The Power of Biohacking: A Real Life Case Study on Boosting Your Creativity and Productivity

Introduction and Guest Welcome 0:00

Hi, I'm dr AMY and welcome to the bio optimized summit where we explore the next level of physical and mental health, you can reach through intentional and targeted optimization of your biology today, I am very excited to bring our guest to you. This is Winston Winston has been become a good friend and I am very excited about his work and him being able to share his work with us today. So he is co founder and Ceo of Hydro's. He is a purpose driven entrepreneur, which I can definitely attest to that. And he is very focused on sustainable products.

And what I really like about Winston is that not only does he share this with other people, but he is very much focused on promoting his own health and goes to lengths in order to maintain his health and optimize that as he can not for his business and being able to show up for his business in that way, but to show up in all areas of his life as a very present and energetic individual. So this is Winston and thank you for joining us today, of course. Thank you so much, doctor and it's been really great to get to know you initially through the N A.

D Clinic and on your own and you know, I think you're doing incredible work to try and spread this message because to me, the biggest problem we have is society is that we don't have enough of a focus on really empowering people to own their health and to be their maximum self. And I think I've always seen that as my mission in life is to unlock as much human potential that's trapped by the misery and suffering of bad health outcomes and just passive acceptance. And can we create solutions and awareness and scalability there, that empowers as many people as possible and prevents them from limiting themselves to their maximum potential? Absolutely. And whether we're talking about physical health or mental health, emotional health, like there really is, it addresses all of that because there always is that next level of health and there's so

Hydro's Origin and Sustainable Water Filtration 1:58

much that we can do, there's so much choice and tools that we have available to us and and when we take that kind of radical responsibility and owners of our health, but that's really where we get to see these kinds of results in our life. And I'm really excited for you to share not only what your business is doing and how you help people accomplish that through your business, but then some of your own health routines and talk to us about what that looks like in your life. So let's start with Hydro's tell about Hydro's. What was your motivation for starting this?

What is this? Tell us about that. Sure. So Hydro's is a really unique startup that I co founded many years ago, initially out of college with a few friends and the initial kind of thought was there's so much waste in disposable plastic bottles. The average american will spend about three or $400 a year. The average family of four will spend over $1000 a year. And there's 100 million tons of disposable plastic waste that we put into basically landfills or the ocean every year. And it seemed incredible that bottled water has grown to be a multi billion dollar industry, something that you can get effectively for free. And I think it's because you know, it was product ties and mark and then it became kind of a, you know, generalized assumption that you know, you were a bad person if you were breaking your tap, which is kind of interesting. Um and that kind of led to kind of a backlash on the rise of filtration products. But you know, as successful as some of these products namely britta have become, there hasn't really been a sustained dent in the sales of bottled water because of the growth of those products. So fractional right, If you look at home filtration or portable filtration, its fractional.

And so my co founders and I thought gee, you know, we stumbled across a set of patents around, you know, fast flow filtration. Can we commercialize the product, we created a prototype. It didn't really work that well, but it sold very well and you know, fast forward a few years. My co founders lost interest, I bought them out and reformulated the company hired a few pro operators and partnered with incredible product development firm called Nottingham spurred design out of Cleveland Ohio And these guys have created $50 billion with the consumer products. So they invented the swiffer, the dirt devil, the spin brush we brought them. Our prototype is kind of an inspiration.

They spent three or four years engineering and designing a brand new set of products. So instead of having just a bottle now we have have pictures of various sizes at one universal filter that is five times the speed of competitive products but still offers NSF 42 level certified filtration for chlorine and particulates. And so the whole thought is can we empower people to make better choices. And it was very important for us to get our costs down so that we can offer these at a very reasonable price we can match or beat market leaders like britta Even though we're just at a small baby startup level right now and our sales have been, you know, fantastic and growing. And then the coronavirus pandemic hit on our sales exploded and we're up, you know, something like 300% in the last couple of months, which is astounding. We actually ran out of product the other week and fortunately just got a new shipment uh, and we're exploring partnerships with various mass market retailers and so it's, you know, kind of moving ahead at the right pace and I think it could be a very successful business but I also think it could really give people a sustainable solution to drink more water hydrate more often, and also to save a lot of money and save the planet. And I think it's important for entrepreneurs when they're thinking about a purpose driven business, because I've seen this many times and I've experienced kind of the fallout negatively as somebody who's invested in some of these companies is that they get so focused on the purpose that they lose sight of the business and you can't have one of the other. You have to have a viable business first.

And so it's really unique and powerful for us to have our core value proposition of fast flow filtration driving our ability to offer consumers something that they want to buy and that it also allows us to price parity with our competitors because of that fast flow, we can eliminate the big, bulky plastic reservoirs that our other competitors have to use. So we can save a lot of costs and materials and we have more user friendly design. So it just kind of is a net win across the board. And so you've got your finger on the health business field right now, you're able to kind of have that big picture view of what our consumers looking for right now. You've seen that shift, even just with coronavirus, can you kind of give us some insight into what that bird's eye view is for you on, uh, consumerism in the health field and how that's changing.

Yeah, so I'm an investor in about a dozen different companies mostly in health and wellness and mostly in food and beverage. And I think there's a huge focus for consumers. There always was over the last, you know, 10 years plus a gradual kind of shift in the landscape of how people are looking at food especially and you know, beverages and other daily habits as ways that they can empower their health. It can't just be something that tastes good and you know, it's full of toxins. People are very concerned about reading the ingredient profiles, checking for sugar, checking for, you know, weird kind of additives that are kind of fake, they want natural, they want non GMO. And so you've seen this rapid surge over the last several years in innovation growth and you know, kind of the capitalistic, you know, validation of just having really successful exits for these businesses and they've been getting bigger and they've been getting faster and now I think you're starting to see a bleed down just away from food and beverage where this kind of trend started into other kind of adjacency ease and so you're starting to see it in, you know, home workout gear, right? Things like peloton or like I have a product called tonal, which is kind of like a peloton for weightlifting and you know, I started using it fortunately a year ago. So I was already accustomed not to go into the gym anymore. I have my own gym.

Uh and I think you know with the acquisition of Mirror for $500 million by uh Blue Lemon you've seen a real validation of that marketplace and the growth of different you know businesses like upgrade labs by bulletproof. The growth of I. V. Infusion centers, you know in san Francisco which is a very tech forward progressive city with a lot of money. Maybe there were two places that did ivy infusions five years ago and they were natural paths and they had their own kind of steady clientele. They didn't advertise, they don't know anything about digital advertising now.

You probably have 10 places and you have places that will come to your house and give you an N. A. D. Infusion right? Uh and they'll charge you a lot of money but they exist in Cleveland. Ohio has five of these places. I mean it's just rapid accelerated growth. So I think there's a lot of interest before this crisis and these types of things and I think that's only gonna accelerate now, particularly for things that people can do to themselves. Right so the right supplementation regimens the right kind of diagnostics, right? Can you get a read on your own biometrics?

So things like or a ring things like whoop other solutions like that can you moderate your stress levels. So that's why you see the surge in meditation apps and kind of brain synchronicity apps. You've seen this surge and you know, wearables that calm you down, like Apollo neuro or other stuff. Growth of places like cryotherapy facilities, every major city now has four or five of these places. So I think we're kind of on the cusp of a

Health Consumer Trends and Wellness Innovation 9:26

tipping point and my hope is that we can really take these technologies and scale them to the level that they're more accessible to the average person because they're very expensive. A lot of these supplements are very expensive and I think the kind of inherent demand is there, I think there's a little bit of education that maybe has to be done and that a lot of investment in kind of the back end or in other technologies and solutions that can allow more people to access these because as we've seen from the coronavirus pandemic, you know, there's a big societal cost to have to go into a lockdown.

And I think if we had a more resilient population, maybe, you know, a virus like this wouldn't be as much of an existential threat, Maybe we could kind of take a different focus if we had just a higher level of baseline health, I don't think it's a silver bullet uh you know, I think we still have to do something at the societal level, but maybe the effect would be less dramatic. Maybe more people would have survived. And I think that's kind of the imperative that we have as a nation is to get people healthier at the baseline level and not just manage their symptoms, which seems to be our model.

Very much so, like our model has still been focused on diagnosing a disease, not necessarily preventing that disease. And the resilience that I hear you talking about is more of like a biological resilience, not necessarily an emotional resilience. So that's part of it, but building your biological resilience so that when things happen, you do have this reservoir of health that your system can get through it, even bounce back from it and not be, yeah, not be taken down with it. So that brings me to my next question in Winston, which would be, how do you do this for your personal health? What are your routines, what health challenges have you had over the years that maybe you've had to be very targeted in optimizing so that you can build this biological resilience for yourself.

What tell us, tell us your story and your personal health journey. Yeah. So I was always kind of a health nut. I don't know why, but I was always kind of very intrigued by the space and it's kind of in stark contrast to, you know, how I was raised. I mean, I wasn't raised in a very unhealthy way, but, you know, my parents came here as immigrants and, you know, they ate all the stuff that they wanted to and they had kind of a very, you know, I think typical view of, okay, you have, you know, a span of life and you're healthy when you're young and then you just get old and you know what's the point of trying to do anything and you know, my dad never drank or smoke. He was a high powered wall street ceo, but his big vice was always consuming food and you know, he would go to cheap indian areas and $5 you know, stuff and he would go to italian restaurants and anything he wanted to and you know, kind of ran his life on a very peripatetic schedule was flying four or five times a week all over the country traveling to multiple cities for years and years and years and I was always very focused on health.

I used to exercise quite a bit. Even in college, I had a very clean, you know, streamline diet. I had a supplementation routine. Even back then I started drinking macha tea when I was maybe 18 or 19 years old and you know, now you can get the sun amazon back then. I was ordering from, you know, some oblique website from Japan. Um, and it really kind of hit an inflection point for me to take things too The next level beyond, you know, just kind of doing random things, but getting more precise and you know, really kind of investing considerably more time and effort and resources in this space in 2015, I was in a accident. I almost lost my life and I had a major abdominal surgery. Uh it was really kind of a painful, you know, experience and I was in my late 20's at the time and you know, had a very kind of fast fall from somebody who was very fit and who was working out all the time to somebody who could barely move and you know, it was an emergency surgery set.

So they cut through, you know, leg ligaments. I was walking with a limp for a long time and luckily I had, you know, have an infrastructure and some resources and so I, you know, started working with the right personal trainers and found a really great physical therapist who had, you know, thousands of hours of training. He treats the governor of California and a lot of prominent people in san Francisco. But everything I tried after, you know, a year or so, I was still in kind of semi constant agony. Uh you know, I didn't gain a lot of weight because I was intermittently fasting and following, you know, a ketogenic, you know, bulletproof diet.

And I think Dave Asprey really did a lot of great work in spreading kind of this ethos and you know, popularizing this stuff and getting a lot of great information out there in a mainstream approachable way, but I still wasn't getting better. And my physical therapist finally said gee, you know, we've been working together for like a year and a half, I can't even touch the scar. And he referred me to a then rather unknown doctor who helped one or two of his other problem clients named Matt Cooke.

And I talked to this guy over the phone and he sounded really weird and you know, couldn't get kind of a straight answer for him what he was gonna do to me and you know some weird procedure called a hydro dissection and he just told me to bring a check for you know some money and I was like okay this sounds really weird but then I was like what do I have to lose? So I showed up at you know, it was a tiny little office that he was kind of renting from some other doctor in san Francisco is basically the size of a utility closet and he puts me under ultrasound sees kind of the scar area and all kind of the tissue, abrasions and block nerves and you know, then gives me a local anesthetic and sticks a tiny little needle in the size of a human hair and starts breaking apart the scar tissue and infusing the area that he's breaking apart with a mix of central matrix which are regenerative products.

I drive from placental donation which have you know, maybe hundreds of millions times the potency of your own blood prp basically stem cells light and the next day I woke up without a limp. And you know, my girlfriend who had known me uh only after I got into this accident had never seen me sleep on my side. And the entirety that we've been dating and all of a sudden I was sleeping on my side and walking without pain. And so it was incredible. Uh and Dr Cook and I became very close friends and I, you know, was very, you know, honored when he asked me if I would provide him some, you know, help with his, you know, practice and we did some of the books and financials for him and loan him some money to help get the thing started and it's just exploded and you know, I've enjoyed a lot of these treatments from him. So I think it's really kind of an eye opener.

And the thing is these things aren't necessarily even that expensive. And uh really the limiting factor seems to be kind of the availability of the right specialty products and some training, you know, for doctors. But Dr Cook was an anesthesiologist for 20 years and he's a very good one. But there's, you know, other anesthesiologists out there and I think, you know, you could, you know, train kind of a large number of these people and for an insurance company if you have a client who's got, you know, hip or knee replacement coming up. But somebody like Dr Cook could maybe, you know prevent that from happening 50% of the time.

It's a massive savings to our health care system. It's got to have a way better effect for the individual. They don't have to go through this and deal with the ramifications and maybe having it replaced and all these other problems. So that really kind of opened my eyes to kind of what is available at the next level. And I've had, you know, stem cell treatments, a variety of kind. I've had, you know, and k cell treatments, a variety of kind and, you know, it kind of got me into the world of N A.

D and ivy infusions and, you know, next level of personal injections and, you know, you've pervade some of those products for me as well. So that's kind of a part of my daily routine now. I think I, you know, have transitioned away from just kind of working out all the time, working out probably too aggressively even when, you know, I was younger and didn't have kind of the overhang of the surgery. Unfortunately, it's been heavily treated by Dr cook, so it's not really a problem, but I'm more intentional in my behaviors now. So I'll work out, you know, lifting heavy weights two or three times a week maybe, and, you know, I'll use the sauna afterwards for the heat shock proteins and for kind of the relaxation of muscle tension and then, you know, probably three or four times a week, I'll get into a cold plunge and I found this great company,

Winston's Personal Health Journey and Recovery 17:28

these incredibly, you know talented and you know, nice people in Arizona, it was a gentleman named Jason and he was a veteran recovering from PTSD cured himself through Wim Hoff and you know, couldn't afford regular cryo session. So he basically hacked together a wooden box with a metal stock tank and a refrigerator freezer, you know, compressor and it makes £200 of ice. I found them on instagram and you know, I was one of their first customers and you know now 20 of my friends have bought them and I introduced it to Ben Greenfield and he's got an affiliate marketing relationship with them now and and so they're very happy with me but it's an incredible product and you know, a cryotherapy machine will run a spot $90,000 and then they have to charge their customers some ridiculous some like $100 for three minutes, right? And you know, air cry, it was great, but cold water is 20 times more effective at, you know, conveying temperature of your body because of the emerging aspect. So basically in 20 to 30 seconds you can get the same bump in norepinephrine and other healthy compounds that you would get in three minutes and you know, there's obviously there's a few people who are going to invest a couple $1000 and something like this. But I think there could be a lot of spots that maybe we're G and 90,000 or cryo facilities out of our budget.

But now they can get this and maybe they can charge people $30 you know $20 to try this and maybe it becomes part of the routine and so we're unlocking you know more potential, right? So that's a big part of my routine. I take a supplement regimen from Quicksilver, I'll use their multivitamin, I'll use their one which has you know, co Q 10 and the mitochondrial energy enhancers. Uh you know I eat a very kind of clean diet and I've had myself tested through Dr cook for you know, all kind my blood, you know biomarkers and other inflammatory biomarkers.

And I know kind of where I operate and what things set me off. Don't set me off. My diet is kind of tailored to that. But I try and prioritize, you know, lots of precipitous vegetables and broccoli sprouts and other anti inflammatory things. I take a lot of Xanthan which is another very powerful anti inflammatory. And I have this very specialized machine. I'm very lucky to have one called a Jasper which gives you this kind of space age workout and you know, you'll sit on this elliptical bike that's low impact and pedal and you'll have these cuffs strapped to your arms and legs that include your blood and it's pressurized with cold water so you don't sweat and that occlusion forces the concentration of metabolic waste, which when the cuffs are released, the workout ends, your brain sees and thinks you just did a very hard workout and releases a massive flood of healing compounds, growth compounds G. H. Androgen boost.

So it's really kind of effective and and you know, I got mine because they're probably expensive because I did some advisory work for the founder and and he was kind enough to give me an extremely generous discount, would never have had one, but it's been a really nice and spoiled thing to add to my routine. And I have, you know, friends and other people and I try and get entrepreneurs particularly stressed out entrepreneurs who, you know, I'm advising or you know who I'm an investor in to come and use my equipment a couple times a week and that's what I really like and we share this common ground of, it's like, hey, we're busy, we've got our lives to live, we want to help other people live their lives like what can we do that will give us the results in the fastest way possible. And for me like this, the vast machine is definitely that it is one of the most accelerated ways to get those results. And but it's not limited to that.

And that's what I hearing you say and sharing with the audience is that there's so many different factors. There's so many different things that a person can be doing to optimize their biology to the next level wherever they're starting out right now that can accelerate their ability to get the endorphins that they need to balance their diet to whatever it is that they need to reach that next level. There's a way to accelerate that process, I think, you know, especially if you're a very busy person and you're kind of a wired personality to begin with and you tend to get kind of overly, you know, invested in your work.

It's nice to have kind of a quick and you know, very kind of frictionless way to empower yourself. Uh and I think, you know, there's increasingly a lot of interest from, you know, corporations and you know, people in Silicon Valley to kind of arm themselves with these types of techniques and I've talked to, you know, a lot of people, I won't mention the company or the name, but let's just say there's a very prominent Silicon Valley executive who came to a surprise dinner party that one of my board members hosted at my house and he walked in and this is a very prominent company, one of one of the top companies in the valley, and he instantly recognized my bass drum machine and he has an A.

R. X. Machine, which is a comparable system, but for weightlifting. Um and and we're talking now about maybe exchanging house keys so I can go uses a R. X. Is my master machine, but you know, I I think for a lot of people out there who don't have access to the equipment, you know it's it's not necessary. In fact I think you know there's more holistic ways and you know it's probably better to try and you know do as much work out on a naturalized setting and so a couple of times a week I'll try and get out into nature, do a you know, a long hike and you know, I transitioned to barefoot hiking and running years ago and so I'll do that on like rocks and like gravel and I'm impervious to and I think that you know really helped with kind of realigning and turning on nerves especially armed with kind of maths work as well.

But decompressing away from kind of the stresses of civilization and nature is so healing and holistic for us on a mental and physical level, it will increase your NK cell, it'll decrease your cortisol levels. It'll balance kind of your, you know, blood oxygen levels and your blood pressure and your heart rate variability will improve and it's virtually free. And I think that's one of the perks that we can maybe enjoy from this, you know kind of revolution of work from home and obviously not everybody is lucky enough to do it, but I hope that we're moving into kind of a more balanced society where we're gonna have more time to ourselves not being forced into these, you know, rabbit hole offices or long commutes sitting down where we can actually decompress a little bit more and carve some time for ourselves.

And I've always, you know, let anybody who's worked for me work from home and make their own schedule on the theory that look, if I have to micromanage you, you shouldn't work for me anyways because I don't want to micromanage you and I don't really care where or how or when you get your job done, as long as you get it done, right? So yeah, there's certain things that you have to be on the clock for. But for the rest of your time do what you can do and enjoy your life and you're going to be more productive person that way. Right. And what I see sometimes, I'm curious if you have seen this as well is that I work with professionals, very high performers and they are always looking for the machine or these top level treatments without having done the foundational work that you've done and they burn out. And it's, it's almost like these treatments and these systems stress their body out. It's taking their mitochondria to their limits.

And because they haven't built that resilience in their mitochondria and their biology, they're running up against a wall and they're tanking and they don't realize, look, we gotta go back to the basics on some of this stuff, we have to figure figure out a good diet that is for you, whether that's ketogenic, whether that's intermittent fasting paleo, whatever it is, we got to figure out what is optimized for your system. We've got to get the nature in, we've got to get movement in. We can't have you sitting all day stressed all day and then go and do this treatment that's going to push your mitochondria when we don't have that resilience built in to your biology.

What's been your experience with that? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I see that very, very often. I think everybody's looking for kind of a quick, you know, band in here and, you know, there really isn't, you know, any and can you use these things as kind of intermediate crutches and kind of stress positions, right? Yes, you can. But that's not sustainable. You need to build a sustainable foundation and architecture and really put in the work slowly but surely. I think, you know, diet is a very tough one. My uh dad recently had some very serious health issues crop up a year or two ago and, you know, he was very reluctant to acknowledge them.

And uh you know, I had to force him to go to Dr Cooke's office actually dr Cook had to call him and tell him, you know, come to my office, you don't seem like you're this stupid. Your son told me what this probably is and you know, I can help you and dr cook was kind enough clear his schedule and get my dad all the right, you know, tests and you know, a couple of days later and all the results and, and you know, it was a pretty bad diagnosis and and would require a major treatment. And one of the first steps was his completely modifying his diet from his high carb sugar addiction, you know, lifestyle too, you know, eating natural foods and holistic foods.

And I remember, you know, the first conversations with him where he was, you know, really upset. And almost to the point where he said, I would rather die than do this and, you know, then he changed and now he's, you know, completely sold on this and he's, you know, been exemplary as a patient. And he got over, you know, these issues fortunately right at the time that Covid was starting to ramp. So he got, you know, done with all of his hospital appointments. Uh, fortunately and you know, he's in the clear now, but he's, you know, adopted this whole, you know, appreciation for what whole foods can taste like.

And, you know, he grew up eating foods cooked in ghee right in India. He grew up in India and then he came to this country started using canola oil. And, you know, I brought him, you know, more g and now he's addicted to G and he makes his, you know, mini bulletproof coffee with every morning. He'll actually take a little dixie cup full of guy to a coffee shop and insist that they put in his coffee if they don't have it. So you know, he's completely transformed and I think sometimes you need a real kind of jarring of your system event for those types of people, especially for that set in your ways and you're in your fifties or sixties or forties and you've had habits that have worked and you're very assured of yourself and you know, especially with somebody like my dad who's you know who's the ceo of a major company and you know has a very strong sense of his authority and and now it's completely different. You need a wake up call that makes people kind of acknowledge kind of the things that they've been trying to ignore and really wake up to you know what they need to do. I think that is lacking with a lot of people the patients to make that kind of invested effort because it's psychological as much as it is, you know, kind of any physical effects you feel from it.

But I think the foundation of a really healthy diet and you know, even if you don't get these biological tests done, I think that everybody should at some point, but there's very basic things that you can do like you know limiting your dairy intake, particularly processed dairy eating lots of cruciferous vegetables eating grass fed, you know meat eating, you know wild fish, you know, and fasting is one of the best things possible because you know, they've clinically shown that even if you're eating the Crimea started in the world, if you're able to do intermittent fast and gradually ramp those up the detox effect inside your system is so profound, you can recover so much of that lost ground. So there's so many of these things that are you know, kind of free and we've just kind of fallen out of using them because you know, the kind of early adoption period is a little bit convenient inconvenient and the

Daily Optimization Routine and Recovery Tools 28:38

psychological impact having to change your habits is very tough. So everybody's looking for the Band Aid on cancer. Can you use this new machine, can you use this new injection or supplement and you know, buy your way out of this hole and that will get you a little bit down the way. It might make it a little bit easier to do some of these things or manage these transitions or these symptoms. But it's not gonna be the foundational level, fix that. And then I see them kind of getting into this mentality of, well I'll take this supplement because I've heard that it's good for my brain.

I hear that it will help my energy, I'll you know, it'll improve my focus and then they just start taking random supplements without knowing for sure that this is a deficiency. This is a targeted treatment for something that I know is imbalanced in my biology. So for you, what has that process been like what tests have you had, What test do you continue to get just to maintain that to know where your levels are at? How do you very much personalized and target your supplements? Yeah. Yeah, so I've got a pretty good read on my system now and you know I like to vary my supplements so you know I eat a pretty clean diet and I'm relatively healthy and so if I've got you know kind of a low stress week you know I will maybe take a multivitamin by quick Silverthorne you know every other day, I'm not gonna take it every day and you know all very you know things like Asus Xanthan and you know very things like tumeric and other compounds like that because of the blood thinning effect and same thing with you know stimulants, right, I'll try and vary okay, you know one day I might have a little bit more coffee when the next day I might have a little bit more macha the next day, I might have you know something else right I try and wean myself off of these things for you know a little bit every week, although it's difficult given my current lifestyle to go entirely cold turkey but but I do my best um um and you know really kind of maximize kind of you know rotating food groups and things like that.

So I try and limit my, you know, red meat consumption, you know, a couple of days a week and my protein and take a couple of days a week uh and tear that with you know, levels of activity, right? I won't do that on days that I have heavy lifting because you need that level of kind of support and nutrition from, you know, particularly red meat and and you know, there's other ways to get it. But I think, you know, if you don't have profound dietary or ethical considerations, I think you know, minimum quantity of those depending on your activity levels and you know, preferences maybe kind of appropriate. Uh So you know, I'll include a fair amount of that on a weekly basis, but I try and limit it on a daily basis or a weekly basis by a little bit one or two days a week.

Uh And when I had all these kind of blood tests done, you know, it's kind of very rigorous. Okay, what are your vitamin levels, what things are you, you know, kind of inflamed by and allergic to. And so I found out very interesting things like, you know, apparently I have very modest, you know, cashew and pistachio allergy, but I don't have a gluten allergy uh but I have a mild, you know dairy allergy, you know like one on a scale of you know 0, 10 and and so you know, I used to eat, you know dairy every day in copious amounts and now, you know I found if I limited to, you know once or twice a week, you know, that's fine for me, but if I ramp it up significantly then you know, I'll notice some dietary distress and I built enough of a reserve that it's not really a problem now if I stray a little bit here or there, but you know, I try and be pretty rigorous to it. I've had, you know, gut bacteria test done to see kind of the balance there and was there overgrowth.

And I've had some pretty rigorous kind of just cellular structure analysis particularly in the course of doing an NK cell treatment. They'll, you know, analyze kind of every single part of yourself and you have to sign a very elaborate waiver saying if you want to know whether you have or not. I remember the phone call, it was an interesting thing. I was in Los Angeles and dr Cook has set me up with this laboratory there and uh in Orange County at the time uh for this case ill treatment. And he told me okay, you know, you need to get really good sleep the next the day before and make sure that you, you know eat well and you know, it's a very expensive procedure and you don't have to do it again and you know, it might have bad quality samples and I was staying at an Airbnb that was freezing, the weather has just shifted in Los Angeles and it was uninsulated. So I slept like three or four hours and and you know, I was like wired and I was driving a very prominent business executive who is a mutual friend of Dr cooks in mind, who was also getting this thing.

So I really had to be on my game and you know, drove to Orange County and I was kind of worried and they take 20 files of your blood. And I spent a day with Dr cook a couple of weeks after that and he's like, oh yeah, the lab called about your, you know, blood was like crap, they're gonna tell me I have to do it again, I knew it and he was like, yeah, they said whoever this Winston guy is, he is the healthiest T cells that we've seen in like 10 years of doing this. So I was like, okay, that's a pretty good sign if you know, after horrible night's sleep And you know, way too many stimulants the next day and a lot of stress. I was able to, you know, generate that type of cellular response and they didn't find any aberrations and they thought I had good cell structures, there's devices that you can use to measure yourself 10 security score and I, you know, score very highly on those to measure kind of how kind of proportional your mitochondria are.

So your cell walls. So it's a good indication. So I've used a variety of those things in the past and I think it's just how much resilience do you have in your day to day life? And I've noticed incorporating the variety of these strategies. You know, you have a lot more resilience at a baseline level. I think, you know, I've got a pretty good read of what to do and what not to do given the circumstances at this time. And so, you know, if I'm feeling very stressed and in the past I might have reached for, you know, maybe a stimulative or you know, a drink, you know, jumping my cold plunge instead because you know, what you really need in those circumstances is to change your state as quickly as possible, Right?

And have that efficacy, right? Feel that efficacy of that change of state and nothing like cold exposure for doing that very quickly. And you know, you can accomplish that with a very cold shower as well. Uh so I think that's one that, you know, a lot of people could really employ in their day to day life. And you know, meditation as well. And you know, I always had a very hard time meditating and I find after cold therapy it's a lot easier. And I think it's because of the increase in norepinephrine. Absolutely like it really does change the your wiring in your brain, the state of your nervous system and it allows you to focus and enter into this relaxation state. That's not that's not a heavy relaxation.

It's this calm live this where yeah and it's an accelerated way to get there and it's this diversity of skills and things that people can do that really provide them this resilience where they're not just having only one thing that they can reach to for shifting their state but they've got different things that they can reach for. They've got that diversity and that variety. Yeah so you don't have diminishing returns. And I think that's the thing if if all you're doing to get healthy and stay healthy is exercising all the time. You're gonna put way too much stress on your body. You're gonna get muscle imbalances, you're gonna hurt yourself and you're gonna lose that at some point and it's gonna have a systemic to your system. Whereas if all you do is intentionally work out in the minimally viable effective dose for yourself a few times a week and you have the right diet and the right calibrated supplement routine and you can access things like heat stress and cold stress and you know periodic you know ivy infusions and N.

A. D. Infusions and other things like that right? You can kind of ride this interesting wave and you know maybe there's times that call for a little bit more of one and maybe a little bit less of one. Like you know, if I have a stress a week, I'll use maybe a little bit more of my supplement routine. I'll take the one more often. I'll use vitamins more often because I figure I'm burning through vitamin B all the time, right? And but you know, I'll always try and kind of go back to that, you know, baseline level and and I think the intentionality around rest is very important. I think we have a society that's built on constant motion and and I have a very hard time standing still, sitting still and you know, now I think I try and carve out one day a week where I pretty much do nothing but lie on a couch and you know, and very kind of relaxed and and that was difficult at first, but it's become you know easier with time.

And I think, you know, you feel a profound difference after you've done that. Yeah, it's giving the body the space and time to recover and whether that's recovery from physical performance or mental performance. Both of them are stressors on the body and need that time to recover. Yeah. And I think ketamine is, you know, a very interesting thing for this and it's really helped me actually relaxed. I find I've never been quite so relaxed is when I take ketamine and it seems like it's a pro collective. In fact, I think I read a research report where they were doing ketamine treatments on rats and that exposing them to stressful stimuli.

And the rats who got ketamine didn't have the activation in the amygdala and the spike in cortisol that the other rats had. Even though they were pre treated for this they were able to navigate those situations of tension. And so what I found is that doing kind of a quarterly ketamine infusion or quarterly ketamine you know kind of experience. I've had probably four infusions now and and you know now kind of do it maybe once or twice a year instead. But I'll take these you know kind of oral compounds that you know you got me on you know kind of a monthly basis maybe a tiny amount.

And you know I found it definitely has affected my ability to be stressed to the point where if I take caffeine a couple of days or a week out from that kind of treatment I won't even feel the effect of caffeine because I think it's moderating my cortisol levels. So effectively that's like the coffee just rolls off of me. And that's that's awesome because that's really when you know that it's affecting your biology in the way that you want it to. Yeah so let's talk about that a little bit. Let's talk about the two things that I've been helping you out with the N.

A. D. And ketamine and walk us through what they do for you how you use them what type of schedule you're on with them to give you the results that you want. Yeah. So uh N. A. D. I think is an amazing compound uh and really has a profound kind of psychological and physical effect. It's it's really the quintessential systemic mitochondrial enhancer and you know you burn through it with age and stress and so you know if you've had a very stressful kind of life where you've been a very busy active person, you're going to have kind of depleted levels. There's not to my knowledge yet the perfect science to measuring its blood levels accurately.

I think it's more kind of you know intuition and depending on the response of the person and you know the kind of harder you feel it. I mean the first time I got an A. D from Dr Cook is an I. V. Infusion was probably a couple of years ago and I think I literally vomited all over myself actually. I was trying to get up uh off of where I was lying down and and you know things just kind of happened. And uh every time since it's been kind of a little bit easier I think I've had about you know 5000 mg a year.

I. V. And then I stumbled on you know kind of the injections through actually initially upgrade labs and bulletproof where they offered it and I kind of fell in love with it and you know you've been kind enough to pervade these for me and I kind of use them, you know, probably about once a week, I would say there's, you know, weeks where I don't go using it at all, but then there's weeks, maybe they'll use it twice. Right. I found that uh, you know, it's usually better for me not to use them back to back.

I think maybe because I've had so much done holistically at this point, I've got so many other things that the net effect tends to not sustain in itself if I use it more than two days in a row, even one day in a row at this point, you know, it's kind of one and done for the week. Uh, you know, I like the injections that can be a little bit harsh. Uh, you take them and, you know, you can feel a little bit weird and nauseous or, you know, a little wired for an hour or two. But then I find it settles into a nice kind of rhythm. The patches are really interesting.

I think the downside of the patches to me, they're, they're, you know, a really intriguing experience. You kind of feel them in a semi psychedelic way, at least for me, especially if you haven't taken them in a while. They have a really kind of profound mental relaxation effect, but you feel a little stoned as well so you can really calm you down.

NAD, Ketamine, and Stress Resilience 41:28

I found if I'm tired and wired in that you know kind of fight or flight state, it can really help me, you know, kind of get back to a restful state. I'll you know put a patch on, I'll fall asleep but I'll sleep for you know kind of the extent that my body feels the need to sleep and then I'll wake up with a ton of energy and so it kind of resets that level. I'll use the patch, you know, probably you know twice a month uh you know for maintenance purposes again, you know, more often than that it seems to kind of you know wear thin.

I think the patches are more analogous to the I. V. S. In my experience, you really feel it kind of you know a little bit more aggressively depending on the dose and the time, especially if it's a shorter level patch. Like a four hour patch. I'm more impatient. So I prefer the four hour patches just because I don't wanna wear a patch all day. Um But it definitely is a very valuable thing. I think the eight hour patches are a little bit more chill. I think it would be perfect for like long air travel or like a trip or something like that because it really calms you down and they get you in the right kind of space and you know, optimize your system.

So I think N. A. D. Is extremely effective as kind of a generalized system enhancer. I've noticed that since I've been, you know, really optimized for N. A. D between the infusions I get from Dr Cook and some of these other supplemental things uh you know, I need kind of fewer kind of touch ups from regenerative products perspective. So like if I do an exorcism treatment, maybe I need, you know, one violence of five vials because I'm gonna get you know, so much more net effect. Same thing with other supplements, right? I'll need fewer of them because my system is more optimized right? To kind of extract what it needs from that.

And I find that I have more resiliency and you know, stressful situations. Academy is a very interesting one to me. The first time was a I. V. Infusion of Dr Cook's office where uh it was, you know, floated full catheter, you know, really intense psychedelic experience. And you know, I was kind of you know, interesting and I think it really kind of broke through kind of some layers of, you know, embedded stress the next couple of times. It's all been very kind of chill and they've just been kind of very deep and profound meditations. I think they really get you into a deeply relaxed and cohesive stage. And I think the analogy that dr Cook told me about is very interesting. It's like rebooting a computer right?

That maybe has too many programs, you know running around and, you know, it just turns back on at factory settings and I feel like that's a very accurate assessment of the effect. I think the lozenges that you gave me are incredible because they're so, you know, readily adaptable. And I forget the dose that we settled on, but I found that actually cutting that in half is even better for me because it's less of a kind of an aggressive experience. And, and it's interesting, I feel the lozenges for longer than I feel the effect of the ivy. Yeah, the ivy is intense and then it disappears and maybe I feel a little bit more kind of relaxed the next day, but, you know, it's reasonably back to normal, I've noticed with the oral, you know, the effect tends to linger for like a day or so, you know, I guess it's kind of analogous to, you know, if you're gonna smoke cannabis or you're gonna Vape cannabis or you're gonna eat cannabis, right? It's gonna last a lot longer if it's going through your digestive track. But it's great because of the convenience of it and how you can kind of create the dose, right? And I think, you know, micro dosing, and I, you know, I'm always careful not to do it when I know I have any work that's kind of, you know, important in the next 12 hours or judgments that I have to make or, you know, whatever, but it's something that I think is should be the toolkit of a lot of people, especially for stress management because if you are having a hard time getting yourself out of that fire flight stress response cycle, sometimes you need kind of a short circuit that loop and just force a response, right? And then you can kind of train yourself after you've inculcated that memory of what that state of relaxation is, even like to be able to access it through other means, whether that's, you know, cold exposure or heat exposure or meditation or something like that.

I'm also a big fan of this supplement by Quicksilver that I stumbled across a few months ago, that's fantastic lipo calm and I guess it's got Gabba, you know, in a pure form that is like so moral and I've noticed it's really, really good because if I use four pumps, it's really good for sleep. But if I use two pumps in the middle of a stressful day, it completely chills me out. You're one of those lucky ones that responds to Gabba well apparently, but you know, maybe it's probably because of some of the other things that, you know, I've been taking as well, I've also noticed is good uh if I take too much of it though, uh it can kind of leave me a little bit woozy and so, you know, I got these 200 mg pills off of amazon that I was very excited to try and it's, it's too much for me, The 100 mg kind of generic that I got from whole foods is perfect, you know, it will keep me asleep if I'm, you know, kind of stressed uh relax me in the evening, uh and it won't leave me kind of, you know, feeling a little hungover the next morning, but too much is definitely not right for me or taking it in the morning, I've noticed as well can be a little bit kind of, you know, weird. Uh I think timing of exercise is also another interesting thing, what I've noticed if I wake up in the morning and I go for a walk or I do a very light vaster system exercise, I'm way more energetic, right?

And I feel more focused or if I do a cold plunge which is hard to do first in the morning and it tends to make you very hungry as well because of the thermo genic response. So if you're trying to fast, it's maybe not the best pairing because you will feel voracious afterwards, but a very light kind of energizing way to get your heart rate up I found in the morning can really be more effective than a stimulant. Uh so I tried to kind of minimize morning stimulants and try to up the level of kind of just passive, you know, workouts because you really get the nice bumps.

I think it's kind of a combination of all these things kind of overlaying themselves and kind of self reinforcing each other that makes it effective and what I really like is that you're tracking all of this, like you're really watching to see how it affects you, how it affects your your metabolism, your focus your energy throughout the day rather than just doing something, forgetting about it and going about your day and then reaching for something when when you're at that point of stress again, like you're you're being so mindful about how you're intentionally bringing these into your life and seeing what effects they have and then tie trading it, changing it and even in micro dosing things in order to find just that sweet spot for your biology at that time and that may change over time, right?

I'm sure you've seen that where something is, is good initially and then with time you're like, oh that's actually too much of a dose now or whatever the case may be, but things change over time. Yeah, and I think, you know, there's too much underrating uh of what kind of feels good to a person, right? You know, even when, you know, maybe the science is a little fuzzy but science can be imperfect and a lot of these things are still kind of, you know, challenge from a testing perspective and you know, you've got this whole kind of dynamic of how much is the chest test bias itself to a certain result, you know, I tested when I tested for all these kind of blood biomarker test is not allergic to gluten.

And you know, I've noticed that if I, you know say have gluten at a high end, you know italian place that has, you know all their flour imported from italy that holds true. I have no ill effect. I wake up the next morning, I don't feel any brain fog, I don't feel any bloating, I'm fine. But if I have any american gluten, it's a big problem and I think it's like like oh phosphates and the other toxins that are in our environment that you're getting. So yeah, I don't think I have a gluten allergy but and you know, it's telling when you know the doctor did this, he, you know, would it be okay even though you tested negative for this?

I wouldn't see that as kind of license to you know, kind of uses still be, you know careful, Right? And so you have to be kind of responsive to your own, you know, triggers, right? So what feels good to you, what works for you and you know, be kind of willing to take kind of assessments that are kind of meh measured in metric with a grain of salt because there's gonna be circumstances that, you know, will drive kind of the outputs of all of this so many different levels and it's impossible to quantify those on kind of one standard test, which is why you should probably do more than one where you get started.

But even that you know they're there blips in time, right? And you know are you doing it all at the same time of the day? Are you doing at different times of the day? So I think the increase in these kind of technologies of biometrics and their increasing sophistication is really gonna offer a lot of value to people over time. I you know spoke to venture capital recently who was talking to this person with like a smart toilet technology that will actually be able to like read you know the viability of your waste and you know judge based on kind of different nutrients and other biomarkers. And you know it's an interesting thing and I mean it's passive right?

And I'm sure there's gonna be some worries about who's you know maintaining integrity of that data but but it's an interesting thought that okay can you passively collect information to yourself? It's one of the benefits I think of something like an aura ring. So you can just get an assessment of your you know sleep and and you know my gripe with aura is that I will sleep you know most nights about six hours a night. And that I take like a 30 minute nap in the middle of the day. Uh And I always score and like the 95 percentile for sleep quality and all these other things but I get a lower score because my sleep quantity is in eight hours and I'm like, but I wake up after six hours and look all my deep sleep scores, all these other scores are like, you know, in 90 plus percent tiles in your system. So why is my score getting so ding just because I'm not sleeping you no longer enough. And and you know, I've talked to some of the investors in aura and they tell me that they're, you know, calibrating their kind of system to you to work with a broader sample size and so,

Personalized Testing, Biometrics, and Democratizing Health 51:18

you know, some of that should get starched out. But yeah, this technology is gonna be really interesting. I'm very bullish on the future. I think the main thing for me is, you know, how can we democratize these tools, both in terms of supplements and you know, work out machinery and other technologies and the knowledge to as many people as possible because I think the early adopters and and this always happens right, are people, you know, who are a little bit more well to do, who are, you know, possessed the re resources and the time and the money and you know, whatever to kind of really pursue these. And they have, you know, various motivations, you've seen a lot of pro athletes, right? They were dr Cook's first clients were pro athletes, right? You break your body, you know, you're not gonna care what you're gonna spend to be game ready because there's so much riding on that, right? And then it's, you know, high net worth individuals and that its business professionals and it kind of bleeds down to people with major medical conditions who, you know, are tired of being sick and are desperate to get better.

And and hopefully it can expand to encompass millions and millions of more people very soon because I think we're really sick as a nation and, you know, health care is bankrupting our country. And it doesn't have to be this way. We can't be beholden to kind of a lobby of an industry that's just about, you know, health care as symptom care and management with expensive pharmaceuticals that, you know, go to the pockets of shareholders. You really need to empower ourselves as a nation. It's a national security thing as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, it really does need to change in the medical system, the whole system in terms of how we approach medicine, how we treat patients and at what point we intervene in their lives and how that intervention happens. Yeah, Yeah, exactly.

And can we teach some of these things, you know, in schools and in people with better habits and I think that's starting to happen in certain places. But food access is a huge thing. And food access to the quality of foods and nutrition's and, you know, that's really distressing to see what kind of the tail impacts on school budgets and kind of food for the people who need it most might be in the aftermath this crisis. And so I think that's an area that we really need a lot of help with as a society because it's one of the foundational things and you know, it's one thing for you know, whole foods and all these other places to be growing.

You know, this kind of incredible surgeons of top tier brands and I and it's bleeding down but you know, at the bottom level, it's just not available to the people who need it the most. Yeah. And it would have the most impact on them based on where they're starting out in their health. Even just a few interventions could make huge, drastic changes in their health or someone like you, you know, you're talking about like one or 2%, you know, change in your in your performance or someone else like we're talking 50% change in their health and that that would be the power of that level of intervention.

Well, Winston, we have run out of time as usual. I can talk to you forever and bounce ideas back and forth. But thank you so much for joining me today on the summit. Of course, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Doctor. Absolutely. And I hope that you enjoyed Winston. This is Winston, I brahim and co founder of Hydro's please check out his project amazing product, amazing technology behind it and check out the other work that he's doing in the world. I'm dr AMY. Thank you for joining us today.

And together, let's find that next level of health and a lightness.