Introduction to the Summit, Who the Hosts Are, and What our Motivations Are

Introduction to Jason Prall 0:00

Everyone, I want to introduce Jason Prall, my co-host of The Summit. Jason is a formal mechanical engineer turned entrepreneur, filmmaker, and health optimization practitioner. Due to 20 years of his own health challenges, Jason is really given the opportunity to discover the reality behind his symptoms and through this entire multi-year, multi-decade journey. He began really working with individuals around the world to really provide solutions for those who are suffering from working in integrated disease care model to model of health optimization and lifestyle medicine.

These lessons were, cumulated into a free online documentary series called The Human Longevity Project's Really Cool Name, which uncovers the complex mechanisms of chronic disease and aging, in the true nature of longevity. In our modern world, because the world we live in is very different than how our parents or grandparents and great grandparents record governments really lived. And what does it look like in the very near future? Amanda. And I'm so, just so happy to introduce you to everyone.

And sorry for the long winded background, but obviously going to ask you a whole lot more about stuff, the stuff that you do. But hey, co-host, thanks for being here. Yeah, it's good to see you. It's, it's it's awesome to do this this event with you. Yeah. So, now I want to ask you why. Like, why did you agree to to come on and be part of the something that involves brain health? Well, this is this is, it's an area that I'm not specifically, married to in my business, necessarily. Right. But in my own personal life, this is something that, that hit me really, really strongly when I was young.

I had a a great grandmother when I was young. And I remember her very well. But unfortunately, most of my memory is clouded by her dementia. And the experiences of that. And I think I was, you know, eight, nine, ten and 11 somewhere in that range maybe. And, didn't have a real concrete grasp of what it is. But that's what I remember. I remember her accusing us of of stealing from her, not remember who we were. Of course, thinking that we were kind of the enemy or making up stories. And that was just a very, very difficult thing.

And then and then later, you know, decades later, I watched my grandmother go through the same thing. Right. So, you know, watching people, you know, and love go through something like dementia and Alzheimer's and, it's tough and it's like it's one of the more difficult things

Why Brain Health Matters 2:50

I think we can go through. And, and then you contrast that with the Human Longevity Project that I did, you know, going around the world to these blue zones, speaking with people that are in their 90s beyond 100 and watching the mental acuity that they had. I remember Julio in Sardinia, he he was playing chess, with his, his son and he was 105. He was playing with chess with his 75 year old son or whatever, 80 year old son. So, you know, it was fascinating to to get to experience those people, a 94 year old in, here in Loma Linda, California, actually, playing the violin, learned the violin at 92 years old.

You know, and so, so to me, it's like when I see those two, disparities, it's like there's something here that we can do right to improve brain health, you know? And on the topic of the Human Longevity Project, I'm sure that was a multi-year journey to even for you to be passionate enough to get to that point, right? Yeah. And make a documentary accessible to everyone to get the word out there. Like what was really the mission behind it? How did you how did you even start that journey? Yeah, well, it actually came from me working as a, as a practitioner, integrative practitioner, and, and all my clients that I was seeing, you know, they, they all had their individual situations, individual context.

Right. They all walked in with something different autoimmune conditions, food sensitivities, hormonal disruptions, hair loss, you name it. Right. The whole gamut I saw and we addressed, we had to address those things. We did specific testing, functional medicine style. But what I found was that there were certain things that I was teaching over and over and over again. When it comes to lifestyle medicine, right? I mean, that's like, that's your brand, right? Like lifestyle medicine. And so these are the things that it's fascinating that we that we all kind of need to go through this, in our modern age.

But, but it's because we've created such an artificial world that we find ourselves in, right? I mean, even right now, we're on computer inside, right? We we live in a very artificial kind of bubble. And so we need most of us need to relearn how to live in this world that we've created. And so that's what I was doing. I was teaching over and over again. Circadian rhythm. Right. What that even is and how we optimize sleep. I mean, it's a huge one for everybody that's going through chronic issues that I ran into is we got to optimize sleep, right?

Of course we we navigate the food choices and all these things. Right. So it was it was this lifestyle medicine that I was teaching to every single one of the clients that I, that I worked with. And that's really what I, what got me interested in, thinking about, you know, not only from like a anthropological paleo sort of perspective. Right. Because we hear these stories about what our ancestors aid and what they did and right know. I think there's a lot of theory about that that we don't really know.

Right. We're using fossil records, right. Kinds of assumptions. And I thought, you know, there's actually group there's people around the world that live primitively in Africa. Right? We have people that are living really, really primary. And then we have these groups of people around the world that are living sort of quasi primitively. Right. They kind of like what we might have lived like in the United States 60 years ago or seven years ago or 100 years ago. And, you know, that's interesting to to go talk to them and to really find out about their lives, because in 1950, Costa Rica, there was no electricity in these little villages right in, in the mountain regions of Sardinia or Eukarya, Greece, or Okinawa.

They didn't have cars in the 1950s, 1940s. So they lived in a totally different way. Right? So I wanted to talk to them. And so that was really kind of the impetus was, was to get a sense for what their lives were like and what contributed to their unbelievable health, not only brain health, but overall health when they get into their into their old age. But, you know, I think a lot of people are kind of watching, they're listening to this and thinking, yeah, you know, there's a Dei component, there's a lifestyle component to it, but I think there's a belief system, a component to it as well.

Right? Yeah. And a lot of things, and whether it's Alzheimer's or even mental health, attention deficit, depression, these are sort of taboo subjects, you know, and not only to the public, not really want to talk about because it just seems so debilitating.

Human Longevity Project Origins 7:10

But neither do doctors. Very much. Right. And, I mean, I feel like, you know, part of this journey and part of my story with the with the Better Brain Health Summit is that there are so many success stories that I've seen for improving brain and mental contents for health. So many right. And there's commonalities, like I said, behind all of them, that's similar to the principles behind the Human Longevity Project, but part of the part of the reason why we have a summit on is for to develop relationships.

You know, it's stuff that we want people to listen to from the world's top experts. Right? And also make it not taboo, make it talk to their family members about it and put it out there. And and having people understand that there's actually a lot of cool stuff and technology that are out there that we can do something about brain and mental health, you know. Yeah, I totally and this is you're hitting at something I think is really, really interesting when you when you kind of work as a and from a clinical perspective is that you might have somebody that has a fungal infections.

Right. And they have this variety of symptoms, skin issues and trouble sleeping. And, you know, just all over the place, digestive concerns. And then when we clean that up, all of a sudden their brain works better. Right. Or all these other peripheral things. Right. And so this is this is something that I think is really interesting when we get into kind of the chronic conditions, these low grade inflammatory conditions, these syndromes that that many of us, to be honest, are experiencing. And they include the depressions, the anxieties. Right.

These sort of mental health things that we might classify. But like there's a difference between diagnosable sort of, condition, so to speak, and sort of these low grade under the radar, kind of situations that we find ourselves in. And, and when we start cleaning things up and we start addressing certain things, all of a sudden we find a new level of reality. I think this is what's interesting to me. Right. And your point is, is so, important, particularly when it comes to stigmas, right? I mean, Add, ADHD, autism, right.

This sort of Asperger's, these spectrums and, and we, we we're kind of shying from them. Right? We don't want to label them as, as, you know, anything negative. And yet I think it's important that we look at them and say, hey, look, we can do something about this, right? The number of kids that I've seen that, that are in this sort of autism spectrum, this Asperger's, ADHD spectrum, when we start cleaning up some of the things in the diet, when we start doing a little of detoxification, their whole attitude changes.

Their their symptoms change, their sleep changes. Like this is what to me is so important is that we don't we stop kind of labeling these things like when you when you get into the clinical aspect. True. From an integrative perspective, right. Labels stop mattering. Right. And you just start recognizing where the opportunities are to improve function. And so I'm just kind of curious what you're what your experience has been in that sort of same light. But you're exactly right. So so part of this thing is that, you know, as a practitioner, as a doctor, you take medical insurance and Medicare and stuff like that.

One of the hardest things, one of the hardest things to do sometimes is to not get the patient on board to skip their other doctors and board. Right. And so my belief is collaborative medicine, right. So, you know, more than 50% time I'm not seeing patients. I'm reaching out to other doctors to actually collaborate on the case. And what I found is that there's a huge reception of this type of lifestyle, improve health, because all doctors actually know there's a lifestyle component to brain health, right?

Or education in general education. Right. When I went through medical school, residency, you and I was really good at pharmacology, and I can prescribe the heck out of drugs and stuff like that. But little did I know, that was just the beginning, right? There's a lot more to it than that. And so it takes some people, success stories, if you will, to really understand that things can actually improve. And then I'll tell you a very interesting case. So I had, someone who gosh, we've been working on our, my whole teams been working on for, for three and a half years.

And she was the loveliest person in the world. But every time she came in, there was a lot of stuttering, hard time understanding her. We give her extra time, a lot of neurocognitive deficits. Now she's gone. You know, she's, she's younger than Medicare is, let's put it that way. And so, when she was starting experiencing these things in the late 40s, early 50s, there was $1 million workup that was done by neurologists and a bunch of different other ologies that didn't really amount to anything.

And maybe they were like, oh, maybe you got seizures, maybe you got this. We don't know what's going on with you. But over three years we tried, a lot of different things, and the progression was kind of slower. First, we'll still improving. Right. And then there's always at one point that I noticed is that someone will give me an idea. And this happens to be her dentist, right. And her dentist say, hey, you know what? Let's put it out there. She's got some some dental infections. And her her jaws kind of like, not the right shape as it should be under developed. Let's let's look for things.

And as it turns out, we look for things. And we found it. And the dentist is the person who funded treatment that actually got her significantly better. In fact, I just saw her earlier today and she's like a different person.

Lifestyle Medicine and Chronic Illness 12:40

Her EEG looks different. Her neural castle does. Even her imaging looks different. She's like a different person. And that today is really the first time that she spoke like in a prolonged three, 4 or 5 sentences. No stuttering. Everything was look great, right? But it really took a lot of investigation and pulling the people together. Now, when I say this, when I when I explain this to the neurologist and she has five right neurologists and ontologies and different allergists, there was a sense like, wow, let's let's publish it.

Not, not I don't believe you. Well, let's publish it because we actually have the data to prove it. Right. And so there's a lot of people that were actually involved, in her case, and those categories actually represented in the summit, because for the brain to heal, it's not just the brain, it's the gut, it's the oral microbiome that the mouth, the teeth, the airway structures. It's things that happen that we're younger, that we need to identify as well, you know, and it's things that's happening right now.

And there's there's tools you can access right now as well. And that's, that's what my, my what I've seen. And that's just one example of many examples of great stories, but it's always a perpetuating ongoing journey. She's not 100%. I don't know if she's going to be 100%. And as it turns out, when this what she experienced, actually came from a very rare, parasite that she acquired when she was a teenager. So when had a lake and it just progressively got worse. And there we just never really caught. Right.

And so, so stuff like this are things that require a lot of collaboration, require a lot of discussion. But a lot of people like her spent years suppressing it, thinking, oh, there's something wrong with me, and I don't want to talk about it because I'm a mom or I'm a grandma or, you know, I'm a dad or whatever it is. Right? And that's the thing to pick up, is that there's always symptoms and now is the really the time to talk about it, you know? Yeah, I totally and I think, you know what I've seen working with a ton of people and even in the health challenges that I faced, and that's really how I got into the health field, was dealing with chronic joint pain when I was, you know, 13.

Right? That I couldn't get any answers for, for 20 years, you know, skin conditions that I was dealing with. You know, these are these are challenging. And what comes often with, with these things is shame or the shame. Yeah. It was this idea that there's something wrong with me or that, you know, and this, this, this is, comes from a lot of the conditioning that we have and our kids. But, you know, we take on this idea that it's our fault. Right? There's something I did or didn't do. I'm a bad boy, right?

These are these are conditions that come from from childhood that we can actually carry with us with these things that show up. Right. And your your example is perfect, right? It's like a parasite. I mean, a lot of times it's, you know, it's heavy metals or, you know, mold, right? It's a very common thing. And these things when, when coupled with some of these sort of childhood traumas or experiences that we all carry, right? When you couple that with perhaps an incorrect diet for the situation.

Right. If somebody has yeast, candida mold and they're eating, you know, a pretty balanced, healthy diet, well, it's not so healthy anymore because those, those, those yeast or mold species really thrive on things like oats and rice and some of these sort of carbohydrates, which aren't inherently bad otherwise. Right. So couple of these sort of interesting contexts, and then all of a sudden, you know, we start going downhill and we just don't know why. Right. And this is very, very common. And this can be due to travel. Right.

We can pick things up, certain, stressful, events in our lives can really put us in a, in a in a biologically stressful state. Right? So there's just a lot that can go wrong, so to speak. And it puts people in a bind because, again, they think there's something wrong with them. They think it's their fault. And they it's really hard to find help. Right. And this is why I think these summits, and you know, the work that you and your team are doing is so, so important because it starts to open up the doors and the conversation how normal all this is that we all go through some kind of health challenge.

And oftentimes it's very difficult to find out what's going on. And then to really start to open up the, the, the mind to this idea that there's a potentially and then a ton of different causes. Right. And the reason that's important is because it's empowering to know that it could be the dental if you've investigated everything and you finally hear that, oh, it could possibly be dental caries or dental infections or root canal issues, right? Then all of a sudden now you have a new place to look, right?

So I think it's really, really important. Yeah. And one of the things that we tackle, we're going to tackle on the summit is sort of this idea that a lot of people with brain health issues, have seen a lot of different doctors, a lot of different degrees. Right. And, there's always sort of this emphasis on disease management, not necessarily disease reversal. Right. And instead of creating health, we're just managing some sort of disease or disorder. Right. And, and whenever there's a pursuit, a lot of times by the patients and they talk to the doctor about it, it really gets, blown off a bit.

Not because the doctor doesn't care. That's not true at all. It's actually because the doctor doesn't necessarily have the right tools or expose the right tools, and now they're only working with the tools that they're given, and they want to, help. Like, we want to really help. Right. But the pursuit of things that are outside the box requires the person themselves sometimes seek out sort of these things. And that can create a lot of like just trauma within the medical system as well. Right. And that's what precipitates a lot of people kind of searching out for answers.

And I bet you a lot of people listen to me. Right? I'll kind of smile and yeah, that's me, searching for answers for it, for other things that that might be there. And in doing this summit, my brain is open. I do not know everything. I'm sure you don't know everything. Our brains are open, and we're here to connect people. We're here to connect ideas.

Collaborative Care and Hidden Causes 18:40

And what are the congruences in those ideas? Right. And when when we're talking about speaking with some of the smartest people in the world right now, for for the Brain Health summit, and there is a overwhelming, agreements. And the overwhelming agreement is that we cannot ignore just the material things like, whether it's the mold or EBV or food or whatever it is. Right. But we have to appreciate the spiritual emotional component to as well. Like it's earlier, like traumatic events, and not just traumatic events, even events that seems very like excitatory.

They all form the way our physiology is. There's no one size fits all approach. That's why there's so many different things that are covered, you know, on the summit is that these things could potentially work for people. But I want to encourage people that the pursuit should always be there. Totally. And I think, you know, this is what's fascinating about the brain is that we we really don't know much. Right? I mean, we're learning more and more each, each year, each decade, and we're uncovering amazing things, but we're still in the dark about a ton, of the function of the brain and how it all works.

Right? I mean, one of the most interesting areas in, in my view, right now is, is going on in a psychedelic therapy, right? Things like, you know, MDMA, psilocybin, ketamine. And it's actually not from the perspective of what those of the experience of those psychedelic, medicines or therapies, but actually what it's teaching us about the brain. So we're actually using those substances. And then we're studying the brain and we're learning like unbelievable information. You know, much like when we study meditators, right.

These really, really advanced meditators and we start to see, their brainwaves and we start to monitor that and we think, well, this is fascinating. This person can can get into this state, in such a profound capacity. There are corpus callosum starts to thicken, right, with meditation. Like these are interesting aspects because what are we doing? We're actually shutting down activity. We're we're turning on other aspects of the brain. And, and that's where it starts to get interesting to me. And again, I think this is where a lot of learning is going to be taking place over the next decade or more as we start to introduce these really fascinating technologies that have to do with sound, that have to do with, perhaps, you know, light, some of these sort of psychedelic medicines, these, eastern practices.

Right. Like, this is really interesting. And I think we're going to we're going to uncover a ton. And I know you've actually dealt with some of this right? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And what's great about it is I think the timing is right right now with this. And because, with coronavirus, we've learned even more. Right. And, you know, one of the most and I, I, I ran the, coronavirus emergency, doctor summit at the very beginning, the pandemic was this, like March of 2020, like, right at the very, very beginning, where we had a lot of integrative health practitioners on their as well as conventional doctors, infectious disease, you name it.

There's, there's a lot of people, those on there and it was live. And I literally just sat there talk for eight hours and so, and it was fascinating because, that the whatever we said at that time, from an integrative health perspective still applies in, you know, currently, you know, 2022, 2023, it's still applies currently. And it's because the fundamental concepts of what we thought virology was is actually reflected in our total body, especially our brain. So is Covid long haulers a surprise?

Absolutely not. Not to the people who, who have been in chronic illness for a long time. Right. Or are, are these no new dramatic neurological symptoms of of coronavirus? No. Well, no, because it's the same pattern. Other viruses have the same pattern. Other toxins have, like mold and stuff like that. So none of us necessarily knew within the space. But now there's a hyper focus on it. Right. And because of the hyper focus, people are speaking in languages now from immunology. And if you look at the newest celebrities on YouTube, they have a lot of MDS.

And after the name, because of their positions and viewpoints on the coronavirus. But everything that they're saying is actually part of like integrative and functional health of how our body actually functions. So in this brain health summit, yes, we do have segments on, post-Covid syndrome and stuff like that. But it's still we're still tied into the overall global picture. And even though everyone's different, everyone's underlying functionality is the same. The way that our body reacts is things is very similar.

The way our emotions react to things is very similar. And what's different is maybe lineage, because sometimes we can inherit traumas from multiple generations up that kind of trickle down to us that we don't know about. And this is really well publicized in studies, but the point of this summit is to understand that there's no reason not to talk about it. And one of the really cool things is that we can now turn words into numbers. So instead of saying, hey, I'm just depressed or I'm fatigued or, you know, I have short term memory loss, there's now devices out there that we use to literally show you, hey, how far away are you from the, 50% of the population in your age and gender?

Is this really true? And that's a number that we want to target. Okay. We can look at short term memory, long term memory markers, attention markers, auditory processing, visual processing, you know, ADHD markers and stuff like that. There's so many things that are out there right now that's actually accessible to to everyone, to be honest with you. But, the medical community has been really behind in getting on board with that. But that's the point of the summit to let people know that there's always going to be hope.

Yeah. Well, I'm curious, Doctor Brown, what? You know, there's a lot of technology coming out, right? I mean, you know, functional MRI are really interesting. We've got neurofeedback, right. And different types of neurology. Yeah. I'm curious. And just from my my limited knowledge of functional neurology, you know, there's you can as a good functional neurologist, good clinician can watch somebody gate. They can watch their handwriting. Right.

Trauma, Stigma, and Whole-Body Healing 24:50

Their speech patterns and and and through monitoring these specific behaviors can actually sort of get a rough estimate or diagnosis of the brain regions and what's functioning well and what's not. I'm curious if there's technology that's coming, online that we're going to start to monitor this in real time, because this is one of the things that I think that we have a real opportunity as we start to get older, our 40, 50, 60, 70, we can start to catch these functional issues before they become clinical and there's subclinical such that we can start to to train them and do something different.

What's on the market. What do you see in that in that realm? Yeah, really good question. Let's define functional clinical for a second. So you know functional means that our body's function is impaired in one way or another. Clinical means someone can slap a diagnosis on it. So really the only difference right. What's a catch. It's a catch in disorders and diseases earlier. You're absolutely right. There's actually technology that can look at brainwave behavior, like the quantitative EEG. Doctor Emmons on the summit.

He's the master of Spect scan of the brain. Looking at that. But even more than that, there's actually artificial intelligence is being developed in research right now to risk stratify people on different disease states, their risk of suicide, their risk of depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, all that's existing right now, it's coming out to the market probably within the next 4 to 5 years. So, and we're going to talk about that on the summit and that that's the really exciting part is, yes, that the technology actually exists, but but the, you know, clinical is far behind from it, right?

Yeah. And the other thing is not only does the technology does this to, to to to look at in disease states, there's technology like this right now to improve them. Right. And so and they come in different various shapes and sizes and there's life therapy and there's, there's neurofeedback and there's, sound therapy, all sorts of different things on there. A lot of them. What we're actually featuring on the summit. But, it's it's not one size fits all. And maybe that multiple things may actually work, but, you know, the pursuit of health is is still there.

But answer to your question, man. There's a lot like, you know, we're doing this summit right now this year at this time next year, it may be a complete set of different speakers with brand new technology. That's how fast the industry is moving right now, right. We're able to utilize a lot of the technology and moving into this era and this era of what we call, primary intervention, with brain tech. Yeah. And and I talk about this on the summit with Doctor Bruce Wexler out of Yale, and, and he wrote the original paper on this back in the early 80s.

He was way ahead of his time talking about specific EEG interventions that you can actually see. And so and so now, you know, we have the ability to talk about this, but not only that, there's actually a approval process from the FDA. And if you're listening to the United States, we have this thing called the FDA that approves different drugs and uses. And they also look at devices as well. We approval process is actually fast forwarded, years sometimes because of what's going around with the global pandemic.

And everyone knows the CDC knows the center for Disease Control, knows that there's a big, pandemic of self-destruction, of depression, of anxiety that's there that is going to be reverberating for the next 2 to 3 decades, just from the pandemic itself. You know, loneliness is the number one cause of death in the world, right? And there's nothing more isolating than through this process. But, you know, as as scary as it sounds, there's definitely hope. And there's things that people can do right now.

And that's what's truly exciting about this summit. Yeah, I totally agree. And I think one of the things that I see over and over with the clients that I work with is that, you know, they come in and they're in a pretty frustrated or, you know, apathetic. They kind of they're just they don't believe that they can get better. And and what I find is, is that once we start getting a little bit of momentum and they start getting not even they're not even where they want to be, but they're moving forward.

It's their whole life starts to change right into this idea of of starting to resolve these things and get better. Right? No matter if you're 50, 60, 70, 80. Right. There's something, really, really important about that that changes your perspective on life. It changes your attitude, changes your mood. And I think this is one of the things when it comes to brain health

Technology, Brain Mapping, and New Therapies 29:20

and these brain conditions that I, I know we're going to do a really, really good job of this with the summit, but I really want to convey that, like, all these things can turn around, right? Even signs of dementia and Alzheimer's, they can be reversed, right? I mean, doctor Bredesen has, has done an amazing job of getting his protocol out, to the medical community, which is, which is, quite something, really, you know, and so that's what I think really, really important about this summit is that it's this idea that we can we can shift this no matter no matter what's going on and what age.

Yeah. So you're right. It's and the other thing to this, this is one that's a little hard to for me to really talk about is that people think there's an endpoint. And there's not, health is a perpetual journey as well. Right? It's not like there's a silver bullet and then you fire and everything is is all is all well and good? It's a perpetual journey. And so while there are a lot of tools that are out there, I don't want people to be in a hurry, but I want them to be in the perpetual state of constant, never ending improvement, because that's what it's really going to take.

You know, life is, is is a dance between your greatest fears and your most awesome passions, right? I think Tony Robbins did that or something like that. And that's always going to be true, in health as well. You know, health is a spectrum that we kind of slide on, right? It's not all of a sudden boom, we get ticked over for for a diagnosis. And the biggest lesson that I've learned, in medicine is that it costs in medical school residency. You know, I was pretty hyper focused on just kind of categorizing everyone and everything and put to put in within a clinical guideline, because the trust level evidence of the guidelines.

But those guidelines, you know, create more pharmaceutical interventions than anything else. Right. And so that was my tool. Right. But a lot of times when you're dealing with new stuff, there's no guidelines because in order to have guidelines, you need to have millions of dollars of clinical research, sometimes billions in terms of brain health. So even have these guidelines out there. And, the people who are profiting from it, it's like the pharmaceutical companies have the funds to do so and work with the government system do. So when we talk about lifestyle intervention, it's not a very profitable market.

You know, I'm not talking about a multi-billion dollar industry here. And so that's why the frustration is there. And I recognize it. And people and I really, really do. But the idea is that you got to speak to your doctors very openly about what your actual goals are. And, and the doctors have to recognize that they may not have all the tools. And that's okay, because life is always a perpetual journey to move the shift towards that spectrum of, of of longevity. Right. Okay. Yeah. And what's interesting about that, sort of that journey, which it's pretty windy, I find it's not really a straight line, in my experience.

True. But oftentimes there are these little things that when you get them right, can make a huge difference. Right. And I'll give it a very, very sort of interesting example that most people don't want to hear. Many of my clients, I will encourage them to, to stop their use of caffeine. Right? Stop drinking coffee and stop drinking tea for a period of a few weeks. Right? Many people don't want to do that, and I understand. I love coffee, I get it. And some people, not everybody, but some people, when they do magic happens.

They can't believe their digestive, situation improves, their sleep improves, their mood improves, they can think clearly and they can't believe it. Right. And so I think that's just one example. Another example might be circadian rhythm. When when you start getting, you know, sunlight in the morning and you start getting, your hormones or start, sort of cycling in the way that they're should all the things start to correct. Right. So there's just these little examples, I think with some sometimes some people, you're example with, with the dentistry.

Right. Like that into a bit bigger. But when you get them right then, then these things that seemed impossible because you thought you tried everything can can magically shift. Right. And the caffeine one is a very interesting because I've had so many examples where people have literally been chasing something for years, and that's one of the first things I encourage them to do, is just get off caffeine for a little bit. And things started to unwind in ways they couldn't imagine, right? So this is what's really cool about this summit, the lifestyle aspects, is that that there's so many little things to pay attention to, but when you get them right, you can really unlock something absolutely.

And it's funny because we actually spend the whole 45 minutes on the summit talking about coffee and caffeine. And one of the and, and this is a great point, is that, it may not be the caffeine and maybe the quality of the coffee actually has has more toxins on. It was about six according to. That's right. And so and so that's the thing right. It's like yes. The quick coffee and caffeine. But it's a behavioral change that decrease the overall toxic load. What else could it be? Right. But there's also simple substitutions for coffee as well.

And they're also different grades of coffee, specialty coffee. And the other thing is that and your example is, is perfectly right. Is that like for example. Right. So let's say I'm a daily I am a daily coffee drinker. So I'm a daily coffee drinker. And if I have a lot of like cognitive issues and even though my coffee is good for me but I stop drinking coffee, I stop also doing the things that link with the coffee. Maybe it's creamer, which is dairy, right? Or maybe I drink coffee black, but I stick a bagel in my mouth on the way out the door.

Or maybe I'd love to go to Starbucks and they always want me to buy one more breakfast. I'm like, sure, why not? Right? So the the linking associations stop being so automatic. And then the behavioral changes, start being in very intentional. And so now maybe I'm packing my breakfast or packing my lunch and stuff like that. And, and that's why, it drives me nuts to, to, to kind of, see, people, especially on social media, create so much resentment about a specific thing. But it works for some people.

Worse doesn't work for others, because everyone has different linking behavioral habits, and the brain is the master of it all. The brain is watching everything from a subconscious side and the conscious side, and the brain is taking it all in. Right? And so, as the and so that's why there's all we can do is have some level of knowledge

Hope, Recovery, and the Summit's Mission 35:40

of the things that are potentially out there for everyone. It's, it's a different journey. And that's what's beautiful about this summit. Also, it's beautiful talking to all the experts on here is that we all recognize, you know, and I and, you know, I notice that the grayer the hairs of people, the more they say that, you know, you have to tackle the belief systems first before all the other all the other stuff that we can measure and bloodwork and stuff like that and that. And that's absolutely true.

And we have to understand that the mind and the body is, is, is heavily connected. And there's a whole field of that in mind, body medicine. In fact, your, your poster behind you with all the Chinese letters, peeing on peace and all that stuff like that. Yeah. All those, are actually the fundamentals of health. And, I know you can't see the top of the poster, but towards the top of poster, it's always about the balance of the body. Right. And that's true not just in Chinese culture, but in other cultures as well.

In ancient Arabic cultures, it's all about that balance. And that is still true in modern medicine. You know, we're not good enough to overcome, nature. You know, a lot of medicines try to fight against nature, and we suffer bad side effects. Right? We're not good enough to overcome nature. But part of this and part of the summit, we're not trying to overcome nature. We're trying to look at things from a perspective of a very open mind, using technology to do it, to validate it, and having it looked at all the previous publications and taking it to the consumer.

And the people who listen to this is like, wow, there's just so much more that I can explore, and I would love for people to listen to this, watching this to be wow, just like I will be wowed when I interview these people. Yeah, I totally agree. And you're hitting on something that's a true passion of mine with with all the the work that I do now in sort of investigative journalism and, and, and working with healers from around the world is this integration, this, this meeting of, of the ancient with the modern right.

And this is what's so fascinating is that when we find that these ancient practices, in fact, I was just recently, this last weekend, I was with the qigong master and, bunch of Buddhist monks, in Minnesota, of all places. But but had an amazing conversation with this qigong master about energy, about the body, about different therapies. And, you know, the practices that they, that they work with, in qigong and working literally with qi, with energy, and with life force itself. And those things start to marry up with the science.

And the science is starting to confirm these ancient practices. This is what gets me so excited. And I think this is, again, this is this is where we're going, you know, it's it's in my mind, it's unavoidable. We're already heading there. You starting to see this merger of technology and ancient wisdom? And that's really what I see, in this, in this, and as you mentioned, it's it's really about harmonizing with nature and recognizing that we can't fight against it. And when we do that, then then health is our sort of reward.

Right. And so, again, that's, that's really what we're all doing here from different perspectives and just kind of quickly going back to the caffeine, what's fascinating about caffeine is that the research shows that it's beneficial and it's good for brain health. Like you go digging into the research and over and over and over again, you show that caffeine is helpful. So so this idea of contextualizing these things and and for some people in certain instances, good to take away. For other people, it's a really good thing to have in moderate amounts on a regular basis. Right. So this is what's fascinating.

And it ties into this idea of, of your individual context and, and listening to the body and following nature's rules. Well, listen, we should get started on these interviews, for our audience. And, I want to just let everyone understand that, you know, obviously, both systems are very passionate about this topic and many, many others as well. We could talk forever, but we want, but listen with an open mind, and just observe. And, what I would like people to get really out of this summit. My ideal situation is to have the creative side of the brain really start opening up, not the technical side.

The creative side. And that creative side is applying the things that are said and applying to yourself and have an inner, inner look at what's going on, with the self and with your family members. And if you're watching this because of a family member, which probably half of you are, also know that everything, everything in the summit applies to people even without brain health issues. Yeah. Well, awesome. Thanks, Jason. We'll get started. I'm excited, I'm excited. This is great. Thanks for having me on and acting as your co-host.

I'm super honored. And I've interviewed you for my summits because. Because you're, you're wealth of information. And I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out. So, let's get started.