How To Prevent Common & Dangerous Toxins

Introduction to Brian Vaszily 0:00

- Welcome to another episode of Reversing Inflammaging Summit Body and Mind Longevity Medicine. And I'm very pleased during this session to have Brian Vaszily, one of today's most renowned and respected natural health leaders and he's the founder of the Popular health destination, the art of antiaging.com. Brian is such a pleasure to have you here. - Well, I'm excited to be here and I appreciate it a lot, a lot of good stuff to share with folks. So I'm looking forward to it. - Great. Well you've been a leader in the health advocate and research area for many years with a very strong following.

How did you get into this area to begin with, Brian? - Yes, I appreciate the question. So it's been 20 some years now that I've been, I guess you could say deeply immersed in health and wellness emphasis on integrated natural health. And I've worked with so many wonderful folks and help them become widely known names in many regards earlier in my career. But I'm right now, I'm 52 and you can kind of cut my life down the middle in the first half of my life. You can call it quite challenging in many regards. And yeah, there's a long medium short version of the story, I'm gonna try to stick to the short version.

But so I had a rough first half of life in other words and grew up inner city, Chicago lost some friends to games. Um but you know, the biggest impact I guess I'd say is my father was a really good man until around the age of my age of nine, he turned severely alcoholic. Why he don't? He did not deal with a lot of very significant trauma back in those years.

Personal Story and Anti-Aging Mission 1:51

You know, folks did not embrace counseling and did not embrace, you know, all these wonderful therapies that we have access to today. It was kind of like only if you're a crazy person. So he didn't deal with a lot of very serious issues. His, his story, which I won't get into much. It reads like a novel and some parts are unbelievable. He was a spy for the U S and World War Two just as one example. And he was in, in Germany. You know, watch as an American spy posing basically as a German fell in love with a woman there who turned out to be a Russian spy posing as a German.

They were gonna get married and then she one day was disappeared, never saw her again. So he had trauma after trauma and like he had some good stuff in his life to his wife before my mother was, they had two kids. He lost one of them who got hit and killed and he just didn't deal with this. So he really had a lot of trauma deep inside of him. Took it out on the bottle, took it out on us, took it out on me in a lot of ways. So there was some, you know, early on abuse there. And I myself was down a very rough track, I guess we'll say going down and moral of the story, women literally saved my life, strong mother, strong sister, certain strong teachers, really powerful women in my life early on is the reason I'm here today, thriving today. So fast forward, I get in, you know, into the whole natural health and wellness world and becoming relatively well known earlier on for, you know, really being behind the scenes and helping others become prominent. I don't know about six years ago, maybe I was at a crossroads and there was a lot of things I could do.

But I started, I've had all this exposure to great, you know, wonderful now, you know, world renowned doctors and researchers and digging in myself. So I started to see that this overriding message out there that getting older equals becoming over the hill is this big, you know, it's a joke. Almost you hit 40 over the hill, ha ha. And um but I saw that, that this message that getting older equals being doomed to suffering and disease was even impacting some of these powerful women who were there for me and we're hitting their own fifties and sixties and seventies and so forth.

And it really, I took it personally, I'm like, wow, that's horrible. That this message can get into, into people's heads so much, you know, you turn on the TV and it looks like, you know, it's a big celebration of youth and, and, you know, even in this day and age, you know, age is kind of frowned upon. And I'm like, but that's goes contrary to everything that I have learned from all these wonderful teachers and all of this research, these ought to be the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, even beyond the best years of people's lives in many respects and it doesn't equal doom, it can equal the opposite. So that's when I was inspired and decided, you know, exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to just bring all these wonderful research based concepts to people clearly and share with them how, you know, to live long and live well by embracing what are, you know, nontoxic, non drug, non surgery steps that they can take in their life.

And that's the story of the art of anti aging medium length version. So there you go. - Brian. That was very, very interesting, fascinating and, you know, it kind of goes to the fact that when you actually, if you actually handle the challenges that you face in early life, they actually support greater resilience. And so you're a model, your model of, of that. Can you give us what your perspective is on aging and longevity? - Absolutely. It's, again, these, in a biological sense, in a, in a certainly in a emotional and spiritual sense, the good news is that these ought to be the best years of people's lives.

Alright, forties, fifties, sixties. Um, you've, you've a lot of things that once matter, don't matter and the things that, that matter, you're typically, if you're doing it somewhat, right? Even you're closer to what really matters, having a good idea and emphasis on that. That's why a lot of people listening to this right now are embracing their health, whether they have Serious challenges, whether they don't or anywhere in between because it matters what's more consequential than taking control of our own health. And, and, and we now have, I've been, especially in the natural health world for I say 20 some, I'd have to sit there and think exactly. But 20 some years and it's been a wonderful experience in this regard that what was once considered, uh you know, out there or some of the quackery, so to speak organic food, natural approaches, taking control of your own health, not necessarily um taking, you know what a doctor says as gold, but also digging, you know, and having an understanding yourself. Um and I've seen this on, you know, increase on the trajectory. So, um you know, healthy aging is really about mindset. First and foremost,

Mindset, Aging, and Longevity 7:10

if you have the mindset that getting older equals being doomed to suffering and disease and pain, well, what's going to happen? You are going to be doomed to suffering, etcetera, right? If you have the mindset that it is instead the time to really flourish and that you do have such significant control as we've seen over the last, you know, 10 years, especially, you have such significant control over your health. 100% of course not, there are factors, you know, beyond our control, but we have the lion's share of control over our bodies, our health fate, even down as we've all seen in recent years to the gym level in terms of what we can do to express certain genes. So it's a wonderful time.

Truly. I know there's a lot of strife out there in the world, but actually it is a really a wonderful time to be alive and to be someone who is in their forties or beyond right now. - Yeah. Well, I'm certainly in alignment with the notion that mindset plays such an important role in how we uh we spend those last years of our lives. You've spent a lot of time interviewing many, many uh leading experts. What would you say is the big, biggest challenge that people in their middle eight, middle years have, uh, in this arena.

- Well, I do have to throw out a single word and then I'll expand on that and that really is toxins. Okay. Now, that's probably an overused word in a lot of regards. Nonetheless, if I had to say what's one word? Toxins. Well, what do I mean by that? Now, I can take that in two directions. There are two types of toxins. One is the toxic messaging that I've already referred to. In other words, mindset. Again, if it's constantly coming at us, these toxic messages that getting older equals doom. It's very, you have to, you have to shield yourself from that toxic messaging basically.

So really, you know what I've seen over the years, it's uh in terms of health, if that is boiled down to probably an over simplistic statement but not less good for conversation, it's all about what you allow into your being and what you strive, try to keep out that's good health in a nutshell. What you're consciously trying to keep out what you're consciously allowing in the more you have a grasp on those two things. Really the health you're going to be over simplistic maybe but, but it's valid. So the type of the other type of toxins are very physical toxins. Now, it's probably no secret to most people.

By now, we live in a world that is saturated everywhere we turn with chemicals. They are in furniture. They're in our flooring there in the air, we breathe air in the chemicals that we feed our skin. I'll get to that one in a moment there in our food and our water, etcetera. We don't really hear even enough about this problem. Our bodies and this is what I've seen over time. I used to be in a camp where, um, and I realized, you know, some, some are, are in this camp where I thought okay, if I do everything to optimize my, my body and, you know, I don't have to worry about that. I'm not in that camp anymore because our bodies are designed to do a really strong job of repelling a lot of these invaders, whether they're chemicals or biological, etcetera, however,

Toxins in Daily Life 10:49

were not designed to combat and shield the sheer amount that the average person faces today. So now we have to be conscious as well about trying to reduce, we won't eliminate them all. Let's get that squared away right now. It's, and I don't want people worried that they have to eliminate every toxic and they're like, that's impossible. But there are some strong steps that people can take to reduce them. One of the least understood and therefore most dangerous areas is in personal care products and cosmetics.

Now, I've been happy to see over the last 10, 15 years, foods and people's awareness of eating cleaner grow. It's important. There's a growing awareness of, of water it's the stuff of life. Right. And, and trying to go cleaner there as well. More, somewhat more recently, air including inside the home and I can touch on all of these. However, the most dangerous right now Is cosmetics and personal care products. Couple statistics on this front, the average woman uses 12 personal care products per day.

On average is contained 168 different chemicals. Another statistic in the European Union in about 40 or more. Now, other countries, over 1300 chemicals have been banned from cosmetics and personal care products. Here in the United States, 11 ingredients have been banned just 11. It is an incredibly powerful industry when people say how much is the cosmetic personal care industry worth. And then you hear figures like 500 billion they're not really taking into account the chemical industry which it makes it much, much more vast.

The point is this the reason it's so dangerous is not only because it is dangerous, but because people's awareness of cosmetics and personal care products is not on par with the growing awareness and other areas. What I mean specifically when we apply anything to our skin or we spread it around our face and it lands on our skin. Um You're eating a significant portion of that through your skin. You know, there's multiple ways into the body. Skin breath and eating are the primary ways, you know, you could argue that the eyes are one way in as well.

And so a lot of what is in these products laced truly laced with chemicals that are certainly prompt inflammation are carcinogenic or potentially carcinogenic endocrine disruptors. I eat hormone disruptors as well as lesser evils like allergens, et cetera. All of these chemicals in these products, the majority are going into your body. Some a couple levels deep, some all the way to your bloodstream where they're shot around your body basically are stored in your organs. So to me, the greatest physical toxin threat are these chemicals in these cosmetics - And Brian, why is there such a huge discrepancy?

if there are 1300 that are found to be needed to be banned in Europe? What's the discrepancy here? Why isn't that happening here in the United States? - Yeah. Well, that's a great question and let's just one word answers money. Okay. So, but I'll expand out for you. What is honestly terrifying is that the last time substantial legislation was passed in the us pertaining to cosmetics and personal care products was 1938. And in 1938, the FADA essentially told the personal care products, cosmetics industry, self regulate. You're on your own.

Just don't, don't, don't kill anybody and, and there's been attempts but nothing substantial has changed since that time. So what does, what does a, you know, what, what do these companies do? Well, obviously they don't want to stick anything in these products that, that literally you could today throw anything together, put it in a package, you know, put it on a shelf and sell it in a store there, there's no oversight necessary whatsoever. Well, what don't you want to do? You don't want to put anything in there that is immediately going to have an impact and can be easily traced to your product. So they're not doing that.

There's been instances, but they don't want to do that. But instead they're sticking in. I just told you, yes, 1300 plus ingredients banned elsewhere. There are thous thousands of ingredients that have potential toxicity. Takes a long time in these other countries to review here. It's all about money lobbying and power. If you want to go in that direction, that's what it's about. There's a great resistance, you know. And so it really is buyer beware in this case, this is why it's the most dangerous area because you are on your own.

Everyone listening with this food that you're putting in your body. And I always tell people, listen, if you take nothing else away from this discussion, when you are pushing that grocery cart down the cosmetics and personal care products, I'll, it's a food aisle. You're choosing food. Don't forget that. - Okay. So what are some of the symptoms that you've uncovered from these different products that people are using? - Yeah. Well, there's plenty of symptoms traces. In fact, if anyone listening has mystery symptoms, meaning I don't know the cause of this. And we're talking, you know, from man, I can go on here all day too, but with sinus issues too were skin, you know, reactions and issues that come up. Dizziness, fatigue, brain fog, you know, also or many of these so associated by the way with, with inflammation, right? Um and on and on again, there's really okay. So there's five basic classes of ingredients when we're thinking about it, in terms of health effects of these chemicals that are included in products, there's direct carcinogens.

In other words, products like formaldehyde and all of its derivatives. Quite common, quite common in personal care products in cosmetics, they are known carcinogens. There's not a question they're allowed in why quantity? The argument is, oh, you know, many don't do any testing but any testing that's done. Well, we tested it on some rats and it didn't kill them right away. You know, the quantity we're using your. Okay. The problem is if we used, for example, deodorant one day only in our life and no other cosmetics, I'd be okay with that.

It's a minute quantity. I could deal with that. But again, 12 personal care products a day, 168 different chemicals on average day after day, week, after week, month after month, decade after decade, it is going to have a massive impact on people. It will result like you said in,

Cosmetics, Chemicals, and Health Risks 18:10

in, in a variety of symptoms. And a lot of times I tell people listen, if you do suffer and you really want to understand the cause. I've seen a lot of success with saying to people stay inside maybe but do without cosmetics and personal care. Give it two weeks, see what happens, just see what happens. Now there's a lot of people who are very resistant because they have relationships with some of these cosmetics. You know, women can have very strong relationships, for example, with certain makeups and, and, and it's their brand and their tight with it or, you know, men too, as well as, you know, whatever it is you use but try just do a process of elimination for a while and see if these symptoms, you know, the sinus issues, whatever don't reduce, you know, in some cases eliminate. - Yeah. Well, I'm hearing that a good idea for anybody who's listening, who does have symptoms that they're wondering how they came about or they've tried to eliminate them and have not been successful.

Certainly the suggestion of taking a break from uh these products is a great idea to just see if it makes a difference. - Yeah. It's a strong idea of an, an equally strong suggestion is why Tempt fate. Um I can go on, I get this question all the time. What are the worst ingredients? Okay. So please don't forget 1300 ingredients banned elsewhere. There are literally thousands of chemicals allowed into these products. Even beyond the 1300. There's a long list to be reviewed of potential carcinogens, meaning potentially cancers, um, endocrine disruptors are far and wide hormone issues if you got them.

This is, this is like playing with fire by putting some, you know, deliverance on or anti aging cream, certain ones on your face, etc. What, what and when I get that question, like, well, there, you know, there's so many, I can give you a top 10 list of common, very common. But, but I wouldn't, I think I'd be doing a disservice. Parabens. A lot of folks falaise in, in products. Um sodium laurel, sulfate, polyethylene, glycol, I can go on and on about the ingredients and I won't hit anywhere close to the 1300, you know, plus - I think it might be helpful for some of the most common ones that you're concerned about. Two to highlight that.

- Sure. Well, I think we're hearing, thank goodness. At least it's a start. Right. We're hearing a lot about phthalates. This is an ingredient that's included to prevent products from getting brittle. You know, so many of these ingredients obviously have a purpose. The purpose is not your health though, you know, its shelf life or, you know, some function of the product. It's not taking your health into account. Be aware of phthalates, formaldehyde trickle son hears. You might have heard back. I think it was around 2016, there was a big controversy about trickle a sand which is an anti, basically bacterial that's included, was included heavily in, in hand soaps. And, you know, this is, this is one where enough shouting was done, that attention was put on it.

Well, they banned it here in the U S from hand soaps. But guess what, they didn't ban it from anti aging creams and plenty of other products. So it's still out there even though they know that it causes issues, it's still allowed in all sorts of other products to treat. The biggest one of the biggest red flags to make there. I'll get to actually one really smart approach to all this in a moment. But if you're looking at ingredient labels, what I do is I turn it around and one of the first things I look for on there is, does it include the pretty sounding ingredient called fragrance?

Fragrance? Why do I look for that? Sometimes they make it very basic sounding sent? Sometimes they make it sound really fancy by calling it perfume, those three words, fragrance, perfume, scents. Okay. Watch for that. What does that, what does that exactly mean? Well, guess what they're not, they don't have to tell you what that means and what they have found is hidden inside of that. One word can be dozens in some cases, hundreds of chemicals, many of which have been found to be quite toxic frankly.

And why don't they have to tell you that? Well, it's a trade secret protected legally. They will say that's our, our special secret formula to give it that fake whatever sense that fake Musk sent that fake sense like patchouli, that fake, you know, strawberry scent that we've come associated with. Okay. I'm going to be a little forthright here. We've been brainwashed to associate these fake pretty smells with effectiveness. Well, that's their little secret formula. They don't have to tell you what's in it.

I put that product back and I run the other way. Frankly, I avoid that. I look for only natural, you know, sense of centered at all in products. But let me, let me take this back. So instead of obsessing over the ingredients to really watch for and kind of watch for and all this USDA Certified Organic today, it's not perfect, but it's the smartest thing you can watch for. And thank goodness it's increasingly available on certain cosmetics and personal care products. Now, this is one thing that I've always been interested in like, wow, you know, I'm not all often a prey. I don't often praise the government for various things. But I'm like, well, somebody at the U S D A realizes that this is, this is food because they applied the USDA Certified Organic Label, which used to be reserved for food you're putting in your mouth and they applied it to cosmetics and personal care products. They recognize this is also going into your body and it's a form of food. So now increase recently.

And thank goodness we're seeing that you can buy USDA certified organic deodorants and, and anti aging creams and other, you know, other products. Not all, it's not easy to do. Some of these products like hair dyes are just loaded with horrifying chemicals. And I'm not sure how you naturally, you know, can come close to doing what those products artificially do in terms of changing hair color. But in many of the key product areas that you want to focus on, you don't want to smell bad. So you want deodorant underarm.

Thank goodness. And what USDA Certified Organic means, it's independent and this is critical independent of the company. They can't make these claims. You have to go through what is a pretty strict

Reading Labels and Choosing Safer Products 24:58

process to demonstrate that this is truly nontoxic and clean ingredients included. And even those natural ingredients that are included were farmed organically, no pesticides and herbicides. So it's like the one clearest signal we've got here. Now, folks are listening elsewhere in the world Eco Cert, which is in Europe and elsewhere is somewhat of equivalent to the USDA certified. And then some states have some of their own programs and, and there's other certifications, but that's the big one if you're here in the US.

- So looking for organic could be a very helpful way for people to select discriminate what might be a little bit better for them. - Let me specify looking for U S D A Certified organic because just like the cosmetic and personal care products are unregulated in terms of what they can throw in there. There's also very little regulation on what they could say. So you hit on a point here that is worth stressing. Be careful of greenwashing if you put one organic ingredients in your product And then you have 15 synthetic, you could still in big letters say organic and then in small letters, you know, say whatever that one ingredient is and it's fooling people.

And then if you turn around like wait a minute, but there's 15 synthetic horrible ingredients. You know, like these derivatives of formaldehyde in here point is um these terms like natural, all natural wild crafted, they mean nothing. Be careful with that kind of stuff as well. Please look for the independent certifications like that USDA Certified organic seal on product, which again means independent of the company. It was found to be truly toxin free organic. - Do you have a couple of examples of people that, you know, who have uh struggled with symptoms and that have made this kind of a shift and noticed uh an improvement? - Oh man, for sure.

You know, uh interestingly quite a few folks with auto immune issues. Um Now I'm not gonna, I don't know if you're looking for me to name names here. I'm not going to do that. But, you know, include a good friend who is an MD and, you know, she, she struggled with celiac and then, you know, made the move in her life first in some other key areas and then in this area of cosmetics and personal care. And uh just to say her, her, her symptoms were significantly reduced by doing this. And there's been other, it's not just those with autoimmune issues, but I've certainly seen especially prominent with folks with autoimmune. And that's purely my, I'm not, again, this is not research, this is me stating this anecdotally.

But I have seen, you know, a trend of those suffering from autoimmune when they make an effort to greatly will go cleaner as well. Say, you know, in this regard, a lot of times, a lot of those symptoms have reduced, I myself certainly have seen a reduction of sinus issues. That's why that one sticks in my head because that's me and I had, you know, mystery sinus issues and then years ago now, but I discovered all of this and started making a great reduction and those sinus issues uh largely now are gone. You know, I'm very conscious of this obviously in a lot of walks of life. But, but I'm not perfect either.

And this is the last thing I want is anyone worrying about stuff like this? Because I will say this and I always like to say this when you fret too much and you worry too much. Oh my God. I've got toxic things in my home, whether there are personal care products or furniture or the air that worry can be just as bad or worse than the other toxins and stuff. So that's not the point here. The point, the beautiful thing with what I'm emphasizing, which is cosmetics and personal care. It's a pretty easy swap to make compared to some changes that we want to make in our lives.

It's not that difficult. You might pay. Yes, indeed. It's true. And I understand affordability is an issue, but you might pay a couple extra bucks in this regard, but it's well worth it. Whereas other changes that a lot of us might need to make losing, you know, £40 we know we got to do it. Those are harder. I'm not saying, don't do that, but I'm just saying the nice thing about a lot of things when it comes to beyond the cosmetics and personal care when it comes to toxic and reducing the load on our bodies.

A lot of those steps are relatively easy to do. So that's, that's the good news on that front. And so I myself, you know, going step by step in that direction, I can look around my office right now and I still see a couple of things like I bet you, you know, that has more chemicals in it that I want around me but I'm not worried about it. It's just every step you make has more of a significant impact than most people realize. That's a good thing. - Yeah, I think it's a very important and a very good point because there are a growing number of people with developing symptoms that, they're not sure what the, the source of the problem is. And I know in my own area we've been highlighting the impact of stress uh and autonomic dis regulation as a primary primary factor. But uh when someone is stuck and exploring what might be the cause, this is certainly one area that I think uh you're highlighting as being important for people to take a look at.

- Sure, I appreciate that. And you know, it's, it's funny because we do again over years and decades, you know, again the words strong, but I'm gonna say we do get brainwashed and it's okay. I mean, the marketing arms behind, you know, some of these, these products are massive and that's their whole intention. But when you, when you pull it back, it's common sense. Most of these artificial synthetic, potentially toxic to downright toxic ingredients are petroleum based. Alright. What is petroleum?

It's dug up from deep in the ground. It's, you know, so, you know, the whole petroleum industry is way more than the gas you put in your cars and a large part of it is all, all these ingredients.

Real-World Improvements from Cleaner Products 31:28

Now, common sense are we as biological beings designed to eat petroleum. Nope, you know, there's the answer. You know, we're not designed to eat this mass quantity of all these petroleum derivatives. In other words, when you step back from common sense, you're like, oh my God. Well, it's not gonna hurt if I start reducing my consumption of petroleum ingredients, it can only help me in many different ways. Yes. Indeed. Your, your symptoms may well subside, reduce, subside, you will also be doing a great service to your energy, your brain clarity, your longevity in the, in the process of doing this, it's not gonna hurt. It's only going to help because we're not designed to eat, you know, what gas is made from and petroleum were designed to eat what we all know we're designed to eat. You know, not that - Well again, that's a great new framework for people to consider that what they put on their skin is another way that they're actually taking things into their body.

I think a lot of people don't realize this. They think that's a barrier there. But a lot of you're saying a lot of those chemicals actually find their way into the blood, blood stream and into the body and into the our organs. - Yes, indeed they do. I mean, in fact, that's what they're designed to do. They're designed to penetrate, you know, real quick. Why, why do they include these ingredients in product? Well, in products? Well, some of them, as I mentioned, are to stabilize it on the shelf to have it, you know, have a, you know, it's not infinite but a very, very long shelf life. Um some art called penetrators.

These are scary ingredients, penetrators are designed to take the other ingredients faster and deeper into your body. And well, I'm not going, let's use anti aging creams. For example, I'm not going to claim that in a very short term, some of these ingredients may do what's advertised, they may temporarily reduce the appearance of wrinkles on your face. But at what cost, ironically, they cause midterm longer term early aging as well as health issues, right? But they wouldn't work if they're just sitting there on top of your skin, they have to go into your body or they have no effect.

So the question is, do you want a bunch of petroleum, you know, derived products inside your body? Of course, you don't. Again, so many have already been traced. Their known cancer causes their known hormone disruptors and then pioneer in the category of potential. Why do this now that we're conscious of this, including maybe from this conversation, why do that? Why consume that junk right now? The beautiful thing is, first of all, there's a lot of there's a growing D I Y movement. Do it yourself, movement for, for personal care products and stuff.

And if you embrace that, have fun with it because there's using natural products if you're not into that again, the very good news is there are conscientious organizations out there putting some good stuff that is USDA certified out there, you know, and my little rule for people is the more it is applied to your skin frequently directly. The more important it is to consider changing that item. First, I keep saying deodorant why that's going on one of the most sensitive parts of our body, a very relatively thin layer of skin down there.

It's sitting there all day, every day. Some people deodorize at night too. So that's one of the very first. For example, I would say that's the most important to switch out. I bring up anti aging creams, moisturizers, anything that you're applying to your face that's intent is to sit there, change that out, you know, to clean food, which is really what is clean cosmetics and personal care. I'm not saying something like shampoo is not important, but a lot of that we put in and then we rinse out. Now there's residue that remains. So it's I'm not saying it but, but I'm saying if you have to make a choice because of, you know, finances or whatever reason, think through whatever is, is applied and sitting there all day or all night.

Resilience, Novelty, and Intense Experiences 35:48

- Yeah. So let's shift gears here just a little bit on focus and I've linked longevity with resilience uh in, in my work and I know you share some similar I ideas and I noticed your intense experience dot com website. Can you explain that and what it, what its purpose is? - Wow, what a throwback. So, first of all, I was pretty popular before all this as an impersonal growth and wellness and, yeah, that's funny. You found that it still sits out there still existed today. I had a best selling book out of all that, that was actually translated into Chinese. I'm still not sure what they really wrote in that book because I don't read Chinese and it was pretty popular in China.

I'm like, what did I, what did they say? I wrote about jumping back so intense experiences, interesting, you bring that up because that is one of the key ways to be resilient is, is and now we've seen with class, you know, plasticity to say that, you know, and our brains, it's indeed research based and proven true is to keep engaging in the new, keep engaging in the new, is one of the one of the big secrets to creating resilience and to your longevity. And you can also say this, you know, in terms of, you know, physical, but by the new one example, a big example, I'm referring to his experiences.

It's all about not getting caught in a rut, in other words. And this is what does happen to many of us as we get older, we do get caught in, in a lot of ruts now some routine is healthy for you, but you want to keep pushing that envelope, so to speak, stepping outside your comfort zone. So the whole intense experiences, brand and model, I did a lot of research. Now, we're talking 15 years ago for that research and I discovered that there were nine key areas of experience that are deeply worthwhile to engage in um meeting new people, for example, is a huge one that comes right to mind. We, we get caught in these ruts of not socializing or only socializing with our little clan. And it's one of the healthiest things you could do, albeit not easy to keep trying to meet new people, including people from different walks of life than your own, different belief systems than your own, different ages than your own, you know, engage with, with the 20 year olds and, you know, people are across these different swaths.

Why? Um it's, it's kind of use it or lose it with our brain, you know, and, and any of these challenges that, that kind of scare us or that pushed us outside our comfort zone in some way, are fantastic for building resilience and living longer. - Right. Right. I couldn't agree with you more. And I, I enjoyed hearing you in, in one of your conversations referring to revving up your hippocampus. Yeah, that's one of the expressions. - Yeah. The another one, I mean, and a lot of my own work I use dumb jokes, you know. Um, like why should you never trust in Adam because they make up everything and I'm so constantly.

But let me tell you, laughter is one of those nine key areas of experience. It really the old expression we have all heard. It's the best medicine. Well, guess what research confirms that some of the best medicine. Indeed. And if you make a conscious effort to expose yourself routinely to laughter, you are taking a mighty big step to live long and live well, by doing that, even even my corny bad dad joke type of humor. So, yeah. - That's great. That's, I appreciate that. And this has been a tremendously wonderful conversation, Brian.

I appreciate it and I appreciate you bringing to this audience an

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awareness and uh being able to pay attention to a whole area that we haven't touched on in our other talks. So I really appreciate this conversation for those reasons. Can you, is there something on your horizon or something important you want to share with this audience as well as ways that they can connect with you? - Well, I just recommend anybody. Thank you for opening that door. Do go to the TheArtofAntiAging.com and you know, simply never, whatever way you choose, we have, we have, you know, very popular summit there that's free to attend.

Um If it's not during live summer time, we keep it there. You know, so that you can sign up for. We've got a wonderful blog, pour a lot of effort. I'm very, I'm a research geek. Okay. So I put a ton of effort into the research and making sure, you know, it's all checked and balanced. But I think a lot of pride in our blog over there, which a lot of people love as well. So something as simple as that, I'd recommend everybody to go check out. You know, the very popular blog, there were one thing I can promise you, it's going to do two things, I guess. Right?

It's well researched and I believe it reads pretty darn well, in other words, you're gonna be, you're gonna enjoy the read on the blog, just pay a visit to TheArtofAntiAging.com And thanks for, you know, asking that one. - Of course, of course on the site and it's a really excellent site so I can second that. So, thank you so much, Brian once more for your time and for these important messages to our audience. Thank you. - Thank you.