Latest / Everyday Ancestral with James Barry / How to Heal Like Your Ancestors: Light, Peptides, and Self-Knowledge | Nathalie Niddam

Transcript

How to Heal Like Your Ancestors: Light, Peptides, and Self-Knowledge | Nathalie Niddam · Everyday Ancestral with James Barry

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Hey friends, welcome back to every day in Cestral.
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I'm your host, James Barry.
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So what do peptides and biohacking have to do with ancestral health?
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Well, in today's episode, you'll learn that peptides are very often fragments of naturally
0:18
occurring amino acids in the body.
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Today's guest, Natalie Needham, bridges the modern biohacking practice of peptide therapy
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with the wisdom of ancestral health practices.
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And you will be surprised, no matter what biohack you embrace for longevity, Natalie combines
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ancestral health principles with contemporary biohacking techniques, focusing on sustainable
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practices that align with our evolutionary biology.
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Please enjoy our next episode with Natalie Needham.
0:50
I have to right away get out of the way, the fact that you are glowing red.
0:55
Can you please explain?
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I am glowing red.
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And the reason why I'm going red is because as of a little while ago, I've been working
1:05
with a company called Mydelux for a couple of years now.
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And the first product that they brought out to market was a small infrared and red light
1:14
panel that also delivered a measured dose of UVB.
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And what UVB does is it helps your body to make its own vitamin D, which is really great.
1:23
So for someone who lives in a climate where it's hard for me to get out, and also like
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the sun is actually not at a good angle for my body to generate its own vitamin D for
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most of the year, I'm kind of in a world where I don't make a lot of vitamin D because
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from an ancestral perspective, my ethnic background is based on getting a lot of sun.
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So my body protects me from making too much vitamin D from the sun, which is great except
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for the part where when you don't live in that climate anymore, you now are at a real
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disadvantage for making enough vitamin D for what you need.
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What the manufacturer did recently is he launched a new panel, which has all those same
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features, but also has what's called the fireplace feature.
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And the fireplace feature is literally just red and near infrared light.
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And when you have it on, when you're sitting in front of an artificial blue light source
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like your computer, it helps to kind of offset and mitigate all the negative impacts of
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that artificial blue light, which is skin aging and even for the eyes.
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And I find that on a heavy work day, I get to the end of the day with way better energy
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than I do when I'm sitting in front of my computer under my artificial lights all day.
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So it doesn't replace going outside, but it's definitely a really nice, you know, it's
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a nice hack for when you're indoors a lot more than maybe you should be.
2:43
Yeah, you bring up a really good point because I think about that a lot and it's been
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coming up on a few episodes about how a lot of people have been helping to recalibrate
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their sleep patterns by just waking up early, getting some of that early morning sun.
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But to your point, sometimes you live in areas or different seasons where there is no early
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morning sun.
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Yeah, I think I would say there are two different things, right?
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Because I can still get outside and get that early morning sun for circadian benefits,
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which is what they're doing.
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Where the slamp is different is the other thing you get from the sun is the UVB exposure
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that really only happens kind of mid day when it comes in contact with your skin is what
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allows your body to make your own vitamin D. So that's ostensibly how we're supposed to
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get our vitamin D.
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You know, he's an interesting guy.
3:30
You should talk to him because, you know, he's coming at it also from a very ancestral
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perspective in the sense that he's like, okay, I'm going to mimic what happens during
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the day with your exposure to red near infrared blue.
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The duration of your exposure to UVB is based on your Fitzpatrick scale skin type.
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I mean, I've now been doing it for long enough that I've gone up from a Fitzpatrick type
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three to Fitzpatrick type four.
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And what happens is I get the lamp runs for seven minutes and for the first couple of minutes
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it's running red and infrared.
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And then for a few minutes in between, it brings in also the UVB.
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So it's mimicking a little bit of what the sun does.
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And then it finishes with the red and infrared again.
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And he's got sensors in there that if you're too close to the device, the UVB will shut
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off because if you get too much UVB or you get it from too close, you will burn.
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Ah, interesting.
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Is it just seven minutes, what, three times a day or once?
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If you're trying to optimize your vitamin D levels, it's once a day.
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Right now there's no UVB coming from this light.
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And so it's literally just the red and infrared.
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This is a great place to start though because you are known in the biohacking communities.
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You are a longevity expert.
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Why is it that longevity and biohacking seem to go together?
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Like what, for those that really don't understand the whole biohacking community, the terms, can
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you just kind of share like what is biohacking from your perspective and why is it kind of
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associated so closely with longevity?
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Yeah, that's a great question.
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So for me, biohacking is looking at our environment, looking at the inputs into our system.
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You know, and it's funny, I think that biohacking for me has evolved a little bit as a definition
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because where I think people kind of get a bit of a disconnect, a lot of people are going
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to say, you know what, why do you need this red light?
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Just get outside.
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Why do you need to take these supplements?
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Just eat real food, ground, get outside, and I'm like, yes, and I don't certainly live
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in a great environment.
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I live in a big city.
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There's a significant amount of pollution here.
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There's a lot of toxins in the air.
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I'm swimming in a non-native EMF soup no matter what I do.
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I'm hooked up to an ethernet cable here, but I bet you if I turned on my phone right
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now, I would see at least 10 different Wi-Fi networks.
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There's a certain degree of things that we just can no longer control in our environment.
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And so to me, what biohacking is, it's two things.
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The first thing is, what do we need to do?
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What principles do we need to apply to help us get to a baseline of balance?
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And that means that we need to mitigate for some of these overwhelming inputs that our
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bodies are being challenged with on a minute-to-minute daily basis.
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And I'm not saying this to freak people out or to make people think, oh my God, I really
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need to worry about the air that I breathe.
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Without being panicky about it and without getting neurotic about it, we also need to
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accept that our bodies are being forced to deal with a lot of things that we just weren't
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designed to deal with.
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If we can put things back in the balance, if we can mitigate, if we can find strategies
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that help to offset, you know, I have two Jasper air scrubbers in my house.
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These are air purifiers that do a really good job of cleaning the air.
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I have to accept that I live in an environment that is not that healthy, and so my indoor
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air is not going to be that healthy.
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So by putting two of those things in my house, I'm getting into a world where I can at least
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control for the air that I breathe most of the day.
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I'm still going to go outside, I'm not going to wear a hazmat suit or a mask, but I do
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what I can to mitigate what I can when I can.
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The next step of biohacking is once we've done all those, and once we've gotten ourselves
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to kind of a balanced state, now we get into the part where it's kind of like the biohacking
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2.0.
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What can we do to really try and slow down the aging process, and other people will talk
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about reversing the aging process, and whether we can truly reverse aging remains to be
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seen, but we can definitely do a lot of things to avoid speeding it up.
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That's for darn sure.
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We can definitely, at the very least, bring it back to aging at a normal rate, and I've
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definitely seen evidence that we can slow aging.
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So now we're getting into things like inhaling hydrogen air or doing things like a nano-V,
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then there's the whole space of regenerative medicine, and that's starting to get really
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crazy, right?
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We've got things like stem cells and exosomes and growth factors and gene therapy, and
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now we're starting to get into the more, we can call it crazy, but really just like the
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more aggressive strategies for living a longer, more vital, healthy life.
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That's where they intersect, right?
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Because if we can slow down the aging process, and I would argue that if we don't do any
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of this stuff that I talked about initially, our environments and our lifestyles risk accelerating
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our aging process, and even things like controlling chronic stress, which I think chronic stress
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is becoming unfortunately all too common, and so can you develop some kind of a mindfulness
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or breathwork or any kind of strategy to help to create some kind of buffer between you
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and what's crazy in the world to you?
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What I hear you saying is that you look for a marriage of ancestral principles and
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using technology and these tools to help to offset how kind of extreme modern life has
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become in terms of how harmful and accelerating our aging.
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It has started to do, but because I'm sure you've heard this before, where people talk
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about, well, are we trying to play God with some of these things?
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Because I feel like even when you were just starting to go to these extreme kind of gene
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things, like I just read recently that they were just successful in basically customizing,
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I want to say a child's DNA, like so that people could literally order the type of child
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they want, and then that's what they get.
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I mean, I feel like that's where we're going, and that really does in my judgment border
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on like, oh, we're going into like really scary territory.
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I agree with you.
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I think that it's a slippery slope.
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I think that a lot of the biohacking 1.0, I'll call it that, is about bringing us back
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to nature or using technology to bring back elements of nature into our life that we've
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lost.
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It's not going to replace getting out into nature, but it's helping me to mitigate my
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reality of being inside in front of a computer for too many hours a day.
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I like that.
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As far as gene therapies go, I recently
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interviewed a woman by the name of Liz Parrish, and she's part of a group of people that
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absolutely are in a world of delaying death and extending vitality as long as humanly
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possible.
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And she's herself has done four different types of gene therapy on herself, and she looks
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the part, not going to lie, but is showing that it's actually slowing down her aging.
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You can see it in her labs and her blood work and her performance.
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But here's what's really interesting about that, and I'll get to the custom child in
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a minute.
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What's interesting about the work that she does is in shooting for this extreme longevity,
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let's call it, what's happening is that a lot of health issues that have been considered
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unsolvable could get solved the long way.
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So things like type 1 diabetes, she showed at a conference I was at recently, she showed
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a video of a child who I believe had muscular dystrophy.
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I could be wrong about the disorder, but whatever it was, it was a genetic disorder that they
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showed this little boy from the back, he was trying to climb a set of stairs.
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There was no way he was getting up these stairs, no way.
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They administered a gene therapy to this child.
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Three months later, the next video is this kid running up the stairs.
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That is life changing.
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That is unbelievable work.
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And so I think when she first started what she was doing, it was because her son had
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been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and she wanted to solve that.
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And she realized very quickly that solving for disease was complicated, it was expensive
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and it was really heavily regulated.
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So she moved into this kind of longevity space.
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But as she explains, you get to solve a lot of health problems when you start to change
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the way the genes are expressing like a telomerase gene, which is telomerase is the enzyme
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that protects the ends of your DNA, your telomeres, helping them to replicate appropriately.
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If you can solve for telomerase, is it possible that that gene therapy could be part of a
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solution for children who are born with a genetic disorder called progeria?
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It's a complicated disease and it's very unlikely that one gene therapy is going to actually
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solve the whole problem.
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But these are kids who start aging kind of like at five times the normal rate, the day
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that they're born.
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So by the time they're 20 years old, not only did they die, but they've died of all these
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chronic age-related illnesses that people suffer.
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So they're arteries hardened, they're skin wrinkles, they shrink, they lose bone, then
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like all the things happen to them at this crazy accelerated rate.
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So I think that that application of gene therapy is unbelievable and could really be massively
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impactful to people suffering from really horrible diseases.
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She even has one for cognition, which could be very helpful for people who have cognitive
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experiencing cognitive decline or dementia or neurodegenerative diseases.
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Now this is all work that's ongoing, so I'm not saying she has the solutions yet.
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As far as creating a designer baby with gene therapy, I think we're crossing the line.
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That's my personal opinion.
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I think that it's one thing to, if you're able to analyze a genome of a fetus and
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say, oh, this kid's heading for trouble, what if you could control for L.T.
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little A or something and prevent this child from having a cholesterol problem their whole
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lives?
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That might be interesting.
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But when you start choosing eye color, hair color, height, aesthetic features, physical
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ability, that kind of stuff, many people could disagree with me, but to me, we're crossing
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the line and we're denying ourselves that the breadth and depth of what humanity is supposed
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to be.
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You know, to that point, one could argue that these kind of contrast, some people would
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look at his issues that people have, now whether they're caused from the toxicity of our
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present day or just part of life, how sometimes genetics just pop out something that's a little
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off or different, right?
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That sometimes these differences that, and this is getting a little spiritual, but it's
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like that maybe that soul needs in this lifetime, you know, that kind of esoteric kind of thing.
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And who are we need to kind of look at that and say, well, no, that's wrong or right?
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But I hear what you're saying is that if this is what we're given right now because of how
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life is and we can solve and fix it, why wouldn't we?
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But I guess the thing that pops up for me is I think about like, for example, the poultry
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industry, right?
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They caged the birds, they keep them in these confined places where they were pecking at
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each other or themselves, right?
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And so what do they do instead of saying, oh, well, maybe we should, they don't do well
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in these tight confined spaces, they put off the beat.
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And to me, that is kind of what we're doing is like we're not going, hey, maybe we should
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rethink how we're doing this because it's resulting in continued chronic illness or this
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or that.
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And I know that people say, well, we don't know for sure.
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But we know that there's more issues popping up than there used to be, I think, right?
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I mean, it's not just that we have more testing, is it?
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No, I mean, look, I think there's a difference between a kid that's born with muscular
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dystrophy or a child who has type one diabetes.
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These are not controllable by, I mean, maybe there's something in the environment that's
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causing these genetic mutations, I don't know, but these are not lifestyle diseases.
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I think that if you were the parent of one of these kids and somebody said to you, we
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can help your child to live a normal, healthy life that is not filled with suffering.
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Yeah, you take it.
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You take it.
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And I mean, is there on a, on a spiritual level, if that soul came back under those circumstances,
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if you believe in those things and if you've read up about it, sometimes it's a lesson
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and that soul needs to learn, it's something that soul chose.
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Sometimes it's to teach the people around them certain lessons, are we interfering with
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that?
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Heck yeah.
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I don't have the answer to that.
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You know, I can only tell you that as a parent, if I had the choice between watching
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my child suffer and live a life of suffering, and if I could end that suffering somehow,
16:52
by making them healthier, I probably wouldn't care so much about anything else.
16:58
These are very good questions and they're good things to think about.
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I mean, there's no doubt that we're already in a world where technology is starting to
17:06
outstrip our ability to balance the ethics of what we can do with what we should do.
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I would never pretend to have the answer to that.
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I think, I mean, maybe it's part of the human evolution is, is, I mean, who knows, you
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know, maybe part of our journey as a species is to learn to solve these problems and these
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people have come along with these problems all along to help us to get to a place where
17:30
we can solve them.
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Maybe.
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It could be either or you're right.
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You're right.
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And we could philosophize all we want, but the reality is, is like, the parent that's
17:38
dealing with it, they want the result now.
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They want help now.
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You know, they want their child to be able to run and play and have a normal life, fundamentally
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is what we all hope for.
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Now, what motivated you to go down this path of health and your interest in longevity?
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Did something happen to you or you sick at one point or?
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I started to get old.
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My first career was in sales and advertising, but I was always a fitness instructor and
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I've always been interested in health and I studied physiology and university.
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I was the nerdy kid that read National Geographic from front to back.
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When I first got married, I had cases of National Geographic that had to be pried out of my
18:26
fingers and disposed of because it's like, I mean, you can't just keep collecting this
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stuff.
18:30
So, you know, I've always had this very, very keen interest in health and being a fitness
18:37
instructor kind of gave me a little, always allowed me to kind of keep my finger in the
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whole helping people part, right?
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And health and wellness.
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And what ended up happening is I woke up one morning and realized, you know, this sales
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thing is not working for me, like it's not feeding me.
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I don't like it.
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You know, you can only say to yourself, they can't possibly be paying me enough to do this
18:57
so many times before you decide they're not paying me enough to do this.
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Like I just don't care enough.
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I don't care about moving money from here to there.
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It doesn't make a difference to me.
19:05
So, you know, at the time, the paleo movement was getting really big.
19:10
People like J.J. Virgin had come out with a virgin diet.
19:13
We had guys like Rob Wolfe, we had guys like Mark Sisson was just calming up at the time.
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Even Dave Asprey was coming out big at that.
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It was that kind of initial wave, if you will.
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And I just got super interested in, I decided to go back to school and become a holistic
19:30
nutritionist because I've always been interested in food.
19:33
And I've always been interested in the body's ability to heal.
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I've always kind of had this belief that the body has a massive capacity for repair and
19:42
regeneration built in, but we need to figure out how to tap into it and how to get out of
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the way.
19:49
And then the longevity piece really, I think, evolved over the last five to six years.
19:55
And for me, longevity, I'm not going to sit here and tell you I'm aiming to live to
20:01
what 180.
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I'm aiming to live for as long as I can be healthy and vital and contributing.
20:08
And the day that that is over, whether it's at 90 or 100 or 110, if I'm lucky or 120,
20:15
so be it.
20:16
This may not be a popular opinion, but I believe back to your point, there's a natural
20:20
circle of life.
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Like we're meant to be here for a period of time and then we're meant not to be here
20:25
for after that because it's an evolution.
20:28
Like you, like you imagine, if you were never going to die, James, how would that affect
20:33
your psychology, the way that you live your life and interact with people?
20:37
And to me, that's inconceivable.
20:39
And it's not as much as I don't want to die.
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I don't think I want that either.
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Unless everyone around you in that you love is also on the same track.
20:48
I mean, I know Dick Van Dyke is talking about this because he thinks he's a hundred
20:52
now.
20:53
Yeah.
20:54
Now, yes, he's enjoying his life as much as he can, but everyone he knew is gone.
20:59
Yeah, they're all dead.
21:00
They're all dead.
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And he's like, I don't have like my friends anymore.
21:04
And you know, and that begs the question of like, well, what is the point of this life?
21:08
Is it, is it about the things we achieve or is it about the connections we make?
21:13
It's both, right?
21:14
And I'm sure Dick Van Dyke is still surrounded by people.
21:17
It's just his pure group hasn't kept up with him.
21:20
Is it possible that as we learn to, to control for all these things that are shortening
21:27
our lives unnaturally or that are making us sick or accelerating our aging, if we can
21:32
do that as a society, can we age better as a society, be less of a burden on our loved
21:37
ones, be less of a burden on society as we age?
21:40
As a result, get more out of the lives, the years that we live and still come to a good
21:46
end whenever that may be.
21:49
I like that thought a lot.
21:51
Let's just say someone is new just beginning their journey, just like you did, you know,
21:56
so long ago.
21:57
But with your knowledge and what you've seen come up, where do you think they should
22:01
start?
22:02
Yeah.
22:03
So where they should start depends on where they are.
22:05
So if this is someone who, you know, really is new to this space, this is someone who
22:10
doesn't, didn't have the benefit of coming from a family where, you know, they ate home
22:16
cooked meals every day, they got outside, they didn't spend a ton of time in front of
22:20
screens.
22:21
If they have, didn't have those benefits, then you have to start there.
22:26
You have to start with a super unsexy foundation that is get to bed at a reasonable time so
22:34
that you can get quality sleep, get outside at least a few times a day so that your brain
22:40
gets the natural light inputs that it needs to regulate your circadian rhythm, which has
22:44
a huge number of downstream effects.
22:47
Move your body, like I'm standing at my desk right now, like I figured out quite a
22:51
while ago that if I sit for those eight to 10 hours, I'm done.
22:55
You're cutting off your circulation, like it's not, it's not healthy, right?
22:59
So I have a walking treadmill, which I don't use as much as I used to.
23:02
Number one, if I record my podcast on that, people get really annoyed because it's distracting.
23:06
Yeah, you're kind of bouncing and people are like, what are you doing?
23:10
Like, this is really annoying.
23:12
But I have like a 20 pound kettlebell under my desk, so I have one foot up on the kettlebell
23:16
just to change up my posture on a regular basis.
23:20
So move your body during the day, get that quality sleep, get the natural light.
23:28
Once we've checked those off, eat real food, like you've got to clean out your covered
23:34
skies, like you've got to go back to eating whole foods.
23:37
And even if our soils are not as rich as they should be, and we're not getting as many
23:45
nutrients, it's still, don't forget that food's not just calories, it's not just nutrients,
23:53
it's information.
23:54
And this is where I think, and this is a whole different discussion, but this is where
23:57
the beyond burgers of the world are so freaking scary, right?
24:01
Because lab-grown meat, to me, is an example of human arrogance to the nth degree.
24:07
It's one thing to make a burger out of nuts and seeds and legumes.
24:10
I mean, whatever you believe, if that's what's going to float your boat, at least it's real
24:15
food.
24:16
But if you're going to start growing your food in a lab, I think there's a lot of danger
24:21
signs there.
24:23
And then exercise, right?
24:24
And then you have to like challenge your body.
24:27
You need to, you need to build muscle and maintain muscle.
24:30
And you know, now there's been this big thing over the last few months of people saying,
24:35
you need to build muscle, you need to lift heavy weights, absolutely.
24:38
But now there's this backlash of people saying, well, you don't really need that much muscle.
24:41
And I'm like, okay, you know what, could we just not do that?
24:45
Could we just help people and be clear?
24:48
You need to lift heavy things as heavy as you can lift.
24:51
Because if you don't challenge your body, nobody's telling everybody they have to walk
24:55
around with like a hundred pounds of muscle on their frame, that's actually not efficient.
24:59
And it's not that good for you.
25:01
But we are saying that our goal, my goal is that in my 80s and my 90s, I'm standing
25:07
as straight and as tall as I am right now.
25:10
And that's only going to happen if I keep challenging my body to maintain itself and
25:15
to remain flexible and strong.
25:18
I love it.
25:19
But you're bringing up something that this whole like we're going one direction, then
25:23
we go to another, to me, that's so human.
25:26
We want the comfort of consistency, but yet we're so inconsistent.
25:31
Yeah, I think also, like don't forget the power of social media.
25:35
People are looking for clicks, they're looking for eyeballs, they're looking for attention.
25:39
And so they're going to say the most controversial thing that they can think of that challenges
25:44
the current status quo so that people will go, wait, what?
25:49
I didn't know that.
25:50
What does that mean?
25:51
Oh my God.
25:52
That mean I don't have to exercise.
25:53
Thank God.
25:54
It's unfortunate that now we're in a world where social media is a new input.
25:59
It's a new thing we have to control for.
26:02
And I'm on social media and I'm building my following, but I'm not building my following
26:06
as fast as some people because I flat out refuse to say the crazy shit that's going to get
26:11
people's attention.
26:12
Like I just won't.
26:14
Like right now, there's this massive thing going on.
26:17
There's some study, a study came out where there's 2,000 lawsuits against no votes against
26:23
those, because there's people who have woken up blind.
26:28
And it's being attributed to the olympic and it is legitimately being attributed to
26:32
the olympic.
26:33
But what nobody wants to talk about is who are these people?
26:38
What dose were they on?
26:40
What were their underlying conditions?
26:43
The truth is nobody can understand what the mechanism of action is for this happening.
26:49
But it's happening.
26:50
But we also know that people who are diabetic are very prone to blindness.
26:57
And in the study, what they talked about is a lot of these people, if most, if not all
27:01
of them, had seen a massive sudden drop in blood glucose and a massive sudden drop in
27:07
weight.
27:08
And the body doesn't love massive shifts like that.
27:13
It needs time to adapt.
27:15
And I'm not saying that that's the reason.
27:16
But is it possible that that is part of what's happening?
27:20
Can we please ask more questions?
27:22
Can we find out were these people put on major aggressive doses because they had a lot
27:28
of weight to lose too fast before their bodies can adapt?
27:33
They've become so, so dramatic that we don't stop and ask questions.
27:39
And we don't give time people to say, OK, well, let me explain or let's look into this
27:44
and let's ask more questions like if you look at the flip side of the 2000 lawsuits and
27:48
there's lots of other lawsuits, there's lawsuits for gastroparesis, which is paralysis
27:52
of the stomach.
27:54
There's other ones for pancreatitis, which can also be an issue.
27:58
The flip side of that is that there are millions of people who were completely stuck, whose
28:03
metabolism were completely broken, who have been helped dramatically by these compounds.
28:10
Is it true that if you're going to use this stuff, it's even more important to eat a
28:15
great diet.
28:17
It's even more important to manage your sleep.
28:19
It's even more important to exercise, but the problem is that people are stuck on aesthetics.
28:24
They just care that they fit into their size six chains.
28:27
They don't actually care that they're any stronger or they're any healthier and they
28:33
want to get there in a rush.
28:35
First of all, you're so beautifully navigating the kind of human situation in my judgment,
28:42
but I also feel like you are capturing that we, as humans, we kind of look towards the
28:49
loudest person in the room or the shiny bright light.
28:51
I guess my question then around that is, how do we support people so that they're asking
29:00
more questions, so that they're more curious about starting with more natural modalities
29:05
of health, not going towards the shiny object or that magic pill, like how do we support
29:11
in the grounding of people in their health?
29:14
That's such a good question.
29:15
I think it comes back to the choices that people make for themselves.
29:19
There's not much we can do about the voices that are screaming from them, rooftops,
29:25
look at me, look at me, look at me.
29:27
What we can help people to do is become more discerning about the voices they choose to
29:32
listen to.
29:35
That's hard.
29:36
It's a little bit like you have to establish your own framework.
29:40
It's like establishing your own value system.
29:43
Is this person intolerant?
29:45
If this person plants a flag on a hill and is going to die on that hill, or is this person
29:49
willing to admit every once in a while, oh God, you know what, I used to say that, actually
29:55
I wasn't right.
29:56
I've learned new information because if you can't accept that you made a mistake or you can't
30:02
accept that new information has come to light that is changing your position on something,
30:07
then that's not probably the person you want to follow necessarily.
30:11
Because confidence is a beautiful thing, but arrogance is the dark side of confidence.
30:17
If there's one thing we both know is that nobody has all the answers when it comes to
30:22
our health.
30:24
Not only did the human body not come with the manual, but to add insult to injury, everybody
30:28
is different.
30:29
And now we have new inputs we never had to deal with before.
30:32
So even the things that were true 10 years ago or in our grandparents' time have changed
30:38
because our world has changed.
30:41
This is a fun topic then.
30:42
So if there was one and I'm going to use air quotes healthy, people think it's healthy
30:49
and it's talked about a lot right now that people are doing in the name of wellness.
30:54
What do you think that is?
30:55
What do you think people think is healthy that they're doing, but in your opinion is like
31:00
it's not at all and then what would you recommend they do instead?
31:05
I think it's possible that the protein message is being overplayed.
31:11
I believe it's true that many people don't get enough protein.
31:16
But I also think that what's happened is there's been a hyper focus to protein.
31:23
And now people are like, oh my God, more is better, more is better, more is better.
31:26
So find the voices that are going to help you to understand how much protein do you need
31:33
based on where you are in your life, based on your health status right now, based on
31:40
your activity levels.
31:41
Now, at a baseline, most people don't get enough protein.
31:45
But do we all need to be consuming 1.8 or 2.0 grams of protein?
31:50
Do we all need every single meal to deliver 70 grams of protein?
31:54
No, we don't.
31:55
Not all of us.
31:57
If you're looking to get buff, I mean, I see some of these influencers and trainers
32:01
and they're amazing, man, I want to come back looking like them sometime.
32:07
Like there's this one girl, she's adorable and she's like one can of cheeky and this
32:12
to this and by the time she's done, she's got this bowl which I don't think I could eat in the day.
32:16
But it's 75 grams of protein and this many grams of this and I'm like, dude,
32:21
but she's built like a figure competitor, right?
32:24
Which is amazing.
32:25
But I'm thinking of all these regular people watching this building their can of cheeky
32:31
bowls and wondering why they're kind of stuck in their journey or not realizing that they're
32:37
not producing enough digestive enzymes or HCl to actually break down that protein so that they
32:43
can digest it.
32:44
There's so much more to increasing your protein intake than just eating more protein.
32:49
Like, can we take a step back and check in with our digestion and figure out, am I even
32:54
breaking this stuff down?
32:56
Maybe that's why I'm deficient in protein.
32:59
It's such a good point and I and through my 20 years in this health field,
33:03
I have definitely found hydrochloric acid as a major issue because when you start out talking
33:08
about stress, right?
33:09
That is the major cause of low hydrochloric acid.
33:13
So we have to assume that we have low hydrochloric acid because of this stressful life.
33:19
And as we age, we make less.
33:22
You'll meet a lot of 70, 80, 90 year olds who like, I can't eat meat.
33:25
It's too heavy.
33:26
I can't digest it.
33:27
You're right.
33:28
You can't because you're not making enough stomach acid.
33:31
Does that mean that person needs to now just up their protein?
33:35
No.
33:35
It means that person needs to either take
33:39
bitters before the meal to stimulate acid.
33:41
Maybe that for them, that's not going to be enough.
33:43
Maybe they need to add digestive enzymes and HCl to their regimen when they eat so that it
33:49
helps their body to break down the protein.
33:51
And maybe then they can eat a reasonable amount of protein and be A-OK with that.
33:55
What do you think of the apple cider vinegar in a glass of water before you eat your meal?
34:03
I think it's great.
34:04
I think that can help to blend in glycemic response.
34:06
I think apple cider vinegar also helps with digestive enzymes if I'm not wrong.
34:13
But bitters are great before a meal.
34:16
And I remember listening to a podcast about this years ago and the guy said,
34:19
look, there's wisdom built into different cultures.
34:24
So in the Italian, for example, world, you might have a small salad of arugula,
34:29
which is a bitter, with extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper and a bit of lemon juice.
34:35
And that would be the bitters.
34:36
That would be getting your digestive system ramped up and ready to go for what's to come next.
34:42
But if you don't have it in you and you don't like bitter foods because so many of us are,
34:46
people's taste buds have evolved sadly towards sweet.
34:49
Like, would you live in a culture where we no longer tolerate bitter?
34:52
We no longer tolerate anything that's not sweet.
34:56
There's companies like Just Thrive has a bitters supplement you can take before your meal.
35:02
So see if that helps you.
35:03
And you'll know you're not digesting your protein if your hair skin and nail starts to fall apart,
35:09
which everybody says, oh, that's your thyroid.
35:11
Well, maybe it's not.
35:12
Maybe it's your digestion.
35:13
So let's just get some blood work done and calm down for a minute.
35:17
It could be that.
35:18
It could be that you feel heavy after you eat meat and it takes forever to digest it.
35:23
And you just, you know, like the words will come out of your mouth.
35:26
I just don't feel good when I eat meat.
35:28
Or it could be that you're not pooping regularly.
35:32
Sometimes I've helped people to solve constipation with something to support their gallbladder,
35:37
like a tutka and oxpile, and digestive enzymes.
35:42
And all of a sudden, they're regular, right as rain.
35:45
Because their body just needed that support to get the system going.
35:49
It's a great reminder as well.
35:51
Because a lot of times when people they'll eat meat or just using that as an example,
35:55
and they'll be like, oh, it just doesn't, it doesn't feel right.
35:57
And then they'll just stop eating meat.
35:58
It's like, I love that you're introducing like it's not black or white.
36:02
It's like there is a gray area.
36:04
And it might be that you're just not digesting the meat properly and you need support there.
36:09
You don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water.
36:11
I want to talk about peptides because I know you're, you know, a lot about that.
36:16
First of all, I think there is a misunderstanding that there are some people that think peptides
36:23
are unnatural. They're not really, right?
36:26
I mean, many of them are taken from nature, right?
36:30
They're not all.
36:31
Some of them are synthetic molecules that are designed to interact with receptors in your body.
36:37
Or they're mimicking a natural peptide in your body.
36:39
I mean, there's 7,000 peptides made by the human body.
36:42
All of peptide is a small protein or made up of protein.
36:46
And so the peptides are the smaller chains of amino acids.
36:50
Some people put the limit at 100.
36:52
Most people put it at 50.
36:53
There's talk that it's going to get lowered to 40 to below 40,
36:57
which means that things like thymus and beta 4, which is a common peptide that people will use,
37:02
even though it's not approved for human use.
37:04
I kind of have to say that thymus and beta 4 is 43 amino acids.
37:08
All of a sudden, it'll be on the wrong side of the fence.
37:11
And they will qualify it as a biologic.
37:13
And what's interesting about that is that tells us that there's value to it.
37:19
I'm not going to assign full malice to it.
37:22
All I'm going to say is that clearly it's doing something and the regulatory bodies are saying,
37:26
well, wait, if it's that active, then we need to establish what it's doing before we have people
37:30
running around using it in bully nilly.
37:33
You know, whether I agree with that or not is beside the point I'm just delivering the information
37:37
right now.
37:38
Then you've got the BPC 157.
37:40
BPC 157, which is one of the better known peptides that people use,
37:45
is a fragment of a peptide that we naturally make in our stomach.
37:49
It's part of our physiology.
37:52
And so it can be reintroduced to the body therapeutically to help deliver therapeutic benefits.
38:00
And it's so interesting because the FDA a couple of years ago decided that BPC 157
38:06
is a research chemical.
38:07
It is not approved for human use by injection period.
38:10
Nobody should be using it.
38:12
Now, it can be taken in orally.
38:14
And people argue about this all the time.
38:16
They're like, no, it's going to get broke down into the stomach.
38:18
It's just another protein blah, blah.
38:20
It does not.
38:21
It is native.
38:22
The body recognizes it.
38:23
It's a recognizable sequence of amino acids arranged in a certain way that it gets a buy.
38:31
Just last week, ironically, I had given each of my parents a bottle of an oral BPC formula
38:38
that is a gut healing formula.
38:40
So it has four different peptides in it.
38:42
It has three or four other components.
38:44
We know we're needed for gut healing like glutamine, zinc, all the regular stuff.
38:50
And I get a call from my mom.
38:52
I think I gave it to them three weeks ago when they were visiting,
38:55
like at the beginning of August.
38:57
And I get a call from my mother a week ago saying, we need more of that stuff.
39:02
What did they experience?
39:05
So in her case, her digestion improved, right?
39:09
Because we're healing the stomach.
39:10
We're healing the GI tract.
39:12
The next thing that she's going to say about her and my dad is something that people say
39:16
doesn't happen.
39:17
People believe that the only way for BPC to help with tissue and joints and injuries,
39:23
soft tissue and hard tissue injuries is to inject it.
39:26
And I generally would agree with that.
39:28
I would say that is the most efficient way to use BPC 157.
39:32
But my mother and my father, not listening to what I tell them,
39:35
and not necessarily reading the instructions on the bottle,
39:37
have been doubling down on their dose of this supplement.
39:41
And my mother earlier this year tore a muscle in her shoulder.
39:45
My dad has a major problem in his back that causes him no end of discomfort.
39:50
And both of them, she said, I was telling your father that my shoulder is feeling so much better.
39:56
And he said, oh, you know, funny.
39:58
Now that you mention it, my back feels better.
40:00
And I never even mentioned to them that this was a possibility.
40:04
Wow.
40:05
Right? Which is the best way to test something.
40:07
Because if you tell someone this is going to make your shoulder better,
40:09
there's a 50-50 chance that their belief will make their shoulder better.
40:13
Which in my mind is actually valid.
40:15
I love placebo fact.
40:16
I think placebo is awesome.
40:17
If you can convince someone that they're going to feel better and they do feel better
40:20
and things get better, rock on.
40:22
Power suggests some of it works.
40:24
If it works, it works.
40:25
100%.
40:26
But in this case, they had no clue.
40:29
And both of them noticed that they physically feel better.
40:32
They have fewer aches and pains than they did before.
40:35
This is so good.
40:36
But for someone who you had mentioned the whole idea of who wants to age younger.
40:40
So someone who's over 40, who wants to age younger,
40:44
what is a not-so-obvious protocol or supplement you'd have them start with today?
40:50
So this is something you and I have talked about before.
40:52
And this dovetails a little bit with your other business.
40:56
Pluck, which is about reintroducing organ meats into people's diets.
40:59
There's a subset of peptides called bioregulator peptides.
41:03
And bioregulator peptides are the tiniest of the proteins.
41:06
These are two to four amino acid chains.
41:08
They're teeny tiny.
41:10
But they are epigenetic switches.
41:13
Meaning that they influence the way your genes express.
41:18
Not as creepy as gene therapy, because they're natural to the body.
41:21
But these are natural in nature.
41:24
There's a Russian scientist by the name of Vladimir Kappensen,
41:27
who almost 40 years ago now discovered these in Russia.
41:31
And studied them extensively for his entire career,
41:35
started in with computer simulations moved into animals and then moved into human testing.
41:40
And was able to show that when we reintroduce these bioregulator peptides into the body,
41:46
it allows to basically repair day-to-day damage or day-to-day deficiencies in the function
41:53
of our tissues, glands, and organs that we lose as we age.
41:56
So the cool thing about bioregulators is that they don't boost anything,
42:01
they don't suppress anything, they just try to bring things back into balance.
42:05
So if I have someone who says to me,
42:07
you know what? I just want to age better.
42:09
I would say, of course, we're going to talk about all the things we talked about at the beginning.
42:12
But I would also say that what these bioregulators can do is they can help to restore better
42:19
balance and function to the pineal gland, which controls your circadian cycle.
42:24
It controls your melatonin production, which is going to be helpful for sleep
42:28
and a whole bunch of that other stuff, because we know that melatonin is a major hormone in the body.
42:32
It's going to help to regulate more production of telomerase to protect the telomeres
42:37
on the ends of your DNA. And then there's a bioregulator for the pancreas, maybe to give some TLC
42:44
to the pancreas, which has been working so hard for you for the last 40, 50, 60 years.
42:49
There's going to be a decline in its function, so can we help the pancreas to kind of regenerate
42:54
a little bit or speed up the regeneration? There's one for the liver, for the stomach,
42:58
for the heart, for the blood vessels, for the thymus gland, like there's 21 different bioregulators.
43:04
And I would, at this stage of the game, to err on the side of nature and safety,
43:10
I would err towards the natural bioregulators that are actual extracts from those tissues
43:16
from animals. And that's where we get to what you do, because where the bioregulators are
43:22
extracted from are essentially organs. So the liver bioregulator will be found in the liver.
43:28
The kidney bioregulator will be found in the kidney. The thymus gland bioregulator will
43:33
originate in the thymus gland. And same with adrenals and testes and ovaries, it moves into the
43:39
world of homeopathy. It borrows from glandular therapy. It's all part of that same world.
43:45
You know, even in your supplements, you only have access to so many organs. There's lots of
43:50
bits and bugs that are not allowed to be used or get thrown away or whatever the case may be.
43:55
So with the bioregulators, you get access to the thyroid, the adrenal glands, the ovaries,
44:01
the testes. I mean, you can eat heart. It's really nice meat if you can find it. You can
44:07
eat bone marrow. There's bone marrow bioregulator, but a lot of people don't like it, don't want it,
44:12
or it's not part of their world. To me, that is where I would start. I feel like the other peptides,
44:18
the longer chain peptides are fantastic, but right now they're very controversial.
44:24
Certainly, there's a group of people out there that's like, I don't care if they're controversial,
44:27
I'm using them because I know that they work for me. That's fine. There's a certain number
44:32
that now that you can use orally, which is great. So there's companies like Level Up Health
44:38
that I work with very closely. He's got a number of them. There's another company. There's
44:43
a couple of companies, but I would say Level Up is doing some of the best work. He's the one that
44:46
makes that ultimate GI repair that I was talking about, which people...
44:50
You gave your parents? Yeah, that I gave my parents. Everyone's going to be ordering now on
44:54
based on them. So if you want that, we can put the link in the show notes, where people can
44:58
just go to my website, netkniton.com, and there's a not recommend section there. That's great.
45:02
We should. We would definitely do that. This is a perfect place to ask. So if people feel inspired
45:08
from your talk, they want to work with you. Do you work with clients? And if not, how do people
45:13
kind of get more access to you? Thank you for that. So right now, I'm not working with clients. I
45:19
think I'm starting to feel the pressure to develop some kind of a curriculum or something that
45:24
people can go through on their own. I don't know that I'll go back to working with people one on one,
45:29
but the best way right at this instant to get access to me and to work with me is to join my
45:34
membership community. So I have a membership community called the longevity community. You can find
45:40
details for it at netkniton.com. I'm doing office hours once a week in there. I actually last year,
45:47
I just finished this year of bioregulators program where I was working with people and getting
45:51
working them through all the bioregulators for a year. I don't know yet if I'm doing it again
45:56
for next year just because I'm so busy, but I might be doing that again. I also bring in podcast
46:02
guests to do live Q&As. And it's a really cool community of like-minded people. We've got practitioners
46:07
in there and consumers and everybody's really just contributing. And because it's, you know,
46:12
it's maybe it's- I don't even think it's 300 people. It's intimate enough, but big enough that
46:18
it's active. It's a really great resource. So that would be the best way to go or and or listen
46:24
to the podcast. I mean like you, you know, I've got a podcast and I talk about a lot of this stuff
46:30
or bring people on that talk about it as well and that's another resource. Yeah, and your podcast
46:36
has been going on for a long time. There's a lot of great episodes and continue to be just a really
46:41
great resource. I highly recommend that to everyone. I think I want to end just highlighting that
46:48
you said something earlier about how we need to support people and mean more discerning about who
46:53
they listen to and what they follow. And I just want to offer that you are a great example
47:00
of someone who I believe is worth following and who has earned that following because not only
47:07
do you live what you preach, you also look healthy. And I think that's really important that when we
47:14
follow people, when we hear people, you know, on their soap boxes, how do they look? I know that we
47:21
don't want to be too visual necessarily, but I think we have to be because if that person doesn't
47:27
exhibit what they're saying and they don't exhibit the type of body and or persona that you
47:33
are pursuing, then they may not be the right person for you. You know, and I just I just think
47:39
it's really important that you are talking about longevity and I'm now known you for a few years
47:43
and you do look like you're de-aging. First of all, thank you for for everything you just said. I
47:47
appreciate it. I think that when it comes to following people, we have to be careful with how people
47:54
look. I came to the space relatively late in life. If I'd been doing what I've been doing since I
48:00
was 35 or 40, I probably would look even like a lot younger than I look now. And that doesn't
48:06
change my message, right? I mean, definitely somebody who looks ill and who you can find shots on
48:13
TikTok of, you know, sitting and having their meals at Burger King or McDonald's or whatever, it's
48:18
not living the life. They're not walking the walk. They're simply just talking a talk that's
48:21
going to get them recognition or whatever the case may be. So I just think we need to apply a
48:27
little bit of grace on that one. Sometimes stuff happens, you know, even people in this space like
48:33
we had one fairly high profile person recently who got who got cancer, like it it can be a beast
48:40
and it's not because she's any less good at what she does. It's not because she's not living
48:46
the right life for doing the right things. It's because sometimes there are circumstances beyond
48:51
our control when it comes to health that are just going to kick in. So definitely, you know,
48:58
somebody being vibrant and healthy is a really good sign. But we also have to reserve a little bit of
49:03
grace for sometimes when things do go off the rails, which they can. That's beyond our control.
49:08
And now we're working in a world of, okay, now how does this person handle that? How do they manage it?
49:14
What are you going to do about it? Yeah, well said. That reminds me that I was curious during this talk.
49:19
So do you fall off the rails ever? Like do you ever have days where you're just like, I'm just
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done doing all the biohacking. I just want to have a, you know, no frills, nothing kind of day, you know.
49:29
Of course, you know, it happens every once in a while, you know, and I don't feel as good at the end
49:34
of the day. If I allow myself to spend too much time on social media, kind of get sucked into that
49:40
doom scrolling thing, it's almost like a necessary lesson for me to remind me, man, I can't imagine
49:48
people who spend their days like this, like talk about toxic. It's more toxic than any food,
49:54
than any activity, than almost anything else because it will alter your physiology by destroying
50:04
your mentality, your spirit. It's soul crushing what's happening right now in the world. Then I think
50:10
that, you know, in an effort to be heard, all the sides are becoming more and more and more toxic,
50:16
and it's becoming more and more and more difficult to find the truth, to not lose anybody's humanity
50:24
in all this. And if there's one thing I want to leave people with is remember that everybody's
50:31
a human being, everybody wants to live. There's certainly there's bad actors in the world that are,
50:37
we have to wonder what they're doing here and why they're here, but they're not the majority,
50:43
and you cannot paint a whole group of people with the same brush of a bunch of bad actors. So
50:50
I don't want to get political about anything, but I just, what I see happening in the world right now
50:55
is this rise in hatred and intolerance and honestly guys, I think that will be the thing that
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takes us down, that will destroy your longevity, almost more than anything.
51:08
Well, thank you Natalie, just so, so well said and love talking to you. There's, there's a thousand
51:14
one more things we could of course talk about. So I hope to have you on at another day, but thank you
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so much. And thank you all for being curious enough to stay with us, to listen and to keep asking
51:26
questions. Thank you, have a great one, everybody, take care. Thank you James, thanks for having me.
51:31
Thank you so much for joining me on every day ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit
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subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You could find the show notes links and resources
51:45
mentioned at eatpluck.com that's EATPLUCK.com. And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out
51:56
of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well and keep it ancestral.