Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / Your Magical Mitochondria - and How to Optimise Them, with Dr Olivia Lesslar

Transcript

Your Magical Mitochondria - and How to Optimise Them, with Dr Olivia Lesslar · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Dr. Olivia Lessler, welcome to the podcast.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Paul. Happy to be here.
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: Now, we met a few weeks ago at the Mitochondrial
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: Health Summit, which was frigging awesome. And I was lucky
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: enough to be emceeing at it. And you were the
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: kind of keynote. I think you should be called Dr.
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: Olivia the Gun Lessler because you've.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Got so much knowledge. It's completely ridiculous.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: I'm a pacifist, so I can't do the gun thing.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Fair enough.
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: But give our listeners, just tell our listeners about your background.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Okay. Well, so I'm a medical practitioner from Australia, and
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: I have a very keen interest in complex chronic conditions,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: mystery illnesses, inverted commas, and psychoneuroimmunology, which is the, essentially,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: it's the hard science behind the mind-body connection. And the
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: reason why I have that interest is because when you
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: have these patients coming in who've been seen by several
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: doctors and who aren't able to really put their symptoms
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: into neat boxes as prescribed by the gods of the
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: colleges of medicine, Then they kind of get relegated to
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: the inverted commas, possibly psychiatric condition, go see a psychiatrist,
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: possibly get onto antidepressant, you know, and then numb them out.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: And I realized after a few years of seeing these
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: patients that a lot of the time it had something
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: to do with the loop that the body and mind
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: can sometimes find itself in perpetuating threat detection and then
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: the body continuously firing against these perceived threats or hypervigilance
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: against perceived threats. And you and I and every doctor
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: knows that stress increases inflammation, cortisol, and that milieu of chemicals,
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: it does pretty bad things in the body. And these
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: are the patients that fall through the cracks because they're
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: We're so, doctors are so conditioned to try and fix with,
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: in some parts, a script or a pill. If the
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: patient doesn't fit our paradigm, that's why they wind up
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: being told it's in their heads.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: I remember reading a research paper on psychoneuroimmunology. I think
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: it was 2015 by a guy called Paul Black. And
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: it blew my mind. Absolutely blew my mind. And I
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: kind of dug in. And I'm now a psychophysiologist, right?
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: So I'm all about this connection. And it's a fascinating
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: area of research how just you're thinking. I actually want
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: to jump in and double click on the threat detection
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: because I.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Dug into that on my Ph.D.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: And what the research shows is that when something potentially
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: stressful happens, we very quickly make a stress appraisal. We go,
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: is this a threat or is this a challenge? So
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: forget about the kind of patient thing. It's just What
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: has been shown was that if you make that immediate
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: stress appraisal, and a lot of this can be influenced
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: by your past, especially if you've had adverse childhood experiences,
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: but if you make that this is a stressor, the
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: body will release cortisol, whereas if you view it as
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: a challenge, it activates the sympathetic nervous system, the fight part,
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: Whereas a threat response activates the HPA axis, which ends
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: up in cortisol.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: And it has actually been shown that.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: The half, this really critical thing for people to understand,
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: that if you are in a challenge response, I'm viewing
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: this as a challenge, you're releasing adrenaline, no adrenaline, the
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: half-life of those chemicals is one to two minutes. And
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: as both me and you know, within about four half-lives
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: of a chemical is back to normal in your body.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: But the half-life of cortisol is way longer than an hour.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: And that means that hours later, you're still having a
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: stress response.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: And like you say, if people are, you know, those
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: chronic conditions affects their psychological state, and then they're in
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: that constant threat state, they are in hypercortisolemia, that high
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: levels of cortisol over time, which me and you know both.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: destroys your body, destroys your brain, makes you fat, makes
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: you sick, makes you depressed, causes all systemic inflammation, right?
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: And I don't think we want to dive much deeper
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: into this because it becomes really, really complicated, particularly around
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: chronic conditions. But what I do want to talk about
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: is the same principles, but around health optimization or the
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: worried well, right?
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: So the people who are.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: Out there, And they're kind of going okay, but life
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: is a bit suboptimal.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: They're stressed. They got kids.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: They got freaking older parents of the sandwich generation, all
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: of this stuff. But I want to look at this
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: initially through the lens of the mitochondria, because I know
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: you're a kind of a mitochondria queen, right?
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: What? Okay.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: So tell our listeners, what are your mitochondria? How many
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: cells in the body have the mitochondria? Let's talk about
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: the DNA. What do they do?
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Why are they important?
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: I mean, a lot of people will have heard the
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: batteries of their cells, which kind of really undersells mitochondria,
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: doesn't it? So just give us a three or four
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: minute diatribe on the mitochondria.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Well, a mitochondria is what's known as an organelle. And
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: an organelle is just one of the machinery in the cells.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Most cells, not all, so red blood cells, for example,
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: don't have mitochondria, but most cells have mitochondria. And the
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: more that particular cell in that particular organ has to work,
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: the more mitochondria it has because it needs the energy.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: So your ovaries, for example, or your liver, brain, heart,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: because these ones have to do a lot of work,
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: they tend to have more mitochondria per cell. Now, It
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: has long, as you said, been said that the mitochondria
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: is the powerhouse of the cells, the battery of the cell.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: And that is true. But we now know so much
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: more about mitochondria. And this is almost like a quick
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: throwback to what you were saying about the threat detection
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: or threats. A mitochondria is also a threat detection system.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: It has a way of sampling the substrates or the
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: molecules that are coming through from your food, from the
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: air that you breathe. And being able to gauge how
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: much output do I have to make? Is this environment
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: safe for me to even make that output? Because in
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: things like chronic fatigue syndrome, for example, where the mitochondria
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: have gotten signals, real or perceived, that the environment is
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: not safe, it will start to go into a hibernation
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: mode where it will not produce very expensive energy to
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: fuel something that it doesn't need or want to fuel.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: The animal has to go into a cave. The animal
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: has to hibernate. The animal has to see out winter
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: or the saber-toothed tiger or something like that. So there's
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: a very close relationship between not just our environment, what
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: we're eating, drinking, moving, breathing, but also your state of being.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: As you said before, with the adrenaline, the noradrenaline, the cortisol,
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: if these chemicals are constantly in the mix, your mitochondria
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: is going to perceive that you are in an unsafe position.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: And then it will help to put you in a
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: situation that's more amenable to survival, let's just say. And
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: generally speaking, A position that is more amenable to survival
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: is not one of exploration, is not one of, you know,
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: taking on the tasks of the village, going out foraging
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: in the forest on your own or anything like that.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: It's going to want you to do very safe things. Eat, sleep, cave.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Energy conservation, right?
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Energy conservation, yeah. Because the whole gambit is a resource
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: allocation strategy. And if it doesn't quite know if resources
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: are coming through or if resources are patchy or if
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: for whatever reason you do an activity and your cortisol
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: spikes or your epinephrine adrenaline spikes, like you said, it
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: has to make a decision. Is this a threat or
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: is this a challenge? And that's why psychophysiology, psychoneuroimmunology is
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: so important because we have control to a large degree.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: over our mindset, psychology, emotions, and behaviors, which informs this
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: entire thing. So personally, I'm a speaker. You're a speaker too.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: I learned many years ago that the increased heart rate
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: and blood pressure before we get on stage, right, those
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: are the things that we're going to feel, the sweating,
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: the nervousness, you know, all that kind of stuff, the jitters. But,
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: you know, we can either call it anxiety or excitement.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Excitement.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You know, typically, clinically, right, the metrics, the biomarkers
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: look very similar. But how you think about what's happening
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: is different. And we can put ourselves into a different state,
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: can't we? Yeah.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: And Mark Seery from the University of Buffalo, he showed
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: that the... The fight or flight response, the adrenaline, the excitement, right?
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: That actually opens up your cardiovascular system. It dilates your
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: blood vessels, whereas the threat response constricts your blood vessels.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: So blood flow and oxygen to the brain at a
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: big level is reduced, cortisol is released. But when we
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: get into the cellular level, the impact on the mitochondria,
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: and I think this is why... people, whenever they're chronically stressed,
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: they've just got no energy because your mitochondria are retreating, right?
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: When did this.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Idea of the mitochondria as a threat detection system, when
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: did that kind of start to emerge?
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: So, I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not a
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: researcher and therefore I don't think I have my finger
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: across the entire literature, but I first learned about it
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: through Robert Navio. And that's the cell danger response.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Ah, boom.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the cell danger response, which I've written about a
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: little bit in my book. Martin Picard does a lot
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: in this area as well, doesn't he? But tell our
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: listeners through this, talk our listeners through this cell danger
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: response and adaptive and maladaptive responses.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: Sure. Okay, so cell danger response, obviously, is speaking about
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: a cell, but I also see this at the organ level,
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: at the person level within a village, and essentially it's this.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: When you take a hit, whether it's an actual injury,
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: a toxin, an emotional hit, and Robert also discusses this
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: in his literature, right? When you have something untoward happen,
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: the cell senses that there's an issue, and then it
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: goes into a series, three, a series of activities. whereby
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: you have to ascertain the damage. You then have to
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: fix the damage, repair the cells that were injured in
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: that particular response. And once all that is done and
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: you have to go through certain gates, once you do
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: that particular phase, that particular phase's activities, once you complete
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: the three phases, you go back to homeostasis. You go
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: back to living a happy life. And he discusses it
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: at that cell level. And the mitochondria is one of
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: the biggest cellular sampling threat detection responses in the cell.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: But I also see that, and I'm sure most doctors do,
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: I also see this in relationships at work. You take
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: a hit, you assess what has happened. For those of
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: us who have learned coping skills, you realize that The
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: action that you see, for example, in your husband or
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: your wife, the action that you see is merely the
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: action and the stories we add to it is our
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: own making, right? We've assessed. Then if we have resilience
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: training or we have the tools available to us, we
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: then take our partner, we sit them down and we
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: have a chat about boundaries and this, that and the other.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: And then we go about the process of either repairing
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: the relationship or let's just say ending the relationship, okay?
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: But then once that's settled, we need to be able
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: to go back to normal life. Now, at a cellular level,
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: we're talking minutes, hours, right? Sometimes weeks. In relationships or
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: as you go up the chain from cells to organs,
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: organ systems, human body relationships, then you're talking about maybe
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: weeks to months or years. Whatever it is, there is
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: a beginning, there's a middle and an end. And if
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: we skip any of these parts, we haven't quite... fulfilled
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: the necessary tweaks that are valuable to the cell. Because
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: everything that happens to us is a learning opportunity. And
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: this is what you mean by adaptive.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Adaptive.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Now, I love the word adaptive and maladaptive as opposed
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: to broken and not broken. Because almost every response, symptom, disease,
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: state that we find ourselves in is a way for
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: your system to reorganize themselves, i.e. adapt to the inputs
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: that were coming in. It rearranged itself in a way
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: that made most sense to the cells at that time.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: It was a resource allocation problem. It was a bioenergetic
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: allocation issue. And then if the environment changes and we
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: don't go back to a better way of being, That's maladaptation.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: And this lends itself into a branch of science that
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: I love, which is hormesis, which is about exposure to
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: stressors or toxins, which at high levels can kill you.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: But at low to moderate levels.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: Induce stress resistance. So there is that balance, right? And
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: it's that, you know, that which does not kill us
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: makes us stronger. And this happens right down at the
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: cellular level, that cell response that you just explained so eloquently.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: Let's now take this from a complex disease idea to.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Let's just talk about health improvement, health optimization, right?
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: So let's go through, again, we'll go through the lens
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: of the mitochondria, but not exclusively. So I just wanted
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: to get your take on certain things that people can do.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: I think the exercise they've heard enough from me time
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: and time again around exercise. And we know it's hugely
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: important for the mitochondria, for improving the health of your
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: mitochondria and for mitochondrial biogenesis, right? So let's just say
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: that exercise is done.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: What?
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: Sorry?
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, done well. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: Oh, sorry.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: Actually, the first time I'm giving a talk about this
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: is on a new hypothesis framework in August. So I
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: might as well, this will be the first time I
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: speak about it in a podcast.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: The talk I'm giving is called Muscle Mitochondria and the Mind.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. I like it.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Okay. So for everything that we prescribe in medicine, supplements, drugs, hyperbaric,
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: red light, all these things I think we will be
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: talking about shortly.
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: We generally speaking talk about a ceiling. In other words,
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: when is it too much? How can you check? Why
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: is too much too much? And I feel that over
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: the last few years that I've been more exposed to
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: muscle as the organ of longevity, get a slab of
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: meat on you, it's a sugar sink, and all these amazing,
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: of course, factual things. we are not talking to our
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: patients about any ceilings. And in other words, because of
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: the omission, it's almost as if more is more. And
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: I feel that for the average person, nobody's overdoing it,
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: generally speaking. However, I have seen a couple of cases
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: where The hypertrophy training is on the more extreme side,
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: especially since we're not talking about functional training. It's getting
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: into the gym and doing the sets and reps. And
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: then the next day you're doing more sets and reps
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: because you're increasing hypertrophy for, to be fair, most of
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: the time it's aesthetic goals. or a PB that you're
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: trying to best because it's what one does, as opposed
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: to the fact that you have to help bring the
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: logs back from the forest to rebuild your village, right?
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: There's no true functional reason. And anyway, apart from glucose,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: muscle obviously needs a load of substrates in the recovery
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: phase and the hypertrophy phase to increase the size of
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: the cells and to increase the number of cells. That's
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: pretty standard. But the pool from which muscle is grabbing
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: these substrates from is finite. It's not an infinite source
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: of substrates. And what else is drawn from the same
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: pool is the brain. I'm trying to appeal to clinicians
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: that when we prescribe hypertrophy training, resistance training, muscles training,
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: that we are at least talking about ceilings, about what's
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: necessary to fuel the muscle, about how important recovery periods are.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: You just don't want anybody to accidentally deprive their brain
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: of resources because the system has to make a decision
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: between the brain, which is the organ of fight-flight.
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, what we're getting into here is the extreme exercise hypothesis.
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: And it is clear, actually, from the research that exercise
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: is a hermetic stressor. You don't do any, it's bad
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: for you. You do some, it's good for you. You
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: do more, it's better for you. But there is a
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: point when involuntary. that it starts to decline. And if
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: you continue to add volume, it ends up being a
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: negative effect.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: That's this extreme exercise hypothesis.
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: Now, it's really interesting you mentioned hypertrophy training because when
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: you dig into it, you know, they kind of say
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: like between 12 and 15 hours of cardiovascular training is
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: seems to be the optimal sweep spot in which you
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: shouldn't go beyond. A week?
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: A week, yeah. That's a week, right? 12 to 15 hours.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: And look, the better way to do it is in
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: met hours because that takes in that intensity, but I
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: don't want to get too complicated on it. But the
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: point when you look at the resistance training stuff, it's
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: about 135 to 150 minutes a week, right? So the,
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: and that is, it really confused me because I know
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: that strength training, resistance training is so important, but why
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: would it be the optimal dose of strength training be
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: so much less than cardiovascular training? Now, I haven't, I've
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: dug into the research. I haven't found a good reason
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: for this. I think theoretically, some of it may be
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: the big increases in blood pressure, that are happening whenever
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: you're doing strong resistance training but maybe there is this
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: this resource that you know that the muscle needs to
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: hoover up a lot of substrates in order for it
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: to recover and resistance training we know creates more damage
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: to the muscle than cardiovascular training. And that's why the
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: muscles become bigger, faster, stronger, right? It's an adaptive response.
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: But there is a point where it becomes maladaptive, where
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: there is too much. Now, again, I don't know how
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: much of that data is clouded by the fact that
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: we're only now getting 30 years, 40 years, of research
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: around the strength training because in the 50s and 60s,
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: very few people did it. And in the 70s, a
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: lot of people who were doing it were on anabolic steroids.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: So I don't know how much of the resistance training
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: story is clouded by anabolic steroids.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: That is exactly when I started delving deep because I think,
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: like I've written up the hypothesis that I'm still in
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: the process of trying to speak to peers about it
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: because I do want to publish. But I think that
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: I saw a case of a man in his early
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: 40s who wound up being diagnosed with early onset preclinical dementia.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: I think in part, in part, maybe 1% or maybe 20,
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: who knows. But in part, it was his extreme hypertrophy
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: training without anabolic steroids, where there wasn't enough substrates in
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: the pool to feed both on a chronic basis. And
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: when I went into the literature, exactly as you said,
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: there is basically, not saying none, but there isn't very much.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: And so much of it was, you know, it's all
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: been dirty by the fact that there's so much anabolic dysfunction.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: sterile use in that condition that does it in hypertrophy training.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, particularly in the long-term strength trainers now. And yeah,
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: it's a very interesting area of research. I'd like to
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: read what you're writing about it and see if I
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: can add to it. So let's now, let's jump in.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: Let's talk about some of the stuff around health optimization.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: Let's take photobiomodulation because it's almost a cooler word as psychoneuroimmunology.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: So tell our listeners, what is photobiomodulation? Do you think
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: it's real? Do you think it's noise?
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: What do you do?
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: What do you recommend that your patients do? Again, is
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: there too much? All of these questions.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: Okay. Well, photobiomodulation or PBM is literally photolight. affecting physiology
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: and then harnessing the light in therapeutic ways. Now, notice
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: it doesn't say red light therapy because red is but
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: one spectrum of the light spectrum, right?
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: And so we actually know that a lot of the
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: research for photobiomodulation early doors was actually the aesthetic industry.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: Where they were doing... Yeah, to the skin, right? And
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: And so they should have because we have a large
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: amount of chromophores, which is light accepting light receptors, right?
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Light accepting or light receptors in the skin, chromophores, which
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: then trigger a whole bunch of cascades of different physiological processes,
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: including vasodilation, you know, whatever. Okay. So we've then gone
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: into red light in the last decade. or so. And
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: we now have the assays to be able to definitively
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: say that one of the reasons why red light therapy, photobiomodulation,
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: does work is because we know that the protein complexes
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: of the mitochondria are light acceptors. They're chromophores. Specifically, the
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: best researched one is protein complex 4, which is a
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: red light infrared receptor. And That's why when you use
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: red light in an appropriate way for the right patient
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: at the right dose at the right time, you're able
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: to help improve all sorts of things. Oxygen utilization, production
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: of water in the cell, increasing ATP production. And of course,
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: it's not just about skin and aesthetics. We're talking wound healing.
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And particularly wound healing burns. Yeah.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: And you said when I had open heart surgery.
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: I was on my red and near infrared light every
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: day for maximum of 20 minutes. My surgeon couldn't believe
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: how quickly I healed. And when I had some significant
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: dental work I needed done before the heart surgery because
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: they found a bit of an infection. Because I was
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: lying underneath that with my gob open. He couldn't believe
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: how quickly I healed because I'd seen the research before.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: burns victims wound healing it it's amazing that shit.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: Well it's a little bit like um you know complex
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: conditions which is what i like doing and then now
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: i'm in longevity medicine inverted commas essentially if you get
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: a very sick patient back to well and then you
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: keep going that's longevity yeah so a little bit like
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: you know wound healing getting that person back to baseline
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: and you keep going that's aesthetic longevity skin stuff right
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: yeah yeah yeah okay well i'm so glad that you
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: had this experience it's invaluable to your listeners because to
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: hear you describe it from a first-person perspective, it really,
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: it's very impactful.
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: And I can tell you the other thing, my 16-year-old,
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: a little bit of acne, red and blue light, freaking amazing.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: And it's actually been shown that red, like that combination
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: of red and blue light is really good for the skin.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: It kills the bacteria in the skin and is so
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: useful for acne. The doctor wanted to put him on Accutane.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: We did this stuff and frigging boom, just huge improvements.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: And green light also tends to modulate the sebum, the
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: oil production as well. So it's funny, you know, I
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: don't really go do any aesthetics or anything like that.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: It's not my interest at all. But when it comes
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: to light, And skin, I do absolutely will ask my
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: colleagues in this space because they've been doing it for donkeys.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: And the key thing is the sun has all of
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: these wavelengths. And the fact that we are not in
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: the sun anywhere near as much of our ancestors is
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: a problem.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: Do not get me started, Paul, on sun exposure, right?
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: Because the thing is, you know, they'll talk a lot
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: about UV being damaging and has the energy to break
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: DNA bonds, and it is all true.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: When is anybody in just UV light? There's no such
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: thing in nature. It's packed up. It's packaged up with
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: all these other spectral light, which are helping your system
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: deal with the high energy UV. And when you feel
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: enough heat and discomfort, you know it's time to go
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: into the shade. Nature has it all built in. But instead,
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: we slather on sunscreen and we stay out longer than
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: we should. Yeah. We also don't do photo prevention. So
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: photo prevention is the concept that if you go out
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: into early morning sun and expose your chromophores in your
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: skin and your eyes to early morning sun, it actually
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: sets the circadian rhythm, but it also tells your body, okay,
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: it's 6 a.m., it's 7 a.m., it's 8 a.m. In
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: other words, the clock starts. We are going to prepare
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: your skin to be able to see high noon sun
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: in x number of hours and your body prepares.
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: Itself ah okay so the worst thing you can do
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: is be in all day all morning long and then
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: go straight out into the midday sun or the afternoon
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: so early afternoon so yeah yeah that's that's very cool
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: um let's now talk about um i mean i'm sorry
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: again this comes back to hormesis right too much is
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: bad and we know that for skin but too little Jesus,
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: we're just seeing the effect of too little sunshine that's
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: happening now and low vitamin D and all that.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. And then, you know, the whole circadian biology
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: thing is that if you have poor sleep, your skin
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: is going to be more sensitive to the. damaging effects
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: of sun and you feel like the need to retreat.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: And then of course we don't because we think we're
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: cleverer than nature, but anyway. And so good sleep forms
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: part of the hormesis equation. Therefore, our patients have less
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: reflux the night after good sleep. They're able to see
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: more sun and so on and so forth. And it
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: all fits in together. Yeah. It's a pain in package.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, absolutely. It affects exercise the next day.
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: It affects food the next day through leptin and ghrelin
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: and all these things. Before we move on to something else,
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: because there's so much I want to talk to you about,
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: let's just talk about near-infrared lights, right? Because, yes, when
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: I was digging into the research of this in my book,
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: it just blew my mind. So just tell our listeners
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: the difference between red and near-infrared and the use cases
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: for those two things.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: So red light is part of the visible spectrum of light,
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: the colours of the rainbow. And that's red is right
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: towards the end. It has and accepts more energy, to
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: be fair, which is why if you have clothes pegs,
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: they shouldn't be red because they're going to actually take
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: in more energy from the sun and break down faster
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: than blue pegs.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, there you go.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: And then just outside of red, that's when we go
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: into the infrared spectra, which is where you have the heat.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: So red light itself, depending on the part of red light, obviously,
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: but it's not hot per se. The milk will move
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: into that near-infrared. It starts to get hot. And that's
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: why we have near-infrared saunas and stuff because it gives
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: us that heat. Then, of course, there's medium and then
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: there's far-infrared. And it gets hotter. So the protein complex 4,
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: to be fair, is actually more of an infrared absorption
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: spectra than red. But it does a whole bunch of things.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: I'm a massive fan of sauna. I think you are too.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I am, yeah.
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: In fact, I think that you were quoting the Finnish
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: sauna study. And the Finnish sauna study was a traditional sauna,
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: so they weren't using infrared. However, the difference there is,
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: as you've probably spoken about plenty of times, one is
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: about heating up from within and the other one is
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: an atmospheric transference of heat. But near infrared has been
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: really helpful for us in terms of sauna use for
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: example in heating a person up a little bit faster
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: but in my practice or rather what I'm interested in
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: doing research on is using infrared to help patients with
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: things like cancer where you brought this up before inducement
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: of heat shock proteins is a really important aspect to
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: therapeutics whereby HSP 70 in particular plus HSP 90 heat
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: shock proteins the 70 and 90 literally is just the
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: size the kilodalton size of the molecule but It acts
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: as a chaperone protein. It goes into the stool. It
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: identifies proteins that are misfolded, unfolds them, tries to refold them.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: And if it doesn't work, they're able to induce that
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: sort of like housekeeping, get rid of it activity. And
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: we know that cancer cells are full of these misfolded proteins.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: In fact, dementia is as well. So I'm a big
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: fan of using heat. in these complex chronic conditions. Sorry,
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: I know you.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: No, no, no.
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: I'm loving this because I'm actually... Because I have a panel.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: I have an infrared sauna. I also have a panel,
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: a near-infrared and red light panel because there's more intensity
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: on that. But I'm about to go and buy one
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: of the skull things.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: The V-glide, I think, because.
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the V-like because the research that's coming out now
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: about neurodegenerative diseases and the reduction in symptoms with people
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: who have Alzheimer's and Parkinson's when they have that exposure
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: in their brains, like because I think it's important for
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: people to understand that the near infrared, because the wavelength
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: is different, it penetrates into the skin and it can
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: actually stimulate that complex four in the brain cells that
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: have become damaged and kind of revitalize them. So, I
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: think we're on the cusp. I think this stuff is
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: one of the next frontiers, right?
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: Because we're both in Australia, it's worth actually maybe having
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: a chat to Professor Anne Liebert at Sydney University.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Ah, cool.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: She was one of the first to show that 904
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: nanometers laser applied to the skull could decrease Parkinson's scores.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: And then she backed up that study. So that was 2017.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: She backed up the study in 2019 to show that
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: 904 nanometers apply to the abdomen. In other words, tapping
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: into the gut-brain axis was also able to decrease Parkinson's scores.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: Ah, because Parkinson's starts in the gut.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: Wow. I never thought about the gut stuff.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: Wow. That's interesting. Okay.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: So that's why the photobiomodulation device that I recommend is
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: actually one that actually has a gut pad as well.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: And so this is, I think it's called Serathrive. The
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: neuroscientist that heads up that company, she's actually not interested
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: in like it being a wellness device per se. I mean,
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: it is, but she's actually gone straight to gun for
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: FDA clearance for diseases because that's too much. Like, you know,
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: that's how much the literature is on its way to
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: showing that we can improve the state for these patients
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: with very complex, conditions alzheimer's parkinson's cancers you know autism
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: adhd like not that the sky's the limit but and
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: we have to be very cautious of course with what
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: we're saying here but you know if you're able to
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: help a cell with a little bit more energy to
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: do what it needs to do you're on the right track.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah absolutely and we do need to caution people that
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: again there's it's not that more is better and better
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: just because it's good. And look, we don't know, but
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: I think probably, I don't know what your recommendations, mine
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: is like no more than 20 minutes a day of exposure, right?
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm on the 15 to 20 minutes as well.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Maybe in some cases, if we have enough of the
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: substrates that the mitochondria needs outside of light, right? I mean,
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: of course, you and I both say, get out into nature,
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: get out in the street. But if you have the
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: other substrates, your citric acid substrates, your coenzyme Q10, your ubiquinol,
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: your blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then you
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: can do another shorter red light session as well.
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: Let's just quickly double tap on that on supplements that
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: help with the mitochondria because this electron transport.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: Chain is really, really critical.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: So you You mentioned ubiquinol, which is the most bioactive
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: form of CoQ10. So that acts in, is it complex
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: four or five? Or it shuttles, doesn't it, between the complexes?
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it shuttles between one and three.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: But there's also B vitamins.
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: So tell our people, if you were having a little
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: mitochondrial supplement stack, what would it look like?
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: Okay. So the disclosure here is that I'm not a
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: massive supplement fan.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: I am.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: But I'm very particular about it being personalized. So yes,
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: this is broad strokes, but understand that me, you, some
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: of these mitochondrial clinicians, we do care about personalization. That said,
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: making sure that you have everything in your citric acid cycle.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: So all those ingredients that are going to go into
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: the mitochondria, Two, the lysosome actually breaks down fatty acids,
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: and so you're going to get your plasmalogens into your
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: mitochondria as fuel, in part. Your B vitamins, as you mentioned,
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: your minerals are super important because your minerals determine ion
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: channel reactivity or activity and how things are shuttled in
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: and out of the cell. I'm a big fan of
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: making sure that your iron, copper, and zinc is key,
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: in part because the protein complex 4 works... with an
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: iron and copper core. So it takes in oxygen and
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: through the iron and copper core, it gives you water.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: So that's really important. And of course, I think the
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: most important supplement is love and fresh air.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, nice.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: It really does make a difference.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: So we're looking at B vitamins, broad minerals, iron, copper, zinc,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: and ubiquinol.
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: You know, because you only need, well, not only need,
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: but one needs more antioxidant support, the more oxidative stress
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: there is.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: And yes, we are sitting in a toxic soup at
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: the moment with all our pollution and our PFAS and
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: microplastics and all the gunk that the government allows in
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: our food and our water and our clothing. But making
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: sure that you have enough antioxidant support one way or
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: the other, because the workings of every cell The workings
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: of every mitochondria necessarily produces the metabolites of that fuel
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: being burnt, i.e. it necessarily produces oxidation and oxidators. So
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: we definitely need antioxidants, I feel. Yeah.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: One thing I would throw on.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: That, if you're doing moderate or short intensity vigorous exercise,
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: don't take your antioxidants around the exercise because it blunts
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: the effects of the exercise. But I think if you're
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: running a marathon, then you need the extra support around
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: that time or just after you finish. So I tend
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: to take, I tend to exercise in the morning and
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: take my antioxidant supplements in the evening. Yes.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. See, I mean, what's physiologic, right? Doing a short
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: bout of intense exercise and then you're going back to
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: sort of regular life inverted commas, you know, from an
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: evolution perspective, that's what we did. And we've relied on
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: whole foods and clean mineralized water to deal with any
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: excess oxidative stress from you rebuilding the fat, right, for
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: your wife. Okay. So then... When generally speaking, we're not
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: used to be doing, you know, ultra marathons, one marathon
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: for 40 days.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: No, that's right.
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: And we get back to the extreme exercise hypothesis, right?
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Let's go on. There's two things I have to talk
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: to you about.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: I want to talk to you about PEMF and HBOT
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: because a lot of people are going, what the hell
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: are those things? Why are they talking in acronyms? So
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: let's take PEMF first. What is it and what's the
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: use case for it? And where are we in terms
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: of the evidence and your confidence in using it?
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's actually one of my favorite modalities. Full stop. Okay, next.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: So pulse electromagnetic field therapy is an electromagnetic field, which
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: is pulse. And when people go, oh, well, that's electricity.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Everything in nature has an electromagnetic field. And it's not
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: just things that seem electrical. Every cell has an electromagnetic field.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Every medication you take has an electromagnetic field. And I
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: bring that up specifically because I've been following the work
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: of a company in the US called Emulate Therapeutics, which
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: is a standard, regular, you know, therapeutic company that is
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: in bed with investors and all that. This is not
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: a woo-woo company, okay? And They are specifically working on GBM,
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: glioblastoma multiforme. Oh, yeah. And the reason why brain tumors
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: are so hard or so difficult for pharmaceuticals is because
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: the medications don't cross the blood-brain barrier.
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: So what Emulate Therapeutics have been doing over the last
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: few years, and I think their safety studies, their pilot
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: studies were actually done here in Australia because it's cheaper
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: than in the U.S. at University of Melbourne or something
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: like that. They've taken the electromagnetic signature of the medications
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: that would otherwise be used in GBM. They've encoded it
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: into an electrical box. And then you wear a coronet
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: for 23 hours a day and it pumps out the
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: electromagnetic field.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: Jesus.
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: Right? Affecting the cells in inverted commas kind of the
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: same way as the actual medication would. Wow. So it's
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: been shown to be safe and effective. I'm really looking
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: forward to what's going to happen with this company for
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: the next few years because the physics, Newtonian and quantum
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: around this is pretty sound. Like there's a fair research
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: in it. Maybe we haven't been as up to date
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: because the Western world, i.e. America, UK, never really wanted
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: to delve into Russian research, but the Russians have been
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: doing this for a very, very, very, very, very long time.
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: Hmm.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: And essentially, a pulse electromagnetic field therapy is giving kind
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: of an energy soup to your cells to encourage them
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: to oscillate at a different frequency. So we already know
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: that a healthy cell basically has across the cell membrane
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: is about like negative 70 to negative 100 millivolts or
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: something like that. And people who are unwell, whether it's
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: chronic fatigue syndrome or it's cancer or something like that,
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: the electrical potential or the membrane potential across the cell
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: membrane goes way out.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: Whether it's 50 millivolts or something, yeah. So it's basically
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: energizing the cell because once you energize the cell, it
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: actually changes how the ion channels behave, how receptors stand
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: up and sit down, how things move in and out
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: of the cell, including something necessary for repair, and of course,
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: how the organelles within it, including the mitochondria, work. So
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of false electromagnetic field therapy. And
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: it's been like decades, decades of scientists encoding different frequencies
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: of different herbs and medications and, you know, whatever, the
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: different electromagnetic fields of healthy cells, for example. So they
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: know what frequency roughly particular cells should be at.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: And so.
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: People can access this through like PEMF mats.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: So are you a fan of those PEMF mats then?
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: I want to say yes. I'm very careful with regards
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: to things that can be bought online where I don't
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: know the CEO. I've always been a person where I
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: kind of feel I need to have looked the higher-ups
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: of a company in the eye and know their soul.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: to feel comfortable about recommending things. That's why I've never
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: worked and don't want to work with Big Pharma, Big Anything,
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: because I don't trust them. Yes, I do recommend some
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: of those maths, but the one specifically that I do
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: is I need to have met the person that's in
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: charge of the research and all that. So, for example,
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: the Immortal Bed.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: Immortal Bed.
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: Is it E-M-M-O-R-T-A-L or is it A-M-O-R? Anyway. It's a
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: fan-dangled machine. All the longevity clinics are into it. It's
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: very expensive. It's red light and pulse electromagnetic field and
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: hydrogen therapy. And I thought, oh, this is just something
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: super pretty for Instagram. But I met the CEO and
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: chief scientific officer, and I can tell you the science
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: that goes into it is sound. It's sound as well
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: as also frequency of sound.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, nice.
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: We will find that and we'll put the link into
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: the show notes on this. Now, another one that is, well,
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't say it's fringe, but it's used. I know
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: a lot of integrative doctors are very pro it and
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: then there'll be lots of sort of normal doctors will go, oh,
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: this is just woo-woo shit, right? HBOT, hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: So tell our listeners, what is it and what is
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: it useful for? What have you seen it be useful for?
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: And also, can we just do a one-off session or
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: how regular do we need to be accessing this stuff?
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: Okay, so hyperbaric oxygen therapy, let's call it HBOT, right,
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: which is known, is actually a massive category of different
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: pressures of radiation concentration devices. And so in part, that
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: is what it just a lot like PEMF actually. That's
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: why it lends itself to all this confusion because we're
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: not talking about the one thing. We know hyperbaric oxygen
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: therapy works in inverted commas simply because at certain concentrations, i.e.
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: very high concentration oxygen at very high pressures, it's been
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: used in hospitals. For the bends or for diabetic wounds
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: that don't heal. So we have that. Anything less than
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: that outside of the hospital, that's when it gets confusing.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: So what kind of pressures? People will go, oh, well,
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: it goes all the way from, you know, 1.35, let's
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: just say, or 1.3 up to 0.56 outside. And this
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: is the number one place where I think people get
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: it wrong, where they think the higher the pressure, the better.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: This is like vitamin C. It's a U-shaped curve. Lower pressures, 1.35, 1.5, 1.75, 1.8.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: It's pretty much got an antioxidant effect. That's what we're
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: going to be using with our neurodegeneration, for example. Again,
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: this is all very, very broad strokes, right?
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: With the personalization, it's different. But up to two, let's
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: just say. It's kind of like an antioxidant effect. The
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: minute we start going high pressures... For longer, it becomes pro-oxidant.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: Like vitamin C does at very high doses, right?
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: It's hormesis in action.
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And so for our cancer patients, there are lots
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: of studies going on where you put patients into a
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: peri machine or a C-crest machine, very high pressure chambers
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: with 100% oxygen or near 100% oxygen, and they're in
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: it for 60, 90 minutes. And we need that oxidative
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: effect in those particular patients that have been appropriately prescribed
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: for because cancer, well, tumors tend to be anaerobic.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: Anaerobic, yeah.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they tend to not like high oxygen.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you give them high oxygen, they go wibble.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So that's some of the things that we need
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: to tease apart, right? First, more is not more. Definitely not. Second,
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: do low pressures with low concentration of oxygen, does that help?
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: Help what? And so I personally do think that lower
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: pressures at low oxygen can be helpful. However, I would
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: much rather my patients... learn and develop the skill of breathwork.
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: Which is another topic that I want to talk about.
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: So there is, but you know, of course, not everybody
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: can do breathwork, right? Not everybody has the diaphragmatic capability.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: Some people may have broken ribs, whatever. So that's why
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: it is a tool in our toolbox. And there is
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: plenty of research to indicate that we are definitely on
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: the cusp of much greater acceptance and indications for HBOT.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: But right now in the weeds, there's just, there's so
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: many protocols flying around. And a lot of the time,
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: it's not necessarily just oxygen getting into the soft tissue.
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: It actually has an effect on transcription factors in the DNA.
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: That's why when we're doing these proper therapeutic hyperbaric sessions,
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: it's consecutive sessions, sometimes even twice a day. You cannot
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: expect to do HBOT once, twice, three times a week
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: and like have some miraculous.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: And you prevent Alzheimer's and heart disease, cancer or stroke.
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: We're talking 20 to 40 consecutive sessions, giving yourself a break,
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: doing it all over again. So the kind of, I guess,
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: the one that everybody's talking about is Shia Frati, right?
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: The hyperbaric researcher who was really sort of getting into
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: the thick of it during COVID. So he's been pumping
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: out a lot of research and we're not talking just,
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: you know, observation studies and stuff. We're talking randomized controlled
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: trials here. Are we there yet where, you know, you
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: can confidently use it for sort of inverted commas longevity purposes?
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. But I do like the fact
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: that sometimes, and I'm very funny with my chamber. Okay.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: Which means that even though it's very, it's low pressure, right?
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: So it's 1.5, 1.6. And I don't use an oxygen bottle.
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: which means that the concentration in the mask is sort
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: of 92%, 93%, and in the atmosphere of the chamber,
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: it's 23.5% oxygen. I still do not let people go
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: in there with a phone or any personal electronic device,
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: in part because it gives them one hour of being
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: away from that damn thing.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: No, that's a very good point.
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: And let's finish, because I am aware of the time,
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: let's finish on breath work.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: So what types of breath work do you encourage your
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: patients to do or do you do yourself?
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: So again, breath work is this massive category of different traditions, right?
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: You've got the traditions that are going to change the
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: pH of your blood in such a way as to
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: induce a hormetic, hopefully, hormetic response whereby you can, change
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: angiogenesis or increase angiogenesis and have all these cascading effects,
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: which can be very helpful. But you have to, of course,
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: make sure that the patient can even accept holotropic breathwork.
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: The nervous system can deal with that because you can
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: put someone in a panic attack. And of course, you'll
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: know that that's not good.
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: And can I just say, because I have done several
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: holotropic breathwork sessions and I have seen people, and often
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: they're used therapeutically, I have seen people have severe, like
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: extreme emotional responses, not negative, but kind of breakthroughs.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: And I think, what the fuck? How did that shit happen, right?
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: It's crazy what particularly that holotropic, that controlled hyperventilation. I mean,
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: I think it changes everything. It changes neurotransmitter balances in
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: the brain. It releases a shitload of adrenaline and it
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: releases dopamine. I mean, some of this research is, it's
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: clear on it, but man, I've seen some crazy shit.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, 100%. And the thing is, there's no such
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: thing as any intervention only giving you a positive result.
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: And that's what we have to be so careful about.
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: You know, again, more is not more. And so understanding
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: the patient in front of you and their nervous system
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: and their resilience capacity and all that sort of stuff
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: is super important. And I actually could just, for me,
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: I don't do any holotropic with my patients. I always
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: refer out to people who know far more about this
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: sort of stuff than I do. But I am a
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: big fan of your day-to-day, minute-to-minute, like, are you breathing
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: through your nose?
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: Choose your part.
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Are you expanding your ribs in an appropriate way?
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: Are you using your diaphragm efficiently? Because what we're looking
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: for is pressure differentials. appropriate pressure differentials between your thoracic cavity,
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: your abdominal cavity, and then your brain cavity. Because the
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: movement of the cerebral spinal fluid, and of course blood,
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: relies on these being appropriately pressurized at the right time
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: in concordance with your heart and blood pressure.
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: And I've just been experimenting because I'm playing golf and
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: trying to get better at golf with thoracic mobilization and
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: actually going to the extreme of your limit and then
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: taking a huge breath into your diaphragm and expanding your
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: whole rib cage.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: And then you breathe out.
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: And it's amazing how much extra you get when you're,
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: because you're kind of distracting the joint and the ribs
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: when you do that big breath and you actually, free
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: up the whole ribcage in the thoracic spine.
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: That's why swimming is so helpful for asthmatic body, trying
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: to increase their breathing capacity. And it's because when you're
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: doing breaststroke, for example, you're pushing your ribs together as
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: your arms go forward, right? And then when you take
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: a breath in, your arms are out. And so you're
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: really expanding that. And then when you're doing the freestyle,
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: you have that thoracic rotation and you're opening your arm
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: out as well.
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, very cool. Yeah, I didn't really think about that.
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: That's pretty cool. And then, of course, we have the
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: slow controlled breathing and it's different formats that are really
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: good for people who are stressed, who are anxious. I mean,
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: that stuff, the ability to quickly switch on your parasympathetic
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: nervous system. But I'm also a big fan and I
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: teach the corporates like when you're stressed, slow controlled breathing works.
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: When you're tired in the afternoon, don't take a freaking
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: coffee at three o'clock and disturb your sleep. Do 30
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: to 50 controlled hyperventilation breaths.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: Because you will wake your ass right up.
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: Give yourself a boost of adrenaline and a boost of
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: dopamine that just, sorry, noradrenaline that basically wakes you up
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: and makes you focused.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: And it's just using the breath to control our physiology is, oh,
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: it's such a tool that everybody should know.
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%.
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: So, Olivia, this has been frigging awesome. I could talk
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: all day about this stuff and no doubt we will
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: get you back on at some stage. But where can
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: people go to find out more about you? Do you
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: have stuff, books, things that people can read? Are you
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: available for consults, all of that? Or are you just
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: going to sneak off into the night? So.
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: I guess I put out the most amount of content
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: on LinkedIn and Instagram and the handle is Dr. Olivia Lesla.
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: I don't have a book, not yet, but that is
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: definitely in the works. I do see patients, but to
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: be honest with you, because I practice as a complex
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: chronic condition consultant and second opinion, they have to have
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: gone through, you know, the ringer before I see them.
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: And I don't see patients more than three or four
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: times per year because if I can't figure out what's
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: going on within three consults, then it's probably not in
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: my periphery or in my wheelhouse or whatever it is.
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: And so there's a moratorium then on seeing me. And
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: I go to like 25 or 30 conferences and I
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: write lots of papers and stuff. Yeah. Constantly updating my
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: knowledge like other doctors as well. But that's basically how
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: people might be able to see me. Very cool.
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: Well, we are delighted to have you on the podcast.
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: Can I ask, what's the book going to be about?
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: Are you still working on it or is it a secret?
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: No, it's about sentinel network. So essentially the different threat
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: detection systems of the body, how they talk to each
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: other and then how they perceive threats and then output
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: in response to those threats.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's complicated shit.
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'm going to make sure I put that as
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: a review in the book.
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: I will write a review and go, this is awesome,
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: complicated shit.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: That everybody should read. There you go.
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: There's my review before you even read it because I
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: know it's going to be brilliant and I know it's
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: going to be complicated and I know it's going to
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: be awesome. Olivia, thank you very much for your time
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: and for your wisdom and keep doing what you're doing.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: I'll see you around the speaking circuit.
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Bye.