 50:13
  Philip Pape: Look for those in the show notes.
• 50:14
  Philip Pape: And this has been awesome.
• 50:16
  Philip Pape: Thank you so much, Thorne, for coming on wits and weights and sharing your wisdom and your knowledge and your energy as well.
• 50:21
  Philip Pape: So thank you so much.
• 50:22
  Thoryn Stephens: Thank you, Philip.
• 50:22
  Thoryn Stephens: Really appreciate it.