The Hidden Truth About FDA Approvals & Biohacking Myths | Sandy Martin | Ep. 35

Introduction to Sandy Martin and Biohacker Expo 0:00

Google shut me down for promoting a health conference. They said I can't advertise about health. I appealed it and they shut down me twice because they said education is fine. Today we're joined by Sandy Martin, the founder of the Biohacker Expo, with her passion for health innovation and wellness. Sandy is transforming how we think about biohacking. Let's dive in. Someone who wants to do some functional medicine or bio hacking, they should seek a coach. I think wellness coaches are probably very helpful.

Every time you hear biohacking in the media, they always describe it as something self-experimental. And that's not what's happening. You get people in regular news media saying, this is all experimental and not FDA approved. Vitamin D supplementation is not experimental. Right. No one should be getting exposed to toxic food. It's unacceptable. or microplastics, or phthalates in our perfumes and our shampoos. I realized two months ago that my shampoo had pthalates. How you actually got involved in the whole biohacking space.

Welcome to another episode of a healthy point of view podcast. I'm your host Sam Tahara. Today we have a guest. This is someone that I got to meet many years ago and now she's doing some really big things in the biohacking space. this is the founder of one of the beautiful big conferences right here in her backyard in Miami. It's called the Biohacker Expo. And last year she had this tremendous lineup. I was on stage, I had the ability to talk about franchising opportunities and the biohacking space.

And then also my business partner, Dr. Davis, was up there talking about environmental toxins. This year he's gonna be on that stage again. Today we have Sandy Martin. Sandy. Thanks so much. Yeah, welcome. I'm happy to have you here. You know, so thrilled, especially, you know. We got the biohacker expo coming up and it's exciting. And I keep on hearing people talking about it. Your posting things with with people that are going to be on stage talking and last year you had a tremendous lineup this upcoming year.

It's going be even a better lineup. So let's talk about. Well, I believe that laughter is the best medicine. And so I booked a comedian to host the main stage for two days, and that's JP Sears. So a lot of the hosts you're seeing are me making fun of biohacking, because if we can't make fun ourselves, then what's the point? I agree. And you know, I've been following him for a while, especially with all the political stuff that's happening. He just cracks me up. You know? Sometimes I'm just like, and this might be TMI, like I hope I am sitting on the toilet when I watch this stuff because then at least I won't shit my pants.

Right? But this is going to be great. I think everyone's going be there having a great time. You and I talked about having the IV lounge. Yes. Right? I'm really, really excited for this because the one thing I hate about getting an IV at an event is that I miss out on things.

IV Lounge, Event Experience, and This Year's Lineup 3:04

And so it's usually happening in a booth. And then I have to take an hour or half an our, whatever kind of drip I'm getting. It's downtime, which is lovely, but I try to pack as much stuff as I can in. But this year we're putting the lounge right behind the seats for the main stage. So people will be able to watch the Main Stage talks while they're getting a drip. I think it is just going to add to the overall vibe. Yeah, that's the experience, because last year we had a booth and doing the IVs, and we did a lot of IV's, but this year it's gonna be different.

Because you're right, a lotta people, they don't wanna miss out, so they're like, ah, well, there's this talk, maybe I'll do it later. And now it gonna just be front and center, right back there in front of the whole audience and stage. So this is gonna exciting, exciting. Yeah. What does this lineup look like this years? Well, the other thing I'm really excited about is dealing with what I see as the confusion behind what it means to be FDA approved and FDA cleared. And so a lot of what we do in the biohacking space is it sounds wishy-washy.

It may support your immune system. This may help your pain. this has not been approved to treat disease, blah, whatever. When regular consumers read those labels, they frankly think biohacking is bullshit. And so what I've done is I booked Andrew Bustamante, who created Everyday Spy to teach real, he's a former CIA operative, and he is coming to us what it means to have a covert conversation about this world. So everything that's out there is FDA cleared, but you get people in regular news media saying, this is all experimental and not FDA approved.

Well, it's, you know, vitamin D supplementation is not experimental. Right. But they still have to put those kinds of labels on a vitamin B bottle. And red light therapy has been around for over 40 years as a therapy. It's not experiment. Oh, and but they can't say exactly what redlight therapy does. Because if they went through what it would take, they'd have to pay off the FDA millions of dollars to review clinical studies that would cost millions. And so the only one who gets the label FDA approved are people who companies who can patent and protect their IP.

and so they can charge really high profits. Right. It's like vitamin D, right? Even if you try to put the studies behind vitamin B, the millions of dollars that you spend on that, you're never gonna get it back as an investor because you can't patent vitamin T, so I get. And so he's gonna be talking about this. He's going to talk about what it means as exhibitors and vendors of these products to communicate clearly to an audience that understands also how to interpret the language, like we're gonna create our own covert language.

That's amazing. For how the handle this, or at least interpret what's out there. Okay. And what funny is I asked ChatGPT for help on that, and it said it wouldn't help me create a covert langauge. Really? Oh they have it, they're policing it. Yeah. They're doing, that's scary. So, okay, so this is gonna be like a class. It'll be a talk, but I think it's one of these enlightening moments where we can recognize we're all in this together. We can really talk about the safety and efficacy of biohacking.

Some things don't work. It's not necessarily because of the thing. I started my bio hacking journey with light therapy on my brain. And it didn't work. But it did work because my body was loaded with mold. And so I had to detox first. So we have to get to a point where we understand the context for when to use something and when not to. I spent a lot of money on that device. If I'd known originally what was wrong with me, if I knew where to go for testing for all kinds of things, then I would have figured it out sooner and could have afforded a much less expensive journey.

So the one thing that I've noticed in the world of functional medicine and biohacking, because I started part-time when I was in a fire department with

FDA Labels, Biohacking Misconceptions, and Clear Communication 7:10

a company called Cinegenics, and I have been in this industry for almost two decades. And what it was almost 20 years ago is definitely not what is today. you get some of the who's who that are all in this stuff. So now people are more willing to accept it. I mean, you got that R.F.K. Jr. movement that's going on, Make America Healthy Again. What do you think about that, by the way? I love it, I was just watching a video on my phone of people lined up in the Capitol building to support him at the hearing.

A lot, oh yeah. And I think he's kooky, and I really think that he is weird. You know, I'm not gonna judge someone based on how weird they are. I mean, pretty weird sometimes myself, so. We all are! Yeah, that's part of what makes life fun. But he's supporting an agenda that he is leading a movement, really, where we're able to talk about the money that is corrupting healthcare, we are able talk why doctors are not recommending lifestyle changes when they can. Or can they? Are they restricted by the insurance companies from even recommending these things?

Why is the cash pay model so vital right now as a pivot point? It's something that won't always be that way. It won' always cash-pay, a hope that we can get these therapies, like what Likovita offers. but it's demonstrating people are willing to vote with their dollars. And if enough people vote their hard earned dollars paying out of pocket to be healthy. That's what it takes, because the rest of it's just sick care. Yeah, it is. And that's the thing, people have to take more of that proactive, preventative approach to the health and wellness.

But you know, another thing that he's talking about is this whole toxic food, the big food companies. For me it doesn't matter if you're on the left or on right, we all should be supporting that movement. None of us, children, no one should get exposed to toxic foods. It's unacceptable. or microplastics, or phthalates in our perfumes and our shampoos. I am really careful about these things. And I realized two months ago, just didn't consider that my shampoo from Whole Foods would have pthalates it.

Really? And then I was like, why does this smell so good? I finally looked at the bottle and it was clear that it had phtalites. Wow. So I had to throw that away. You know, you think companies like Whole Foods, they vet out the majority of the products. I thought they vetted out all of their products? No. It's not one of there criterion. Wow. So I guess you threw that shampoo out? I did. Smells so good. Yeah. That's how you know. If something smells really good, check the label twice. Check the labels.

Like all those things that you plug in the wall and stuff too. You don't know what you're breathing in. And if you breathe it in I mean it's going into your lungs is diffusing through the blood It's getting in your bloodstream people have to understand that it such as you're breathing it and breathing It back out like when you breath something in it it going to your Lungs and what happens is deoxygenated blood that that dirty blood is going through through The lungs and it getting oxygenated again with whatever you breed so it is Going into you blood stream so you have be careful So, now Sandy, I wanna talk about how you even got into, because before you used to do different type of conferences.

I did. Right? I ran Comic-Cons. Comic Cons. Florida SuperCon in South Florida was the big one. Okay, awesome. Which is different. Two whole different industries. Yeah. So I want to talk like how actually you got involved in the whole biohacking space. I got involved because I had to remake my life after I recovered from having a brain injury caused by mold. And what happened to me in that process from that injury was I believe the mold went to the most active part of my brain. So the analytical driven, operational, hardcore boss bitch got real quiet.

Mmm. Everything I knew to be me went away. How long did it take for you to notice that? It took two to four weeks for me to know I was gone. Something's up. Yeah. Wow. And it was likely because I painting in an area where mold was behind the walls that the VOCs from the paint fumes acted as the carrier to get it straight into my brain. Oh, wow. And so we have to be really careful about our environment. And it took six months to figure out what was wrong with me. Meeting you is part of my story. Liquevita is a huge part in my recovery.

So a friend of mine recommended that I do a heavy metals test.

Sandy's Mold Injury and Health Crisis 12:22

because he thought it could be arsenic poisoning. That's how sick I was. I couldn't stay awake past seven. My cognition was just, the put, it was gone. And couldn' do anything sequential. It was freezing. Just, I called it buffering. You just stop and not know how long I frozen. couldn work on sentence structure really without pausing and taking a long time to really think about my words. Anything sequential was quiet. And so this recommendation that I take, a heavy metals test at home, I didn't know at the time that crab cakes have a natural arsenic, natural, or I guess arsenate comes from the earth.

They say it's nontoxic. I don't now. But I ate a crab cake, activated charcoal, and then I eat in a cup. Sent that off. So the charcoal pulled all of the arsenique that was from that crap cake out What happened was the lab, not the company that sold me the test, but the Lab between me and them called me on the phone and said, I'm not supposed to call you. Well, that's scary. You have so much arsenic in your body, you might just die. Oh, geez. And so that when my friend said you have to go to liquefied, and you had to get chelation straight away.

And then he connected me to you. You were so kind and so helpful. And I was out of my mind. Like, I thought I would die. I took a jog the day before, a light jog, and then I though I'd die the next day. So thankfully, you took blood tests before I started chelation. but you got me in the same day and we got those results turned around, sent to you and you said, okay, do this, help me out. I did two drips and then found out I wasn't really poisoned. And I wouldn't have known that if it wasn' for the extensive blood testing.

Just standard protocol for what you do here. The thing is that what people have to also understand is like, One thing can show up in your blood work, but it doesn't mean that there aren't other things that have to be addressed. And that's where like the comprehensive blood analysis and doing the specialty tests, micronutrients, deficiency, mold testing, and all of that stuff. When you were feeling the way that you're feeling, I mean, how frustrating was it throughout that whole time until you got better?

I saw a neurologist straight away and he misdiagnosed me. What did he misdiagnose you with? So he said I had a traumatic brain injury from a bump on my head when I was 10. What? He sees it all the time, he says. They just come back to haunt people. Just midlife. You'll just suddenly have confusion from an early childhood bump to the head. When he told you that, did you already know in your head, like, there's no way? I knew that that wasn't the case, but he sent me for a spect scan. I was one of those people that, it was during COVID, It was October of 2020. And I, I a person who watched MSNBC.

So I thought that the world was ending.I was afraid to get on a plane and go to Dr. Aiman's clinic in Atlanta. He didn't have a clinic down here yet. And so I didn't go get the proper scan. I thought I was being clever, I found someone locally who would do a SPECT scan and I though I would get help I need. And what happened was that the clinic or diagnostic place where they did the scan, they put me in a dark room, had me lie down on a table, 15 minutes to wait, closed my eyes and meditated because I So that spec scan showed low activity in my frontal lobe because I was meditating and low-activity in the back of my head because had my eyes closed.

So it looked like I had had a traumatic brain. And so he's like, it's obvious. It's on your scan. He recommended hyperbaric oxygen therapy, neurofeedback, and a drug called nemotapine. Off label, he said. and he said it's used for stroke victims to open up the blood vessels in the brain. That seemed really aggressive to me, but I was scared and desperate and I didn't know what to do. You did the hyperbaric? I would have said the hypobaric couldn't hurt. It would only be able to benefit, right? Accepted it gave me headaches.

Oh really? Yeah, this was one of those like industrial hospital So I went to a clinic. I'm down the road and I met with one one other doctors there He is what put me on the course of biohacking So he asked me what the protocol was that was recommended when I told him he said oh doctor so-and-so Like how do you know that? He said well, he's the only one that recommends that drug Oh, wow. And so this doctor recommended mild hyperbaric therapy, because if you do 2.0, it can be with pure oxygen. It can actually do more harm than good to the brain.

So you want a really slow, gentle approach for the brains. OK. I bought one. Got a chamber. They couldn't get into my home. Too big, so we put it in the office. Was it one of those soft shell or the hard shell? I actually got a hardshell 1.5 ATA chamber, You said, forget it, but I gotta get my health right. I'm doing the real deal. Yeah, yeah. It was only 7,000 more than the therapy was going to be. Right, right? And so I said if we're gonna do this, we'll do that. So I'll pay the extra 7000 and then it's available to my friends and my then husband and so we got a chamber.

But immediately I had a Herc's response to it because mold will fight back. And the headaches were so intense I couldn't even use this really fantastic therapy until I found out what was wrong with me, detoxing got better. And so we found that it wasn't arsenic. That was maybe four months in out of the six months. I was listening to one of Dave Asprey's books and he described one his scans from Dr. Amon as looking like he'd had toxic exposure. They figured out for him it was mold. Then I went back to my scans and I had a similar scan.

Okay. And then found out that was the case, was able to start detoxing. But then it took me six months before I felt well enough to just be a regular person for a whole day. You know? And Dave Asprey's big on the whole mold thing, you know. And he even like, his coffee that he has, the Danger Coffee, it's all about mold-free. So what did he do to detox from the mold? So the first doctor I found, It took me a month to see her and I read all of the protocols for how to detox for mold before I saw her.

And she recommended something that wasn't on the protocol. But I was, this time I actually desperate and was I didn't take the nemotapine, but she recommend a nystatin and took that. I like whatever, I'll take anything. Im desperate. Right, right. Then I had a herx response again, massive to that and so I have suicidal thoughts for the only four days of my entire life. And that's just mold doesn't care if you live or die. It feeds off of us, living or dead, it doesn' care. And so it got in and just started to shoot off signals like, oh no, I just imagined the mold in my brain just firing off these signals.

Detox, Functional Medicine, and Finding the Root Cause 19:48

Get her to stop, get her stop whatever it takes. Thankfully, when I looked in the cabinet the next morning to take that pill, And so I called her and I said, I can't take this drug. And she said I told you, you would need mental health help to get through this process. And I was like, no, that's not how we do this. You don't give me a drug that makes me think of drowning myself in a tub. That's a thought that not mine. Right. It's coming from this thing that has taken up property inside my head.

Yeah. And it's an actual living thing, fungus. Those weren't my thoughts. I'm not gonna go talk to somebody about that thought. It's not mine. And so I had to fire her and find another doctor. Can you just imagine all of a sudden now you're seeing this therapist, right? Where now they're gonna label you as potentially crazy. They're going to give you other medications that are gonna actually truly make you crazy, and the root cause, which is the mole, still hasn't been taken care of. Yeah, so you made a good choice.

Yeah. So I found another doctor who took me for $13,000 day one, and that's how desperate I was. Wow. I didn't know where to turn, didn' know what to do, but he was the number one mold doctor in South Florida. Okay. And then what I find out was that he wanted to test me everything because the cash pay model is, he's incentivized to take advantage of my weakness When I'm the weakest, I had to sign a form saying I wouldn't be rude to his staff, and I would question his judgment because mold rage is a thing.

And so he'd just seen it so many times. So he automatically put me in this submissive role where I have to agree to just do whatever he said out of the gate. It took me two months to realize that that was nonsense. Once I had to fire my second functional medicine doctor, I realized I just had do it on my own. And so what got me healthy, because I'd had that over-response, so I knew I have to go gentle. So a lot of chia seeds. Every time I drank water, it had chia seed in it. And so that would help to bind the mold and get it out of my body.

And then chlorella at night is more gentle than activated charcoal. I would do activated a couple times a week. The chloella every night really helps. So that's how I helped my buddy get rid of it. Right, so you don't keep on getting exposed to it. Right. I mean, that's the most important thing. Our bodies, most people, 70% of people can clear whatever toxins are sent their way. It's going to do damage. But we're in this constant filtration process in our bodies. That's what the liver does. So I had to get out of the environment.

They aided the lever through gentle binders. And then I was doing some mitochondrial support, supplements. CoQ10 and PQQ and oh goodness, I don't remember. Glutathione? Well that's where I kept coming back to Liquivita. I didn't supplement for that. Think I took an NAC supplement. Okay. But I keep coming to Liquid Vita for the glutathion drip. That helps, yeah. Like every other week in the beginning and then about once a month thereafter. Yeah, that's so interesting because I hear a lot of stories of people going through similar processes with their health.

And until you actually, you know, I had someone else on the podcast, Natalie Lefebvre. And Natalie, she talks publicly about how you have to become the CEO of your health and you got to take control because there's people out there to guide you. But everyone has like a different way and it might not be the way for you in listening to your story. It wasn't until you actually decided, you know what? I just gotta roll up my sleeves and do this myself. I gotta start reading, I got to start looking into this, picking people's brains, and now look at you.

It's like everyone in the biohacking space knows who Sandy is. You went from being a patient who's trying to just get better, where now it's just like, honestly, your helping. millions of people now. Being part of all of this, I saw you at the A4M, we were at that premier red carpet event together, and it's just like, now we're actually bringing it to the world. And so how that transition happened was I got divorced and I realized I had to go back to work. And I had been helping my ex-husband with the Comic-Cons a little bit here and there, but really hadn't worked in two years.

And in the lead up, I started playing gongs. So that was part of my healing, was sound therapy. I was going to run a metaphysical event because I kind of was all wrapped up in a mystical way that frequencies had also helped me heal. And then we were talking to a lawyer and the lawyer asked him how I was different before and after the mold. And he said, well, before she was a real boss bitch and now she sits in a corner and plays gong. It's like, that's not who I am. Wow. I called him that night and I said I need you to help me think this through because you know me better than anyone else.

That's not me. What do I do?" And he said, well, why do you like the gongs so much? And I said well they're biohacking. Because what do mean they are bio hacking? When I explain the science behind low frequency tones in that 30 to 50 Hertz range and how it shook the mold out of my brain, helped drain it through my cerebral spinal fluid, it's a lymphatic massage to have sound go through the body. especially in those frequencies and I was working with Gongs in that frequency range intentionally to create movement and to help my body detox.

And I explained that to him and he said, well then do that. What do you mean do do biohacking? What he mean? Do a bio hacking event. He had to hit me over the head with it. And I went, oh, is that a thing? I had no idea. I'd never been to any sort of health expo, let alone a biohacking event. And we'd just come out of COVID, so events were not really a think. Even Dave Asprey's event was virtual that year. So I looked it up. Within two weeks, I have a brand. If there's anything I know how to do, it's I now how run an event, and I just applied all of that structural and operational knowledge into something that I'm truly passionate about.

And I know that my content is reaching millions of people. And so we'll have 1,500 attendees at the event. But I that the work I'm doing is affecting people all over the world who come in contact with the message. To me, that's the whole reason to do any of it. Yeah, and I actually remember when you did the first conference, it was actually Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving that I saw an ad on Facebook, after having a crazy big meal on Thanksgiving. And I was like, what is this, Biohacker Expo? This is my industry, I've never even heard of this.

I wrote an email, you wrote back, hey I know you. What? And then we connected and then everything kind of came to fruition.

Launching the Biohacker Expo and Building a Mission 27:48

The relationship further enhanced itself and got on stage, talked, and we had the Ivy Lounge there. So yeah, it's... Isn't that so typical of founders that we have that exchange on Thanksgiving? You wrote it on thanksgiving and I replied on thankgiving. Oh yeah. We work around the clock. And I tell people, honestly, if I'm up and my eyes are open, I am typically working. And you know, I understand the whole work life balance thing. But for me, it's just like I work around the clock 24 seven. That's because you're on the mission.

I am. And that mission is to really help as many people as possible. I wasn't fulfilled. I knew that I could do more than just taking people to this traditional hospital system that kept me going back and picking them up and taking them back every other week. So I told myself, this can't just be happening. God's not going to use me to just feed this system. That's going use to actually help people. And that's my goal now. But yeah, we work on most awkward days and times and, you know, look at us now, years later we're here on the podcast talking about it and sharing this information with the world.

It really blows my mind to be able to go from dependent on your kindness for survival to being able sit across from you and share my story in a way that will help other people realize that they can feel good. Right. People are walking around with the aches. They're sluggish. Brain fog is just considered normal. I was 45 when all this happened. Do you know how easy it would have been to just call me perimenopausal? Oh, it's part of life, you're getting old, and people just accept it. People listen to us, like, oh, yeah, that's, I'm just getting older.

And then they say, don't get old. You know? Because you'll get crippled like me. It's like no, there's stuff inside of your system that you need to take care of. Right. Yeah, your body's supposed to be able to handle this aging process. but all the toxins around it in our environment and our foods and everything else. Listen, even if your hormones are out of whack, there's things that you can do to balance out your hormone still. Yeah, and even without supplementation. That can be done with just the right advice.

Or even, the hormones off because of endocrine disruptors, or because mold, we have to take care of those root cause issues. You mentioned biohacking and functional medicine in the same sentence earlier, say what I think is the difference between the two, because I'd think people will sometimes think they're similar. Biohacking is really about feeling good now. I want to think clearly, I wanna have energy, and I don't want it to be accomplished in my day to day. And I wanted to repeat that tomorrow and the next day and next.

So biohack tools are energizing and they give us a sense of vitality in the present. And I think functional medicine differs in that it is going to the past to look at the root cause of why we might not be feeling great in a moment so that we can feel better in future. I agree with that. For me, when I hear functional medicines, I start thinking about a lot of testing. A lot specialty testing and looking at genetics, epigenetics, looking biohacking kind of exactly what you said I think about having certain modalities and technologies so you can feel better like now like a cold plunge infrared.

you know, sauna, red light therapy, brain tap, guided meditation. Those are things that are like, people should be doing every single day. But even if you biohack, you can still benefit from functional medicine and having a good functional medical practitioner who can take that deep dive to make sure that the bio hacking technologies that you're utilizing are working. Right, because they didn't work for me until I got to the root. Right. So I wasn't going to get there on biohacking alone. And even I think it's considered bio hacking to do an at home test for heavy metals.

Like that's something a bio hacker does is to test and measure at But that sent me down the wrong path. And had I really thought that that was a reliable test for my situation without the context of a doctor telling me that the other ways you get exposed to arsenic other than being poisoned by somebody is from crab. I wouldn't have known. It took a smart person to help me think through that process. I could not do that on my own. And we definitely need both. But I think that if people don't know where to start, because sometimes, not at Liquivita, but at other places, functional medicine is really expensive to get started.

Very, very expensive. So if someone doesn't want to outlay that kind of money and they don' have access to one of your clinics, If they start with something that's biohacking, my advice is just to say, that cool. That's great stuff. But if it doesn't make you feel better, you gotta dig deeper. Yeah. So in your opinion, would you say someone who wants to do some functional medicine or bio hacking, they should seek a coach to get them through the process? I think wellness coaches are probably very helpful.

Our mutual friend coached me through had I not had him, I wouldn't have known how to interpret the things I was getting. But I think that There are a lot of naturopaths and DAOMs, and even MDs in the space that aren't charging astronomical amounts of money. If you can find a clinic who has, I don't know how, you have PAs or nurses that help people understand? Yeah, a mixture of nurse practitioners, PAS, MD's, DO's. Every location's a little bit different. But they're all, at the end of the day, Everything that we do on the functional medicine side and biohacking side, they didn't learn any of it in school.

So regardless if it's an MD, DLNP, they're all going to these courses, accredited like A4M, AEMMG, going at the different conferences, listening to other doctors, listen to their case studies, which obviously at The Biohacker Expo, there's gonna be doctors up there talking about their different case study. Dr. Davis did that last year, talking all his different cases studies with patients being exposed to toxins and how it is truly the root cause to most diseases. So and until you actually start listening to these other medical providers and their stories and they're case studies You won't really understand it You have to have someone else to kind of as a medical provider you have To have somebody else guide you based on their experiences So that's so true I'm hoping what the whole RFK junior, if they confirm him into that role, I am hoping that they start running actual real clinical studies on a lot of the stuff we do.

Because if now if we have true validation behind it, at that point we're changing the course of medicine. I also think it doesn't have to be that complicated. is that they can change the restrictions on speech about what it is these things do. There are so many studies that demonstrate the effectiveness. But they're not allowed to say. In the bottles and the labels and advertising, Google shut me down for promoting a health conference. They said I can't advertise about health. I appealed it and they shut me down twice because they said education is fine.

Biohacking vs Functional Medicine and the Role of Coaches 35:48

But because I have biohacking vendors in the room and then I'm supporting them, Google won't let me put search ads in search results. because they say it's speculative. And that's a matter of speech. These are all FDA cleared. these are not dangerous products. I don't have anything at the event that is dangerous. The FDA doesn't think anything of my event is danger. It's all been cleared, the approved label is about money. So all they have to do is change policy for us to be more effective in what we offer.

You know, I've been recently on social media, there was actually a podcast with Joe Rogan and Mark Zuckerberg talking about how the government was making meta censor a lot of these things. And for me, it's just like, why? It's really money, yeah. And the funniest part of that interview to me was when they were talking about Mark's knee surgery and Rogan asked him if he had tried peptides. He was like, no, my doctor didn't recommend that. I didn' do it. And Rogen laughed at him and goes, you don't like healing?

He's like I'm good with my dr. and it just goes to show that Money isn't necessarily how someone accesses the truth of what can heal the body. Zuckerberg has all the money he needs to do whatever he wants to. He can make his own peptides, for real. And he's not a believer in these therapies because he is not reading the science. The science is there. This is no speculative. Joe Rogan's a complete opposite. I mean, he, like, is a biohacker. I mean, for years, he's always believed in the stuff that we do.

But he is working with legitimate doctors at Ways2Well. He's not doing anything on his own. Every time you hear biohacking in media, they always describe it as something self-experimental. And that's what's happening. Rogan's is not experimenting with his body. Right. His engaging in structured hormesis. Doing cold plunge followed by heat followed cold Plunge. He's taking peptides specific to what he needs. He cycles in and out of things. Everything he's doing is with doctor supervision. It's not experimental.

And it's personalized to the individual because someone like Joe Rogan, he's doing the comprehensive blood work. The blood that your regular doctor in the allopathic world doesn't do. They're looking at the micronutrients deficiencies. So when they're biohacking with certain supplements, that's because there's a deficiency that has been tested. And people just, they don't understand that. A lot of doctors that are formally trained as family doctors and stuff, they don't know this stuff. So the first go-to is, ah, that doesn't work.

Hold on one second. Our bodies need nutrients just for it to function. My heart needs electrolytes for to even pump and have its own electrical activity in the heart. And you know, when I first started doing IV drips and putting the different nutrients in there, the calcium, magnesium, potassium, I started looking at the boxes that we were using of medications. I was like, these are the same medications that were used for emergency cardiac arrest patients and whatnot. And when you start thinking about it, it's like oh man, I got a patient who's hyperkalemic and I give calcium gluconate.

This is the calcium that goes into the IV bag. magnesium, magnesium sulfate for preeclampsic seizures, you know, adenosine monophosphate. I'm giving this to a patient with a cardiac dysrhythmia. So the traditional system is actually using a lot of these nutrients, but then they try to bash the doctors started utilizing it when it's out of the emergency environment. So, but it shows you that your body does need these things. And when there's an imbalance, you can go into an emergency crisis, medical emergency crises.

This is, Sandy, I'll tell you, your story is one story that always sticks to me because it like, You didn't just help yourself. You decided to actually do something with your experience and bring it to the masses. And the Biohacker Expo, this is something that if people haven't been, they have to come to this. There's a lot of greatness that's happening there. Not only that, the energy, just when you walk in, it's just like so zen. I'm all about the vibe. Last year, people were dancing, right? One of the things that I think people have a misconception of when they think of biohackers is they kind of think the typical tech bro, But that's not who comes to these things.

These events are full of people like me, people who have overcome something painful in their lives, even if they've just gotten a little taste. In fact, I think that who benefits the most from coming to an expo like mine. I put it together so that, and I spent $97,000 in my first year to heal my brain. And that was absurd. Should have never done that. It didn't have to do it. But it was out of desperation that I got anywhere close to that. And so what I've done is I created these experiences in the room for people to try, and so they can see what works for them.

If it doesn't work for then, then they have the knowledge from the talks to find out how to go deeper, to figure out to how find the answer. It shouldn't take anyone six months. Actually, six month is a quick period of time for figuring out something is mold. It's usually two to three years. And people are typically in a very desperate state by the time they consider mold could be a thing. But if you come to an environment like this, you get exposed to the ideas behind what it means to be healthy.

Really healthy! I didn't think, four years ago, I did not know what joy was. I didn't know what it felt like to feel good, I was accomplished, driven, loved my life, but I wasn't happy. I loved all my choices, the impact, what I did, didn�t love myself, and was stressed. The first thing I thought was burnout. So many people can relate to this. that life can feel like drudgery for people sometimes.

Closing Advice: Stop the Poison and Take Action 42:36

But you know what, that might just be sugar in your brain. It might have been my oatmeal for breakfast for 45 years of my life. it might not be the individual themselves, it may be a host, a parasite, fungus, bacteria gone awry. We think that our brains are designed to give answers. So if we feel down, the brain says, I must be depressed. It attaches the eye to that. But my story is a testament that it wasn't me. I didn't feel those things. i had something in my body that was triggering those feelings.

And once I got it out, it The first time I heard someone say she experienced bliss in her life, I thought she was lying. I didn't think it was a real emotion. But now, now I know. And I want everybody to know that they can feel good. That's our birthright. This is the power of looking under the hood. Seeing exactly how your body's performing, what's going on, What are the deficiencies, or how you said. Maybe something's living inside of you that shouldn't. And that happens a lot. Wow. So what else can we expect at the conference at The Expo?

Well, if you have a well-behaved dog, you can bring it. Oh, I like that. We've had quite a few dogs here in the podcast room. People bring them. My dog is my best biohack. Nice. He gets me walking four or five times a day. Who walks who? He gives me love, exactly. Exactly. You know Miguel Bertanati from Medical Health Institute? Okay. And he's gonna talk about biohacking his dog. Oh nice. So we're gonna have vendors focus on what they do for pets too. That's become a lot more popular. It is. I mean I was talking to Christian with STEM Regen and they have a new supplement product coming out for Pets.

Yeah. Pulse, the PEMF, they a whole device for pets Red light therapy for pets? Red Light Therapy. And the more I look at it, honestly I think people are more willing to do stuff for their pets than for themselves. They are. It's scary. So I'll get them in to figure out how to keep their dogs alive longer and then maybe they'll figure how live longer too. Especially if the dog outlives them. So this is awesome, this awesome. So Sandy, as we wrap up here, your story's very powerful. If there's someone listening, any of the doctors that tune into our podcast, or any the consumers that are listening and they resonate with your message, what is one thing that you can leave them off with?

I think the best place to start with biohacking or living a healthy lifestyle is asking yourself what you can stop doing. My cousin called me the other day and he said, I have a little brain fog, should I take Lion's Mane? And I said you should stop eating at McDonald's. He goes I know. Right. Two weeks later, he's down 16 pounds. The greatest gift I'm ever given is when someone takes action on their health and they feel better, right? So he took my advice and in two weeks he is down 15 pounds, feels better because he, took out a poison.

So what's one thing you can stop doing? I think that's the big takeaway. And that can easily make you feel a lot better. So it's not necessarily what you can supplement yourself with. Sometimes it is that one thing that you just have to eliminate. Amazing. Awesome, and they can buy tickets there, too? They can. All right. Yeah, I hope to see everyone there. Amazing. So, Sandy, it was a pleasure having you on the podcast. It's going to be exciting. I'm excited for the big expo. And, you know, what's it's gonna be a good time.

Good time, thank you. Awesome. Thank you for listening to another episode of a Healthy Point of View podcast. Again, I'm your host, Sam Tahata. Make sure you like, share, subscribe. All the links are down below. You can check out Sandy Martin and the Biohacker Expo there. And if you have any questions, just reach out to us. We're not difficult to get a hold of. Until then, we'll see you the next one.