Pushing the Limits

Lisau2019s Introduction and Scheduling Story 0:00

So we are going to talk to Lisa. We've known her for some time. She has blown my mind all the way from New Zealand, by the way. We had to figure out times all the things, and I just let everyone know. This required four attempts at scheduling. One because of the timezone difference. Two, because we had a storm and a tree fell down and I could. The story goes on and on with a we finally got Lisa to body with us. Thank you for joining. It's wonderful to be here Kashif and I love working with you and your team and we made it happen.

We appreciate it. And that's what you do, right? That you are a high performance human. You make things happen, and people dive into your story and read your books and listen to you. People all around the world, they'll really realize that human potential is so much more than what we think it is. I mean, part of your story is you've run. I think you've run like a total of what, 70,000km now? Yep. Something around there. So about two and a half times around the planet, around the equator, if you put it all together.

Really, Kashif, it just means I'm all out. I've done a lot. Yeah. You know, I've been around a long time, and if you add it all up, it sort of, comes up to a fair bit of running. Yeah, I don't think so. I obviously, to get to what you've done and I mean, some, some people listening to your story, some don't. And we're not just talking about going to the racetrack or the local school. You. Have you been up mountains and Death Valley in the Gobi Desert, like at extreme, it's not just the movement but also the terrain.

You know, you put yourself self literally through hell to push yourself, you know? So yeah. Yeah. So doing. Yeah. Doing ultramarathons for 25 years sort of did the sort of the world's sort of toughest, the longest sort of races or a lot of them, did over 2000km in the Sahara, did the Arabian Desert, the Libyan Desert, Niger, Jordan, the Gobi Desert in China. Yeah. Death Valley in the USA, which was pretty special a couple of times. Different parts of the outbreak of Australia, the Himalayas, Nepalese and the Indian Himalayas.

And at one point I ran right through New Zealand, from which is, 2250km. I'm not sure. And miles is it 1600 miles or something like that? In 42 days? For charity, which nearly killed me, I must admit. Oh, yeah. The funny thing is, I've got no talent, so I was never a particularly talented athlete at all. It was, more of a this is what I want to do, and I'm going to do it somehow or die trying. I mean, we looked a little bit at your DNA to understand what makes you this high performance human. And there's things that kind of stand out. Right.

But improvements were made. It made me laugh, really, with. Oh, yeah, with that combination of the attitude and age of two being changed, yeah, you're in for trouble and you're literally are designed for that pursuit to you can't give up and you need to win.

Ultrarunning Career and Extreme Races 3:00

You need to keep doing more and more and more, which is why you achieve so much. But for the average person that's listening today, how do they take I mean, it's one thing to say, how do I become like Lisa? Well good luck, I want to. But I guess the more important question is, how do you take from you what you've done and just apply it to everyday life? What what is there to learn and don't take everyday world like life and make it better. Yeah, and this is the thing, you know, when you do these extreme adventures and expeditions and stuff, you, you start to realize the capability of humans because you're being told constantly.

Yeah. That's impossible. You can't do that. I mean, if I have a dollar for every time, you know, be really very wealthy. If I'd have something, if I'd listen to people who tell me I can't do things. And and but you don't just dive in at the deep end, so to speak. You start off small, and then you get a little bit bigger and a little bit longer, and you start to learn and develop and you train, but you have to have this sort of, a driving mental t of going all in. And it's a theme of what I would like to talk about today, because I've got a couple of stories around it, but it's, it's a matter of working out.

What do you want to commit to? Why you want to commit to it. The why is a very, very big piece of the puzzle because it has to be worth the effort, the sacrifice. And that's something that's not really talked about a lot in the goal setting world. It's sort of like, you know, set the goals and, you know, go for them. It's like, well, you have to see is that goal really worthy of your time, of your effort, of your, you know, the mission that you're on. Is it really worth it because it's going to cost so understanding that Y is a really big piece of the puzzle and having those emotional drivers pushing you along, because when you're aiming for something big and you know that's running your company and how hard, you know and all the obstacles that come your way, you better have a really determined mindset if you're going to find a way through those obstacles and you better have a pretty strong mission and vision for your case, your company, or my case for getting through this race or whatever I'm doing.

Because otherwise you won't make it. You have to be sort of ready to walk out of a cold, hot, cold sort of thing, so to speak. Does it make sense? Yeah, I get it. Sounds like what is the big audacious goal? But then how do you have the mindset that matches the goal. And that's something that you're really good at. That mental resilience. So how do you do that for somebody that feels like I can handle it? Yeah, I mean, certainly I think, you know, the genetic part of it is, is it is a piece of the pie.

But as you and I know, genetics is not deterministic. It's it's something that we can work with. And we can use that information to help drive us forward. I think for, for me, I grew up in a family that was very sports oriented. It and I grew up with a dad, and I had this wonderful dad who I adored and wanted to please. And little girls like to please. They didn't. And my dad was a hard, he wanted me to be the best, you know, and he wanted me to represent my country. And do you know, I always joke if I was a boy, you know, I would have been an all black in an essay. So during a everything.

If I've been according to my dad, you know, and and that I think, sort of framed who I was as a youngster. So, you know, your cultural background, your what's expected of you. But what I learned from that lesson is when you place expectations on people or on kids or whatever, it does make them rise to the occasion. And in a funny little story, my dad always wanted me to represent New Zealand in some sport. So as a kid I tried at the gymnastics and I was really good up until I reached puberty, and then I grew too tall and I just didn't have it, you know?

And he was absolutely devastated that I called out when I was like 15, and I knew that I was never going to make it. I didn't I was, you know, tall and athletic and to to bacon two heavy and to, you know, all of these things that, you know, and, he was devastated. So then I tried surfing. And I have two brothers who are really top big wave surfers. And I tried that for seven years, day in, day out surfing. But I was hopeless. I never talk, right. And then I got into running. I, hit a yearly, adventurous life of of cycling around many, many countries and climbing mountains and doing all this.

And I got into the ultramarathon running. And we can go into that story if you want, but, it I started to realize, like I was hopeless at running. Like you put me in a local ten K race or something, and I will be in the middle of the pack if you're lucky. I'm not fast, but what I found ahead was an ability to go long, and I always sort of still left standing when everyone else had fallen away by the wayside. And so you then I decided, okay, well, I'm gonna represent New Zealand in ultramarathon running.

And I worked out that you could do this 24 hour racing where you're racing around a track for 24 hours, a 400 meter track. Right. And you had to do 185km, which is, I don't even know how much that is. In miles, you can work it out, to qualify for the New Zealand team, to go to the the worlds and so on. It took me eight years of doing this, running around, and I took off running around the track for 24 hours, which, believe me, is a really hard thing to do. Before. And I was 42 years old when I finally qualified and got to take home to my dad and, silver Fern, which was our national emblem, and I was able to represent New Zealand after after seven failed attempts, I finally did 194km in 24 hours at the age of 42.

And when my dad, my dad was so proud. I've talked to you a few times, but I never heard that before. It's first of all just the thought of running on a track for 24 hours. I can't imagine driving for 24 hours. Forget about running on your leg. It's it's really. There's one hell of a lot of pain involved in that, in the mental suffering and all that. And to be honest, I didn't want to be doing it for the fun of that one. It was just purely I wanted to represent New Zealand. I wanted to make my dad proud.

And this was something I was relatively good at. So by the time I'd gotten to this point. So, you know, I never gave up on that dream, even though as a 15 year old, as a 20 year old, I've failed and failed a child. And it was really, really special to bring that home to my dad. And my dad just says to me, I'm so proud of you. But, you know, it did take you a little bit longer than I was expecting. And that's like, you know, some people are never pleased. You know, you're enough. There's always room for improvement.

Yeah. Funny. That's incredible. Because, I mean, the resilience, the mental toughness required to grind for 42 years, you know, how many people could actually you would move on and say, this is not for me, right? Like you kind of did it with surfing, but you didn't do that with the goal. You just said that I'm on the wrong path. I've got to find a better path so that that fire and burn never went away. And you got there. And that's another good point. You know, like, sometimes you got to know when to quit, right?

It's how sometimes the path that you're on, like, I'm all for going, you know, going hard, going long, being persistent, all of that sort of stuff. However, if the goal that you're after no longer serves your purpose for some particular reason and you need to pivot, then don't be afraid to do that. You know it's knowing when to quit. And this is something I have not known how to do. And sometimes I've, you know, I have a lot of different businesses over the years and I haven't known me to quit. And I've or I've done sports too long.

And, you know, I mean, I've retired now from doing the ultramarathon thing. I retired when I was 48. And to be honest, I probably should have retired about 3 or 4 years earlier. But I was it was the what? You know, who am I if I'm not this ultramarathon, you know. Right. And then I was, you know, forced to retire at that point because I had a family situation which were maybe talk about later, too. But, you know, knowing when to quit and to pivot and to change direction is also an important skill, I think, as well.

Yeah, that's a big challenge because quitting isn't as it's shifting is changing. It's real, which can sometimes feel like quitting, which, you know, is so disappointing. Especially what are people going to think? Yeah. You know, so it's kind of more like replacing that. Just advice for people that are listening. Stopping something doesn't need to be the end. You just replace it with something better or more aligned. You learn from the thing that failed and then you know better what to do next.

Mindset, Commitment, and Knowing When to Pivot 12:00

Right. So yeah, and this is another good point, is that understanding, that you're going to learn the biggest things when you fail. And you know, I have a podcast called Pushing the Limits. Right? And it's all about pushing the limits. But when you're pushing the limits of possible, whether that's in your career and your academic life and your sporting life, whatever it is, you've got to understand you're doing something that it's pretty hard and pretty tough, and there are things that you cannot control.

And these are variables outside of your your realm, if you like, that you can't control. And when you're in my case, you've be doing maybe an expedition or something. You can just prepare the things and you can be really on with your safety, and you can be really on with your planning and your your training and all of that aspect. And then you have to sort of give it up, right? Whatever is left, you have to just go, well, the rest is sort of beyond my control. It's, up to the universe or God or whatever you believe in.

Is is going to be the, you know, whether you make it, and you can't worry about those consequences. You have to just go. I've done the planning, I've done the work, and I'm going for it. I did this race in the Himalayas. Kashif. It was really like this. It was really on the edge of possible for me. It was a 222 K race over the two highest mountain, motorable mountain passes in the world and in northern India and the Himalayas there. And this race had only been one, run once before I. And only one guy had finished it, and he was a bit of a crazy dude who'd, you know, done absolutely made things like he was not your average human.

And so I didn't know whether, you know, was possible, really, for for a normal person to do this. We were going from 3600, up to 5800m, extremely high altitude, back down again and then back up again. So there was these huge, you know, mountains you had to climb, but you had a bit of a third of the oxygen up there. And I'm an asthmatic. I have a very small lung capacity. My VO2 max is very poor. Not very good in the cold. And one of the reasons I did mostly descents was because I was bitter in the dry, you know, heat than I was in the cold.

But I heard about this race and I was like, I rang up mark the guy that had done it the year before, and I said, what was it like? He said, well, the other runners ended up in a hospital and it was the toughest thing I've ever done, and it was brutal. And I've still got some health consequences from it. But he said to me one thing. He said, Lacey, do you realize no woman has done this race? And that's all I had because I wanted to be the first you know, because she's not many things you can be first.

And so I signed up and I'm like, oh, work it out. I signed up and I do this ride. I just dive on in and and it's not always a good thing, but sometimes I just dive on and then work it out on the way and try to work out, how am I gonna how am I going to swim, you know? And so I had to work out altitude, how to run an altitude, you know, how to how to try to get my body more red blood cells and all of that sort of stuff. And I was always been fighting with anemia is another thing. And so I didn't have a good, oxygen carrying capacity.

Anyway, but I heard about this thing called a hypoxic co tent, which is you can sleep in, and it takes a part of the oxygen, and it helps you adjust to altitude. Right. And I got one of these things sponsored. And I was all excited. I started sleeping in it. And I followed the instructions. And you go up like 1500 meters and then 2000 and so on and so forth. And you do it over, over a period of time. But by the time I'd got this team that wasn't that far out from the race and I was running out of time and I was like, oh, gosh, I need to go faster.

So I rang up, my ex-husband, he's a ultramarathon runner from Austria, and he had one of these. And I said to him, do I need to follow the instructions or can I just, you know, go higher, faster? Because I'm running at a time. And he said to me, following the instructions is for wimps. I want you to. Yeah, just turn it up to 6500m, which was the max that this thing went to, which is about like 30% of the oxygen that we breathing and sleep on it every night. And I'm like, are you sure? Is it safe?

And he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do it all the time, you know? And anybody listening out there who might have an ex-husband never, ever trust your ex-husband to maybe try to kill you, right. So this is what happened with us, and I did that. I followed his instructions stupidly. And after a couple of weeks, I was really starting to have trouble now. I expected that I wasn't going to be to, you know, to full of energy for a while, but I was having, brain issues with my brains, and you might think, well, you've probably got mental issues anyway, but this was sort of a lot different.

This was all, I would lose my memory. I'd be talking to you one day and know I didn't know, I don't know the next and all that sort of thing. And then I had, bacteria proliferate. So you had all these infections, and so, and so I went to the doctor and I said, oh, maybe pushed it a little bit hard on this change. I'm preparing for this race in the Himalayas. And he said, well, what was your oxygen levels at night? And I said, about 70% now, 70% is a pass mark and an exam usually. Right. So I was like, okay, well, I, I, I didn't realize that at that point, that, you know, we like 98, 99% usually oxygen saturation and red blood cells.

And so this was a deadly level. I was telling myself, you know, and he said, you've got a hypoxic brain concussion. So you've been knocking off your brain cells and you really couldn't afford to do that. And, you better get out of that tent. And I suggest you pull out of the race because you now sensitized to altitude, and you're probably not going to cope at all up there. And I'm like, oh, you've got to be kidding. I couldn't pull out of the race because I had sponsors. I've been training for a year and a half.

I had lots of responsibilities. I had a crew, you know, full on time and everything, and I'm like, okay, I'll get out of the tent. I'll try to get healthier, and I'll promise I'll try to back the story a little bit shorter, but it and a few weeks later I went over and I was doing this 100 K race over the is a preparation and build up, and I was feeling a little bit better and starting to come right. But the following day I had photoshoot with The North Face and now they're my sponsors and we're in the North Face to a photoshoot.

It's like a 15 hour odyssey in the mountains, right? And I was pretty tired, and I came down at one particular point at nighttime when I was doing these flash shots, and I ripped the ligaments off my left angle ankle, on both sides. So now I had the hypoxic brain concussion, the bacteria plus ligaments in my ankle. And I had and I had like ten weeks before the race and even, it was crazy. And they said, look, you want me to run for seven weeks on these ligaments? So, you know, like, you can't train basically.

All I could do with weight training, swimming and things like that. And I decided I'm going anyway because everything's gone to custard, but I might as well just keep going and go to the scariest race of that I've done. And I went over there and I had ten days. I went over early and I was preparing, and we got over there and these seven runners, and five of them were woman there were only two guys, five woman. And I was just like, are you kidding? You know, like or I thought it was I would have to, you know, get across the finish line somehow and I'll be the first woman there, right?

Because I'll be the only one. But no, there were five women there, and I was really, you know, and then we had, like, the Indian Army, there and they were trying to stop the race because I said, people are going to die. Altitude sickness, you know, all these things that can go wrong. And then we had a group of doctors come over from America, and they wanted to study us because humans had done this really before, going up from 3600 to 5 eight and then back down and back up while running 222km. It sort of hadn't been done, and they wanted to experiment on us and see what would happen, take our blood and do that.

And they were also responsible for our, you know, medical welfare. And so they were giving us lectures on pulmonary edema and cerebral edema and how you can die this way and die that way. And, and it was just terrifying, you know, like I was just like, oh my gosh, what have I got myself into? And it got to the point where I can't I can't take any more of this fearmongering. I've got to stop listening to everybody else, and I've got to protect my psyche. If I'm going to have a go at this thing and do my best, you know, I need to protect myself.

So I got my team, and I said, I want you to protect me from everyone else. Don't let any negativity through to me. I want you to tell me how amazing you are as a team, and how great we are and how well planned we are and all this sort of stuff. So for the final 48 hours before this race, that's what my team, the doctors and the army

The Himalayas Race and Mental Resilience 21:00

and everybody else who was, you know, all this, this chaos going on and we just went over and over our plates, you know, and and they really made me feel strong. And then on the day of the race, I remember waking up at 4 a.m. and you open your eyes and it's that moment where you go, oh, no, I'm actually run to that. You know, I've got 222km to run, and I'm alive today, right now. And the fear starts coming up. Right? And so when I do, when I feel fear like that, as I start to get control of my breathing, for starters, because your breath is so important for being able to control your your cortisol and adrenaline responses.

And then I start imagining, imagining and visualizing that I'm a superwoman. So I'm I'm Gal Gadot, I'm Wonder Woman, I'm I'm amazing. Right. So as I put my, my running gear on and I put my start number on when I put my start number on, that for me is symbolic. And now it's game time and I become a different person in my head. This is all in my head. This is just a psychological preparation of what an athlete sort of does when they're getting ready for a battle that they don't really, you know, there's a lot of fear.

And when you do that, you release testosterone into the into the blood and you make yourself full of testosterone and you feel more powerful and you stand there and you go like, that's like Rocky at the top of the stairs. And Philadelphia, and you sort of pump yourself up, ready for action. Right. And so you're doing that. You don't, you know, run the other way. I just wanted to go home to my mummy. Really scared. Because then I got to the stat line and the gun goes and we're off. And I knew that I was, you know, the first pass would probably be okay or go really slowly, conservatively.

Everyone ran past me, you know, it's just me and my team and my time. That was all I was focusing on. Not not focusing on any other athletes. Who's doing better? Whatever. Because the race hadn't really begun and I managed to get up the first pass, so I had some vomiting on the way up. I had an asthma attack on the way down. I had all sorts of problems for the next 24 hours, going through these villages that were really full of pollution and, all sorts. And the second, past that, I had to go up.

I knew that that was going to be the make or break. And, and in the morning of the second day, I had heat stroke because we had like four degrees, 40 degrees temperatures really, really hot. And, I'd been running all day or night. And into the next day I passed out. My crew came and put me in the car because I had a crew car. They stuck me in. They tried to call me down and put me back out on the road. And now I'm like, really out of it. And like, down to a walk. I can't run anymore. I'm really sick and I'm looking up the barrel of the second huge pass, which is 35km up the side of a mountain in these really dangerous single lane roads.

And on these roads there was convoys of army trucks coming through that are just, you know, 40 odd trucks at a time. And they're spewing out all this unfiltered diesel into the it's an air atmosphere as well. And I'm going up this thing and really, really slowly. And in my mind this battle is raging like, why don't you just stop? Why don't you just give up? You're in so much pain. You're in so much suffering. You know, you've got heatstroke. You haven't slept for 30 hours. You know, all this sort of stuff going on in your brain and you're looking at this thing and going, oh my God, how am I going to get up there?

And as the day was on, and then the nighttime comes and it gets colder and colder and colder, and now you've got hypothermia and you've got every piece of clothing on that you can possibly get on, and you're still just crawling up, up this mountainside. And then you, you know, have all these tracks, campus and you and you couldn't breathe. And like, my team was just pulling out all the stops to keep me going. And they were just absolutely amazing. And it got to the point where I'm like, take 100 steps, sit down, take another hundred steps, sit down for a minute, recover because you just can't breathe.

It's like breathing through a straw. And it got to the point that, where it like, a snowstorm came in. I kid you not like, I've got a documentary of all this. I can't give you the proof if we ever want to watch it. A snowstorm comes in and it's freezing temperatures and it's snowing, and we're heating up the mountain, and it gets to the point at 10:00 at night where I just can't, you know, I'm calculating. How far is it to the top? How far, how far? And I'm working out and I think it's only a couple of kilometers.

And I'm like, I can hang on, I can hang on. And I said to my crew going work out, how far is it? And one of the guys, Josh, comes back and he says, no, sorry, laser. It's six kilometers to the top, not to six kilometers in like six kilometers up there is like two hours of hell. And I couldn't take it anymore. I'd been out there for 45 hours and I just sat down in the snow, and I just broke, and I bowled my friends, they were like, we're so proud of you. You're amazing. It's okay. It's all right to fail.

You know, just you've done everything you can. We've been here with you, and they gave me permission to fail. And they one guy in my crew, his name was Chris. And he came over and he sat down on the ground, and he grabbed me by the shoulders, and he sort of shook me like this. And he says, no bloody way are you going to fail now? And you're going to get your bum off the ground and you're going to to walk up this thing, and I'm staying out here with you every step of the way. And it sort of shook me out of my bowl and crying, hysterical me.

And he dragged me to my feet and one of the other guys said, yeah, and I'll come out here and I'll help you too, and I'll walk with you, which was a huge sacrifice for these guys. But and these guys just came out and they and they, they really, you know, you know, when friends pick you up, when you're really down and they just get you over that hard hump. And that's what these guys did. And they walked and talked me up all the way up to the top of this pass. And I had 33km to go to get down to the other end.

But I knew that I was going to finish. And to cut a very long story short, I finished in 53 hours and five minutes, but I was the second woman home. I was beaten by a 55 year old grandmother from England who also had asthma. And this is where, like Kashif, you know, age is no barrier. Your sex is no barrier. Ethnicity is no barrier. Your genetics are no barrier. Nothing's a barrier. If you want it enough, if you're prepared to fight hard enough, you know. And if you're prepared to believe in yourself and build a good team around you, then you can achieve anything.

So sorry I've rambled. No, you have one of the most inspiring few minutes of my life. You know, you're what you want. Potential is like, the whole time you're talking. I'm thinking people listening are like, how do I find ten minutes to get on the treadmill? You know, that's the challenge for today. You know? Yeah. How do I not watch that extra? I'm just like, right. You know, the funny thing is, I had those days, too, because it was all about what is in front of you right now and what you are dealing with as well.

You know, but this is we are putting in some good habits and some good things around you framework. In order to, you know, make sure that you get on that treadmill, you know, and that you, you do do what it takes every day to keep you healthy. And you and I are both in that health optimization space. And that's a big part of what I do now is, is helping people, you know, do that and be in that space. So in part of that help you do, you tell people when it comes to your big important goals that you have to go all in, right?

So people you have a sense of what that means. But what does that mean to you? What are you actually teaching people? Well, it's like, can I show you a story with you about my mom? Because that's an old story. Yeah. So, so, you know, another big story coming, guys, but, six years ago, my mum, who you probably hear sneezing in the background. I sit there, I'm recording, and she's being really loud. So sorry, guys. My mum had a massive aneurysm, and she was left with, So an aneurysm is a bleed in the brain.

A massive brain in the brain. And when this happened, we didn't think she was going to survive. And the the doctors managed to do the surgery, and she was in and out of a coma for three weeks. And in this time, we'd had sort of a medical misadventure at the beginning with I, thought she was having a migraine for the for six hours while blood was going into her brain and killing her, basically. And so that really made me hyper aware that I had to take control to the best of my abilities. And I had no medical background at that point, of the situation and to study and to be vigilant and to and so my mum was in a coma for three, three weeks or so or in and out of a coma.

And in that time she had to have another operation, had another stroke. She was paralyzed on the right side when she came out from this critical phase where I couldn't do a lot in this critical phase except to watch what the doctors were doing, understand the medications, understand the the pathology of what was happening to her. She stabilized, but she had massive brain damage, like hardly any higher function left. And she was 74 years old. And the doctors said to me, look, she's got massive brain damage.

She's probably never going to do anything again. She's not going to have any quality of life. They shifted her back to our regional hospital. We had three months in hospital and, in this time I started studying everything, and now I was seeing signs of hypoxia in her body, which I'd seen to myself when I was writing at altitude, know, seeing these signs in her. And so I put two and two together and thought, I think she's got sleep apnea. And, I went to the doctors. I said, I want to sleep apnea assessment.

And they said to me, why would we do that? You know, and apparently, when you have a stroke or an aneurysm, this can, cause, sleep apnea. And in this case is what, what happened? So I went and bought an outside consultant into the hospital, did an assessment, and it came back that she was stopping breathing hundreds of times a night. So she was not getting enough oxygen. And she was, of course, sleeping 18 hours all of the day. And she for the time that she was asleep, she wasn't getting enough oxygen.

So she had this brain, that massive brain damage, plus not getting enough oxygen. So that was a first win for me that I managed to get the CPAp machine put on it and she got oxygen. And then she started to have little improvements. And then I started to think, what else can oxygen do? And I came across something called hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And for those who've got the camera in behind me is a mild hyperbaric chamber. And this turned out to be a huge part of her rehabilitation. And at this point, my mum couldn't speak.

She didn't know who she was. She had no control over any bodily functions. She was just basically like a baby in a 74 year old woman's body. And after three months I said, well, you know, we've got to put her in an institution. She's 24, seven around the clock here. There's no way you'll ever cope with her. And I know I'm taking my mum home and they say we need a co. And I said I came in with my first two books and I threw them at the social worker and I said, this is who I am, and I'm taking my mother home and you'd better get used to it.

And he said, and I had a hell of a battle to get a little bit of support. So caregivers for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening is all we were wanting. In some advice on how to renovate the house and things like that. And I said, we as a family are going to look after our mum and we're going to take her home. And so I eventually got, you know, to take her home. And I had been studying hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And so I went to this dive company. Now they use hyperbaric for divers who have the beans.

And I went to the store.

Rebuilding Lisau2019s Mother After Stroke 33:00

I've company said, here's my research. Here's my situation. Can I use your chamber? And these amazing people said, yes. You saw in a legal a legal waiver. And, you work at the protocols and do all of that with, in conjunction with some doctors. And we'll do it. And so we did this with you. I'd take you down into the factory setting sticker on a forklift. This is a very frail in a wheelchair, completely out of it. Mum. You know, stick around this forklift and stick around to this big, big steel hyperbaric chamber that looks like a big LPG tank or something.

And we did this for an hour and a half a day, for five days a week for 33 sessions. And in that time I started to notice changes. And after 33 sessions, she was starting to respond. And the oxygen because it hyper oxygen the body. And that gets through the blood brain barrier and it gets oxygen to the cells that are desperately needing it. And so it was starting to work. But then I lost access to the chamber because I had to be taken off on a contract. And so I'm like, next obstacle, what do I do now?

So then I researched and found I could buy a hyperbaric chamber. So I mortgaged my house. I bought a hyperbaric chamber and stowed it in my house was what you see back there. And I actually ended up opening a clinic, and I'm about to open another clinic. And over the next few years, I ended up doing, you know, hundreds of these sessions. And then I started working on other aspects. And this is where you guys came into it, because I started DNA, I studied epigenetics, I studied, everything. And so working with the DNA company has been, you know, a huge, a huge thing for me because this was another big piece of the puzzle.

Then I started functioning neurology and, keto diet and all these other aspects that I did. It took me two and a half years to take it from being like a baby, which you could not even set up to, or, you know, anything to having a full driver's license, walking five cases a day and going to the gym five days a week. And the doctors have, you know, you just see this, this this is an impossible journey. But nobody asked me what I had done. And so I actually ended up writing a book. And this book, called relentless How a mother and Daughter Defied the Odds.

And that's a journey of bringing her back. And what I did in the it was really the mindset. Kashif, because if I hadn't had that mindset as a crazy athlete, if you like, what should you know? I think, what's the point of running all those kilometers around the world? Well, that was the point because that taught me how to just grind out the daily training. I put her through hundreds and hundreds of hours of retraining of her brain. You know, I would go for months on end and see no change, but I would keep going when everybody else was telling me, why are you carrying on?

There's no point. She's never going to improve. It's a waste of time. You're putting it through all this training, and it's torturous and it's hard for her and stuff. Why don't you just let it be and make a comfortable? I don't do it comfortable. And I think, you know, comfortable means we're declining. You know, we need to be pushing, being strong, and we need recovery, don't get me wrong. But, hundreds and, you know, thousands of hours have gone into rehabilitation. But two and a half years, it took me to get it back to, to full health again.

So a really empowering and inspiring story. And unfortunately, Kashif, in October last year, my mum was diagnosed with, lymphoma, a, an aggressive CNS lymphoma. So that's she had a brain tumor. And we went into round two of her journey and we were told once again she would not survive. This was terminal. She would have, only have only weeks to live. It was very aggressive. And so I went and I what I did this is go to the research, go to the go to the science. And I studied everything I could about the metabolic approach to cancer.

And I selfishly went and got some of the world's best doctors and scientists on my podcast so I could learn from them. And, and it took me 12 weeks, but we now have no sign of cancer. You never want to say you're cured because cancer can always change its metabolism and so on. But as of now, we now ten months. And in doing hyperbaric intravenous, vitamin C, the metabolic approach to cancer off label drug combinations, peptides, DNA, all of these aspects. And now the, the tumors are gone and she's, you know, fully functioning again.

And she, she'd regressed right back to being a baby again when she had the tumor. So I've been through this journey twice, you know, and to see who come back at the age of 80 now, is just absolutely, absolutely phenomenal. And it's amazing what the human body can actually endure. And it's amazing what happens when you actually go to the latest in science and you start taking responsibility for your health. She's on a very strict diet, a very strict training regime, you know, a number of hours every day into her rehabilitation.

But I'm prepared to do that, and she's prepared to do that in order to live, you know, and she gets to hang around and be with her grandchildren and have a wonderful life. But she's a she has to be an athlete. She's my athlete. You know, I treat her like we're training for the Olympics. And every day's a training day is no days off. And I, Yeah. That's incredible. You know what people don't hear about often in these kind of stories is the journey. And how difficult like, it's the same as you spending eight years to get to your goal. Like eight years.

You you'd say it. It's hard to really feel what eight years feel like. Yeah, right. Like the grind. Failure after failure after. And imagine with your mother month after month after month of seeing no change and sticking to it. Yeah. It's that big, audacious goal on the fearless path. It's just I know what's going to happen. I'm going to make it happen. The belief is part of what makes it happen. But the resilience of your getting your mental strength allows you to plow through. And I'm sure when you bring that mental strength to your mother, it's it's, you know, it leads on to her.

It becomes, you know. Yeah, she's she's tough beyond tough. She's a gentle little lady, you know, she's not she hasn't been an athlete or anything. And you know her new normal life. But she is strong in the mind. She just does what I ask you to do to the best of your ability every single day. And she never complains. Or once or twice, she tell me she wants to punch me in the face because she's had enough of me bossing her around. But very, very rarely. She's so tolerant. And that is key. Now, I work with a lot of clients now with their health coaching, with doing our DNA and, a number of other things.

And if I can tell pretty quickly whether somebody is going to have a chance at coming back or not, because I know I can, you can work out whether they've got the commitment to, you know what, what's going to be required, because people often come to me and they see these results and stuff and they're like, what's the magic bullet? What's the one thing? What's the pill that I need to take? What's that? And unfortunately, there is no magic bullet. It's hard work. It's a multi-faceted approach, you know, and it's grinding out.

The daily stuff is just so cool because what you're saying that a clinician will look at the pathology and determine whether this person's coming back or not, like, yeah, I don't I mean, I try not to make that deterministic sounding, but you can, you can pretty early on in the journey see whether they have, the strength in the mind to, to fight, you know, because that is you're not the clinician. No, no, it's, it's what they're trained to do. They're looking at what does this disease look like, how far progressed is it.

And do I have this technology medication to reverse based on where it's at. Here's my calculation. Here's your chance of survival. You're looking at one thing. Is this person ready to live or not. Yeah. Are they going to fight through or not. That mental. Because the solution isn't all of what they're measuring. The solution is truly if you want to heal, you have to fight. You got to fight. You got to have the mental strength and like you like the things that you have done and overcome. There is nothing that we can't overcome.

Yeah. And you know, like because by the same token, you have to also know that you can fail, you can go all in and still fail. You know, I had a situation unfortunate with my precious dad who died 18 months ago, and that was a situation where I went all in with everything I possibly could. And and I failed or not, I failed, but it you know, we lost my dad. He had an aortic aneurysm. My dad, and unfortunately been a smoker all his life, and I never stopped smoking. And he loved this bad food. And, you know, he.

Where mum, mum always listened did did did was very fit, strong and capable. And he was very, he lived a really outdoorsy life. So he had that going for him. But he did smoke and he did eat terribly. And I could never change my diet, you know. And, so he had the same tourism and he was in the hospital. If they'd done operation, they couldn't believe they had survived this massive operation. But unfortunately, he developed sepsis. Now, I was aware, because of the work I do of, the, the clinical research around intravenous vitamin C and sepsis.

So I tried to get him intravenous vitamin C in the hospital because they were running out of options at this point. And I just came up against a brick wall. Of bureaucracy. And, now in America, in certain states, there's a thing called the right to try, where if you're at, you know, the end of life and they are doctors have run out of options. You have the right to try different approaches because there's no other options. Right? We don't have that law, unfortunately, in New Zealand. And I came up against a brick wall of bureaucracy and I, you know, I wouldn't even know, you know, if I had had the intravenous vitamin C from day one when I was asking for it, whether that would have been enough to save him.

That and a number of other things. I couldn't because he was intubated in an ICU unit. I'd lost complete control over over him so I could not. And I had to fight against ethics committees, and I did, and I fought for 15 days. I had this legal battle. I had to get every doctor, every nurse in the entire ICU unit on board with me doing this. I had to fight the ethics committee. I eventually won that. Right. But it was too late for my dad. And it was 15 days, and he was at death's doorstep. And despite that, the intravenous vitamin C started to turn things around initially.

But we needed it every, every, every six hours. Huge doses of vitamin C, which was the protocol that I was trying to get. And they stopped me doing the second they stopped me doing the food to stop me doing the fourth. And I had to fight 18 hours every time to get the next one. And, and, fortunately, my dad was too far gone at that point, you know, so I know what it is to go all in and to fail. And I know what I will do is to go all in and to succeed. When I when I look back at that horrific journey, which was horrific for me and my whole family, and just heartbreaking to lose the center of our, you know, family world.

Excuse me. I know, though, that I did everything I could for him. I gave him every opportunity that I possibly could. And, you can't control the universe, unfortunately.

Cancer Recovery, Hyperbaric Oxygen, and Longevity 45:00

You know, but this is what makes me so passionate about people being in the preventative space. Yeah, about taking care of your health in life. You know, increasing your life's being, having longevity and having functional a functional life where you are strong and capable right till the very end. You know, that's my goal for people that we drop dead at 150 or 180, if you're like Dave Esprit gone for broke, you know, and I do think with the the technology in the in you're at the cutting edge of this, you know, you know, the stuff that's coming down the pipeline.

We are going to be able to live decades longer. We understand genetics better and it's getting better all the time. We got the chance. So if we can hold it together now to live decades longer, I believe in live functionally healthy longer. And that's that's the key. We don't want to have this decline that we see so many, you know, and I've lived with my mum, you know, like bringing her back and and having to keep it there. It's so it's a big it's a big, you know, huge commitment on a day to day basis.

So I mean in that you mentioned anti-aging and longevity. We've been talking about, you know, your mind and the power there, which is incredible. We've been talking about reacting to sort of acute situations your mom and dad ran, which, by the way, it's interesting that you use the high dose vitamin C for both when there are two very different problems. But yeah. Right. So but it works. Yeah. And so does hyperbaric by the way. They're all part of the oxidative medicine family. And they have very broad reaching sort of almost panacea like therapeutic value.

Hyperbaric is just huge in synergistically intravenous vitamin C in and hyperbaric worked very well together. And in the case like with cancer, keto diet, exogenous ketones, intravenous vitamin C and hyperbaric, you've got a winning combination to start knocking those cancer cells off. So, you know, it's far more complicated than that. But yeah, these are things that are real anti-aging. Intravenous vitamin C is a becomes a sort of a pro oxidant at these super high levels. And can I take everything from the, you know, bathing the tumor basically in, in oxygen, and with a hyperbaric, you've got inflammatory pathways downregulated, you've got stem cell production, you've got hyper oxygenation of, of the, of the body in the tissues.

So any place that's hypoxic or if you've had a like a stroke, concussion or anything like that, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, wound injuries, gut health, everything is help with that. It's absolutely amazing. And it's not promoted as well as it should be because nobody can really make money out of it, unfortunately. You know, there's no drug to patent. Yeah, yeah. It's funny, I'm actually going to a hyperbaric conference next week. Oh, wow. Yeah. For the really? My life. Yeah. There's a conference where they've asked us to come just speak about the genetics of it and why, you know, how oxidation affects the body and that kind of.

You kind of already answered my question, which I was trying to figure out. You're talking about things therapeutically, you know, what are your thoughts on the longevity? But it's really one of the same, the way you deal with hyperbaric gravity because of, like you said, that panacea effect. It's not only responsive, sort of therapeutic, it can be, but it is also preventative. But it's also that's. Absolutely. I'm in there. I, you know, I do blocks of 4 to 6 weeks in the three times a year, actually, you probably have Doctor Jason Solomons at this conference that you're going to, I imagine is in America.

He was just on the podcast a couple of weeks ago. Fantastic. And he's, written a book called, Oxygen Under Pressure. Highly recommend that book. And it explains just really, simply clearly what it what it actually does. And I would probably butcher the explanation, but it is it is because it's oxygen is is a is a is actually a nutrient in if we have tissues in our body that are hypoxic, not enough oxygen, which we all do, because as we get older we get more hypoxic tissue. Plus anything that's like a crush.

Andrea burn or gangrene, inflammation or arthritis, a stroke, a concussion. All of these cause hypoxia in those tissues. And if we can get the oxygen, which in the, in the chamber, is the oxygen. You are on an oxygen mask. You're, compressed, in a in a pressure rate of, depending on what clinic you go to, this one here only goes to 1.5 atmospheres. Some of them in the hospital settings go to two and even three atmospheres. But the therapeutic is usually around the 21.5 up to say 2.5 is mostly where a lot of the therapeutic, dosage is, is is brought into effect if you like.

The oxygen molecules just briefly are compressed down in size because of the pressure. And it's like a can of fizzy drink. You open up a can. It all bubbles out, right? Yeah. That's what's happening when you're releasing the pressure. When it's under pressure. Those, those those bubbles are smaller. And that's what happens with oxygen. It's compressed down in size. And it can and then dissolves into the plasma. So it becomes like a liquid. And then it can pass through the smallest capillaries in the smallest where when it when it's attached to the red blood cell, it's too big to get into places that have got crush spoons, inflammation, whatever going on.

It can't get through. It can't get through the blood brain barrier. So this is where we can get up to 15 times the amount of oxygen for the period that we're in there. And then you also have the AP genetic changes because you if you're doing this 20 plus sessions over a period of weeks, you get epigenetic changes happening as well as you turn on certain genes and certain transcription factors, upregulated and so on and so forth. So they get an immediate effect. But you're also getting this epigenetic peaked over time.

You get neo vascularization where you get new growth of new pathways. So you can actually get, you know, like if you have a blockage somewhere, it can actually make the body make new capillaries around the blockage. And things like this is absolutely for athletes. Amazing. For your oxygen carrying capacity and so forth. Is there like, a sensorial, like, wow, I feel amazing. No, actually, what you do feel and it's a little bit different for every person if you have a short session. So like I say, if I've got an athlete who wants to train and they want to be hyper oxygenated before they go training, then you might do just a short 20 minute session, and then they'll probably be energized and have more oxygen for their immediate, training after after straight after the hyperbaric.

I use mine at the end of the day because it, I stay in the longer, an hour to an hour and a half. And that puts me into a very it's a very strong parasympathetic driver. So it puts you into a very deep, relaxed state. In fact, when I come out, I'm a little bit dopey and a little bit sort of I've got to sit down and get my gear there myself again, because number one, it has a detox effect. Partly as well, especially if you've got a lot of toxins in the brain. But also this pair of sympathetic. So it puts me into this relaxed state.

So I'm not going to be really so doing it. You know, before I come on a podcast, probably not a great idea because I need a little bit of adrenaline. Right, to do that. So yeah, it's amazing that you open up like literally the door to your home and towards your family story, because it's true that that you discovered something that everybody needs to know, you know. And yeah, it's not only your personal story, but it extends into your family and the, the, the vision of resilience that I what I get after listening to you and, how much more I think I can do, you know, you can do it.

You can do it. We can all do. What we need is a team of people and a network of people that we can pull on when we need help, and we need to build that, that support network around ourselves. I always had a good team of people around me is an athlete, in my family, in regards to my mum, you know, they backed me every step of the way and that's absolutely key. But believe in yourself. And when we believe in others, we empower them. As a coach, I love when I, you know, someone comes to me, they want to run an ultramarathon and they've just starting out or something, and they're like, I can't do that.

I'm signing for super heroes and you have to be. And I'm like, hell no, this is how you do it. I'm going to give you the plan. Just follow the plan and anybody can do it, you know? And I truly believe that that, you know, as long as you've got a, you know, relatively healthy body, anybody can do an ultramarathon or anybody can achieve success in whatever field they want to go for. It's just a matter of following, a plan and sticking to it and being persistent and getting around obstacles when they come and and fighting, fighting hard and having the discipline to keep going when everything else is looking like custard and, you know, like in business, the stuff that comes at you, I mean, Covid, we've all been through that, you know, you have to have resilience.

You have to go, okay, this was tough, You know, sit down, have a cry if you have to. I do regularly, what the heck of what is been through? And then I get myself back up and behead it again, you know? Yeah. So if people listening, I'm sure at this point you're like, I need to work with Lisa. I was like, how do I tell the people that you coach? Are they only local to New Zealand or. No, no. International. Definitely international. So obviously I work with you guys. So we do DNA testing obviously, and epigenetics.

Online. If people can go to my website, it's probably the best place to find me just Lisa Tamati. Okay. It's Tim at least optometry.com, and I'm all over Instagram and YouTube. I have a quite a big YouTube channel as well as my podcast, which is pushing the limits. And if anyone's interested. Yeah, I've written three books. So the other two were running hot and running to extremes. Of my running at beaches. So yeah, my evening reading. Where's the documentary of you, killing yourself? I have them on my YouTube channel, Google or Lisa Tamari, and you can find, my YouTube channel.

I've got a whole playlist of, all my ultramarathon, documentaries. If you can't find it, you can reach out to me, Lisa, at Lisa Automaticamente all of your links. But, Yeah, that's where you can find me. The got my, TV plan for the next month. Brilliant. I just love working with you guys. I love your team. I've loved learning from from you all. And, yeah, I love being at the cutting edge of what science is doing and helping people be preventative and optimizing the health and longevity. Yeah, it's great working with you.

The ability to work with people like yourself who have seen it all, done it all, pushing the limits. It's a compliment to know that we can benefit that in any way. But are you coming here opening up, telling us your story, telling us about your family? Well, it just the inspiration I'm sure people are choosing right now to get out and do what they've been putting on. Thank you so much. Thank you again. So yeah, anybody again wanting to work with Lisa directly is Lisa target.com. So tamati.com YouTube Instagram anywhere.

She's all over the place. Read the books, watch documentaries, get inspired, climb a mountain, tell her about it. Exactly. Thank you. Lisa, this was. This is awesome. Thank you. Kashif for.