How To Live Longer, Stronger, And More Purposefully | David Guttman | Ep. 134

Misdiagnosis and surviving cancer scare 0:00

So I was misdiagnosed by three different doctors and told I had six months to live. For about a month I genuinely believed I'd be dead in six month. In fact, I want to talk about that. How did that hit you when that happened? I'm in a stage four cancer ward. Everyone around me is dying. And I know I am going to be completely fine. Like the worst survivor's guilt you can imagine. It f**ked with my head. Today we have David Gutman. Hey David. David is a serial entrepreneur with eight and nine-figure exits, chairman of the Cryotherapy Industry Association, and co-founder of TitanArc.

David helps people optimize their health span and live with vitality. He also founded 30 Acts of Kindness, a nonprofit inspiring millions to spread kindness. People wear their lack of sleep almost as a badge of honor. They're like, I'll sleep when I die. The reality is, it's a badge of stupidity. Titan Art, you started that company with your partner. What is it? What are you guys doing? We're trying to help people have those last decade, two decades, three decades be the highest quality they can possibly be.

Our target demographic is the ultra high net worth individual. Based off your experience, what's like the number one thing where you see like people are doing it wrong? That's one of the easy things to do that I think people get wrong most commonly. I thing seed oils is a big one. Now you're guys are going some different type of testing and it is very interesting. And I want you to kind of explain what proteomics is. What it really does is it looks how proteins are being processed in the body. Like right now, proteomics tells you kind of which way the wind is blowing.

The other thing that we do, I think that's really unique is. Welcome to another episode of a healthy point of view podcast. I'm your host, Sam Tahata. And as usual, we're bringing experts from all over the world to talk about health, wellness, beauty and mindset. Today's guest, he flies out all the way from Arizona to come visit us here in Miami, even though he lived here, Miami for many, many years. This guy here serial entrepreneur, he's got a nice company that's doing very unique things called Titan Ark.

He is the president of this company. Is also the chairman of the Cryo Industry Association. As you guys already know, I collaborate. I speak at the big conference, the cryo con. We're gonna be getting into a lot of different topics. You can really get to know what's happening in the longevity space. Today we have David Gutman. Hey David. Welcome on a healthy point of view. Sam, thanks for having me. Absolutely, man. So David, you had some really cool stuff that you're working on. You know, we had the opportunity to talk about a few different things that we have going on and before we get into that, I want to get in to who you are so the viewers and listeners can really understand your upbringing of how you even got to where you at today.

Let's go way back from when you were a kid, maybe around the age of five. So I had one older brother, about three and a half years older than me, and he was a really good athlete, so he wouldn't play with me unless I was good enough to not suck. And so I think because of him, I'm used to playing with someone three-and-a-half years old, he's a good really athlete. So like my identity all the way through college and even for a few years after that was as an athlete. And so I played four sports in high school, wrestled in college, was a competitive triathlete for few year after.

So for me I think sports is kind of what taught me about how to be disciplined, learning about incremental improvement, things like that. And, you know, look, I was really lucky. I had two loving parents. My dad was a very successful entrepreneur. He started a company that eventually IPO'd. And in fact, always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, just watching him. So yeah, so I, was I really fortunate. Awesome, man, awesome. You know looking at your story, And one of the things that you brought up, which when we were talking, it kind of really like hit me, you know, because it's it was a misdiagnosis that it not like any type of mis diagnosis.

You got mis-diagonosed with cancer at the age of 24. I want to talk about that.

David Gutman's background and entrepreneurial roots 4:17

Sure. But what was that like and how did that hit you when that happened? So, yeah, it's funny. It's very top of mind because I'm doing my first TED Talk, TEDx in March, and part of what I am talking about is my journey from my misdiagnosis. So I was mis-diagonosed by three different doctors and told I had six months to live. So for about a month, I genuinely believed I'd be dead in six months. In fact, my last misdiagnosis was at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City, which at the time was the best cancer hospital in the world.

Like if you're president of a country and you get cancer, that's where you go. And so when one of the top oncologists at Sloane Kethering says you gonna be like, you believe them. So I really believed it was gonna game over for me. I just got accepted into Wharton Business School and they're telling me I'll be before I enroll in fall. You know, honestly, the most common question I get asked about it was, did I sue the doctors? And I'm like, I was really happy I wasn't dying when I found out that they screwed up.

I weren't worried about who to sue, but it the best gift I could have ever been given. Just think about, most people, when they experience their mortality, they're in their 70s, It's too late to make real change. You don't have much time left. I have my whole adult life ahead of me. I was so focused on my career and stuff like that, I don't think I'd even be friends with me, that version of me now. So it completely pivoted my life and I think the reason I became a servant leader in my serial entrepreneurship was because of that experience.

I stopped being so internally focused, in fact, again, it's top of mind because I'm working on When I was at Sloan Kettering and they were doing a biopsy to figure out whether it was Hodgkin's or non-Hodgkins lymphoma, they basically said, it really won't matter. You're going to die anyway. But they're doing the biopsies and it's supposed to take 30 minutes. And once the surgeon opens me up, he sees it is a cyst filled with fluid. It's not a tumor. So he immediately knew it wasn't cancer. They just fucked up.

And so, can I curse on here? Okay, so anyway, but because I was on the operating table for three hours, they made me stay in the hospital for two days, like with an antibiotic IV drip, right? Because I'm worried about infection. So I am in a stage four cancer ward, everyone around me is dying, and I know I will be completely fine. Like the worst survivor's guilt you can imagine. The kid in bed next to me, about my age, just had his leg amputated from bone cancer, and I find I'm gonna be completely fine.

It fucked with my head. And it's almost like a blessing though, too. But to just think at age 24, you're over here in this mindset of thinking about mortality. I can't even imagine what that's like. You've been told by three doctors, like, hey, What's going on in your head when you're thinking about that? Are you thinking the next five months? What am I doing? How am going to live the rest of my life? Did you even feel sick? Yeah, so no, that was the thing that really weird was, yeah, I was having trouble breathing.

So what happened was that I thought I had bronchitis, and I have was asthmatic as a kid, So I knew what that felt like, because I just was just having some trouble with breathing, it wasn't terrible. And so they take an x-ray and there's a mass the size of a softball. It's so large it's pinching my trachea shut. My lungs were fine, It was a mask compressing trachia that caused me to have breathing difficulty. And apparently, according to the doctors, there's only like two medically documented cases of what I had.

It was very unusual, which is why they screwed up the diagnosis. But so, from my point of view, I felt fine, other than having a little bit of difficulty breathing. Otherwise, it felt great. And you know what it was? Even though they told me I was going to die, and it wasn't that I didn't believe them. I did. My dad had a cousin who had gone on a macrobiotic diet, so I decided I was going to go on the macro biotic because I'm like, well, they're basically telling me none of the traditional treatments will work.

It's too far gone. So I am going try some atypical stuff. And there was some part of me that thought, I don't know, maybe some miracle will occur. But the thing I did learn was it's actually much harder on the people that care about the person that's sick than the personal that sick. Like I wasn't happy about my situation. I was pretty unhappy. But my parents are basket cases. It's like I so focused on keeping them from jumping off a bridge that I weren't as focused of myself. At the point in time that they find out it is not cancer, I got a smile on my face because that has got to be a celebration at that point.

You know where it's just like your parents must have been like, like it should. It must just dropped, you know, where where he's like oh my God. I have never felt that level of euphoria. That's the only word I can use. It was euphoric. I mean, tears streaming down my face. When the doctor's like, because I was still out of it. And I've been in anesthesia for three hours. So I thought I heard him because in the recovery room he was talking to me, but I wasn't out. Then I'm back in my room and my parents come in and they're crying.

You're going to be fine? I am? It's surreal. Did you notice like you and your family bonded even stronger after that moment? You know, we were pretty close, you know? It was, I guess it was just, It was nice to, I mean, you kind of know you're important to your family, obviously, but you know it at a deeper level, is the best way. My older brother, he wouldn't talk to me when he thought I was dying.

Building TitanArc and personalized longevity 10:11

He thought it should have been him. I like the golden child, the kid that was always in trouble, so he felt like it was him and not me. So he was probably more relieved than anybody in a weird way What a story about that, man. And I'm more than sure there's a lot of other cases out there that are similar. So, you know, obviously that had an impact on you to do big things. What I like to always say is milk life for what it is, right? Having an experience like that you're going to milk every single moment because you just never know what can happen in life.

So fast forward to today, man, you've done some really big things. You've had the opportunity to exit out of companies, right? As a serial entrepreneur. And now you have this beautiful company that you built, that are doing something very unique in the longevity space, Titan Ark. Yeah. What made you actually get into that part? So I was trying to be kind of semi-retired, unsuccessfully, obviously. I doing two weekly podcasts and I think, I'll just do that. You know, working on some books, gonna publish my first, actually doing a few children's books and publishing my fist regular non-fiction book this summer.

And so I'm just gonna do and try to work on my head talk, work in my personal brand and just kind like, you know. I worked 20 hours a week. I thought somehow I'm working 70, 80 hours week and one of the guys I had on my podcast, Dr. Hanley, Richard Hanely, we had done a podcast swap and he was telling me about what he's planning to do with Titan Ark and I was kind of mentoring him in sort of his business stuff and trying to be as helpful as I could be because I though what was he doing was really interesting and eventually he said, Dave, would you just do this with me?

I was like, I told my wife I wouldn't do that and then she was, like no I want you to do it. And she's like because you need to, because I wanted this for you. Like for me I do a daily visualization, a meditation visualization where I basically have this same image. I'm 100 which would make my daughter 65 and we just hiked a mountain together and were watching the sunset. And that's the thing, I'm not trying to live forever, but I want the years I have to be as high quality as possible. I did triathlons pretty competitively for about five years, and one of the things that is unique about triathlon is they write your age on your calf.

which means every person that passes you and every that you pass, you know how old they are. I was pretty fast. You know, I in my early 20s and I'm finishing in the top eight, 10% of all people. And every race I ran, there'd be some guy in his 60s that would blow by me like I were standing still. Like I run in a 5.45 mile. That guy's got to be running a five 15, five 20 mile and he's in is 60's. So I've always had it in Man, if I take care of myself and I really pay attention, you can really have that health span be a lot broader than you think.

Absolutely. Talk about a motivational component, right? That guy running past you who's older than just a car. Man. I got to step it up. Yeah. Pretty cool, man. So Titan arc, going back to Titan, or so you started that company with your partner. What is it? What are you guys doing? So I have two co-founders, Dr. Rich Hanley and Augustina Visconti. She actually lives here in Miami. That's the doctor, Harvard? Yeah, so he's a Harvard trained doctor. Augustine has basically been in the concierge medicine space for about 15 years.

And she's done a lot of the operational and marketing stuff that we're doing. she is amazing. Her and I worked together at a previous company. But what we're really trying to do is imagine what Brian Johnson's doing for himself. He spends two to three million dollars a year to basically have a one-of-one protocol. You know, he's got a team, whatever it is, 20 doctors and whatever. We're basically doing a version of that. It's a, one of one, completely custom longevity plan. And the thing, when you look at whether it's, and this is no knocking everyone else, When you look at all the stuff that's out there in this space, there's a few aspects of it that I don't think make necessarily the best sense for the actual client, for that person themselves, which is they vertically integrate into some of the testing or some other protocols.

And so their ability to be profitable and successful as a business is based on what they're recommending to the client. That creates a disalignment of incentives. What we've decided to do, so that's one big distinction. The other thing is they tend to have a location-centric aspect where you've got to go to them for some level of testing and you're using their equipment. We don't do that. Instead, we're like, look, We want to be completely agnostic. It clearly has the best cardiac scan this year and ABC Company has a best Cardiac Scan next year.

Well, if we are making money with CLEARly, maybe we aren't going to recommend ABC company, right? So we don't integrate with anybody, right? It's best in class of everything. It also includes unlimited testing, unlimited protocols. Like for us, we want the incentive alignment to be as perfect as possible so that we make the most money by making you live as long as possibly. We want you to, this is not a once a year kind of thing. Our target demographic, is the ultra-high net worth individual. It's very pricey, it's expensive.

$150,000 a year. So it is very expensive, but it for the kind of person who would I spend $150000 a years if I'm worth $5000000 and this is going to help me live longer and better, guaranteed. Of course, the best money you could possibly spend. And you know the part that's funny to me is people are like $1000000, that is outrageous. Think about your average regular American household that gets regular health insurance, okay? Married couple they're gonna spend $2,500 a month to have health insurer health Insurance coverage that's 30 grand a year and they reach gonna have a $5,000 deductible That's forty thousand dollars before dollar one is covered.

Yeah So that's not so far, and that just your average household, that not a rich person. So people don't realize, because I've had, every time I go anywhere near a doctor or a hospital, they screw something up, my job is to stay as far away from doctors and hospitals as humanly possible. In fact, we joke about it internally, I was telling Dr. Hanley, I'm like, doc, we got to stop calling them patients. They're not patients, they're clients. Because our job is to make sure they don't become patients because that's where stuff goes off the rails.

And yeah, you're right. You know, if we do that with liquid we call them clients because we don' want them to feel as they are a patient. It's taking more of that proactive preventative approach so they can have that good health span and lifespan. Now, you know, I initially started on my days off from the fire department in that world of concierge medicine with a company called Senegenics. So I was a client of them years ago. Yeah. Yes. I actually trained other Dr. Robert Willicks, who was one of the founding partners with Dr Allen Mince and.

You know, interested enough, I learned that people high net worth individuals, they want stuff like this. They're looking for it. And they're not just looking forward so they can live long, but they look forward also so that they could be at their peak levels and perform every single day, being sharp as a tack, cognitive health being in place, not getting sick, you know all of that stuff. So the testing that you're doing, because I know you said you guys will actually come into people's homes. So what kind of testing are you doing?

How is the whole setup of this type of business? Yeah, so that's another thing. People are like, oh, go to Fountain Life Center in Dallas or wherever it might be. With us, it's like even if you had that, I still got to go your home if I want to test for mold and other forms of toxicity. If I wanna look at your bedroom and see what your sleep hygiene looks like. The only way you're gonna be able to evaluate that is actually going to their home. The other thing we're doing is we are including a piece of at-home equipment.

It's most likely going to be ExoFit. I don't know how familiar you are with them. But it's like a total on steroids, I would argue. Obviously, we give them protocols to do for resistance training and cardio when they're traveling because a lot of our clients are going travel a But when they're at home, we're gonna make sure everything is set up just the way it's supposed to be. That we've got protocols downloaded onto their ExoFit machine that maximize time under tension. Because for us, part of what we are trying to do, and we talked about this off camera, you know, vitality over vanity, right?

That's what were trying do is we trying help people have those last decade, two decades, three decades be the highest quality they can possibly be And because that's what, you know, ultra high net worth people are going to be willing to pay for. And the other thing we do, I think that is a little unique, is we a extremely thorough intake interview, not just like fill out a medical history, where we're talking about things like I think one of the problems, and like if you look at what Brian Johnson does, he literally calls his program the blueprint.

Like this is what you're supposed to do. You know, there's an 80-20 rule in most things in life, right? Like show me that 20% I can do that's gonna give me 80% of impact. Someone might say, look, I'm willing to work out, but only 30 minutes a day, four times a week. And you know I want to cut back on my drinking, But I still wanna have a few glasses of wine once or twice a weak. you tell us what we have to with, And we will maximize whatever you tells us. I love that, man, because that's kind of important because you gotta find that easy medium, right?

And this is what I tell a lot of people because one of the things I've noticed with some of these crazy biohackers, it's like, oh, you have to go to sleep at this time, or you know what? You can't be having a glass of wine if you're calling yourself a bio hacker. And for me, in my head, I'm thinking to myself, hold on one second. Most entrepreneurs, the CEOs that I know that are bio hacking, They're doing all of this stuff to be able to combat the things that they still like to do, right? They like have a couple glasses of wine.

Well, they're taking a few of these different antioxidants to help enhance their detox pathways. So then they don't get sick, so they can avoid the oxidative stress, bring down the inflammation. I'm happy you brought that up. That's kind of important for people to recognize. Now, when you guys go into someone's home, And by the way, I've never heard of anyone doing this as of yet. Where you're talking about, you guys are checking for mold, different toxicity issues. We're doing that. Like, we're also doing, like, looking at everything in their fridge, everything their pantry.

And we go shopping with them. Right. you and I are pretty knowledgeable, right? But you take the average person, maybe they don't know the difference between seed oils and extra virgin olive oil and ghee and butter versus margarine. People think margherin's better for them, like they know any better. And again, it's not their fault, they do know, but that's our job is to make sure. The other thing that we do I think that is really unique is, and like I went through this experience myself just about, It was actually one of the reasons why I decided to do this thing with Dr.

Hanley, was I had just gone through a whole protocol myself with a functional medicine doctor. I mean, I hit every freaking test under the sun, microplastics, gut biome, you name it, blood work, of course. And then he's like, well, okay, here are your 300 biomarkers, and here's the 47 that are out of range, And here is the 9,473 things to do for those 47 biomARKers. Like, my head's exploding, but I know what I'm doing. What we do is we have all those underlying biomarkers too and then some, but then we say we should, there's only two things you have to focus on.

Your biggest opportunity and your biggest risk. Okay, back to the 80, 20 thing. So maybe my biggest opportunities is sleep. Hey, if you can improve your sleep of all the things that you could do for your health, nothing will move the needle for you right now more than getting good sleep and let's talk about how to do that. Let's do an exhaustive sleep study, all of that, On the risk side, maybe it's cardiac. Hey, let's get a clearly scan. Let's look at your lipid panel, all that kind of stuff. And so then once we've improved your biggest opportunity and mitigated your big risk, now you go to the second biggest risk.

The second-biggest opportunity that anyone can wrap their head around. Trying to make it actionable and not just data for data's sake is a huge part of what we're trying to do.

Home-based testing, nutrition, and proteomics 23:08

Because a lot of this stuff can become very overwhelming, especially if it's someone who's really not in this industry and understands all this health and wellness stuff. You see some of these clinics, patients go to these clinic, and after they do their initial blood work, they feel the whole kitchen sink at them. It's like eight different peptides, You know, and one of the things I see when they do that also is someone has a bad reaction to the treatment. Well, heck, now you don't even know what the heck's giving them the reaction.

You just do the whole kitchen sink at them. So looking at the highest risk and the biggest opportunity model, I like that. I think that's pretty good. You know, just the other day yesterday, I was talking with our chief medical officer, who's my business partner, Dr. Christopher Davis, and we're flying out to go on the news over there in California on KTLA. And one of the questions they're asking us is, well, how can people do these peptides affordable, you know? And Dr Davis tells me, he's like, You really can't.

I said, well, Dr. Davis, I mean, i think we can, right? Because when you look at the industry before throwing the whole kitchen sink, of course it's going to be expensive. You know, you're going take eight different peptides and they still got to make profit. So the way we do things where we only start people off with maybe one or two different things and then work up from there, it can be affordable. Right now I know obviously you guys are working with the high network individuals so a little bit different.

Now when it comes to going into these homes you know we talked about what they have in the fridge, are you Pots and pans are using that are toxic free. Are you looking at what containers they're putting the food in? Are they plastic containers versus glass containers? Water filters? Do they have the big water system outside that's removing all the different toxic chemicals out of the water? You guys doing that too? everything. Test the water. Exactly. My wife and I recently moved. The place we were in Scottsdale had a reverse osmosis water filtration system.

And the place that we moved to in Gilbert that's closer to my brother, it didn't have that. So we bought one. But we test the waters. In fact, when we move into the places in Scotsdale, I tested the water and it was terrible. It wasn't working. The system was broken. But I have a water tester. Most people don't have water testers. I think it's like $7 on Amazon. By the way, I take that water taster wherever I travel. And I test the waters, otherwise I'm not drinking the Water. So we test everything.

We test their water. Make sure we look at all their cooking supplies. People don' realize Teflon and all this other stuff. Man, there are so many. Someone might say, you know what? Don't want to bother with my cooking stuff like leave that stuff alone. That's okay. You tell us what we have to work with We're gonna maximize and optimize whatever you tell that you want us to with What would you say is like the top thing that when you guys go into someone's home that? You guys see that's just like you know based off your experience just in the longevity space for the amount of years that You've been in this space.

What's like? The number one thing where you see like people are doing it wrong and I think seed oils is a big one, right? Like people don't realize, and it's such an easy thing to do, you know, ghee and butter and extra virgin olive oil versus, using other forms of oils. That's one of the easy things to that I people get wrong most commonly. Right, right. Now, you guys are doing some different type of testing as well. You know, I think I'm going to butcher this over here. Proteomics, proteomics.

I told you I was going butchered. No, it's hard, man. It took me a while. So, proteomics, which I started researching this a little bit and I had no clue about it and it's very interesting. I want you to kind of explain what proteomic is. Yeah, so I'll preface this by saying I kind enough to be dangerous. That's Dr. Rich's and Augustina's wheelhouse. With that being said, what it really does is it looks how proteins are being processed you know in the body like right now so there's a couple things about it that's really nice one it's relatively inexpensive to test so you can test it frequently okay um and it it would be like the difference between um think of it this way if you look at genetics genetics is uh if he looked at weather genetics hey in Miami in February it's usually 65 degrees okay that's genetics that is how it generally is in february epigenetics is maybe like the 10 day forecast right right that showing you what's happening kind of in the shorter time frame proteomics is sticking your head out the window to see if it''s raining that'''s the best analogy i can give you Okay, very interesting, man.

So is this a blood test or what kind of test is it? Yeah, it's a Blood test. The beauty of it is, It will show you how proteins are being processed in your body now. Like you said, you've got your genetics, which is kind like, that doesn't change. Your epigenetics is your gene expression. That does change, though less frequently. And then proteomics tells you kind of which way the wind is blowing. Like, hey, you know, maybe this gene expression is turned on, for you're not processing vitamin D properly, whatever.

And now you'd see, well, proteomic is going to tell you if you are making progress against that problem, as an example. So it gives you that really near term barometer about whether things are moving in the right direction or not. Very interesting. So obviously you guys are using multiple different data points. When we're talking about different points, we all know in the longevity space, the importance of mitochondrial health. What type of data point are you using for that? It's funny you say that it's one of the things that.

And I think I mentioned to see when we talked, I was at a four M in December, rich and I went together. We spent two days walking the floor and didn't even get to every single booth. It was huge this year. Who's giant. He was a monster. Um, and. I've been to an ammonium and all these other ones. This one was like four X and it was the biggest one to date. Yeah, I never say anything like it. But the part that was frustrating, so there were two things we were trying, there's a bunch of things that we're trying to do, but two tests we we really trying hone in on, because we didn't have one picked yet, was what were we going to use for gut bio analysis, and what are we gonna use to test mitochondria health?

So my logic, silly me, is hey, let's talk to, There's all these companies at A4M that claim to improve mitochondrial performance, whether it's hyperbaric chambers, or red light, whatever it might be. So let me talk companies that, hang their hat on, hey, we're gonna improve your mitochondrial performance. So I asked all of them, what test do you recommend? And I'm talking to their CEO, their chief medical officer, they're head of R&D. What test you'd recommend, and without exception they were like, yeah, that really isn't a great one.

And I'm like, so your entire business is based on something you can't measure. And then I had the same thing. My logic was, well, if I am looking to look at gut biome testing, who better to ask than companies that make pre and probiotic products? Because again, that's what their business about is improving gut health. I think there are about six or seven different gut-biome tests that we're exhibiting at that conference. And I got all seven recommended to me by based on who I was talking to. And they were saying, this one's trash, This one is great.

This ones trash. this ones great and so that's one of the challenges and one the things that my partner Augustina had done was and this is why it's so important to test and we this, is part of what we do at Titan arc is she actually took a stool sample, the same stool town sample and sent it in under her name and sending in, under, her mom's name to the, same company, that same school sample got completely different results. That's interesting. You know, I've done that before. I haven't done it with micronutrients.

So I'm not going to fill the labs under the bus. But after that, you don't know what to trust. And ultimately, that's what it comes down to is what we've tried to do with our testing is there are a million tests you could do. We only do the ones where the science behind it is black and white. You're doing dry urine tests for hormone analysis and things like that. There's testing that's the genetic testing, the epigenetic testing. They're assessing that it's very black-and-white, and so we focus on those things.

And then the other thing I think that we do is we're very thoughtful about how we sequence the testing We're not just doing, people think about I think this is a huge problem just with the medical system. People think about your annual physical. Like your health is the thing that you measure once a year. That's why we call it Titan arc. Your health isn't arc, it's a journey. It's not a snapshot, its a movie. And people have been trained to think of their health and hey I'm going to take a snap shot once year in my annual Well, the reality is you want to sequence testing.

The other thing is people sometimes are doing the wrong testing there. You can do too much testing as an example. If you use something like a Prunovo scan to look for cancer, like they're looking at one millimeter is the smallest they are going to pick up. That's already going be stage four. So there are better things to do. Prunova is great for certain things, but not great cancer. I wouldn't use it for cancer screening. There are two or three tests that I cannot remember the names of. My experts have that.

But there's a couple tests are really good for a cancer screen but Pruna was not what I would use. I would say the same thing. It's great screening for a bunch of other stuff, the prenuvo. But when you're looking for cancer, there's a lot of these liquid biopsy tests. That's what they call it, like the grail tests or. Yeah, that's one of the ones that they recommend. We actually use RGCC based out of Greece. And our doctors like that one a heck of a better. They're all good. Don't get me wrong. But yeah, those tests, they can actually detect cancer at stage zero.

So, you know, significantly different than. And I've heard stuff, again, part of it is like, You've really got to stay on top of the science. That's one of nice things about AI is, AI will allow you to, because think about it, even if you are the most diligent practitioner of any kind. Let's say that your expertise is, you know, your cardiologist, right? Maybe you go to two conferences a year and maybe you read half a dozen research papers a month, and that's if you're diligent. But imagine you could consume everything ever written or spoken about a topic in every language as of five minutes ago.

That's what you can do with AI and have it notify you about anything that's changed. Because that part of what we have to do at Titan Arc is stay on top of whats changing. Focus on the things that are really black and white and apply those in an intelligent way and stay top everything that is changing so that as things get better,

Sleep, VO2 max, and fitness protocols 34:18

which they invariably do, or things change, sometimes the underlying research changes, you change your protocol. Absolutely. David, how important is sleep? So to me, sleep is the single most important thing. If you had asked me when I was younger, in fact, I have very few regrets in my life. Not getting enough sleep when was I younger is at the top of the list. And again, people wear their lack of sleep almost as a badge of honor. Yeah, they're like, oh, I'll sleep when I die. Yeah. Exactly. I was sleeping when when i'm dead.

And, you know, the reality is it's a badge of stupidity. and I put myself in that category. When I. Was in business school, i was. Sleeping max three hours a night, Sunday through Thursday for two years. Think if I did that now, think I'd die I don't think I could literally physiologically do it. I didn't actually need that much sleep, I need six hours. But what I actually found was I needed two and a half to three hours of restorative sleep. So RAM and deep sleep combined. If those are between two-and-a-half and three or more, then I feel terrific.

If it's less than that, I kind of drag. But like we had talked about this off camera, one of my frustrations, when I have an eight sleep at home, it is in the name. Like if you don't get eight hours of sleep, like I wear a whoop and basically it tells me my sleep score is terrible. I've never had 100 sleep scores because I never sleep eight-hours. Yeah, and I deal with the same thing. With my Oura Ring, i never hit like the 100. i can't because i'm not getting, now the thing is and when i've asked, same at A4M, asking all these sleep experts, Again, experts in the field of sleep, give me an objective measure of a good night's sleep.

Couldn't get a straight answer from anybody. Very frustrating. And so my own proxy for me is really measuring the restorative sleep And it almost doesn't matter. I mean, generally the correlation is pretty high. If I get six hours, I'm getting around three hours of restorative sleep. if I got five hours I am getting like two and a half. And so if if i get 6 hours sleep I feel great and I can't sleep more than six hour.s I wake up without an alarm, right almost right on six-hours almost to the minute and i can go back to sleep Yeah, yeah.

You know, we talked about that because I'm kind of the same way, you know. From when I retired from the fire department, I take all my nutraceuticals, take care of my health, exercise. But I do how you said, that I go to sleep and my body tells me to go sleep. I prepare myself to get asleep. Like I don't eat three hours before going to see, et cetera. My body tell me wake up. Don't wake to an alarm clock. So when people tell me, hey, Sam, you get in four and a half to five hours of sleep. It's not good.

And it's killing you. I said, well, what the heck am I supposed to do? Because I feel well rested and refreshed. You know, I don't have a midday crash. Not getting sick often. What else am supposed do I? Feel good? So for me, there has to be something, some kind of end of one data with me personally, that someone can do a study and say, Hey, the five hours is working for you. And it's working. Because you're taking all of these different supplements that help, you know, uh, combat, your daily stress or whatever it is.

You're meditating, You know you doing your Vegas nerve reset. This is why your body only needs four and a half hours to five. Yeah. But I just haven't been able to find that answer. Well, I'm working on it. And like I said, as soon as I think we mentioned to you, i'm reaching out to a bunch of sleep experts. We're going to hone in on this because it's a big part of what we need to be able to provide to our clients, which is some really, you know, measurable black and white way to to determine because the part that's frustrating is, just like you are, and I am in the same boat as you.

I really try to focus on my health and wellness and longevity and it is frustrating when you can't get a straight answer because then you don't know how to apply your time and attention. Yeah, I agree with that. Now you were talking earlier, man, and you're talking about your VO2 max and where you want to be with your vo2 Max. Let's talk about that. I'm a firm believer of VO2 max. When I first got into the industry, the longevity space at age 19 on my days off in the fire department, one of the tests that sedigenics was really big on was the VO 2 max, which Dr.

Willix was, you know, that former heart surgeon who truly believed in VO max and, uh, he would actually tell you how your mitochondrial health is based off of Now, the VO2 max ascentogenics did was a little bit different. It was the Parvo device. So the parvo the device would put you on the 12 lead EKG. They also utilize the gas versus a lot of the other VO 2 max devices that are out now, which we use like Pinoy. But it doesn't give you like the EKT readings that require you to do this full assessment and diagnostic yourself and break down the results.

So, VO2 Max, why are you challenging yourself to be at over a 60 within the next few years? So it's just because I'm turning 60, it 60 at 60. It's not more sophisticated than that. And I mean, I am already in the low 50s, which would put me in top probably like 5% of 25 year olds. I already am in pretty good shape. So really it is just like a 60 and 60 kind of thing. There's nothing more than. The other thing too is I try to get myself to a While I'm still in pretty good shape, I try to get myself to a pretty high level of fitness and then I am going to try and maintain.

Maintenance is so much easier than trying to improve. The thing that's interesting is I actually find the psychology of maintenance harder than the theology of improvement. For me, it's because I'm so competitive. It's weird. People think I am competitive with other people. I actually am not. Like I playfully competitive other with people, but with myself, I like psychotically competitive, like the two best matches I ever wrestled, lost. Was wrestling someone way better than me. They should have mopped the floor with me and it was close.

Wrestled matches, mop the floors with the guy and I felt I wrested terrible. So for me it's about, so I know what I'm capable of. So yeah, it really is, for when I try to improve, I find it much easier to really push myself than when trying to maintain. Like when you're going to do something, you are all in. And then like the maintenance stuff is kind of like, it's almost like you got one foot in, one out, and that's really not you. That's kind how I am. I'm like. You know, everybody around me knows it.

It's like once I hit the switch, I'll wait, there's no in between. Like I mean, they're all out or all-in. So I get it like to maintenance part is just kind like why can't just eat healthy today and then not healthy tomorrow. To me that almost doesn't make sense. But yeah, that is what maintenance is. Right. It was funny, years ago, and again, I wasn't crazy out of shape or anything, but I'd put on a few pounds and my gym was having a biggest loser competition. I think this is the only time my wife didn't like me very much.

There were only two possibilities. Again, it was a stupid thing. It's like, you get a free year membership and $1,000 and they threw you a party if you won. I'm dead, or I am winning. Those are the only two possibilities. Dude, I was working out three times a day. I won, and I lost more than double the next person, because I a lunatic. But it was funny, what I liked about it, was I wanted to see if I could go as hard as I went when I wrestling in college. Turns out I couldn't. And it was really satisfying that I knew that if I had to go that hard I could.

I found it, it made me very calm for some very strange reason. Yeah, so the maintenance is hard. So what I find for myself is I have to create little tricks. As an example, I'm not a big drinker, but I know alcohol is not good for me. And I tried this for the first time last year and I am doing it again this year. So I only give myself six days a year that I'm allowed to drink. And I tell my friends and my family that too. So someone sees like maybe it's a really close friend of mine's birthday and I am gonna spend one of my days for them.

Like, oh wow, Dave's spending one his days. So I use it as currency, and that way people aren't always pressuring me to drink. I'm like, yeah, just going out with the boys for, you know, that's not worth one of my days. But hey, it's like my closest friends, 50th birthday, okay, I'll spend that one on one day. Yeah, because I say that I don't drink, but once in a while I have an old fashioned, if I go to one the conferences and meet up with a bunch of doctors that haven't seen in awhile. I'd rather stay away from alcohol, but at the same time, there's like the social piece that's still involved, you know, families, they drink and that doesn't hurt a little glass of wine or something.

So I might actually tap into that, because the cool part about it, what I like about, it is like how you said, the currency. Whoever gets a drink with you on those six days and they are a lucky mother. They really are. I mean, they're just like, man, I got to actually drink within on one of the six. That's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. So the view to Max, what are you doing to improve your VO to Mexico? So I want to give a shout out to Connor and Rob Darnborough. So they have a company called the SmartFit Method.

They've got a bunch of locations in Southern California and in Utah they're actually opening some locations and Phoenix. And I spent a lot of time with Connor. He's one of the most knowledgeable people on this fitness stuff. I thought I knew a little about fitness. he's forgotten more about it than I'll ever know. And so a lot of the protocols that we're putting into Tight Narc came from my conversations with Rob and with Connor. And what we are doing is we trying to shrink the resistance training protocol.

We have shrunk the Resistance Training Protocol down to 30 minutes twice a week. What we doing with cardio is one 28 minute anaerobic workout a day. So we do the Norwegian 4x4 if you're familiar with that one. It's basically you can use any cardio equipment, doesn't matter which one you want. Say you're doing it on a treadmill, you could do a Treadmill Rower. You go four minutes for as hard as you go for four. Then three minutes, in this example, walking on the treadmill. So you are resting for the three.

four minutes hard, three minutes rest, four minute hard. Three minutes, rest four, minutes and you're done. Total 28 minutes. I do that once a week. And then the only thing I on top of that is three to six hours of zone two cardio. So, and that can be playing pickle ball with my brother and my wife or going for a rock hike with wife with a weighted vest or stuff like that. So it's, you know, that's all I have to do and that will get me to a 60 VO2 max. Yeah. Man, I haven't done, i'm due for my VO 2 max and I started rucking and i wonder if that is going to prove my vo2 Max.

I should probably go do it next week. That's awesome, man. All right. So you're the chairman of the cryotherapy industry association. Yes. What got you into that? So the two co-founders, Lars Loftstrand and Kelly Carden, Kelly's been a friend of mine for almost 15 years now, and I helped her early when she was opening her first cryotherapy locations in Dallas. God, it's gotta be like a dozen years ago, something like that. and I met Lars through her. And I actually, they had just, last year they asked me if I would come, Kelly had seen my podcast and started to get some traction, and she had asked like, hey, you know, we wanna have as like a perk for some of the exhibitors and some other speakers to do a podcast, would I do co-branded podcast with them?

So the original plan was just to, so they invited me to speak so I basically spoke on how to start scale and sell a business because obviously their audience wanted some guidance on that and I've done a fair amount of that. And then the second thing they wanted me do was to do podcasts. So I had Dave Asprey and a bunch of the other speakers and exhibitors on the podcast and it was really well received. It was so well-received that basically now I do a second podcast called The Business of Wellness that I co-brand with Cryocon.

Nice, awesome. So what's the biggest cryotherapy misconception that you've seen? Well, I think that the big shift here in the last few years is away from the and liquid nitrogen and towards electric. So I think that's been a huge shift. One, it reduces the cost significantly, you know, for the owner operator. And you also don't have any of the risks associated with, if people drop down and they breathe in the liquid, nitrogen, they can pass out, like all those problems go away. Your head is also, because you can't put your head underneath to get cold with the Liquid Nitrogen or you'll pass it out.

Cryotherapy, MAHA, and health optimization 47:58

You don' have that problem with electric, So it doesn't get quite as cold, but it's much more even. Your entire body is in it. And so I think that's what has been one of the big shifts. The other thing that people equate doing cold plunge with cryotherapy, they're fundamentally different. and I Think, you know, cryo therapy is is a much More useful tool Because with cold plunge, you can't and shouldn't work out. One, if you do cold Plunge right after a workout, it shuts off your hypertrophy, so that's bad.

Here you're trying to build muscle and it shut that down. And if try to workout too soon after cold-plunge you could tear a muscle. You can create problems. The reality is, If you cryotherapy, You get a lot of the same benefits, but you jump in a sauna and then do a work-out and be great. So I think that's been one of the big shifts is away from liquid nitrogen and towards electric, which I thinks, you know, really going to help the industry just broadly. Absolutely. So, David, right now there's a big movement that is going on.

It's called the MAHA movement, Make America Healthy Again. What are your thoughts about this movement? You know, it's funny when you really look at it, is kind of hard to wrap your head around the fact. If you look it like the amount of money that was being spent on say, diet, health and exercise in say the 1970s, 80s versus what it is now, like it 20X, 50X I don't know some crazy multiple and yet we've never been less healthy. I mean, our food supply is so messed up. I think that's one of the biggest problems that we have.

And I'm mean look, I, think the RFK is chipping away at it. My concern is, if the next administration isn't a Republican, that it's gonna, you know, it gonna flip the other way. Because the food supplies I thing is the big problem. Yeah. You're not gonna make America healthy again if you can't fix the foods supply. Absolutely, yeah. And that's a good point that you bring up of, you know, if it's different administration, that it not a Republican one, it is going to be dead on the water at that point.

It's not even political. I am more conservative, but it isn't even about that. If you look at the track record of the FDA and the CDC, It is not very good. Look at The Food Pyramid. Oh, sorry, we had it reversed, like literally upside down. Well, we'll see what happens with it, man. So, um, you know, obviously I'm a big part of the whole Maha movement. I hope that things keep up moving in the right direction. We got cool, cool people involved now. Mike Tyson's involved. You look at RFK, I mean, what is he like 73, 74? Like I want to look like that when I was his age.

Yeah, seriously. He's on it. He is a beast and that's the thing. This is the guy who was a heroin addict and now he's at the peak of health. The reality is there's so much damage you can reverse. I don't think people realize that they call it longevity, escape velocity. they already have the ability to reverse aging in some organ systems and in different types of mammals. If I'm able to keep it together for another 10, 15 years, it's possible. I am on the cusp of being young enough where that's possibly.

And again, my goal isn't necessarily to live forever, but it is that I want to at least make sure that enjoy the years I have. So talking about enjoying and having gratitude and doing things the right way for our community, you got something else going on, a nonprofit, right? And you're telling me you've got this goal of 10 billion acts of kindness, so let's talk about this nonprofit man. So my dad was a college wrestler for a bit too, and once a year we go to a College Wrestling match, kind of a thing we do.

This year was Iowa and Penn State, so I flew into Chicago, we drove to Iowa. And you know, my Dad's 84, just about to turn 84 actually tomorrow. I know he's retired and he is bored. And so we're just kind of making small talk and I'm like, you know, well, if you could snap your fingers and do something that you were excited to get out of bed in the morning, what would it be? And he said, I'd like to make the world a nicer place and for people to be nicer to each other. So I don't know. Just this idea popped into my head.

I was thinking about 75 Hard. so I originally thought, Well, What if we make created 75 Nice? That was my first thought. Right? Well 75 Days is a lot. But so then I came up with the idea. to create an app called 30 Acts of Kindness, where people are gonna document doing 30 nice things. And it could be something small, like giving someone a compliment, holding a door open for someone, helping an old lady across the street, something, you know, maybe it's paying for the coffee behind you at the line at Starbucks, or forgiving a debt, a friend that owes you.

Could be anything. It could something big, it can be small. But the idea is you document the 30 acts of kindness, and then at end of the thirty days, we mail you a bracelet that makes you certifiably kind, And so, I haven't seen my dad this excited in 20 years. And my Dad and I have never really done anything together. So working on this with him is really kind of fun. Our plan is to have an MVP of the app. AI is going to be really helpful. But by the end of April, we're expecting to That's pretty cool, man.

I could see big organizations and groups implementing it into their organization where people make it a fun thing to do. Even life groups and stuff where it's just like people do it together. Brotherhood, sisterhoods. There's so much toxicity in the world. One of the guys who I mentor, he's a real expert in influencer marketing. So one of the things we're talking about doing is creating a curated list of maybe like a thousand influencers that have the kinds of followings we are looking for. And say that the first hundred that complete the 30 acts of kindness, they'll get a Mac Daddy bracelet that's like super cool looking, cool packaging so the unboxing will be really cool.

The first 100 people that do it, so they're basically exposing it to their entire following. Who doesn't want to show that they're certifiably kind? And then you could have it on your LinkedIn profile, you can have in your dating profile. Where it's on the blockchain permanently, here are the 30 things I did. Now, we're not gonna stop there. Some people are gonna do 365 acts of kindness. They're gonna get something different. You're going to get some pretty cool. Man, I'm up for that challenge. I want that on my LinkedIn page, my resume.

Well, and then think about it too, like you could have the hundred kindest companies to work for, the 100 best, 100 kind-est private schools, a hundred private, hundred, kindist colleges, all those things. There's so many extensions of it that you can do. And if there's something that for sure this world doesn't have enough of is kindness. Yeah, yeah. Man, I really like that approach, you know, because you start looking at, like, the Better Business Bureau or you look at like Yelp and stuff. You know when you talked about like the kind the better kindness business, it's like those other platforms are always like so focused on the negatives, right?

People complaining about stuff or whatever. How about if we focus on a positive and we highlight those sort of just like actively documented, doing this act of kindness, and you don't need to know about the bad because, Period. Well, in fact, one of the things we're gonna add is, I think it'll be in the MVP, where it's gonna be like a Tinder thing, but imagine Tinder, you can only swipe right. You can't only upvote something, can you downvotes something. So, what'll happen is you'll able to filter, because I want an idea, like hey, want to do an act of kindness, give me some ideas about what I could do.

I'll to be able filter it based on whether it costs money and how much time it cost. Maybe I'm just like, well I wanted it to free and I wanna take less than 10 minutes, or I'd want it less that $10 and take an hour. Or whatever criteria I give it so it'll then serve up suggestions based on my criteria And if I swipe right then it basically up votes that act of kindness and so if your act Of kindness gets up voted you could be on a leaderboard You could get you know, we're even talking about creating like a crypto token

30 Acts of Kindness and closing reflections 56:28

wherever you act. Of. Kindness mint such crypto tokens There's all kinds of cool things you can do. That's pretty cool, man. I love it. Love it, so David we could have a little fun here sure so One of my favorite podcasters, the diary of a CEO, Stephen Burlett, came out with conversation cards. So I'm going to have you grab that. You'll go ahead and pull that sleeve off. Randomly pick a card out of there. They're going read it and answer it. OK. Where were you when you felt most vulnerable and why?

That's a little so I think probably a memorial song Kettering told that I was being told I Was you know gonna die, but my second let me think where was I when I felt most vulnerable? You know, I I feel most vulnerable when it comes to my daughter. So I have a 25, soon to be 26 year old daughter and that relationship is just so special to me. It's the one person in the world you never wanna let down and it isn't a physical location necessarily, but maybe this is the physical occasion for me, in fact, I always said I would never get a tattoo.

And then when my daughter was leaving for college, I was afraid we would grow apart, we wouldn't interact as much, and so I wanted to do something big. So I had a boomerang necklace made for her, like a sterling silver boomering necklace, And I wrote her this very long letter about the whole idea of a Boomerang where she could always come home to me. And so I basically got my one and only tattoo. So I have a tattoo right here, right where my heart is, in the shape of a boomerang, and it has her name in it, except it's in reverse.

You can only read it if you're looking in a mirror, so that's what I see, or my daughter knows because obviously So in the letter I said, I want you to know how serious I am about the fact that you can always come home to me. So I did the thing I would never do. I got a tattoo and anyway. My daughter's right. Feel most vulnerable. Amazing man. Pick another card. Okay. Who was the person who first believed in you? My parents. I have to, like all parents, they have their flaws. But I will say the one thing they nailed was, and I was a freakishly little kid.

In fact, I don't know if they probably don' do it now because everyone's so woke, but they used to line you up in size order, right? And I mean, from the time I in kindergarten, all the way through middle school, was the second smallest kid, in fact I as a senior in high school before I think I dated someone who weighed less than me. because I was so little. And even though I very small, I never felt that way. Like my parents convinced me and I believed them that I capable of anything I set my mind to.

So yeah, they always believed in me, always supported me in anything that ever done and have such gratitude for that. Amazing, amazing. David, you know, as we start to wrap up here, if there's someone listening or viewing this podcast who really resonates with today's message, with the message that you put out here today, what is that one thing that You know, it's the lesson I learned when I was laying in my hospital bed next to the guy who just had his leg amputated. You now again, at the time I so inwardly focused, so me focused.

Like I wasn't cutthroat, I never harming anyone else, but my life has been so wonderful because ever since then I focus externally. And people don't realize how much of an impact they have on the people around them. It's why the act of kindness thing is so, like I'm so excited about it too, is getting people to be thinking about not themselves and what's going to make themselves happy, but what is going make the people around them happy. Because when you do that, it makes you happy! Think about it this way.

What's more fun? Getting a thoughtful gift from a friend or family member? or giving that really thoughtful gift where you think about it for months and you get just the perfect gift and want to see the look on their face when they open the present. That's so much more rewarding. It's nice to get a wonderful present, sure, but it's not as rewarding as giving one. And I think that even though that's people's lived experience, they forget that. I that that is the one message I'm really trying to give out there is try to think what you can do for somebody else and be surprised what comes back.

Yeah, I love that, man. I loved that. And David, if someone wants to find you, where can they find me? So I'm basically at real David Gutman on all socials. So that's my YouTube channel. It's My Instagram. That's why Twitter at Real David. Gutmann is, you know, my my handle for everything. Amazing, brother, which will include all of that down here. David thank you for coming on a healthy point of view podcast. There was a pleasure. Sam, thanks for having me. Absolutely. Guys, David It's about what you do for others.

Obviously, you have to take care of yourself. And there's a lot of things that we talked about about taking care yourself, tapping into the data, sleep, a lotta great information. Guys, this information here that discussed today, if it doesn't help you, it could definitely help someone else. So make sure you all that stuff, comment, like, but make you share it with someone, friend, or family, and we'll see you for the next one.